When the mind is behaving tyrannically, it’s running unconscious software belonging to the ancient limbic brain. The limbic brain is focused on survival, and when we’re in its grip we see danger everywhere and respond like a trapped animal. Often known as the mammalian brain, the limbic brain is driven by the Four Fs—feeding, fighting, fleeing, and fornicating. These primitive survival programs are activated when we fuel the brain on processed grains and sugar. The limbic system is the same region of the brain that craves sweet comfort foods when we’re feeling sad or insecure.
The limbic brain’s obsessions with food and sex, its craving for mind-dulling drugs, and its bias toward aggression, emotional withdrawal, and other destructive behavior can be overridden by the neocortex, the “new” brain, which allows us to learn, create, envision new futures, and make plans. The neocortex is programmed for beauty, whether it’s found in a Mozart concerto or an elegant mathematical solution.
The new brain needs good fats to run at its best. Otherwise it merely sputters along, coughing up the occasional brief revelation but no lasting insight. The new brain doesn’t fare well under stress. When we’re stressed, it leaves the limbic brain in the driver’s seat. The problem is that the limbic brain evolved when we were sitting quietly by the river’s edge or watching the sun set lazily over the African savannah. It is not used to the rhythm of the world today. It can become so overstimulated that it hijacks the entire neural apparatus. Blood flow to the front of the brain, where we perceive opportunity and come up with creative solutions to problems, is then reduced. Raw emotion overtakes us, and we become blind with jealousy or rage, paralyzed with fear, or so riddled with anxiety that we can’t think straight.
Often we’re not even aware that we’re operating out of beliefs programmed into the limbic brain. Survival oriented, these beliefs center on fear and violence: the world is a dangerous place; there are tigers around the corner waiting to eat us; there aren’t enough resources to go around; death means the end of our existence. Beliefs like these become etched into the neural networks in the brain.
Neural networks are information superhighways that process what we perceive and feel. They tell us red means danger, green means go, who is sexy, who is dull. They hold a dynamic map of our world and how our reality works. This map contains sights, sounds, scents, memories, and early childhood experiences. It is thought that as many as half of our maps of reality are formed in the womb, as the mother’s stress hormones pass through the placental barrier to the fetus. So if your mother was not sure she could count on your father to be there and support her, your map will code for a reality in which you can’t count on men to be there for you, or a universe where men will not support your endeavors. If, on the other hand, your mother was confident she could count on her beloved, your mental map will show a world you can count on—and it will create this reality around you.
These neonatal neural networks are strengthened as your day-to-day experience proves your mythic map true, with more connections between neurons formed every time that pathway is used. Over time, this becomes the path most traveled and eventually the only route. A brain scan will actually show the breadth of neural networks in a particular area of the brain. The opposite is true as well: When a neural network falls into disuse and is pruned away, the void in that area of the brain will show up on a scan. So even if you have a spiritual awakening during a weekend meditation retreat, unless you make a conscious effort to continue practicing once you return to your everyday cutthroat existence, the epiphany will fade away. It’s not easy being a Zen monk in corporate America.
Our neural networks make us creatures of habit. We stop having innovative thoughts and original perceptions very early on. In fact, most of our neural networks are set by age seven, when we stop drawing purple pigs and imagining houses in the clouds and in the roots of trees. Adverse childhood experiences not only affect development but also correlate with higher levels of alcoholism, heart disease, depression, teen pregnancy, and many other negative behaviors later on.
Just as we develop practical neural networks for everything from reading and speaking to riding a bicycle and being polite, childhood traumas form networks for fear, anger, suffering, and abandonment that are encoded in the limbic brain. We repeat the underlying themes of these experiences, even if we don’t recall the events themselves. As I reflect back on my own life I notice that I have always suffered around the same themes—lost love, hurt, and abandonment. And fear. When I moved to New York City for a summer decades ago, I arrived at my new apartment on a hot and muggy day. A bunch of beefy guys in sweaty T-shirts were sitting on the front steps. I was convinced I’d moved into a neighborhood of muggers and killers. Later, I discovered the guys were my neighbors and couldn’t have been nicer. I had unknowingly superimposed childhood memories of the Cuban Revolution on these innocent neighbors.
Often themes run in families, passed down from parent to child. In the Amazon, they call this a generational curse. It can trigger the genes for disease. An emotional pattern may manifest as a physical ailment. Autoimmune diseases, which involve the immune system attacking its own cells, often run in families with poor emotional boundaries: family members have trouble acknowledging what is yours and what is mine.
Whatever willpower we exert to change our habits, we often fall back into the old themes because of our ever-efficient neural networks. The good news is that we can rewire the brain for joy and more nourishing outcomes.
when toxic emotions dominate your thinking and nervous system, you put yourself in danger. To stop being the victim of your circumstances and become functional, you will need to heal your emotions. You won’t have to go out of your way to find opportunities to heal. Life presents plenty of challenges and stressors that will allow you to rewire the neural pathways in your brain, transforming toxic emotions like fear and anger into positive feelings like compassion and love.
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