As we explore the gears of overthinking, consider what your imagery looks like that brings your intuition and balanced emotions into your decision making.
Overview of "The Gears Are Turning" Metaphor
NOTE: The introduction is the same for each of the four intensities of The Gears Are Turning Metaphor. If you have already read it, you may want to click to skip.
Are you being told to get it in gear? Maybe you’re telling yourself that. Are you gearing up for a presentation? Are you gearing down after a long week at work? Is something getting you geared up?
Gearing up. Gearing down. Getting in gear. Typically we identify these metaphors in our body somewhere, and we might relate it to the gears in a car. But the one metaphor that pretty much always puts us in our head, is THE GEARS ARE TURNING. And that’s the one we’re going to focus on this week.
Hello, my name is Karen, and this series grows out of my book, Emotion Commotion, and The EAT Program™. In these videos, I help you Locate, Describe & Transform™ the emotions that interfere with you making your best decisions.
Your emotions present as images and metaphors, so each week I explore new imagery, always looking at it from four levels of emotional intensity: extreme, high, medium, and low. The imagery that I present: yours can look completely different. The best way to go through this process is to focus on your imagery; just use mine as an example.
Four Emotion Intensities with Four "The Gears Are Turning" Metaphor Images
- For the extreme intensity video, I’m using gears in a robot head.
- For the high intensity video, I’m using imagery that reminds me of the Bronze Age, so it’ll be an historic issue.
- For medium intensity, I’m using golden gears that are leaving, in part, the head, and turning into vibrant bright lights.
- And for low intensity, I’m using gears that have mostly left the head – some are still in it – but there’s a multitude of bright colours that are filling, and giving me an idea of, a creative space in the head.
The Gears of Overthinking: Medium Intensity Emotions
This medium intensity video looks almost positive. You might be convinced that it is – or maybe, for you, it is. But there’s two things that stand out for me.
- I don’t want that many gears turning in my head. When the gears are turning, that’s overthinking – you’re just thinking way too much about things.
- This looks like a porcelain doll figure, and it doesn’t feel real enough to me. There’s not enough emotion in the imagery; there’s not enough sense of personality or freedom.
I do very much like the idea of the gears flowing out into the atmosphere behind the head and turning into golden lights. That speaks to intuition for me, and that feels healthy.
The Gears of Overthinking: Transformation Example
What I want to imagine is removing each of these gears – they seem to come apart nice and easy – and bringing them outside of the brain. And I actually want to melt each one of them down into those specks of gold, and watch that form a halo of sorts, or a bright light bubble [I Know Me, story 3] all around me, that’s keeping me safe, protecting me from negative emotions, from negative energy, from other people, and allowing me to think for myself, giving me the space to do that.
Then I imagine this face image just relaxing and becoming much more human-like, less porcelain, and having some wrinkles. I imagine the eyes opening; I imagine the smile on the person’s face.
And then, with that healthy imagery, I can allow that person to become me. And within that energy, taking a deep breath, relaxing, I can figure out what my next healthy step is, and what combination of thinking, intuition, and emotion I want to bring to the decision.
Positive vs Negative Transformations
If the actual head – this person’s face, this porcelain-like figure – does not feel positive to imagine you shifting into it, then you could imagine dissolving it; that might be a healthy transformation.
An example of a negative transformation would be to imagine a hammer shattering it into a lot of pieces. You would feel that as a negative energy, probably in your stomach, maybe in your chest or your throat. And that’s what I mean by the difference of a healthy transformation and a negative one.
The Gears of Overthinking Are Gone: Now What?
So:
- I’ve located the negative emotions -they’re only a medium intensity – in my head.
- The metaphor has been that the gears are turning, and I don’t want to imagine gears in my head.
- I’ve dissolved the gears after I’ve taken them out of my body, and turned them into this bright, light, protective bubble around me, where I can make my healthiest decisions.
My transformation is complete. My emotions have transformed, and I know what my next healthy step is. If you don’t yet know what your next healthy step is, but you feel like your emotions are transformed, then your next healthy step is to do nothing. Just relax, let it come to you.
The Gears Are Turning: Closing
The caution, with the imagery I’m using this week, is:
- Beware of robotic thought, where it’s not even your ideas that you’re putting forward.
- Beware of historic issues or historic beliefs that are coming forward, that don’t serve you anymore.
- Be aware of gears in your head that might be turning nicely, but that you just don’t need to be thinking so much, and you could allow intuition to come in.
- And finally, be aware of emotions, intuition, and thinking all being in balance.
Especially if you’re talking about group projects, extreme intensity emotions, extremely complex emotions or situations, you might need to take some private space and work through your transformations one-by-one. For low intensity emotions, for some low complexity emotions, even if they’re higher intensity, it might just take a deep breath, relax, and let the image transform quickly, while you keep going about your day.
I respectfully acknowledge that this video was recorded on the traditional territory of Mi’kmaq people.
For more information on transforming negative emotions with the Locate, Describe & Transform™ process, check out theEATprogram.com.