The Mental Syntax 

Fair warning, this is gonna seem like a weird blog for some people, but please bear with me, I do have a point and there is certainly method in the madness.  

For the last three years, I’ve had the privilege of working as a data engineer, and I’ve been exposed to the industrial protocols that are common to all areas of the engineering world. I have a friend who is a mechanical engineer with a biomedical company, and despite our differences in job description, there exist many similarities in the protocols that we must follow on the day-to-day.  

Through counselling, podcasts and panel discussions, I have found myself in many conversations with counsellors. I always preface these things with the fact that I am “far from qualified to talk about mental health”, but you can’t help but pick up a few gems when you’re around people who are highly educated on the matter. These insights, coupled with various self-help books, have given me what I believe to be a semi-decent grip on how our minds work.  

Although psychology and engineering exist on opposite ends of the industrial spectrum, (one filled with professionals who help people delve into their most traumatic experiences to understand them and find healing, and another filled with professionals who are typically the more “introverted” type, and who often struggle to make eye contact), there is a fascinating amount of overlap in these two areas.  

Let’s look at the work of an engineer for a moment. Something breaks, whether it’s a code script with a bug, a machine in a factory that has stopped working or a car has broken down, the repair protocol is similar in each of these cases: 

• Each case requires a detailed knowledge of the functionality of the product before it can be fixed 

• If one is not familiar with the product, they must examine the inner workings to gain this knowledge 

In the case of a car that’s broken down – if you have never seen an engine before and have no idea where to start, you need to begin by taking the engine apart to see how all the components fit together. Doing this allows for a “process of elimination” type of repair. By clarifying that various parts work correctly, we narrow down the point of the malfunctioning culprit. 

In the case of a code script, with 1000 lines. The best way to learn the workings of this script is to run each line of code one by one to get a feel for how the script works: 

• Does it handle data 

• Does it rely on any upstream processes 

• Are there connection issues 

Again, studying the product allows for a familiarity that enables us to narrow down where the problem might be. 

But this tedious studying of the product from the ground up needn’t happen every time there’s a breakage. Knowing the workings of a system allows us to quickly pinpoint problems. This is why when you bring your car to your mechanic, they don’t have to strip your engine apart every time, they know by the symptoms (noises, warning lights, etc) what the problem is. Rattles might indicate a clutch or a flywheel issue, wearing sounds might indicate an oil leak, problems with power might be indicative of injector issues (I’m not a mechanic so forgive me on these analogies). The more we examine a product in the engineering world, the quicker we can identify problems. 

So how does this relate to psychology? What could our brains possibly have in common with a code script, or an engine?  

Fucking everything, that’s what! 

In my book, I made comparisons between the brain and a car engine, highlighting that a counsellor is like a mechanic, but I wasn’t aware at the time of how deep the similarities go. 

You see, anyone that has gone to counselling will remember a few distinct details. Over the course of the first few sessions, a counsellor may ask about: 

• Your family life 

• Your upbringing 

• Your parent’s marital situation 

• Your cousins 

• What relatives you spent a lot of time with when you were little 

A counsellor will ask several questions, some of which may at first seem irrelevant, but in fact they’re learning; they’re learning about you – your brain is the machine that they are working with, and they are familiarising themselves with its workings. 

Now, you might be thinking, “Conor, how does all this impact the way I’m feeling right now at age 25/30/45/60?” Again, the answer is – fucking everything! 

What I could not believe is that psychologically, every single one of us, from me, to you, to your partner, to Josef Stalin, to Mother Teresa, are all conceived as a psychological blank slate. Our brains are then molded by our experiences (note this begins from conception, not from physical birth). If you don’t believe this, then let me tell you the following – children born into a household where their arrival is the cause of stress have a high probability in later life of “feeling like a burden”, afraid to overstay welcomes, ask questions, or seek assistance. So yes, our emotional make up does indeed go back that far. 

We are molded by our childhoods, our schooling experiences, our friends, our traumas, our ups and downs, highs and lows, all of it is backed up in the iCloud of the subconscious mind. There’s a great quote which goes something along the lines of: 

“If we don’t take control of our subconscious mind, it will rule our lives, and we will call it fate”. Chilling stuff. 

So, a counsellor will ask about these experiences to get to know your psychological back story – what kinda miles are on the clock, what traumas have you hit, what blockages exist in your present that may be formed by an element of your past. 

When I reflect on my own counselling experiences in 2022, when I was on my knees with anxiety, I noticed my counsellor asking me similar questions to these. She was getting acquainted with my past and began to piece together where my anxiety was coming from, why I had certain triggers, and certain perceived limitations. 

Looking back, I can see that my mind was like a code script. By delving through past traumas, my counsellor and I were debugging the code one line at a time, peeling back the layers of the psychological onion to figure out the reasons behind my anxiety. It became so overwhelmingly apparent to me, that we are the way we are in the present, simply because of our past. Our thought patterns are not concrete, immalleable structures, they are just learned behaviours, and they can be altered with the right help. Learning this was by the far the most freeing moment of my young life. 

I ascertained that I could do the following: 

• By studying my thought patterns via counselling and conscious observation, I could learn to pick out negative thought patterns, then consciously counteract them (see “Cast Iron Ceiling – Blog 2”). 

• I needn’t feel limited by my current thoughts about myself since they are simply that: just thoughts, and I can alter them 

• By studying what triggers me, and by being aware of the origin of these triggers, I could begin to separate myself from them, and remain calm in situations where I would previously lose my temper 

In short, I realised that we are not at the mercy of our brains.  We are not simply just “the way we are” for no apparent reason, we have been molded this way, and we can consciously remold ourselves to think in whatever way we choose. The realisation that we are in fact the masters of our own fate was quite a breath of fresh air. 

I hope this helped, my friends, 

Chat again soon, 

Conor