In this podcast episode, I  would like to tell you a story about how the human brain works.

 

I wrote this story based on my ongoing review of the medical literature, my experience as a mom of a child with OCD and my lessons as a life coach helping my clients get what they want in life. 

 

It’s a story that could help you make sense of your behaviors—and the behaviors of a loved one with OCD. 

 

Hopefully this story will help you treat yourself and others with more compassion and less judgment, inspire you to be more curious about how YOUR brain works, and help you understand why you get stuck in your life and how to get unstuck.

 

Think of this story as a work of fiction, and take the ideas that resonate as true. 

 

I could be proven totally wrong. 

 

But I don’t think so.

 

Once upon a time, specifically 5 and 7 million years ago, our non-human ancestors roamed this  planet.

 

Then, about 300,00 years ago, homo sapiens made their first appearance. 

 

Back then, we were both predators and prey. In order to survive as a species, we needed to avoid being a saber-tooth tiger’s dinner. 

 

Keeping us alive is the brain’s number one priority.

 

Millions of years of evolution selected for brains that would first, be hyper alert for danger and second, could mount a quick response to get back to safety. These two qualities conferred a survival advantage.

 

Human brains obsess about the answer to this singular question: In this moment—right here right now— am I safe—or am I in danger?

 

Here’s how our brains answer that question. We are constantly gathering information about our surrounding environment through our senses. This information is fed to the gatekeeper of the brain called the thalamus. 

 

The thalamus sorts through the sensory input, and passes significant input to the appropriate  parts of the brain. Our attention is skewed to identify sights, smells, sounds, tastes and textures that could suggest danger.  

 

Let’s say our ancient hungry Paleo ancestors were wandering around the savanna. They came across a patch of brambles with black berries. The wise elder recognizes the berries as safe and starts eating. The tribe members gather around the brambles and start eating too.

 

Suddenly a tribe member begins running. Then the rest of the tribe runs in the same direction.

 

What happened? The first person to run scanned the horizon as he ate. He sees shadows of a big rock and the brambles. Without being consciously aware of it, the corner of his eye captured a movement of the shadow that was different than the shadow the rock and brambles would cast. 

 

The thalamus found this sight to be significant. It relayed this visual information to the amygdala, which is like the brain’s danger alarm. It functions like a smoke alarm, sounding an alert in the presence of danger. 

 

On this day, the amygdala recognizes that he shadow did not fall within the safe shadow patterns. Once this very pattern turned out to be  saber-toothed tiger hiding behind the rock stalking the tribe.

 

Without a single conscious thought, this man’s amygdala set off the danger alarm. This alarm triggers a cascade of physiologic changes that will allow this person to get back to safety. You might know it as the fight-flight-freeze response, or the stress response or the danger response. 

 

The whole body prepares to get away from the saber-toothed tiger. The heart starts beating faster,. The respiratory rate increases. The body blocks the sensation of pain so he can run even if the saber toothed tiger grabbed a chunk of his thigh. 

 

Most importantly, he feels a strong urge to run. Imagine the person who decided that these berries were just too sweet to pass up, and ignored the urge to run. She became the saber-toothed tiger’s dinner. Evolution selected for people who responded to this urge.

 

This is a very fast neural circuit. The amygdala sees a pattern the COULD represent danger, and it sounds the alarm. Better to have 100 false alarms when things are safe than to have even a single time when the alarm does not sound in the presence of danger.

 

Evolution selected for brains that erred on the side of false alarms. The others became dinner. 

 

Let’s say on a different day Caveman Fred’s eye captures images of his buddy Barney running. This visual information immediately gets transmitted from the thalamus to the conscious thinking part of the brain. Fred knows, “Barney loves to run. He runs all the time just for pleasure. But this looks different. Is Barney running from danger?” Then Fred sees Barney’s worried expression he looks over his should to see who or what is following him. Fred’s thinking brain concludes, “Barney is being chased. He’s in danger. I could be in danger, too!”  Fred’s  thought “I could be in danger”gets relayed to his amygdala, and the amygdala sets off the same danger alarm and physiologic changes of the fight-flight-freeze response that saved the berry-eaters’ lives.

 

So there are two ways to set off the amygdala: the fast circuit that responds to sensory input directly from the thalamus gatekeeper, and the slower response set off by conscious thoughts.

 

The slower response is more accurate; however, faster responses are more likely to help outrun the predator. However, both set off the same physiologic response. The danger response is either on or off.

 

What if a tribe member eats a berry and dies? This would be traumatic for the entire tribe. In order to learn what berries are safe and which are dangerous, and to prevent others from eating lethal berries, our body stores information about trauma. Trauma impacts the function of the amygdala.

 

 

The Paleo Brain has simple rules that guide and predict its behavior:

 

1. Stay safe. The defense response is the key tool. If this were the only driving force no one would leave the safety of the cave. This lead to a second brain rule:
2. Seek pleasure and avoid pain. The thinking brain connects specific action to the a desired emotional state. “If I’m in pain and I eat the bark of a willow tree, I feel less pain.” They act to achieve a desired emotional state. 
3. Respond to urges. We already saw how responding to urges is part of the fight-flight-freeze response that helps us get back to safety when life and death were on the line. 

 

However, we also respond to urges when there is no danger, and here’s why. Our brains consume about 20% of the body’s energy.Thinking and deciding are energetically expensive.

 

The brain saves energy by automating tasks. It creates habits. Once we have a habit, we don’t need to think what to do. We act because we feel the urge to do it. Our new habits become life patterns.

 

The amygdala knows that pattern disruption could mean danger. When a individual does not carry out the habits, the amygdala sounds the danger alarms.

 

This is how the Paleo Brains of our hunter-gatherer ancestors worked. These neural circuits were refined over millions of years.

 

Then about 12,000 years ago, something dramatic happened. We got an addition to the thinking part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. This is like adding a third story to your home. Now we have a New Improved Brain.

 

The New Improved Brain—the prefrontal cortex— allows us to imagine a future, and then make our dreams come true.

 

This brain upgrade set the stage for the upgrading from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to the agrarian lifestyle. 

 

You can imagine the Paleo Brain, honed for the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, being invited to plant seeds. He might think, “Spend energy working the soil and planting seeds I could be eating today. And I don’t even know if this will work like you say! What’s in it for me?”

 

But if your New Improved Brain comes online and imagines a future in which you and your children are protected against starvation, you might take a risk and say yes to farming.

 

The New Improved Brain is an additional layer added to the Paleo Brain. All of the circuits of the New Improved Brain were wired into the Paleo Brain, just like the second story electrical sockets get wired into the fuse box.

 

The Paleo Brain can have a hard time resposnind to messages from the New Improved Brain. The New Improved Brain may offer a thought about the past or the future or something happening elsewhere. The Paleo Brain does not have a context for anything but the here and now, so it responds to thoughts as if they address the present time and current place.

 

Sometimes the actions suggested by the New Improved Brain violate the Paleo Brain Rules.

 

Let’s say the farmer is hungry as he plants the seeds. The Paleo Brain offers the thought, “Eat the seed. You’ll feel better now.”

 

The New Improved Prefrontal Cortex offers a different thought, “Plant the seeds. Resist the urge to eat your seeds today so you have plenty of food this winter.”

 

Planting the seeds breaks all the Paleo Brain Rules. To avoid starvation the Paleo People have safety rules around eating. Eat when you have access to food so you don’t starve. In fact, binge when you have access to food. Eat til it hurts.” 

 

Eating creates a pleasurable sensation, which supports the habit of binge eating. In fact, the gut —sometimes called the second brain— is lined with brain cells. Eating is a powerful way to achieve a desired emotional state—at least for the moment. Binge eating to the point of pain becomes a habit. If the farmer plants rather than eats the seed, he’s breaking the pattern of a habit. The amygdala notices the pattern disruption and sets off the danger alarm.

 

 

What does the farmer do? Eat the seeds, like the hundreds of thousands of years of brain wiring  tells him to do, or listen to message from the New Improved Prefrontal Cortex that was practically born yesterday? The winning thought in the moment guides the farmer’s actions. 

 

It’s easier and more comfortable to eat the seeds and sate the immediate hunger. It feels familiar.

 

But in order for the farmer to plant the seeds, he must be able to proactively manage all the urges and discomfort and temper tantrums the Paleo Brain offers .  

 

 

Despite their differences, the Paleo Brain and The New Improved Brain share a mission: get and stay safe. 

 

Today we’re the apex predator. We are no longer prey for non-human species. Still the Paleo Brain serves us.

 

Yesterday I drove to the bank to get some documents notarized. As I was driving through the parking lot, a parked car backed up, completely oblivious to my car’s presence in its path. He was quickly heading directly toward the driver’s side of my car. Without thinking, I sounded and sat on my horn and swerved sharply to the right. He missed hitting me by millimeters.

 

Thanks to my amygdala, I didn’t THINK. I just ACTED. My heart was still racing after I parked my car and entered the bank. It took about 5 minutes for my heart to slow and my hands to stop trembling. Once the adrenaline and cortisol released under the amygdala’s direction were metabolized, I was back to normal.

 

Sometimes the danger response explains behaviors we don’t understand.

 

When my son was very young, I noticed that I got very, very upset when he spilled.  I never understood why spilling water was such a big deal for me. 

 

One day when my brother visited me, he spilled his water at the dinner table. He was very upset about it. It was the kind of reaction you might see if someone poured water on your laptop. 

 

I remember saying, “Barry, I get very upset about spills, too!.” 

 

Then he pointed out that our mother would go into a rage over spills. For children, having an adult out of control is very frightening. It could be dangerous.

 

Over time my amygdala and my brother’s amygdala learned that spills were part of the pattern of danger. Spills set off the danger alarm. However, it wasn’t that the spills were dangerous; my mother’s rage was. 

 

The amygdala is always learning and changing. Usually it just adds to the patterns that signify danger.  Someone with OCD may suddenly decide that odd numbers are dangerous. The amygdala complies and sets off the alarm when odd number are observed. 

 

The amygdala also has the ability to learn that patterns previously thought dangerous are, in fact, safe. 

 

I went through the exercise of training my amygdala that spills are safe. When my brain notices the racing heart rate  after a spill, I learned to put my hand over my heart and say, “You are safe. I’m the mom now and I know this is just a spill.”

 

We have a core human longing to be safe. This means being able to identify and respond to dangers.

 

If seeing danger is good, is seeing more possible danger in more places—as someone with OCD does — better?

 

Sometimes too much of a good thing is dangerous.

 

One summer I was the eyes for a blind graduate student in experimental physics. His name is Kent Cullers and he was portrayed in the movie Contact with Jodie Foster.

 

One day I asked Kent about how he lost his vision. He said he was born a premie born in the early 50’s . Back then pediatricians knew that giving premies oxygen improved their chances of survival.  

 

If a little oxygen is good, more is better, right? Kent was put in an incubator with 100% oxygen. The doctors, in their well-intended efforts to help, were unaware that high levels of oxygen are toxic to the retina. They unintentionally did harm.

 

Maybe people with OCD would have been the admired superstars in Paleo days. Who wouldn’t want someone who saw hidden dangers in hidden places?

 

But these same qualities became liabilities when fueled by the imagination of the prefrontal cortex. Maybe all of the possible threats of modern life simply overwhelm the system. 

 

In every moment of every day, we get to decide which brain is in the driver’s seat of our lives: the Paleo Brain or the New Improved Brain. Most people just let their brains do what brains will do. They don’t know who is in the drivers seat. They are not aware that they can there are ways  to ascend to the new Improved brain. They don’t even know that his is an option. 

 

Letting brains do what they do is like letting a toddler run with scissors. It comes with risks. For humans, the risk is a threaten happy ending.

 

If I were ecording this podcast in December of 20119, this would be a good place to end. 

 

But our world changed in a way that impacts this conversation. 

 

Early on, the COVID pandemic represented a dangerous physical threat to our lives. Before a vaccine was available , Individuals and families could only wonder what to do to keep themselves safe.

 

The COVID pandemic construes to threaten our sense of safety.

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Of course our Paleo Brains wanted to get and stay in the driver’s seat of our lives.

 

Did you feel a jolt of fear or anxiety as you walked through the grocery store in early 2020 and you observed empty shelves?

 

Did you feel a hit of dopamine the first time you found toilet paper on the shelves?

 

Your Paleo Brain can interpret COVID-imposed social isolation as dangerous.  After all, in paleo times isolation meant certain death.

 

The Paleo Brain can treat financial scarcity or job loss as a modern saber-toothed tiger. 

 

It’s completely understandable that we would respond to the  stresses of the COVID pandemic with the thought, “This is too much to bear.” This is the very definition of trauma. And we know that trauma impacts the amygdala and makes it harder for us to feel safe.  

 

This means it’s more important than ever to know who is in the driver’s seat of your life—your paleo brain r your New Improved Brain. 

 

Would you like to live happily ever after? You are much more likely to get there when your New Improved Brain—not your Paleo Brain—in the driver’s seat of your life.

 

This is what we help our kids imprisoned by OCD do. We help them see that the OCD monster does not need to be in the driver’s seat of their life.

 

We share simple ideas that help people be freed from the tyranny of OCD:

 

Witness and choose your thoughts

Feel you feelings

Resists urges.

 

It means learning to proactively use your mind to manage your brain.This is something that can serve all of us!

 

Thank you for stopping by. What do you think of this story about how the human brain works? Please leave your thoughts.

 

In the next podcast episode I’ll compare and contrast “normal” brains—and I put normal in air quotes and neurodiverse brains like the brains of people with OCD and add.

 

See you next time.