The Three Brains: Why You React Before You Think

A talk about the idea that the brain works in three layers: a thinking brain, an emotional mammal brain and a reptile brain tied to the basic functions of the body. It explains why you can sometimes act out of proportion, with behaviour driven by the state of arousal you are in rather than by conscious choice, and why that does not mean something is wrong with you. It closes by inviting you to pay attention to how your body feels, notice how you respond, and understand what happens within before trying to change anything. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

I want to share with you a concept which helped me a lot in my journey. It's about our brain and the fact that it's built out of three different layers. It's base, It's called the reptile brain. Then we got a mammal. And on top of it, We get a human brain. Each one of those have a different function. And sometimes you might wonder why certain behaviors come out of you when there is no need for that. That's because it's not up to our conscious control where do we act from. That is defined by the state of arousal we are in. But to explain you the concept of those three brain, I'll just specify their activities. So our human brain, The prefrontal cortex, It's built for our logical thoughts, For our planning, Language learning, And possibly creative thinking for some of you. It works whenever we feel at ease, And then it's common ground to our existence. Below that we got our mammal brain. It's where our emotional responses are hidden, Where our memories are stored and how our body responds to these factors. And below that we got what we call the reptile brain. It basically defines how our body functions. It's connected closely to the vagus nerves and it affects primarily all of our organs from the bowels, Your heart, Your lungs, Your liver, Your spleen. And all of your hormonal releases. Depending on which state of excitement you are in, Different parts of brain take charge. You might notice that in some situations something happened, You wanted to reply to this cognitively in a certain way, But you felt something different and you acted something completely different, You acted completely out of proportion. And that's primarily because Because your nervous system has learned that it's not safe and your responses were driven from the lower parts of your brain. It's important to notice that primarily threats and in our common existence it's anything from a notification to an email to reading your bank statements to seeing someone looking at you weirdly to over cooking something while doing your favorite dinner. This causes your threat response. And you might notice that when this happens, You do not act as you would want to. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just your brain going into its natural default settings and running from them. There are ways to break this. There are ways to improve your way of feeling, Your way of responding and the way you regulate yourself. Paying attention to what happens within is the key factor. Notice how your body feels. Notice whatever happens in front of you. And how do you respond to that? Did someone lift that eyebrow cause your hands to sweat? Or did someone change the tones of voice cause your heart to beat a little bit faster? Once we start mapping these activities within our own body, We are able to distinguish from which part of ourselves we are running this reaction. Are different. Don't aim to change everything at once, Just try to understand what happens within.