Friday, 28 October 2022
As we enjoy scaring ourselves and our friends with things that go bump in the night this Halloween, why not turn your attention to those creatures that can haunt us throughout the year – our mental gremlins and goblins. Leonie Lightfoot from our Perform Well mental wellbeing programme explains what you can do to stop these pesky demons from impacting your time in the saddle, and in other areas of your life, too.
In the Chimp neuroscience model, gremlins are unhelpful or destructive beliefs or behaviours which we have learnt over the course of our lives. Behind many Chimp outbursts or distress calls are hidden gremlins, which prod our Chimps into action.
Think about the last time you recognised your Chimp – in other words, a time when you noticed a thought, feeling, or behaviour that was unwanted. It’s likely that you can identify an unhelpful belief or behaviour sitting behind this. For example, maybe you got frustrated this morning because your horse wouldn’t let you catch him in the field, meaning you didn’t have time to ride before work. Potentially, the lurking gremlin is that your horse should work to your schedule and understand that it’s time to come in, or that not riding this morning means that you’re letting him down.
Alternatively, perhaps you’ve been putting off moving up a competition grade and telling yourself you’ll just do a few more classes at your current level, even though you know it’s time to move on. This is the gremlin of procrastination, potentially supported a gremlin of perfectionism – you can’t possibly move up until your performance is completely polished and perfect.
We’ll often hold unhelpful beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world in general, so it can be helpful to consider what gremlins you can recognise in each of these areas. Once you become more aware of the beliefs that you may be holding, it’s likely that you’ll begin to notice the ‘gremlin twins’ rearing their heads. The gremlin twins represent unhelpful and unrealistic expectations, often leading to you to beat yourself up and experience frustration with yourself or those around you. Commonly, these take the forms of ‘should’ gremlins – for example, I should never make a mistake, I should always be on time, my friend should understand.
Our unhelpful behaviours are often poor habits that we’ve formed without even thinking. This could be going to the fridge when you’re bored while working from home, or moaning about the day when you get home rather than smiling and greeting your family.
The good news is that our gremlins can be replaced once we’ve recognised them and identified a more helpful alternative. For behavioural gremlins, it can be helpful to consider what else you could do in this situation, such as smiling and telling your loved ones how much you’ve missed them when you get home. This introduces a much more friendly character in our mind management team – the autopilot. These represent helpful or constructive beliefs and behaviours. The idea is that once you’ve identified your gremlins, you can think of autopilots to replace them, then repeat these new beliefs or behaviours until they become automatic.
Imagine that all of your unhelpful beliefs and behaviours are represented by pathways in the brain. While it isn’t possible to delete a pathway, you’re able to replace it with another one which, with repeated practice, can become more dominant. Once you’ve identified the autopilots to replace your gremlins, you need to be proactive in repeating these new beliefs and behaviours so that they become your go-to. Practice your new autopilots in real life or by running through scenarios in your mind and imagining how you want to think and respond in certain situations. For example, next time you’re putting off filling in an entry form, you might have a little Post-It reminder to ask “how will I feel at the end of the day if this still hasn’t been sent?” Or, you might spend a few minutes each evening thinking about the morning chaos, imagining yourself staying calm and reminding yourself that there are no guarantee that a morning with horses will go smoothly – nobody is making you late on purpose.
While most of our unhelpful beliefs and behaviours can be identified and replaced in this manner, it’s important to understand that sometimes they can be more hard-wired into our brains. This is because they’ve been developed early in life, typically before the age of eight, or have occurred as a result of a traumatic experience. In the Chimp model, these are our goblins. Goblins are also destructive beliefs or behaviours, but these are very difficult or impossible to remove – think of them as damage to your computer system. For example, a serious riding accident when you were young can lead to changes in the way your brain functions in later life, leading to a fear of certain equestrian activities, which could be difficult or even impossible to change. Rather than focusing on replacing them, our goblins need to be recognised and contained. It’s important to make the distinction between goblins and gremlins to stop yourself from trying to do the impossible, then feeling as though you’re failing. Often, it can be necessary to seek professional support to help with this.
Both goblins and gremlins are stored in the Computer, our mind’s ‘reference library’, and therefore will become a source of information for the Chimp or Human parts of your brain when interpreting a situation or making a decision. They can therefore more regularly influence your behaviour and sabotage you from functioning than you might realise.
Often, this is because we haven’t recognised that our gremlins and goblins are running, or we aren’t challenging them. If you don’t give your computer some attention and spend time reprogramming it, you’ll keep noticing the same triggers and repeating the same unwanted behaviours. Our Chimps keep adding gremlins throughout our lives, so it’s important to regularly spend time reflecting on the day’s events. What gremlins might the Chimp have added? What do you want to replace them with?
Maybe you move up that competition grade, but your first outing doesn’t go as well as you’d hoped. Your Chimp’s immediate reaction may have been “I’m rubbish at riding and moving up was a big mistake” which, if you aren’t careful, might become a gremlin. The next time it comes to filling in that competition entry, this gremlin is likely to cause self-doubt and anxiety. To avoid this, you could engage the Human system in your brain to re-frame the day’s events – for example, “for where my horse and I are in our training at the moment, we did the best we could.”
While there are common gremlins that apply to lots of people, it’s important to note that your gremlins are unique to you because your beliefs will differ from others. Building in some regular time that’s focused on identifying your gremlins, thinking of suitable autopilots and proactively practicing them can reap huge rewards.
The traditions of Halloween have their roots in warding off ghosts and other ghoulish creatures, so hopefully this year you can also take steps to focus on protecting yourself from the gremlins and goblins that reside in your mind.
Leonie Lightfoot is co-lead of British Equestrian’s Perform Well mental wellbeing programme, and has been helping athletes on our World Class Programme since 2016. She’s a BASES (British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences) accredited sport scientist and has a Masters degree in sports psychology, and is also a Psychological Skills Mentor for Chimp Management.