Beyond Threat

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PART ONE:

HOW HAS IT COME TO BE THIS WAY?

Chapter One: Our Emotional Brain

The emergence of brain

The feeling, thinking and doing person that each of us is today is the product and sum of billions of years of evolution. Four billion years ago, life on Earth appeared as single cells such as bacteria. Fast forward three and a half billion years and life forms we are more familiar with started to appear, beginning with arthropods, fish and reptiles. These early life forms contain nervous systems that are no longer single cells but networks of neurons that carry messages between parts of the body. As it evolved, this nervous system supported basic functions like moving, eating, breathing and reproducing. As it evolved further, it came to form the oldest and still very active part of our brain, which I refer to in this book as threat brain.

Understanding how and why our brain has evolved over millions of years helps us to appreciate why we feel, think and act in the way we do. When our feelings, thoughts and actions are sometimes ineffective or even destructive, evolutionary science offers insights that help us see how this is not our fault – even though it is our problem. Instead of blaming ourselves, we can begin to see our frailty as a shared human experience. Although we have evolved into astonishingly conscious, creative, social beings, these new capabilities are grafted onto our old threat brain and this causes us problems. Our earliest ancestors, living in harsh environments amongst numerous predators, needed to be highly vigilant, cautious and ready to attack or run. Their sensitivity to danger and urge to survive is still in us even though the contexts in which we live have changed considerably.

Just as we would not blame someone for being born with one leg shorter than the other or for having motor neuron disease, we need not blame ourselves for the irrational, damaging or debilitating feelings and thoughts that sometimes direct our action. Understanding ourselves as an organism in the flow of evolutionary life helps us become more aware of our previously unconscious drives and motivations and enables us to cultivate self-compassion and tolerance towards our mistakes and failings. This ‘warm awareness’ will also help us manage the problems that our threat brain can cause in our relationships with others.

Neuroscience – the study of the brain

Neuroscience is the study of the brain. In recent years, the work of neuroscientists has spread into many disciplines including physiology, psychology, computer science, engineering, physics and education. Sophisticated scanning technology showing how the brain works may be responsible for this surge in interest – perhaps because people are fascinated by, and liable to believe, propositions backed by brain scan imagery more than other psychological findings.¹

When I use images depicting the brain’s evolution and how it responds to certain kinds of stimulation I notice how quickly my students and clients become curious and motivated to explore their feelings, thoughts and behaviours. Understanding ourselves in terms of the moment-by-moment brain states that we experience seems to offer more immediate possibilities for change than talking about our childhood or our personality profile.

However, as much as I too am fascinated by these emerging insights, I don’t suggest we jump onto the neuroscience bandwagon just yet. Who we are and what we will or can become is a complex and dynamic subject best illuminated and understood using insights from many different disciplines. Before galloping off into a future filled with scans, screens and magical mind control, I invite you to pause and consider the extraordinary connections and synchronicities between contemporary science and the historical, non-technological, intuitive insights of, for example, writers, artists, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and philosophers who were equally absorbed and challenged by how we have come to be this way and where we are going. So, throughout this book I will refer to work which may no longer be in fashion but which has significantly influenced today’s popular theories.

Our Trimotive Brain

Without motivations we would not be alive. Living creatures need to experience the energy and desire to seek food, stay safe and if possible, reproduce. In organisms with nervous systems the brain mediates motivation through three neurological systems which I call the threat brain, the drive brain and the safe brain. In reality they are all part of one interconnected system, which I refer to as the Trimotive Brain, but it helps to understand their various functions if we separate them. Remember the Trimotive Brain is a metaphor to describe our complex motivation system and is not intended to suggest an anatomical fact. It is an adaptation and representation of ideas first outlined by Professor Paul Gilbert in The Compassionate Mind, where he describes three emotion regulation systems that give rise to different feelings, desires and urges related to threat/self-protection; incentive/resource-seeking and soothing/contentment.²

These motivation systems are responsible for directing our feelings, thoughts and actions and if we want to change the way we feel, think and act we need to understand and manage these systems. We will discover, however, that this is easier said than done because most of their functions are carried out without our conscious control or knowledge.

Our motivations are activated by emotions produced by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Emotions are neurochemical reactions in our body that are triggered by experiences we have and occur without our conscious control. (Those experiences, as we shall see, may be happening now, may have occurred in the past or we may be imagining or anticipating them.)

Emotions are not the same as feelings. A feeling is our representation of what is happening in our body. Distinguishing emotion from feeling is important because it is our conscious ‘naming’ of our body responses that determines how we act. Let’s say for, example that someone I do not know walks into the room and I experience a fluttering sensation which is the result of chemical and neural changes in my body. This fluttering sensation is an emotion. Usually I consult my prior experience (which I have stored in my memory) to help me name and understand the sensation. I may decide it is anxiety, attraction, excitement, or nerves and label it as one of these. These are feelings. It is this naming of what is happening in my body that orientates my subsequent actions.

Throughout this book, I emphasise that as we become more conscious of what is happening in our bodies and minds we are more able to exercise choice in our interpretations (thoughts) and responses (actions). In particular, we learn that our memory is not always a reliable source for interpreting ‘here and now’ experience.

The purpose of human emotion then is to motivate action in order to achieve the basic goals of survival, accumulation and affiliation. Threat brain, our oldest motivation system, enables us to recognise and respond to danger. Drive brain motivates us to seek out pleasurable and rewarding experiences. Safe brain motivates us to rest, recover and form relationships with others. Ideally, we need all three motivational systems working together in a balanced way and regulating each other. Unfortunately, many of us get caught in unhelpful habits which are sustained because our motivational systems are ‘dis-integrated’ and out of balance. Usually the cause of dis-integration is an over-active threat brain. Many of our personal and social problems can be attributed to this over-activity: high blood pressure, anxiety, loneliness, addiction and shame are a few of the consequences we can trace back to the innate and learned responses of our threat brain. To overcome these problems we need to recognise when we are in a state of ‘dis-integration’ and we need to learn what to do in order to restore equilibrium.

When our threat brain, drive brain and safe brain motivating systems are working well and regulating each other we experience motivational integrity. Our feelings, thoughts and actions become more coherent, calm and considered. We feel centred and at peace with ourselves. The neurologist Andrew Curran describes this as "a state of being where your entire brain is harmonic with itself’.³ This is when we are most likely to experience and act from our full potential.

Figure 1: The three motivation systems of our Trimotive Brain. Our threat brain system is the earliest; our safe and drive brain systems followed and have continued to evolve.

It is only when a situation demands extreme and intense focus or response that over-activity in parts of the Trimotive Brain may be useful:

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If I am climbing Mount Everest or about to give a crucial presentation to my board of directors I may want my drive brain to be working hard – to give me a good dose of dopamine to keep me alert, enthused and energised.

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If I have just given birth or I’m managing the fallout from a mass organisational redundancy programme, I need my safe brain to do a little overtime. I’ll need some oxytocin to reduce my stress and to support excellent relational skills that can help soothe a troubled team or a new-born child.

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If I am stepping into a busy road and notice a bus a few feet away, then I want my threat brain to kick in quickly. Cortisol and adrenalin will get me moving fast.

These are all moments when I may be ‘off centre’ in a useful way. I can focus my attention and energy on a situation that is specific, transient and legitimately demanding of a particular neurobiological and behavioural response set.

If, however, I find myself ‘off centre’ most of the time I will start to experience difficulties. Workaholism, compassion fatigue (‘caring too much’) and anxiety disorders are recognisable examples of what happens when our drive brain, safe brain and threat brain motivations are stuck in unhelpful and probably deeply rooted habits. This is when our feelings, thoughts and actions become inflexible, repetitive, less effective and sometimes harmful. So let’s look in more detail at how these motivation systems work and how our biological heritage, which has given us this brain, shapes the way we are.

Threat Brain – fight, flee, freeze

The brain’s oldest and primary purpose is to ensure the survival of the species. In order to do this it must sense, process and store information that enables us to detect and respond to threat, to find a mate and to protect our offspring. Of these three motivations the most significant is avoidance of threat and danger. The organism has to remain alive as its first priority. Our sensitivity to threat and our reflex response to react are at the core of our brain function and our being.

Robert Sapolsky is a stress biologist. In his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, he explains that our stress response is designed to respond to life-threatening, physical challenges. In other words, being killed, wounded or starved. Stress for an animal is a shortterm crisis which either passes or doesn’t. In other words, you live through it or you die. The physiological reactions triggered by short-term physical emergencies are highly effective. The combination of cortisol (a steroid hormone), adrenaline and noradrenaline increases blood pressure, blood sugar level, breathing rate and muscle contraction. This gives you a boost of energy and prepares your body to act fast. These chemicals also narrow your attention (to focus on the threat), constrict your memory (to store only threat-related information), impair digestion, lower sex drive and suppress the immune system (to save energy and keep you alert and awake). In summary, the threat response stops any bodily function, feeling, thought or behaviour that might ‘waste’ energy and detract from either fighting or escaping danger. When in threat, your emotional, cognitive and behavioural range is significantly reduced.

It is good to be hyperalert and to respond with speed and strength when we are in life-threatening physical danger. However, our brain can also turn on this physical reaction simply by imagining, worrying or ruminating about potential risks and dangers. The zebra in Sapolsky’s book does not get stress-related illness because, once the danger of being eaten by a lion has passed, he resumes his relatively peaceful grazing life. We, on the other hand, have a tendency to think about and anticipate danger even when it has passed or does not exist. Sapolsky draws on a significant body of evidence to show that stress-related illness arises when we regularly activate and sustain our threat system which was originally designed to respond only to acute and immediate physiological emergencies. The net result, Sapolsky says, is that the stress response can become more damaging that the stressor itself.

Many of my clients say they frequently experience states of mild to moderate threat at work and in their personal lives. These experiences of threat (micro management, poor performance scores, customer complaints, divorce and debt are just a few examples) feature highly and are complex and not easily dealt with by either fighting or running away. For example, in this volatile economic climate many people have at one time or another feared losing their job or being demoted. This experience does not constitute a direct threat to survival yet for some people it produces the same physical responses such as raised blood pressure and the increase of stress hormones. This is because our brain can anticipate problems and imagine the threatening consequences of being out of work. It can also make associations and connections between ‘being out of work’ and personal inadequacy or even shame. Our ability to think in this way is relatively recent; however, this evolved response is not necessarily helpful to us.

Figure 2: The basic threat brain emotions stimulate anger, disgust and fear. As we have evolved, these basic emotions have become more complex in their expression/action.

Job insecurity, when handled through our threat brain, may motivate us to compete aggressively, treat others ruthlessly or become so consumed by anxiety and depression that the quality of our work and relationships suffers. These threat brain reactions are unlikely to secure us the job we fear losing and so our problems compound and our fears are fulfilled. Karen Horney, whose work we will look at in the next chapter, gives us more insight into the complexity of the human threat response. Often we do not realise that our habits – especially those that cause us problems – are sustained by the real or imagined experience of threat.

Luckily, as our brain evolved we developed higher brain centres that gave us more response options. The next part of the brain to develop was the limbic or emotional brain which is concerned with complex behaviours like social interaction and nurturing. This part of the brain first supported the emergence of safe brain and drive brain motivations. Later, with the arrival of our uniquely human, prefrontal cortex these motivations became capable of even more sophisticated expression.

It is something of a ‘chicken and egg’ debate as to whether the development of new higher brain centres such as the limbic brain encouraged social (drive) and nurturing (safe) behaviours or whether these behaviours came first and in doing so stimulated the development of the limbic brain. If, however, we agree, that the more nerve cells you have the more potential you have for new and complex behaviour, then it would be reasonable to argue that the brain cells came first. Furthermore, research suggests that throughout our evolution we have carried ‘spare cells’ which are ready for use. For our brain to grow we need to feed those cells with experience. Mammals engaged in new and different behaviours which seemed to improve their survival and probably stimulated these spare neurons to fire and create new specialisations in the brain. The proposition that behaviour, occurring sometimes by chance but repeated over time, alters structures in our brain supports many theories of learning and growth. Later we will see how it is possible to use this capacity to ‘learn by repetition’ to let go of some of our problem habits when we practise acting ‘as if’ we did not have them.

Safe brain and drive brain motivations, emerging about 150 million years ago, found a lasting place in our evolution because caring for our young and living in larger social groups significantly improved our chances of staying alive and controlling essential resources. About four million years ago, at around the time our ancestors in Africa began to stand upright, we see the brain develop again. This time it is the emergence of the neocortex, bringing with it the capabilities of language, imagination, abstract thinking, problem-solving and introspection. In humans, this cortex has grown in size and complexity. The newest and uniquely human part – the prefrontal cortex – offers us even greater potential to learn, reflect and collaborate and to develop accurate, creative and effective responses when faced with life challenges. However, to access all these advanced human capabilities we first need to regulate our threat reactions because they can interfere with – and sometimes close down altogether – the functioning of our higher centres. It is safe brain that helps us do this.

Safe Brain – rest, repair, soothe, bond, reflect

Our safe brain motivations were successful. In other words, caring helped our offspring survive for longer and increased their chances of reaching maturity and, in turn, reproducing.

In this way, caring was genetically favoured. This is in contrast to, and a developmental leap from, reptilian (threat brain) strategy, which does not prioritise caring for others. Consider, for example that a turtle – a member of the reptile family – lays hundreds of eggs but once hatched the young are left to fend for themselves and only a small percentage survive. In 2016, the BBC Planet Earth documentary highlighted the plight of baby turtles in Barbados. In this programme, we see distressing footage of hatchlings emerging from their solitary shells and becoming quickly disorientated by the city lights. Instinct should propel them towards the luminescence of the moon and the relative safety of the shoreline but on this Barbados beach they mistake neon for moonlight and so turn away from the sea and head towards the busy road. With no parent to guide them, most of the hatchlings meet their end under the wheels of the oncoming vehicles or fall through the grills of the urban drainage system. These turtles are at the mercy of their basic brain which is not equipped to deal with an increasingly complex environment. Without the help of conservation projects they would be extinct.

Caring is not exclusive to mammals, of course. Basic caring capabilities and behaviours can be observed in a wide range of species. The Kildeer bird, for example, displays an unusual type of parental care behaviour – it nests on the ground and when predators try to take its eggs or chicks it lures them away by pretending to have a broken wing. These behaviours are effective but fairly basic – feed offspring and defend the nest. By the time we get to humans, the caring relationship and social mentality has evolved into a much more complex set of emotions and capabilities. Compassion towards others, the experience of love, and care of and mourning for the dead all represent evolutionarily recent