What many people don’t know is that, although we have one brain, for all intensive purposes we actually have two minds – The Intellectual Mind and the Primitive Mind.
The intellectual mind
This is to the bit you know as you. It is your conscious part. The part that interacts with the world. The part we are using to be aware of our interactions together. It is attached to a vast intellectual resource. This is the part we don’t share with other animals.
The development of the intellectual part came about as part of a ‘genetic accident’, giving human beings the ability to daydream. This immediately put man on the evolutionary fast track that quickly distanced him from his nearest neighbours. Being able to forecast a positive outcome tomorrow based on what he did yesterday gave him unequalled incentive to be inventive. Beforehand, man had certainly been able to learn instinctively. Now he was able to learn intellectually from experience and imagining outcomes. He was able to continually improve his performance and he was programmed to do so. From an evolutionary perspective, the more successful he was as hunter/provider, the more the human race flourished. He survived and his family survived.
When we operate from this part of the brain we generally get things right in life. It will always come up with answers based on a proper assessment of the situation and is generally very positive.
The primitive brain & the limbic system
While the development of the intellectual brain continued at pace, the much older, instinctive part has remained just as active. In the physically dangerous world of early man, vigilance and strength were valuable commodities.
Without doubt, the intellectual progression led to more and more ‘sophisticated’ danger. Daydreaming, while continuing as a force for good, inevitably acquired a negative aspect to it. This increased the sensitivity of the limbic system response as the amygdala responds to thoughts, or imagination, in the same way as to actual events.
The centre and influential bit of the primitive brain is the amygdala. This is generally referred to as the fight/flight/depression area of the brain. It is associated with two other very primitive parts. The hippocampus, which holds all our primitive and sometimes inappropriate behavioural experiences and patterns and the hypothalamus which regulates chemical responses in the body and mind.
The Tiger Example: So, let us imagine that when you next go outside you run into a Tiger. What would happen? Your anxiety would go up. You would lose intellectual control and move from the intellectual brain to the primitive emotional brain, go ‘sweaty’, increase the heart beat, churn the stomach and you would be off like a shot.
In the circumstances this response would be entirely appropriate. You would be pleased. Unfortunately it is the same in life. When our anxiety goes up, and this can be a gradual process, we lose intellectual control and to a greater or lesser extent the primitive mind takes over and this mind always operates within the primitive parameters of the fear/ anxiety, depression and anger or a combination of all three.
There is a direct relationship between anxiety and intellectual control. When we do encounter that Tiger (or whatever) – something that constitutes extreme danger – the alarm system is activated. Responsibility moves immediately from the pre-frontal cortex to the limbic system. The human body prepares to deal with the physical danger. In the case of a lion a hasty ‘flight’ might well be the best option.
If our primitive mind thinks that, for one reason or another, our life is in some sort of crisis or emergency it will step in generally to help. Depression, anxiety and anger are all primitive opt out clauses.
Pattern matching
So, information is held in the intellectual part of our brain as well as the primitive part. Pattern matching is the process by which the brain habitually organises experience and endeavours to make sense of it. Throughout our lives our brains are constantly seeking to match up given patterns, or templates, some of which we are born with, to stimuli in the environment. The intellectual part of the mind seeks to progress and improve and in the process change templates for our betterment.
The limbic system constantly scans the environment for potential threats. It compares all incoming stimulation supplied by the various senses with survival templates, or fear memories, to decide if they are life-threatening or life-enhancing. A crackle of twigs or a sudden silence in the forest may trigger the alarm system, because previous experience of a crackle or silence has signaled a predator, thus setting in the flight, fight or freeze response. An experience is formed into sensory, sometimes emotional memory and is passed to an adjacent and also primitive part of the brain, the hippocampus. Recent experiences are stored here before they are transferred to the neo-cortex as a narrative memory.
When a deeply traumatic event occurs, the emotional reaction is so strong that the memory is retained in the limbic system. The event itself and various aspects surrounding it are now seen as having ‘life- threatening’ potential. A template is formed containing all the necessary information to ensure that a similar event is avoided at all costs. Thereafter, whenever there is a match, or even a partial match, the amygdala fires off the alarm reaction. Because this happens at a subconscious level, and sometimes is metaphorical, the experience is often an incomprehensible state of alarm. This is how our fears and phobias are formed.
How we do our thinking
It is not the events in our lives that necessarily causes the perception of crisis. No, if that were the case then everyone studying at university would be suffering from the same anxiety issues and panic attacks and we know that is not the case. So, it must be our thought patterns surrounding the events of our lives.
When the cavemen looked out of the cave and there was snow or ice or danger and he couldn’t go out to hunt, he pulled the rug up over his head and didn’t interact until the situation changed. We have adapted this to all the modern day symptoms of depression, phobias, fears & anxiety etc.
Primitive mind = Negative mind
The primitive mind is a negative mind. It will always see things from the worst possible perspective. If you think about it, it has to for our own self-preservation. When you run into that lion, it won’t say ‘ah it has probably eaten’. No, quite rightly it will say ‘it will eat you.’ This response is great when we run into lions but not so good when the bank statement arrives or we are facing redundancy or we’ve had an argument.
It is an obsessional mind. If you did have a Tiger in the back garden you would be reminded of it constantly. You would keep checking. It is a vigilant mind. If the perception is that danger is all around then it is wise to stay on red alert. And, because the primitive brain is not an intellect it can’t be innovative. It has to refer to previous patterns of behaviour. If what we did yesterday ensured our survival then we are encouraged to do it again. Here we can reflect on the reactions we get when facing our fears & phobias.
So how do we create this anxiety
Anxiety is created by negative thinking. Every negative thought we have is converted into anxiety. We can create anxiety by negatively forecasting the future, big things; “we will never be able to afford that”, I’ll never find another girlfriend”, “I’ll never have a baby” etc. It can be small things; that check up at the doctors. Here we should remember that the mind can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality. Intellectually you know the appointment is going to go OK, they generally do, but you start thinking about things going wrong. You think about it 50 times? The actual appointment goes quite well but according to your mind, you have attended 51 check-ups, 1 of which went quite well and 50 have been disasters.
We can also negatively introspect about the past. We can beat ourselves up about something we should or shouldn’t have done or said etc. Putting off things that we are anxious of will just add to the anxiety. What I like to call “THE STRESS BUCKET”.
Every negative thought that we have is accumulated and stored. We say it is stored in a stress bucket, which is actually a metaphor for the Hippocampus. The stress bucket is a wonderful concept as it illustrates perfectly how the creation of a certain amount of anxiety and stress is totally manageable. Things happen, and things certainly will go wrong, but we can get ourselves onto an upward spiral by limiting the amount of stress in our buckets, simply by altering the way we think about the event or situation. However, when the bucket overflows, this is when we start to get into real difficulties.
REM sleep (rapid eye movement)
Thankfully, we do have a method for emptying our bucket and it is known as REM sleep (rapid eye movement). At night we re-run events of the day and change them from being an emotional memory to a narrative memory. Everyone is familiar with how REM works. Someone upsets you in the afternoon and you really are upset. You tell your partner or friend about it and he/she says forget about it, but you really can’t. You’re thinking about it when you go to bed. During R.E.M sleep we re-run the event either in clear or metaphorically (dreaming), and move it from the primitive brain to the intellectual brain where we have control over it. So when you awaken in the morning you might well have forgotten about the wretched person or you might not but you will certainly be saying something like “how do I allow these people to upset me so”.
Perhaps the primary function of R.E.M is related to our early programming. To assimilate information, particularly new information, we need the ability to enter a R.E.M state. Sadly, R.E.M is restricted to about 20% of our overall sleep patterns. If we try and overdo that, for example when we DO have too much in the bucket, then the mind will respond in one of two ways:
- It will wake you up. You know when it is your mind waking you up because you wake up wide awake and often feel quite miserable. Often we can’t get back to sleep again. You know the difference between that and a loud noise waking you up for instance.
- It has enormous energy in that effort to diffuse that anxiety. Sometimes we can overdo it and this exhausts us and makes us even more depressed and anxious, even after a long night’s sleep. In an attempt to empty our bucket we are encouraged to sleep more and more, sometimes all day, which makes our depression and anxiety worse and worse.
Now we find ourselves in the grip of a vicious circle, the more we sleep or can’t sleep, the greater the tendency will be to put more things in the stress bucket the next day. But once we’ve reversed this process, life starts to improve exponentially.
Just imagine always waking up in the morning with your stress bucket emptied so that you can start the day without anxiety, anger or depression!
What can we do about it?
Evolutionary times back when early man and early women were given quite definite rewards for carrying out certain evolutionary processes. They got a reward when they hunted and gathered and successfully supported themselves and their families. We are better as a tribe rather than individuals, so they got rewarded when they interacted with others.
The reward they got they quite definitely recognised and scientists are adamant about this. They felt motivated. But most of all it was a coping mechanism.
- It helped them cope with day to day activities
- It helped them cope better with physical fear
- It made them braver
- It even helped them cope with physical pain
(If you were walking down a dark alley or the woods alone at night, you would be terrified. However, sharing that experience with others makes you braver and you feel more safe because someone else is there with you).
No doubt they were pleased. Now we know what that reward is. It’s a chemical response in the brain that produces various neurotransmitters that act as catalysts for that sort of mentally healthy behaviour. Furthermore, the neurotransmitter we talk about most, simply because it is the most important, is serotonin. When we produce a constant flow of serotonin we are happy and brave and can cope with any situation.
So we need to operate within these positive parameters like early man, and although we do not have to go out to hunt, we do have to interact in a positive way, be active in a positive way, and think in a positive way. Because when we do, we produce patterns in the brain that give us that constant flow of serotonin.
What stops the flow of serotonin?
When somebody is down at the miserable and depressed end of the scale, they won’t be producing any chemicals at all to speak of. On the other hand, anybody operating up at the anxious end will be producing an overload of stress hormones and adrenalines, which are great for when we run into Lions, but not so good for running our daily lives. For this reason, any anxiety or phobia prevention must ensure that people get into the intellectual part of the brain, where they will again have the control they need to do well in life.
As anxiety in life is reduced the intellectual mind regains control. This is brought about by a reversal of the exact process that caused anxiety in the first place. Learning to think positively will, in due course, reverse all depression, anxiety and anger related negative processes.