Emotional Pain, Rational Brain

In the middle of your brain, and well protected, sits the limbic system, known as the lizard brain, the oldest part of your evolutionary brain. It’s function is emotional and to protect you with the fight, flight, or freeze response. In addition, it regulates basic drives and emotions which help you survive. These include fear, anger, sex, and hunger.

Included in the limbic system is the amygdala, which plays a role in fear, sexual and appetite behavior. Used to be, if a saber tooth tiger had you in his sights, the amygdala would mobilize you for running away, an emotional response to circumstances without thought of consequences. Overindulging on a diet, drinking too much, smoking when you swear you will give it up, abusing your partner, and running from shadows in dark alleys are emotional responses controlled by the limbic system. The more we succumb to uncontrolled responses, the harder it is to break the habit. They get stronger with use. Add stress to the picture, and it’s darn hard to elicit any change.

This is not useful when there are no tigers or when we need to be cool, calm, systematic, plan ahead, or problem solve. That’s when we need our executive thinking brain to work, which is in the prefrontal cortex, the front of the brain. It’s function is to exert self-control, make sense of things, regulate emotions, and take executive action. It’s cool, calm, collected, and is the source of creativity and imagination. 

Between the lizard brain and the executive decision maker exists a balance. The more we feed one part, the stronger it gets.  If we think of ourselves as emotional, we become more so. But if we think of ourselves as rational, we become that instead.

Emotion helps you, but it can also harm you. When you are in the middle of a heated discussion or an emotional melt-down, remember there’s another part of your brain that is logical and calm, and work to tap into that rational brain. That can also save your life.

That’s Aging Intelligently