at first I was afraid, I was petrified
(all about the survival brain).
This week’s tiny spark: our survival brain. We’re learning all about our brain, how it’s wired for survival above all else, and how it’s always trying to protect us, even when it doesn’t feel that way.
Have you ever had a situation where you were stressed/nervous/excited/scared and it seemed like your brain just wasn’t quite working right? Maybe you had to give a big presentation at work and you were so nervous that when you got up to talk, it felt like the speech you had memorized and practiced 10,000 times flew right out of your head? That, my friends, is the work of our survival brain.
If you’ve known me for a while, you probably know how much I love the brain. In fact, you may remember this post on how we change our brains (spoiler alert: it’s hard!). Understanding how our brain works is so critical in understanding ourselves so that we can be more compassionate and move more toward what we want for ourselves in our lives, be that changing habits, setting boundaries, forming new relationships, or whatever we feel drawn towards.
Of course, the brain is incredibly complicated but in my daily work I get to teach these topics to kids as young as 4 years old all the way up to older adults, so rest assured that anyone can understand and apply this material to their daily lives.
The first thing to know about the brain is that it’s made up of three main parts. One of the easiest ways to explain these three parts is to use our hand, a model created by Dan Siegal, a leading researcher in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. Imagine you held your hand up in a fist, thumb wrapped inside your fingers.
The front part of our fist, where our fingers are, represents our prefrontal cortex area. This is the part of our brain that lets us do things like think logically, rationalize, do algebra, make a meal plan, etc. We use this part of the brain when, for example, writing down a to-do list, making a plan to exercise, or trying to change a habit. When I teach this model to children, I refer to this part of our brain as the wise owl. Here’s a little fun fact: did you know that our prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until age 25?!
Our thumb, tucked inside our fist, represents the limbic region of our brain that contains the amygdala. The amygdala is part of the novelty and survival center of our brain and that means that it’s always assessing things around us to ensure we are safe - we can think of it like the guard dog of our brain. This part of our brain is wired to have what’s called a negativity bias, meaning that if something could be negative or something could be positive, the survival brain will assume it’s negative - this is to keep us safe!
To really understand what a negativity bias is, think of a smoke detector in your home. Have you ever set off the alarm when making toast or cooking something on the stovetop? I know I have! When the alarm went off, was there actually a fire? No! It was just picking up on the small bits of smoke from your food. But we WANT the smoke detector to be sensitive and have a negativity bias, meaning that even if there is just a bit of smoke, it warns us there is a fire. Again, this is to keep us safe! Imagine if there was a real fire that started with just a tiny bit of smoke and the alarm didn’t go off; you could be seriously injured if you weren’t able to leave the home before the fire and smoke got bigger. Our brain works the very same where it uses past information and current experiences to activate our survival brain.
At this point, you may be thinking, okay this brain info is great, but why does this matter in my daily life? Let’s talk about what happens when we get stressed, activated, or go outside our window of tolerance. When something happens in our daily life that activates our nervous system, the amygdala, or guard dog, activates to let us know something is happening that is dangerous. As that happens, it is sending signals to the rest of our brain and body that we need to prepare to fight, flight, fawn, or freeze. When that happens, we “flip our lid.” In simple terms, the guard dog starts barking to alert us and when that happens, the wise owl flies away - aka, our logic/rational brain goes offline. We can no longer effectively communicate with others, control our emotions, think logically, or respond to reasoning.
If you have a history of trauma or are in a period of higher stress, your amygdala is likely even more finely tuned into things that could possibly be dangerous. Remember, when we say dangerous we don’t mean only things that our rational brain thinks of as dangerous, it could be something as simple as someone you love talking to you in a different tone. Your amygdala hears that tone, assumes something is wrong or the person is upset with you, and then takes your logic brain offline. That makes it much more difficult to see the situation as it actually is…maybe that person was just tired, distracted, or had a bad day. But to your survival brain, it’s telling you the worst: they hate you, they don’t want to be your friend anymore, no one likes you, and you’ll be all alone. Without our rational brain to help us see reality, we are left feeling stressed, upset, and like our life is at stake.
Typically, when we are feeling well and we can access our resilience, our amygdala will settle down and will allow our rational brain to come back online. Think about someone cutting you off in traffic - you may feel a rise of fight/flight/fawn/freeze energy come up and then recede. But other times, it may feel like we spend all our time in this activated state, where things always seem VERY stressful or VERY scary. If that’s the case, you’re not alone. There are many ways we can support our nervous system and amygdala in accessing more space by increasing our resilience and widening our window of tolerance. Just being able to observe what is happening and think to yourself - I flipped my lid, I need to take a moment and do something grounding before I continue this conversation - can help settle down our survival brain.
Feel free to join me on Tiktok, Instagram, or Youtube where I share many different grounding techniques that can help support our survival brain and nervous system.
Sending tiny sparks of wellness your way,
Trisha
~Here’s a refresher on the brain and increasing your emotional resilience (in less than one minute) on my TikTok.
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~Remember Dunkaroos from the 90s? I saw a recipe for the Dunkaroos dip on Instagram from @meatloafandmelodrama, and I think I found my next potluck item (or midnight snack).
~I’m reflecting on this summery graphic from Dani DiPirro on Instagram. Which popsicle do you need? P.S. No one said you can only take one…
