Feel like you are doing everything right and still stuck in a rut? Tips from Hardwiring Happiness that will get you out of the muck
Main points, No filter:
✅ Most self-help advice is noise: People feel overwhelmed and stuck because therapy-speak is everywhere, but it's hard to tell what actually works. Just because it’s trending doesn’t mean it fits your needs.
✅ Your brain runs on three core needs — safety, satisfaction, and connection: When these needs aren’t met, you end up in reactive mode (fight/flight, overthinking, self-sabotage). The goal is to shift into responsive mode, where you can think clearly and feel grounded.
✅ Your feelings and behaviors are clues: Emotional reactions and habits (like doom scrolling or binge buying) are often signs of unmet needs. Slowing down and tuning into your experience helps identify what your brain is actually asking for.
✅ Use the right tools for the right problem: Don’t take iron pills for scurvy — tailor your coping strategies to the specific unmet need. Visualization, sensory memory, and intentional practices can retrain your brain to feel safe, satisfied, and connected.
✅ Therapy helps you update your mental operating system: You’re wired for survival, not happiness. A therapist helps you unpack outdated thought patterns, practice new responses, and take charge of what grows in your mental garden. 🌱
I am going to wrap this month’s blog series up with some tips on how to weed out the strategies that aren’t a good fit for you so that you can spend your time, money, and energy on things that will work. This approach will allow you to feel more productive, happy, and accomplished. Roll up your sleeves and let’s get to it.
Therapy is usually not the first go-to when people feel stuck. Initial consults with new clients have an underlying theme. They have run out of ideas to feel better and come to me looking for guidance. Their current set of skills aren’t getting the job done anymore. That’s understandable, life gets tricky.
Luckily there is a reduced stigma in talking about mental health, the problem is, in the age of instant information, you have every mental health tip bombarding your senses everywhere you go. Everyone is a narcissist, we all have ADHD, and we are all gas lighters getting gas lit. The therapy speak is turning mainstream and the message is getting diluted.
How do you know how to get unstuck when there is advice coming at you from all directions?
In Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson discusses how to shift our brain's negativity bias to a positivity bias by understanding and re-wiring our brain systems. He describes the basic human needs and how we behave when those needs are not met. By understanding what our behavior is communicating about our needs, we can make a more informed decision about how to feel better.
First some brain science basics
Understanding how your brain works is the first step to weeding out your self-help garden. We need to understand the basics of herbology before we just go at it with a tiller.
When you feel stuck, the first thing to do is notice what need is not being met.
Humans have three basic needs:
Safety
When our sense of safety is threatened, we go into fight or flight. If we don’t feel safe, we tend to be more cautious or defensive, have more inhibition, or withdrawal to restore the feeling of being safe. Our need for safety is responsible for preventing declines.
Satisfaction
When we feel dissatisfied there is a sense of loss or missed opportunities. You may feel empty or hollow, unfulfilled. It’s like when you are craving authentic Latin food and all you have is Taco Bell. It just won’t do. To get this need met we tend to pursue things with eagerness and excitement. Our need for satisfaction is responsible for seeking out opportunities.
Connection
When we feel detached from ourselves or others we experience a sense of rejection. To feel connected we use empathy, bonding, and language. Our need for connection is responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships.
The systems responsible for meeting those needs
There are different parts of our brain that take care of getting these needs met. All the systems interact and feed off one another, just like a plant depends on the roots, the stem, and flower to survive and grow. Our brain systems work to:
Avoid harm
Approach reward
Attach to others (Brene Brown says “we are hard wired for connection”)
When you feel like you are doing everything right and nothing is working, check in on how you are getting your needs met. You might hesitate to take risks to avoid harm and feel safe. You may be pursuing goals or items that are not a good fit for you (like fast food, gambling, a career that your family wants but you don’t). You may be looking for love in all the wrong places. Like maintaining a friendship with someone who treats you poorly or having a connection based on common enemy intimacy.
Which mode are you in?
The three systems above respond to the environment in one of two ways. You can be responsive or reactive.
Responsive – when the need is met
When you are in responsive mode you can meet your needs in an intentional way. You think things through, and you have an open mind. You respond to yourself and others in a compassionate way.
You see challenges not stressors. You see how you can use your strengths to overcome barriers.
Reactive - when the need is unmet
In reactive mode, you respond to stressors as threats. You are in fight or flight. The world is out to get you, and you enter situations with guns blazing. You may compromise your integrity or sense of self to feel satisfied or accomplished. You may go about getting your needs met in a more desperate or panicked way.
Barriers are stressors and vulnerabilities that must be eradicated. Take no prisoners.
Tip: Use the brain science to your advantage.
While we can’t, and arguably shouldn’t, change our needs and survival systems. We can change the mode that our systems are in. We can practice being in a responsive mode more and save the reactive mode for its intended purpose of very real and immediate threats. How do you that? Keep reading.
Your actions and feelings are a clue
Sometimes you will be surprised that your anger is really fear or your sadness is more about loneliness. If you notice that you are snacking a lot or the Amazon deliveries have increased recently, you are unsatisfied with something. If you are feeling jealous, you might be feeling disconnected or lonely.
How do you know what your unmet need is?
This is the tricky part it requires being present in the moment and slowing down. This is a lot of what goes on in therapy. When I ask my clients “how does that make you feel?” it is to get to core of the experience. I might ask what a certain behavior, like what you spend your money on or how you react to a certain person, is communicating.
It’s okay if you don’t know
A lot of times we just don’t know what we are feeling or what is being communicated. That’s because we don’t have the vocabulary to explain the experience (read my diatribe on emotions here). Sometimes, I follow up with a question like “where are you feeling this in your body?” or “what sort of sensations are you feeling?”
The more practice you have with naming your experience, the better you will get at understanding what needs are not being met. Once you understand your unmet needs we can start working on it. If you intentionally do things to feel safe, satisfied, and connected, your body doesn’t have to go in fight or flight at the slightest whiff of danger.
The right antidote for the right ailment: the best approach for you
Now that we know what unmet need is sending us into panic mode, we can use that information to come back to rest and digest and find the right techniques to have a flourishing garden.
Hanson describes this concept as taking iron pills to treat scurvy. Iron pills are okay to take in moderation, but they are not treating scurvy. If you want to get rid of scurvy, you need to pop some Vitamin C. When you have the right antidote, you will feel like you are making progress. This is like intentionally planting flowers that you want to grow instead of just waiting to see what the wind blows in.
The right types of thoughts.
We have all been there, ruminating about something that we just can’t let go. In this episode of her podcast, Brene Brown calls it the Willy Wonka shit tunnel. Why do we do this? Your brain has sensed a threat to one of our needs. Your natural inclination is to be in reactive mode. So, you do all the things that a reactive brain does. But wait! You can think different thoughts and start to feel better.
Let’s say you got a less than stellar review from your supervisor. How do you feel? Angry? Defensive? Rejected? What if you get fired? Miss the chance for a promotion? Of course, you feel panic, you feel that your sense of safety and security are threatened.
The problem is that these feelings impact your performance at work and your relationships at home. Then, if you piss off your spouse because you are in a bad mood, you now feel your sense of connection being threatened too. Plus, you are so pissed off you forgot to eat. Now you are hungry and will be alone and homeless in a van down by the river.
Pause. You do not need to stay on the boat in the shit tunnel. How do you disembark?
Because you sense your safety is at risk, you need first to remind yourself that you are safe. There is no tiger chasing you through the jungle. Your body may be reacting like there is an immediate threat to your life, but you are probably sitting at a desk in a climate-controlled space with a relatively full belly.
Say it again. In this moment, you are basically safe.
You fear being fired, that hasn’t happened yet. You have no idea if you missed the promotion or even if that promotion is right for you. You are safe. If you can tell your brain to calm down. You can respond to this stressor as a challenge instead of a threat. Responsive mode on.
What happens when you are in responsive mode?
You will have a balanced sense of what happens. Sure, no one likes to hear they made a mistake, that stings. If you are in responsive mode, you can take the criticisms as a goal for improvement. You may even remember the several positive remarks that were said as well. Remember the praise and the criticism at the same time. This will help you have a clear view of reality, not a skewed bias of what has happened. You are choosing the thought flowers that are planted in your garden. When you are in responsive mode you can think critically about your challenge and decide how to respond.
Hanson offers a guide to intentionally practice acknowledging thoughts and experiences that meet your specific needs. He suggests visualizing these experiences and rehearsing them.
If visualization isn’t your style, you could draw it, write it, even create a voice memo for yourself. Some folks find it helpful to look at pictures on their phone that remind them of these feelings. When you are feeling lost, look at some memories on your phone and remember what it felt like in that moment. I pulled some examples from the book that may give you some clarity.
Safety
Protected
Think of a time when you felt protected or you protected someone else. Maybe someone spoke up for you when you couldn’t speak up for yourself.
“Protection decreases a person’s sense of alarm. When you feel protected, there’s less need for bracing, guarding, or anxiety. It’s like watching a storm from inside a sturdy shelter: There could still be threats or problems outside, but they’re not penetrating to harm you.”
Relaxed
Think of a moment when you felt completely at ease. You felt, even briefly, that things were going in the right direction and you were carefree.
“As you relax, your parasympathetic nervous system gets more active, which calms down the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system. Tension drains out of your body, your heart rate and breathing slow down, and digestion eases—all of which turns down the dial on internal signals of threat, helping you relax even further”
Refuge
Where do you feel safe? Maybe it’s your childhood home, being with a friend who just gets you, maybe it’s at church, or with folks who accept you for who you are.
“A refuge is anything that gives you a sense of sanctuary, refueling, uplift, or sacredness. You can rest and recharge in a refuge even as pain or difficulty swirls around you.”
Satisfaction
Pleasure
Think about your favorite food. Pasta Carbonara? Steak? Fresh picked strawberries? What about ice cold water straight from the garden hose?
What about the last time you laughed so hard you cried? Maybe it’s some inside joke you share with a friend that will without a doubt get you two laughing hysterically without even saying a word.
“Enjoying the taste of toasted raisin bread or the humor in a cartoon may not seem like much, but simple pleasures like these ease emotional upsets, lift your mood, and enrich your life.”
Accomplishment and Agency
“You accomplish many things every day, most of them relatively small and easy to overlook, such as getting the kids off to school, finishing a shift at work, buying groceries, or returning a phone call. You also accomplish things through restraint, such as letting others have their say, and endurance (e.g., getting through a bout of back pain). Each of these accomplishments is a chance to experience gratification and success rather than frustration and failure.”
Connection
“When you experience connection, your attaching to others system goes green, into its responsive mode. You can build up both your capacity to be connected and your sense of feeling connected by regularly taking in a sense of feeling cared about, feeling valued, compassion and kindness, self-compassion, compassionate assertiveness, feeling like a good person, and love.”
“feeling cared about sends soothing, calming oxytocin into your brain’s alarm bell, the amygdala; it also increases cortisol receptors in your hippocampus, so this part of your brain now more quickly recognizes that there is plenty of cortisol, and it signals your hypothalamus more rapidly to quit calling for stress hormones. Second, feeling connected is satisfying. For example, social contact, play, and loving touch all release rewarding opioids in your brain. Love is a universal medicine.”
Like the examples listed about, a book or other media outlet can spark ideas for therapy sessions. Especially if you show up with no clue where to begin (which most of us do).
How does therapy help you feel better?
You can’t grow what you want if you keep planting the wrong stuff or letting random weeds take over. Therapy helps you garden with intention—clear out what doesn’t serve you and make room for what actually does.
Your brain cares about keeping you alive, not about helping you flourish. You have an outdated operating system that is not built for this fast-paced world. In therapy, we work to slow down your thoughts, “unpack” what is happening, and give you different and more helpful thoughts to help you gain traction and stop spinning your wheels. We rehearse the new thoughts, fine tune them, and help you understand where your reactive thoughts are coming from. Are you ready to have more agency over your thoughts and feelings? Have a say in what thoughts are whirling around your brain? Set up a consult and let’s see if we are a good fit.