Some interesting insights into the two brains.

I know I share a lot of diverse info on my blog.  And I hope it doesn’t confuse readers who follow me for one stream and not the others.  However when I find something enlightening I have the immediate impulse to share it especially if I feel it may help some readers.  We do need to understand with the younger part of our brain or past is being triggered in order not to react so much from this place but this excerpt shows how different emotions can evoke different responses depending on which part of our consciousness (or unconscious) we are reacting from and how we can use more awareness to move those reactions to a more creative and less destructive conclusion.

This comes from the chapter How To Turn Toddler Brain Feelings into Adult Brain Values, in chapter 8 of the book Soar Above : How to Use the Most Powerful Part of Your Brain Under Any Kind of Stress by Steven Stonsny, PhD.

The latest research on the neurobiology of emotions shows that the particular way they feel depends on where in the brain they’re processed.  The Toddler-brain (I believe here he means the amygdala or lower brain which holds old trauma and associations to past experience of threat where we felt fear fight or flight) feelings that most commonly trigger self-defeating blame, denial or avoidance are :

• Fear, with its motivation to freeze or shrink (become a smaller target).
• Anger, with its motivation to devalue or attack (or self protect??)
• Anguish, (seemingly unbearable loss), with its motivation to yell, scream, or wail.
• Shame (unlovable, defective, inadequate), with its motivation to cover up or hide.

The same feelings that sound like urgent alarms in the Toddler brain, become mere emotional signals via Adult brain reality testing :

• Fear becomes concern or caution which motivates research, planning and preparation.
• Anger becomes impatience or frustration which motivates stepping back to evaluate methods used to accomplish the goal, modifying them when appropriate, and re doubling efforts to achieve this task.
• Anguish becomes sadness which motivates incremental increases in value creation to fill the void of loss.  (The paradigm example is recovering from loss of a loved one.  The purpose of grief is to love again.)
• Shame becomes disappointment (The experience of shame in the Toddler brain is paralysing and disorganising, which is why toddlers have temper tantrums; the adrenaline temporarily overpowers them.  But disappointment motivates self soothing and self care, sharpening old skills and acquiring new ones in order to be more successful.  If the disappointment signal is about attachment, it motivates connecting to loved ones – being more compassionate, kind, supportive and loving.)

The Adult brain is able to achieve the above by attenuating the Toddler brain tendency to view transient negative feelings as permanent conditions.  “I have always felt bad and always will feel bad.  I don’t know what its like not to feel bad.  You always make me feel bad. ”  In the Adult brain, negative experience is temporary, the further is alway near.  “This bad feeling will pass.  Most of the time I feel okay, and I will again.  Sometimes our interactions go wrong, and neither of us act in the we would like, I will try to do better.”

The inability of the Toddler brain to see anyone else’s perspective – “I feel shut out; you must be ignoring me;  I feel empty; you must not care about me.” – is transformed, as the Adult brain puts emotional signals into social context.  “I’m frustrated which means I’m hurt or anxious, so he or she must be hurt or anxious too. ”  “My partner is reacting to something different from my perception; I’ll try to understand sympathise with his or her perspective and communicate mine more clearly and respectfully.”  And if ignored or rejected “My partner must feel preoccupied or overwhelmed.  I’ll let him know how much I like feeling connected.  If we cannot connect right now, I’ll create value in different ways for example, by playing with the kids, talking to a friend, or writing a poem.

The ability of the Adult brain to put emotions in a social context can be developed like any other skill.  I call it binocular vision.  

(There may be times people block or shame us for reasons that come from their own psychology or inability to respond from a place of empathy too.  This is especially the case with narcissism.  However we all have varying degrees of self involvement and different styles of relating and processing as well as being triggered.  This is just one pespective and I hope it give you something.}