When Michael's girlfriend broke up with him he started getting into trouble at work he would get into fights with his boss and get
frustrated and angry in meetings
He came to therapy after his boss said you better figure this out, or you're not going to have a job here anymore.
Becca has an eating problem, when things get stressful at school all she can think to do is eat, eat, eat.
What do both of these people have in common? Their brain is getting in the way of their life.
With both Michael and Becca their deeper brains are interfering with their ability to regulate their life
because their brain is sensing a survival threat. This triggers emotions
instincts, and reflexes that they aren't even conscious of. For us to understand our emotions
we need to have a little bit better understanding of how our brain works.
Briefly there are three levels to our brain: The Executive state which is the pre-frontal lobes and the Cortex, the
Emotional state which is the limbic system, and the
Brainstem which is the
Survival State of our brains. Now the deepest and oldest part of our brain is the
Reptilian brain or the Brainstem this part of our brain evolved millions and millions of years ago
And is the most basic level of our brains functioning. Its job is to make sure that we stay alive. It manages survival
reflexes, eating, bodily regulation, things like your heart rate and your breathing.
Just the very bare bones of keeping us alive. When Becca felt stressed at school the deep part of her brain
sensed a survival threat like a famine and cranked up the drive to eat as if to store up food resources for later.
Now Becca knew this wasn't going to be helpful in her executive part of her brain.
But that wasn't able to stop the reaction in her brain stem.
This instinct has helped humans survive for thousands of years,
but it isn't very helpful in Becca's specific
situation. The Limbic system is also called the mammal brain because it's able to think of survival in terms of the group.
It's also a very old part of our brain so think of the wolf pack hunting together to survive or a herd of antelope
sticking together to fight the wolf pack.
For thousands of Years humans have depended on small groups of people. Maybe a village of 50 to a hundred people for their survival.
Rejection meant death. This part of our brain manages love,
attachment, jealousy.
Most of the emotions that we feel occur in our limbic brain and it has a lot to do with our social interactions.
So when Michael's girlfriend broke up with him
it triggered this fear of rejection or being kicked out of the village. That was necessary for survival and
that elicited the fight flight freeze response. This anger that he was feeling that was coming out at work.
The outermost part of our brains and the newest youngest part of our brains is the Prefrontal Cortex
This is only in humans, and it has the ability to think about the future and use words, create
imaginary scenarios, this is the part that we often think of as our mind. It holds conscious thoughts,
it has the ability to plan for the future and and reason things out. It holds memories and
Has the ability to think out problems on a complex level. This is the part of our brain that we use when we make
intentional choices about the direction we want our life to go. It holds our identity and our life's purpose. When Becca
knew that it wasn't good for her to be eating so much that was her executive brain thinking about the future. And when Michael thought
"I should get some therapy to help me with these problems" He was using this reasoning power of the human brain.
It's important for us to understand these different parts of our brain
because when our brain senses a threat it turns off the upper levels of the functioning in our mind and
defaults to the lower levels so it's going to default to survival first and then
attachment and relationships
and not being rejected before it's able to really think about "How do I solve this complex problem in my life?"
So if we want our brains to function well, and we want to be able to solve these complex problems
we really need to make sure that the message of safety is being sent to our reptilian brain and that the the message of
connection and closeness and social interaction is
fulfilling the needs of our mammal brain and then we're able to use the executive part of our brain which
functions to solve problems and make complex decisions. The fact that our brain
regresses to these deeper levels when it feels threatened is really functional when it comes to physical threats.
But it's not very helpful when it comes to things that we need to think through and plan out.
So if we get stuck in our limbic brain we're constantly making decisions based on emotions, or
instincts, or stress or reactions. We're very reactive and
impulsive in our choices. And in order to make conscious and thought-through
Choices we need to be spending more time in our executive brain in our Prefrontal Cortex
So to do that-we need to feel safe in our bodies and in our minds.
We need to notice our reaction to threats.
So take a minute think about when was the last time you felt threatened, and what was your habitual response to that?
Thanks for watching. I hope this was helpful and take care