A New Way to Understand Your Mind
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your struggles, trapped by old ways of thinking about the mind, you’re not alone. Concepts like the polyvagal theory, “the body keeps the score,” or the idea of a rational brain battling an emotional one can feel like they’re boxing you into a corner. These outdated frameworks often leave you feeling like a passenger in your own life, reacting to external triggers or “issues in the tissues“. But what if there’s a fresh, empowering way to understand how your mind works? Enter predictive processing—a paradigm shift that flips the script on how you experience reality.
What Is Predictive Processing?
At its core, predictive processing says your brain isn’t a passive receiver of the world—it’s an active creator. Forget the old idea that sensory data floods into your eyes or ears, gets processed, and then you “see” what’s out there. Instead, your brain is constantly predicting what’s happening based on a model it’s built from a lifetime of sensory patterns—light waves, sounds, textures, and more. These patterns start simple (think photons or angles) and stack up into complex concepts like a face, a conversation, or even a community.
Here’s the kicker: your brain only notices what it didn’t predict. If something in the world doesn’t match the model your brain has built, that’s what grabs your attention. In other words, your reality isn’t “out there” bombarding your senses—it’s generated inside your brain, shaped by the beliefs and patterns you’ve accumulated over a life time.
If that idea doesn’t make you pause and go, “Wait, what?” then let’s dig a little deeper.
Why This Matters for You
Predictive processing isn’t just a fancy theory—it’s a game-changer for how you understand yourself. Those beliefs your brain has built about how your body works, how the world operates, and how you fit into it? They are your reality. Your brain isn’t reacting to some objective truth; it’s constructing your experience based on past experience and its best guesses of what’s happening now; i.e. What is this most like? This means your struggles, your emotions, and even your sense of stuckness are tied to the internal model your brain is using to predict the world.
If that feels mind-blowing, it should. It’s a radical departure from outdated ideas like the triune brain (lizard brain, anyone?) or the notion that your body is “keeping the score” of trauma and mental anguish. Predictive processing puts you in the driver’s seat. By understanding that your brain is actively shaping your reality, you can start to question and reshape the beliefs that keep you stuck.
Breaking Free from Old Paradigms
Old theories of the mind often leave you feeling like a victim of your biology or past experiences. They suggest your reactions are hardwired, your emotions are dictated by an ancient “emotional brain,” or your nervous system is broken or stuck in “fight or flight”. Predictive processing, on the other hand, offers a way out. It says your brain’s predictions—and the reality they create—are flexible. They can change. And that’s where the empowerment comes in.
When you start to see your experiences as predictions rather than reactions, you open the door to new possibilities. You’re not just a product of your past or your wiring—you’re an active participant in shaping your reality. That’s not just liberating; it’s transformative.
What’s Next?
This is just the beginning. Predictive processing is a big idea, and it takes time to wrap your head around it. In future posts, I’ll break it down further, exploring how it works, why it matters, and how you can use it to shift the way you experience your life. For now, let that sink in: your brain is predicting your reality, not reacting to it. And that means you have way more power than you might think.
