‘Seeing the ‘bigger picture’ — A psychologically informed discussion of how we perceive the world’…

07.10.2022: As I was thinking about the topic for this week’s PIE blog, as the lead for Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE), at the national youth homeless charity — Centrepoint, I came across the picture above. On reflection, perhaps my eye was drawn to this image because of recent financial events in the UK where similar graphs detailing economic forecasts and currency values have been appearing in the media. However, what really resonated with me as a psychologist was the text; “Failure is the frame, not the picture” and how our view of something can be effected by what part of it we are focusing on or ‘seeing’ at any particular time. For many of the homeless young people that we support in Centrepoint, they can often feel like they are a failure when too much focus is placed on one aspect of their lives to date (e.g. their lack of success in education) and other successes or progress is ignored (e.g. coping / moving on from previous rough sleeping or care placement experiences, or obtaining their first employment). Therefore, it is important that we always try to see the ‘bigger picture’ and see strengths in ourselves and others, as well as any concerns or difficulties.

Is this always that straightforward though? Psychologists know that we are constantly bombarded by a huge amount of stimuli in everyday life through our five senses (e.g. seeing, hearing, touch, smell and taste). Essentially we ‘collect’ information about our environment through our senses, information which is then interpreted by our brains to allow us to formulate our responses. However, how we make sense of this information is based on not just what we actually perceive through our senses and how this may be combined (Ruben & Scheffer, 2014) but also influenced by our previous experiences, past learning and future expectations. Therefore, if our previous experiences of a stimulus are negative, we are more likely to perceive this stimulus as negative in the future despite any evidence to the contrary. To put it another way, if a stimulus has previously made us anxious or upset (e.g. we see a spider and we don’t like spiders because we have been frightened by them before), we are likely to perceive the stimulus in the same way in the future and have similar feelings and resulting behaviours (e.g. we will fear all spiders and behave accordingly by running away or getting someone to remove the spider from our house!). We might not see the ‘bigger picture’ that the spider is much smaller than us and is unlikely to harm us (unless we live in a country with poisonous spiders!)

Although we therefore don’t always naturally ‘see the bigger picture’ because our brains have evolved to sieve all this incoming information to look at what is the most relevant at any particular moment, this isn’t necessarily a ‘bad thing’ the vast majority of the time. We can’t possibly process all the information we are receiving from our senses at any one time. There is just too much! We need to be able to be selective (White et al, 2010) in order to respond almost automatically to most sensory information because having a quick response has evolutionarily been important for survival in our environment. Consequently, we tend to naturally and automatically focus on what is relevant in that moment rather than considering the whole picture, which may be too time consuming and be too large a cognitive load to process.

To give an example, as I was walking to work this morning, the street was full of stimuli — people walking around, the market stalls being set up, traffic passing by, birds singing in the trees etc. However, I was focused on getting to my local train station and thinking what I had to do at work today. I knew that cars and buses were passing by, but I only paid attention to the traffic when I needed to, that is when I had to cross the road. Unless I consciously stopped and looked around me in detail to notice my surroundings by being ‘mindful’, I didn’t actually notice or pay attention to much of the stimuli in that streetscape. Therefore, we actually need to make a conscious effort sometimes to ‘pause’ and reflect, as per a psychologically informed approach, in order for us to see the wider context and thus respond accordingly. This is why taking time out to have Reflective Practice (RP) in a PIE has been argued to be so important in the homeless sector (Homeless Link, 2019). In such a busy and often complex or crises focused environment, RP gives us that psychologically safe space to ‘stop and think’ and perhaps therefore respond more mindfully rather than reactively to a similar situation in the future. RP also gives us space to evaluate all the data available, not just that we are immediately focusing on, which increases our critical thinking skills.

The tendency to focus on a limited range of data or stimuli incoming from our senses is particularly the case when we perceive ourselves as under ‘threat’, whether this threat is a real, physical tangible threat (e.g. someone is being aggressive towards us) or imagined (e.g. we are worrying about something that might happen in the future). If we are perceiving a ‘threat’, of course we need to act quickly. We might not have time to process all the information at our disposal, we need to react to keep ourselves or others safe. Luckily, our brains have evolved to do this automatically and activate a key biological response within the limbic system that allows us to ‘fight or flight (or freeze)’. This ‘fight or flight’ response was originally described by physiologist Bradford Cannon (1915), who noticed it in animals when they were confronted by a predator but it has since been expanded further by other psychologists (e.g. Schauer & Elbert, 2010).

This ‘fight or flight’ response is like an internal alarm warning us of danger and automatically activates the sympathetic nervous system that prepares our body to react and thereby increase our chances of survival. Our adrenal glands release stress hormones that increase our heart rate so we can increase our circulation of blood flow to our major muscles (so that we can run if needed!), dilates our bronchi in our lungs increasing our respiration / breathing rate (so we can take in more oxygen), slows our digestive system (so we don’t need to go to the toilet when are dealing with a threat!), dilates our pupils (so we can maximise what we can see of the threat) and narrows our perceptual systems to focus on the threat or potential ways to escape it (so we aren’t distracted by stimuli that aren’t relevant at that moment). When the threat is over, our body eliminates these stress hormones by activating the para-sympathetic nervous system, which begins to calm us and help us return back to our ‘normal state’ after about 20–60 minutes.

Of course, if we are stuck in a situation of chronic threat (e.g. sleeping rough on the streets, working long hours in a stressful frontline service), we will remain in this ‘fight or flight’ state for long periods, and may be constantly hyper-vigilant for further threat because of our past negative experiences. This is exhausting, both physically and psychologically and means that we are always focusing on or looking for only one aspect of our wider context (i.e. the ‘threat’). This can lead to chronic fatigue, depression, gastrointestinal issues, headaches, heart issues, high blood pressure and cholesterol, poor immune function, sexual dysfunction and breathing issues (APA, 2018) as well as mental health issues such as anxiety and depression (e.g. Mihic et al, 2015). Moreover, by continually focusing on or looking out for threat related stimuli, we can fail to see the ‘bigger picture’ thereby reducing our critical thinking abilities.

As a result, it is important that we are first aware of this human tendency to only see part of our ‘bigger picture’, and accept that our ‘truth’ may be different to others depending on what we are actually perceiving. Neither are necessarily wrong, in fact both can be right. This is illustrated in the cartoon below, that we often show on our PIE day training at Centrepoint when we are exploring the value of team reflective practice and the sharing of different views, perspectives and experiences in order to create a shared understanding of team issues or challenges with a homeless young person:

Thus, we can never perceive everything around us all of the time. This is particularly true when the stimuli is complex or there are lot of different or competing stimuli. Interestingly, psychologists have also found that what we perceive or pay attention to is also effected by our mood. To put this another way, if we are happy then we notice positive things whereas if we are sad then we are more likely to notice negative things. The way we perceive even something arguably fixed, like the height of a hill in front of us, can also be effected by how we feel. For example an interesting study by Cedar et al (2011) found that individuals who reported feeling sad perceived the steepness or gradient of a hill in front of them to be higher than those who reported feeling happier. I can certainly remember climbing Snowdon in Wales with my family last year on holiday and how my perception of how step the path in front of me did seem to be effected by my mood (as well as how much energy I had at that moment!) as well as the actual reality of the slope.

Returning back to the blog picture above, if we mentally shifted the white frame to the far left hand side or the far right hand side of the graph, it would look like actually we were plotting successes or a general increase in something we had measured rather than the decrease or failures that are currently framed in the picture. Part of being psychologically informed, is understanding this and the way our brains work, so that we can purposefully and deliberately take the step back and try to see the bigger picture. Perhaps if we are working with a homeless young person and their thoughts or narrative about themselves is dominated by feelings of worthlessness or failure because they are focusing on just one aspect (e.g. not previously attending education) then we can encourage them to ‘take a step back’ and think about other areas of their lives that give them a different perspective (e.g. they are managing their daily living skills, or have positive relationships with their peers in the service). Perhaps we can apply this to ourselves and instead of focusing on a meeting we had in the day that didn’t go as well as we hoped or wanted it to, we can view the day as a whole and see what has gone well that day whether that is professionally or personally (e.g. we didn’t burn the evening dinner or we completed a work task we had been putting off for a while).

Moreover, being aware of the most extreme version of this ‘frame’ — our biological automatic ‘fight or flight’ response will enable us to know how to calm it if we have to deal with a threat. Working in frontline homeless services can be challenging at times, and although our threat response is automatically activated it can be consciously reduced when recognised. For example, engaging in breathing exercises that activate the para-sympathetic nervous system, such as breathing OUT more than IN (or inhaling for 2 counts and then exhaling for 5 counts), or developing a yogic breathing practice can be helpful to calm us in the moment. Ensuring that we don’t come to work already feeling tension by practicing good self-care outside of work and taking time to check in with our colleagues and supporting them in challenging situations so they are perceived as less threatening to them can also be helpful.

Finally, trying to always take some time out to be ‘mindful’ or ‘reflect’ will help us to create the space to see the ‘bigger picture’. Perhaps next time we are walking somewhere, we could not just focus on our destination but also allow ourselves to notice other things on the journey. Being mindful in this manner can orientate us in the present, improve our psychological well-being and as noted above, develop our broader critical reasoning skills in other contexts. As per a psychologically informed environment or PIE, we need to give ourselves space for reflection, whether individually or within our teams. I would argue that we make better decisions when we have time to think, and consider all the evidence or data. It is good practice to build reflection into our professional (and personal) lives as it enables us to see the ‘bigger picture’ more easily and therefore respond to the challenges we face working in the homeless sector in a more psychologically informed manner in the future…