Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Borders inside Us
Jose Lopez
RWS 1302
Hernandez
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Running head: Borders inside Us
Literature Review
Mental borders exist in every person, most of these borders are negative thoughts that limit
ourselves and affect us physically and mentally; even though we never think of any of these borders
they exist in every people, it doesn’t matter the age, race, or genre. These borders are like anchors
that the only thing that does is to hold us back, and indirectly make our lives harder than it should
be. For instance, the most common barrier that most foreign students had while studying in other
country is the language barrier, where learning a new language is not easy but with practice we
can learn. It may not a hundred percent but at least the sufficient to understand and talk to other
people, but in other situations where people move to another country for any reason they run in to
the same border. For most people this is a very hard obstacle so difficult that they prefer to ignore
it, because is easier to live in a world of lack of knowledge where they think that they can’t learn
this new language, and they begin to create excuses or in most of the time they create more barriers
to avoid the original border. This people convince them self’s that is impossible to learn a new
language for example because of his/her age decreases their learning skill that do not allowed them
to remember this new vocabulary, they don’t have time since all the time they are working, all this
barriers block their brain and something that it’s hard to accomplish with this barriers would make
It impossible to learn this new idiom. What if instead of finding an excuse we find a solution to
this border, like read a news article use a dictionary to translate every word where eventually you
would be able to recognize the word an know the meaning of that word and begin to understand
sentences of the article. In the future this person would be able to read not just the news but also
magazines or books; even do this person is not the best reader or speaker of this language, this
person is moving freely in the ocean that’s the point to demolish this barriers since our failures and
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Running head: Borders inside Us
accomplishment lies in our brain and “it is not the quantity of life that matters it is the quality of
life” as seen in Philosophy of Life: Connecting Dots (2017). As is mention before mental border
can affects our daily lives but before there is three important questions need to be consider to
The following review on literature will explain the psychology behind these mental borders,
It is hard to think that we have a problem even if we can’t see them, but these mental
barriers are created by self-examination where we look our conscience, and emotions. For instance
it is normal that everyone is afraid of something is part of the human being, this emotion is one of
the causes that deprives us to be successful in life, according to Bernardo Stamatas(2016), since
fear is a defense mechanism to protect us and by trying to do so, it help us to create mental borders
because when we get out of our comfort zone we feel unconfutable and we tend to think any
possible way to avoid that situation for instance a lot of students are scared to talk with their
professor and most of them prefer to ask their classmates instead knowing that they may are wrong.
For years theses students grow with this mentality and when they get to college this would affect
them in a negative way since they would struggle to learn if they can make it to college.
Moreover, another emotion that contribute that limit ourselves is the conformism as mention in by
the author Ashok Kumar Sood (physiological life 2015), by achieving part of the real goal for
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some people they conscience feels relieve since once they reach certain comfort they don’t try to
advance anymore or keep working to finish their goals. Being conformist does not have any
positive sides just negatives because is too easy to convince them self’s that everything is fine and
there is no necessity to do an extra to finish or accomplish the next goal, limiting themselves to
keep learning or advance in life. Furthermore, in the video from Crash Course talks about Freud
theory of psychoanalysis where states that our personality realize on the “enduring conflict
between our impulses to do whatever we feel like, and our restrain to control these urges.”(Hank
Green, 2014), Fraud believes that depending on each person’s conscience every one reacts
different; leading to these people either overcome a new mental border or just ignore it, for
example negatives experiences, depending on the severity of this experience trying to live the
present without having accepted or having left behind this bad experience in the past would cause
mental barriers that would affect them in the future. Like during a vehicular accident ignoring the
fact of who is responsible or not been involved in this event can be traumatizing, so much that this
person may never would drive again because after experience this accident the subconscious would
remember all the emotions, such as fear, pain, anxiety etc.; by consequence the conscious would
be fulfil by panic or stress, all this is triggered in seconds and every time that the person do
something or remember the past leading to a mental barrier that would affect them in the future if
this border is not overcome(The power of your subconscious mind, 2011). This subconscious stage
is not just triggered by the bad experiences but also with the great ones making us to feel happiness,
but we tend to remember our failures, and bad experiences because it’s one way that we learn and
most of the times we try to not fall in the same errors that lead us to make our life’s harder than it
should be.
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Running head: Borders inside Us
Is it possible to overcome these borders?
In this life is there is a solution to everything and for mental borders is not the exception,
according to the hypnotherapist and psychotherapist Marisa Peer, she mentions that there are four
strategies to collaborate with our mind that we need to be able to avoid or overcome any mental
barrier we may facing (Marisa Peer, 2015). The first one is the to collaborate with your mind,
because if we are not connected to our mind it would be impossible to overcome this problem; as
she mentions in the video every time that we talk to ourselves we communicate with our mind but
it’s so important that we need to say positives though. For instance, when we say a negative though
to ourselves like this homework is so hard or this job is so boring the only thing are we doing is
telling to our mind that we don’t like this job or we don’t want to do the homework so our mind
would not help us to accomplish since it would be try to avoid the homework or can make a
workday more difficult and longer than what should be done. But if we change this thoughts for
“I can do this homework” and “I love this job”, even if do you don’t mean it; because our mind
would start to believe that we really like what we do. If we apply this to any mental border would
be easier to overcome any situation like the language barrier mentioned before.
The second strategy is to “move the pleasure away from the pain”, Marisa Peer mention
that our mind how it works is that we try to avoid pain and would move on to the pleasure, we are
the only ones who can choose what its pleasure or pain in our minds for example, when we eat
spice food we tend to feel stomach pain but we told our mind that since was has spicy then we link
that food like pain where in reality could be anything else and we stop eating that plate, this also
happens when we face a mental border we tend link this border to pain either physically or mentally
so we try to avoid them, but if we link it to the pleasure part then our mind would not try to avoid
them instead would try to find the solution to it in order to feel the pleasure.
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The third strategy is related to the first one because depending on how we picture this
mental border in our mind it would determine if we can demolish or not this border, as peer
commented when we picture and say negative thing to ourselves we would make our life harder.
We need to collaborate with our mind not just with positive thoughts but also with a positive
picture in our mind. Like flying in an airplane if we think in the worst-case scenarios we would
not enjoy the trip and inclusive the hold fieldtrip because we begin picturing the negative sides.
There is cases where people unfortunately had lost an extremity of their body this can be a
disability but never a mental barrier, for this people is so easy to make this mistake in their situation
since they picture themselves less than others, rejection from other people, or accepted by the
society, while in reality this should not be affecting them because there is a lot of role models that
even has any disability have found the way to be successful, for example there is runners that train,
they workout, and they do not have legs inclusive some of this runners compete in the
convince us that we have the strength, say to ourselves that we can do anything and we can break
any barrier it doesn’t matter the size of the wall or the time to break it, by patience and a positive
Lastly the last strategy is to make the unfamiliar into familiar and what is familiar
unfamiliar , because our minds how it works is that it loves what is familiar, every time that we
don’t feel uncomfortable it’s because we are familiar with the situation that we are living on,
basically our routine life is familiar since we always do it, but The constant fear of the unknown
is the what defines what is unfamiliar since we are afraid of anything that we don’t have control
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or knowledge about it. But the problems are that we tend to make familiar everything that
contributes to a mental border. Like she procrastinates, no study after class, and eat unhealthy food
etc. subconsciously we familiar anything that contribute with a mental border for example for
many people is not possible to pay they education and most of them do not have any choice than
work in fast food restaurants, gas station or mall’s stores where they can earn money. In this
situation is very common that this people would prefer to work instead to back to college first
because they make familiar to earn money where they can be self-independent, buy whatever they
want, and secondly they are afraid to return to college to get a better job because they are unfamiliar
of being a college students, instead of make us familiar with the money we need to make it
unfamiliar and make familiar the idea of study any career it doesn’t have to be a prestigious college
first can start with a community college and then move on to other school to go to the next level
but is not obligatory but always picture yourself positive and change the way you think by seen
college something familiar where you can get a pleasure for any reason like think that when you
finish your first semester would give you peace, so every time when you finish a semester it would
not be so harder to take another semester and every time you think it get harder make it unfamiliar
so when you take the next one your mind would not remember how hard was the last semester and
even the next one is a little bit harder your mind would tell you that is like the first semester.
The human brain is so powerful since can store so much data that is impossible to
forget something we may not remember but it still sored in or brain so it’s impossible to have one
mental border because of this massive data and emotions but there is common mental barriers that
we tend to make to ourselves, which are the following discourage yourself to do new things or try
it, Unreasonable feelings, negative ideas, and hold our mind with negative experiences (Diario
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Norte, 2016). Most people normally discourage themselves without thinking they just negate
themselves and they refuse to give it a try like when writing an essay to a scholarship most people
don’t do it not because they have money but because they say why write it if I’m not gone a win
against the other essays that maybe would be better than mine or why do it if there reward is not
too much, so at the end they are not even going to try to write it because they block themselves.
Moreover, the next mental border is the irrational beliefs, this often occurs when we feel
sadness, depression, or fear. Basically, everything that makes us feel negative emotions that makes
us to “ignore the positive, exaggerating the negative, and generalize” (Dra. Araceli Flores León,
2012). The Dra Flores gives a perfect example where she explains that when the things aren’t how
we wanted, we usually get used to it instead to trying to chance it, like when we feel anything
abnormal in our body but since we don’t feel pain or intervene with our daily activities then we
Another type is the negative ideas, as is mentioned before the negativity is the number one
factor that creates barriers, everything that is related to think, talk, imagine, and describe ourselves
in a negative way is going to lead us to create immensely barriers there is a lot of example such as
saying “I can’t” , “is too difficult”, “I don’t want to do it” ,”I’m not strong enough” etc. depending
on the situation and the personality of each person it may not affect them at all.
Moreover, a very common barrier that we face is to hold our mind with negative
experiences as is mention before is when we don’t leave the past behind, since is our past is like
an anchor that the only think that it does is to hold us back and its impossible to forget our past,
most metal borders are related to our experiences because when we suffer a negative experience
we try to avoid to repeat this mistake and then we create a border that unconsciously we block not
just that experience but also perform other activities related to this bad experience.
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Running head: Borders inside Us
According to a survey asked to fourteen people about mental borders in order to know if
people Is aware or have experience any kind of mental border, these are the questions asked to the
surveyed: have you experienced any kind of mental border? if yes which experience, and if they
were capable to overcome this border? During this survey most of the time first it was give a
context before ask these questions like what a mental border is, and many examples. Four people
out of fourteen responded that they have no experienced any type of barrier or they were not sure
of having experienced anything like it, 10 out of fourteen say that they have experienced a mental,
but 3 of them denied to tell if they were able to overcome this border, and 6 of them said that they
face the language barrier and thanks to their schools, teacher, and other resources were able to
learn this new language may be not perfect but the necessary to continue with their education,
lastly this person struggles to move from his country to the united states where he has to leave
every thing behind and start new and learn how to adapt to this new environment in order to
In summary mental borders even do they exist in our mind, not necessary means that we
have a problem. These borders are what defines who we are, without these borders everyone would
be the same with the same personality but as humans no one is the same, no matter how similar
we look there is always a difference. But some of them can limit our capacities, or inclusive can
affect our style of life since it does not allow us to make a change in our life. And in order to
eliminate these borders it’s so difficult to overcome because everything starts with ourselves, our
way of thinking, habits, economic situation, and people that surround us. Since this affect our way
of thinking and lead us to either think in a positive or negative way, and in order to overcome these
mental borders is to live the present don’t think about your past, everything happens for a reason
and it doesn’t matter if was a great or bad experience, learn to avoid the same mistakes but at the
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same time know yourself all your ups and downs and always picture yourself as a person that is
not afraid of anything, that you are capable to do everything that you want, and every time that
you are out of your comfort zone always try to think in all those memories that makes you feel that
your are familiar and related to that moment that you fell uncomfortable. and most importantly
recognize that you have a mental border it doesn’t matter how you end up with it, what matters is
that you are conscious that there is an obstacle that you need to overwhelmed and use all the
https://www.slideshare.net/alfredoge/bernardo-stamateas-nudos-mentales
-Murphy, Joseph () the power of your subconscious mind retrieved from https://www.law-of-attraction-
haven.com/support-files/power-subconscious-mind.pdf
- Peer, Marisa (2015/ 1/ 22) To reach beyond your limits by training your mind retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCv-ZBy6_yU
Green Hank - (2014/ 7/14) Rorschach & Freudians: Crash Course Psychology #21 retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUELAiHbCxc&feature=youtu.be
pensamientos-irracionales-y-como-afectan-nuestra-vida/