Who Are You Meant to Be? (10 page)

Rational Brain

The instinctual and emotional brains are by nature, reactive. They have automatic responses that occur via the nervous and hormonal systems outside of our conscious awareness. By contrast, the neocortical or rational brain makes possible our organizing and planning abilities so that we can consider first and then respond, rather than just react. It enables us to decide what type of response to use when we are upset, overwhelmed, or hurt, and to learn how to deal with recurring challenges. Using the example of the primitive person and the snake, the rational brain would enable our friend to learn something about snakes so that he would know which ones are harmful. He could try to plan and order his surroundings so he doesn’t ever have to be around a snake!

The rational brain also enables us to decipher the meaning of our experiences (for example, in Dennis’s case, why he hates office parties). By using the rational brain effectively, we can develop self-awareness. It gives us the capacity to reflect objectively on what we are feeling and to decide the best way to respond. It is the center for learning and using self-management skills. The rational brain allows us to name our experiences and objectively determine which information about these experiences is useful, so we are not subject to the automatic survival reactions of our emotional or instinctual brain.

The rational brain’s skill of self-management allows us to take the time to decide what is actually going on so that we are not constantly reacting to thoughts, feelings, and situations as they arise. It helps us tolerate our feelings until we have had time to think things through, and to bear frustration and delay gratification. It is able to selectively override impulses that are valuable at certain times but inappropriate at others.

For example, in Dennis’s case, the same fear response (e.g., increased heart rate, dry mouth) is activated when he attends the office party as would be activated if he were confronted by physical danger, such as a house fire. In the case of fire, running away (flight) might be the best response; in the office party situation, it’s probably not wise. If he can apply his rational brain to the situation of the party, he can learn to manage the impulses created in his emotional brain, that is, to tolerate some fear or embarrassment while he learns how to talk to people he doesn’t know.

The rational brain is also responsible for overriding impulses that would lead to immediate gratification at the expense of long-term goals. Suppose that Dennis, a slave to his emotional brain, enters the office party and sees two choices: a well-stocked buffet table that no one seems to have approached yet and a bar area where all the guests are making conversation. His impulses scream, “Buffet table!” but his rational brain, however reluctantly, decides that it’s not in his or his wife’s long-term interest to bypass the social niceties and storm the buffet. If it’s functioning at a high level, Dennis’s rational brain can help him bear his discomfort so that he can get through the small talk. And once the time is right to move on to food, his rational brain can also help him manage the instinct to eat too much, because it recognizes that food is not scarce and that good manners call for restraint. If necessary, the rational brain can also recite for Dennis the likely consequences of giving in to his emotion-driven impulses.

How the Brain Develops

Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain.

—Santiago Ramon y Cajal

To achieve our potential as human beings, we must also know a little about the biology behind our development. It is now widely recognized that our brain continues to grow and develop until our mid-twenties. Most of the developmental activity that occurs after adolescence is in the prefrontal cortex or the rational brain, which undergoes the longest period of development. This development does not happen in all young people, as their environment, social circumstances, and choices can get in the way. For example, teen pregnancy that leads to dropping out of school, a lack of higher education, and the use of drugs or alcohol to excess all tend to interfere with the brain’s full capacity for development.

Our three brains don’t all develop at the same time. To ensure our survival, our brains develop from the brain stem up, with the rational brain developing last. Although the brain stem is almost fully functional at birth, the emotional brain is slower to develop and mature, in part because development of the emotional brain is activity dependent. How many or how few experiences we have dictates how neural pathways form and interconnect, and how strong or weak the links are. As neuroscientists often say, “Cells that fire together, wire together.” Every experience that a child has causes certain neural pathways to strengthen and others to fall away, a process called pruning. The brain does not discriminate as to whether the pathway is helpful or harmful to us; it simply fortifies
what it experiences the most
. So there’s actually a neurological basis for the saying “good habits last a lifetime.” Unfortunately, the same can be said for dysfunctional and maladaptive patterns.

When we’re born, the rational brain has limited neural pathways connecting it to the emotional and instinctual brains. It is wired to be the last to develop and the last to receive communications via neurons from other parts of the brain. And just as our brains develop from the instinctual brain upward, neural pathways process information and experiences from the instinctual brain upward as well. This means that if you put your hand too close to a hot stove, you will have moved your hand away from the burner before your rational brain has registered that it felt hot. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to see that the instinctual and emotional brains do the lion’s share of decision making and have a greater influence on the rational brain than vice versa. They also have more control over our behavior.

When the brain develops along its ideal trajectory, connections from our emotional to our rational brain strengthen, reinforcing the communication between the two. This increases the ability of the rational brain to influence our decisions and behavior. In this way, we continue to develop self-awareness and self-management as we learn from our experiences. If something gets in the way of our brain’s development, its natural plasticity allows it—when given the chance—to take care of that unfinished business the second time around.

The Striving Styles Model for Brain Development

You can’t imagine how much detail we know about brains. There were 28,000 people who went to the neuroscience conference this year, and every one of them is doing research in brains. A lot of data. But there’s no theory.

—Jeff Hawkins

Within the SSPS, we have developed several theories and applications for what we now know about the brain. We use MacLean’s triune brain theory and the neuroscience behind brain development to help us to understand how our brain develops and what our brain is capable of doing when we decide to take our development into our own hands as adults. Our emotional and instinctual brains are wired to communicate to each other at birth, to ensure our survival. Because of their survival orientation, we named these two brains and their neural connections the Self-Protective (SP) System. Its primary goal is to protect us from physical and emotional experiences that cause us pain and suffering.

The brain’s biological mandate is to build connections between the SP System and the rational brain. The result of connecting the three brains is what we have named the Self-Actualizing (SA) System. This system allows us to direct our energy toward meeting our needs, our goals, and our potential rather than just ensuring our survival. Development is complete when enough neural networks have been laid down from the rational brain to the emotional and instinctual brains to consistently and habitually manage, plan, direct, and organize our experiences. Without a developed SA System, we are left with a disconnect between what we know (think) and what we do (experience). This might explain why many people behave in less than admirable ways despite their considerable investment in self-help books.

The SP System, with its hardwired brain circuitry, ensures our survival as human beings. During our formative years, the pathways between the instinctual and emotional brains are used almost exclusively. (If you’ve ever tried to win an argument with a two-year-old, you already know that the rational brains of toddlers cannot be accessed!) The instinctual brain alerts us to danger, and the emotional brain gets our physical and psychological needs met. So while we are operating from this system, we are acutely aware of our emotions and reacting to them as though our lives depended on it.

The SP System is wired to protect us from real or perceived threats to our survival and is activated by fear and other associated emotions. Threats may be external or internal, real or imagined. The system’s reactions are automatic in nature and give rise to freezing, withdrawal, avoidance, or flight reactions without any attempt to understand or question; the only goal is to survive. Because this brain system does not learn from mistakes, it keeps doing the same things without really understanding why. Think of poor Dennis, his SP System working overtime at every office party he’s ever attended, telling him to freeze, withdraw, avoid, or flee—although there’s no real danger at all. Not surprisingly, the behaviors prompted by our SP Systems are often mystifyingly self-destructive. Like Dennis, we may find ourselves tempted to do things that only compound our problem, like getting drunk at the office party, grazing the buffet table all night, or making inappropriate comments in an attempt to be funny.

Our SA System regulates impulses from the instinctual brain the way a good leader deals with competing priorities. When this system is fully functional, we are able to set goals, dream our dreams, imagine, delay gratification, manage our impulses, and make decisions in the interest of self-care. We respond to situations instead of reacting to them, trying to solve problems rather than focusing on our emotions. In the SA System, we don’t experience our emotions in the same way as we do in the SP System. We might notice that we are afraid, upset, or anxious, but we don’t allow our emotions to dictate our behavior. Instead, we decide what our best course of action is. Most important, we develop the capacity to use our whole brains, becoming flexible and resilient, able to manage our lives, adapt to change, and become who we are meant to be.

When we’re successfully using our three-brain system, we spend more time seeking pleasurable and self-promoting experiences than avoiding perceived threats. We are curious about the world and embrace our lives with joy and vigor. This system promotes behavior that is likely to bring us a variety of pleasurable outcomes (including fulfillment of our physical and psychological needs). It is an energizing system that moves us outward to explore and experience our environment.

When we get angry, anxious, afraid, or otherwise upset, the entire brain is activated, and it is up to our rational brain to slow down the process between activation and reaction so that we are able to consider the best way to deal with the situation. The rational brain tries to decode or understand impulses from the emotional brain before responding. It attempts to figure out where things fit in the bigger picture rather than reacting to the situation as a stand-alone event. For example, if my best friend has just been stood up by her boyfriend for the umpteenth time, I may be tempted to say, “That guy is a loser. Why don’t you break up with him?” My rational brain allows me to pause before speaking, to consider how my words might affect her feelings and our relationship. This reasoning process takes much longer than automatic reactions of instinctual and emotional brains, which explains why sometimes we do blurt out things that we later wish we’d never said. However, the more we use our SA System, the stronger and faster it becomes.

The rational brain is also the only brain that has insight into itself and learns from experience. In the example here, my rational brain will ask, “Is that really the most helpful thing you could say? She might need support more than advice right now.” As a result of repeated use of the SA System, of the rational brain with the instinctual and emotional brains, the neural networks strengthen, so that the next time a similar situation arises we can respond with greater ease. The rational brain can also take dysfunctional patterns of reactions and revise them so that we can exercise greater skill in dealing with challenging or emotionally charged situations.