Get Curious!

Here’s something about me that most people find weird: If I’m getting a shot or having blood drawn, I have to watch it happen. I cannot stand the uncertainty of not knowing what’s happening while someone is poking me with a needle.

I think this stems from my tendency toward hypervigilance. I was always worried whenever I felt anything abnormal happening inside of my body. Pain and discomfort were always clear indications that something was wrong, and the only way to fix it was to identify the source of the pain or discomfort and make it go away. Because pain and discomfort were signs that something was wrong, the worst thing that could happen would be to not identify what the source was. If I couldn’t identify the source, I couldn’t fix the problem, and then things might get worse.

With the needles, as long as I could watch what was happening, I knew what the source of the pain was and I could feel safe. As soon as I looked away, any number of things could be going wrong that I wasn’t aware of and that was too scary for my nervous system. I needed the certainty.

I share this story because I wanted to write about the importance of developing a “curious” state of mind in order to feel better, yet my experience with needles also seemed like it was rooted in curiosity, and it didn’t seem like the positive experience that I usually associate with curiosity. So I got curious and looked up curiosity. In today’s newsletter, I’ll share some of what I learned about curiosity and some tips on how to be more “positively” curious.

Curiosity is generally considered a positive state of mind by psychologists, and fostering curiosity is considered a strength. One of the most helpful books I found for understanding how to rewire our brains is the book, “Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind” by Judson Brewer. Although the book is about anxiety, the tips apply to every symptom you might have as a result of chronic illness, like long covid, or chronic pain. It was one of my favorite books for learning about brain retraining. Most importantly, this book is where I first learned just how important curiosity is for feeling better.

In the book, Brewer describes how approaching symptoms with curiosity can be the antithesis of approaching them with fear. If we feel a symptom and think, “Huh, that’s weird,” or “Huh, that’s interesting,” our nervous systems will respond very differently than if we think, “OMG. I don’t know what this is. It’s feeling really bad,” or just “OMG. This feels bad.”

As this paper by William Whitecross and Michael Smithson says:

“Regarding happiness, studies have found that daily curiosity levels strongly predict daily happiness levels and personal growth experiences. Curious people also tend to enjoy a stronger sense of meaning in life and life satisfaction, and show less symptoms of depression, anxiety, and burnout, leading these researchers to theorise that curiosity may be an important source of psychological well-being.”

If you look at the original paper, you’ll find that those two sentences are supported by nine citations,1 and that’s just for the happiness benefit of curiosity. Curiosity is found to be a benefit for multiple personality strengths. In an interview, Whitecross states, “A curious response entails wanting to learn and understand the unknown, and counteracts our impulses to avoid, fear, judge, and attack what we don't understand.”

In general, some benefits of a curious state of mind include:

• It’s harder to feel scared or overactivated when you’re curious.

• Curiosity is a state of mind or emotion that occurs when you’re more relaxed.

• Curiosity opens us up to other possible options while fight/flight/freeze tends to narrow our perspective.

• It’s easier to accept and allow from a state of curiosity.

• It’s nonjudgmental.

• When you’re curious, you move toward something rather than move away.

• Curiosity triggers centers of your brain related to happiness which could mean that if you associate curiosity with symptoms or negative emotions, your brain actually starts to rewire to feel more positive in relation to those symptoms or emotions. The symptoms or emotions won’t feel good, but they also won’t be as upsetting.

If curiosity is so good, then what was going on with the uncertainty I felt if I didn’t know what was going on inside of my body? Wasn’t my desire to know what was happening to me a form of curiosity, even if it seemed to be a negative experience rather than a positive one? It turns out, Whitecross was also curious about that dichotomy.

In another paper by Whitecross and Smithson, they write, “certain aspects of curiosity seem to entail a high tolerance and enjoyment of uncertainty (because it involves willingly searching for unknowns and exploring them), whereas other aspects seem to entail a high intolerance of uncertainty (because curiosity is fundamentally aimed at reducing uncertainty to improve understanding.”

When it comes to uncertainty, there are two types of curiosity: interest curiosity and deprivation curiosity.

In the interview linked to above, Whitecross explains:

“Interest is the desire to learn aimed at stimulating enjoyment.”

“Deprivation is in many regards the opposite to interest – it's the desire to learn aimed at reducing negative feelings associated with ignorance and incomprehension. Deprivation is a negative (or unpleasant) feeling of curiosity – that annoying or frustrating feeling that you don't understand something. Deprivation works by conjuring a determination inside us to acquire that missing knowledge in order to rid ourselves of that annoying feeling. The reason it's called deprivation is because it feels as if you're lacking information that you just need to know.”

“In general, people with higher interest-type curiosity tended to view uncertainty as an opportunity, while those with higher deprivation-type curiosity were more likely to view uncertainty as a threat.”

That last part is what stood out to me. If we’re treating the symptom or emotion as a threat — or if we’re uncertain about the symptom or emotion and treating the uncertainty as a threat — then we may be activating the fight/flight/freeze response. Once our nervous system is activated, everything else can get worse.

That’s what was happening for me with the needles, and it’s what was happening every time I was hypervigilant about my symptoms when I had long covid. I would get curious, but not with interest. I was terrified that if I couldn’t figure out what was going on, something awful might be happening to me.

I would end up in a hpervigilant cycle in which if I felt any symptom: I would wonder what it was; I would worry that it was bad; I would worry that if I couldn’t figure out what it was, it would get worse; I’d feel it more intentionally and intensely; and then I’d worry even more about it, and the cycle would escalate.

OR, if I felt a symptom and I knew what it was, I would worry that it would get worse, and I would worry about all the bad things that could happen and all the good things I’d miss out on if it did get worse. The uncertainty was a threat, and I needed to know what was going on in order to get rid of the uncertainty.

When people refer to curiosity as a strength or benefit, they mean interest-type curiosity. For most of us, this means that we need to shift from a deprivation state of curiosity to a state of interest, and that’s a form of brain retraining.

Developing an interest-type curiosity about symptoms can help keep the nervous system better regulated, decrease fear-symptom cycles, and enable us to sit with symptoms and emotions more easily. All of that will make it easier to tolerate symptoms with greater ease and calm and maybe even with some extra humor and positivity, which makes life better, regardless of the discomfort we may be experiencing. This type of curiosity can also make it easier to do all of the other work because it can help us start from a more positive perspective.

How might this work in real life? Let’s consider physical symptoms first.

I’ll use the example of fatigue, which is a symptom I expect all of us are familiar with. If you’re like me, your default response to fatigue might be to worry that it means you can’t do everything you planned or wanted to do today; that it might be a precursor to bigger symptoms; that maybe you pushed too hard and now you’re going to pay the price with a crash; or some other negative response.

Instead, you can get positively curious. You can start by saying, “huh, that’s interesting,” and then ask yourself questions like:

• What if it means nothing? Everyone feels fatigue and most times it just means our bodies are tired. What if I’m just experiencing perfectly normal, healthy fatigue?

• What if I just allow myself to rest and either binge some TV or take a nap?

• What if it means that there’s something repressed that I’m close to accessing and releasing? What if I could be excited about that?

• What if I’m okay with having reached my body’s limits today? What would this feel like?

• Where am I feeling the fatigue? Is my brain tired? Is my body tired? Do I feel tension in my body that I an associate with the fatigue?

• What if I don’t need to feel guilty for feeling too tired to function?

• What if it’s a sign that my body is working perfectly by letting me know that I need to stop now?

• What if I consider trying to do one more small thing and then stop? How does considering that slight push feel in my body? Do I physically feel like I can do a little more, or does that trigger a sensation of anxiety or any other symptom?

• Does it feel like there are emotions that might be associated with the fatigue? For example, am I feeling sad or do I have a sensation of anger, guilt or shame somewhere in my body?

You can try this type of exercise every time you have any physical symptom. The key is to ask yourself neutral to positive questions about the symptom and to try to develop a genuine sense of curiosity about the symptom, rather than just feel fear or uncertainty about it.

This technique is also helpful if you have a JournalSpeak practice. Sometimes it can be easy to get stuck in JournalSpeak and not know where to go next or how to get deeper with an issue. These types of blocks are often an unconscious response that your nervous system is using to keep emotions repressed, and if you have a sense of deprivation curiosity about the block, then it can actually reinforce your nervous system’s belief that the repressed emotion is something to be feared.

However, if you can start to ask questions about the block from a more positive, interest-curiosity perspective, then you may be able to calm your nervous system enough to allow you to access whatever it is that has been repressed. Some questions or thoughts that might help include:

• I wonder how good I could feel if I could access this blocked emotion?

• What would it feel like to love myself unconditionally, regardless of whether I can access this repressed emotion now or not?

• How old was I for this particular repressed emotion?

• Were there other people who were involved in this repressed emotion?

• What sensations do I feel in my body as some part of me tries to keep this emotion repressed?

• If I could move freely right now, what movements would support the part of me that is repressing this emotion? What movements might support releasing this emotion?

• What if I just sit here with the block and not try to do anything about it besides love and support my body and the part of me that is repressing the emotion?

One of benefit of developing a state of interest curiosity, especially for JournalSpeak and emotional processing, is that it helps us separate our true self from the unpleasant emotions and sensations. If “you” are able to get curious about something, then “you” are not the emotions you’re curious about.

Ultimately, whether you’re dealing with emotions, symptoms, or both, interest curiosity can help you:

• sit with symptoms in a calmer state,

• be more aware of what’s going on inside of you,

• accept what’s happening inside of you rather than resist,

• ask questions during journalspeak that can help prevent you from identifying too strongly with the emotion, and

• minimize the extent to which you may feel overwhelmed by fear.

At the risk of sounding trite: get curious about being curious. What are different ways that you can foster that positive sense of curiosity about your health and symptoms? The more you practice interest curiosity, the more it will become your default state of being.

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