Halted Brain…Carrying On Brain

Does part of your brain ever screech to a halt mid-conversation? You’re sitting…You’re talking… You’re listening. And in that time, you’ve formed an impression of the person across from you who is sitting, talking, listening. Your impression is being formed using countless conscious and unconscious bits of information—from the actual words being used, her tone/inflection/cadence of voice, her style of clothing, how and when she makes eye contact and looks away, her physical characteristics, whether she wears glasses, any quirky mannerisms she has…and on and on and on the list goes.

So, the impression formed is your picture, your decision, about what this person is or is not. For me, in one conversation, my brain had formed the impression that the woman sitting across from me was studious, a rule follower, dare I say, “docile.” Then in the middle of all of this unspoken impression formulation, the woman mentions she used to be the goalie on the women’s Olympic hockey team. My brain stops. And it starts ruminating—or at least part of my brain does. I call this part of my brain Halted Brain. The other part of my brain continues to Carry On, to participate in the conversation. Carrying On Brain is fully aware that Halted Brain has stopped engaging and has shifted its focus, but continues to carry on without her. Just as Halted Brain continues down a path without Carrying On Brain.

Halted Brain ruminating:

--Hmmmmm…Huh…I wouldn’t have thought that, would you? I mean a goalie for the Women’s Olympic Hockey Team; would you have thought that? (questions posed to Carrying On Brain).

Carrying On Brain: Ignores Halted Brain. Continues to talk to Olympiad instead

—Yes, that must have been an exciting time when you traveled with the team to Europe…Yes, it does sound awesome…

Halted Brain who is accustomed to being shunned by Carrying On Brain:

—I mean physically she can’t be more than 5’2” tall. She maybe on a good day weighs all of 125 pounds…So how does she stop all those pucks? Quick reflexes – yes…must be very quick reflexes…

At some point, somehow, after Halted Brain stops ruminating, the two parts of my brain reunite. But during the part when they were split, I wasn’t really present with either of them. I was in both places simultaneously but only partially. As a result, my presence in each conversation (the internal conversation with myself and my external conversation with the Olympiad) suffered.

Recently, I’ve been paying more and more attention to Halted Brain and revisiting those conversations Where was it that my brain halted? What was said and what caused my “schizophrenic” response? What is it that I need to pay attention to? Do I need clarification about something? Somewhere in the screeches, in the conversational halts, there is an opportunity to learn. For me, with the Olympiad, I formed an erroneous impression. She was not who I thought she was, who I perceived her to be. How had my own biases led me to this erroneous conclusion? And how can I eliminate those biases? These are questions Halted Brain can’t really process mid conversation because Carrying On brain keeps doing what it does best…carrying on. But in the quiet gaps after the conversation, there is time for increased awareness, for exploration, for learning, and for changing.

Patricia Nemeth received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). She earned her Juris Doctorate and Masters of Labor Law degree from Wayne State University School of Law. She is the founding partner of Nemeth Law, P.C. which celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 2017. Patricia decided to start a personal blog because she wanted to write about topics other than the law.