How Understanding Your Brain Can Change Your Life
Inside your skull lives a highly intelligent computer. And seeking to understand how this computer functions can be the difference between a life of pain and suffering, or a life of peace and joy. So it is for that reason that it becomes critical to understand how your brain works, and how we can leverage that understanding to regain control over our minds, and ultimately our behaviors.
What follows is my grossly over-simplified explanation of how your brain works.
However, I do believe this is all you have to understand in order to begin making drastic changes in your life. This includes changing how you think, which impacts how you behave, which transforms how you feel.
So let’s start by splitting your brain in half into a higher and lower brain.
You have a higher brain that sits behind your forehead called your frontal lobe or prefrontal cortex, and you have a lower brain that sits between your ears called the limbic system, which includes your basal ganglia.
For our purposes you can start calling your frontal lobe your “higher brain” and you can start calling your limbic system your “lower brain.” I also refer to the higher brain as your higher self, and sometimes I refer to the lower brain as the primal brain, animal brain, or computer brain.
You can think of your higher brain as the part of the brain that houses your highest sense of “self.” This is where YOU live. The wisest, most authentic, most intuitive part of you. The higher brain houses your morals, your core values, your conscience, and what you really think and believe. It’s the part of the brain that makes you, you. It’s your true self. Your true identity. Your spirit self.
Alternatively, you can think of your lower brain like a computer hard-drive that lives below your higher brain. Your lower brain is the same brain that mammals and even reptiles have. It’s the brain we had before we developed the frontal lobe. The part of the brain that we had before we developed the higher brain that makes us human and gives us a sense of self.
Your lower brain has one job, and that is to make sure you survive.
Your lower brain functions like an animal, driving you toward things that promote survival and away from things that might lead to harm. It remembers everything painful that ever happened to you so that you can remember to avoid similar painful things in the future. And it doesn’t know the difference between physical and emotional pain. It only knows that pain is bad, and therefore should be avoided.
Your lower brain’s job therefore, is to seek pleasure (survive) and avoid pain (possible death).
Now the tricky part lies in recognizing that your lower brain isn’t especially sophisticated. It functions like a computer. And as a computer, it is only programmed by pain, pleasure, and repetition. It is not programmed to understand what’s true or accurate. Which means it will drive you to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and continue doing things that you have always done, whether or not any of those things are actually in your best interest.
Example:
Woman enters abusive relationship. Lower brain interprets this as painful. Woman develops false limiting belief that men cannot be trusted. Woman avoids all men and future relationships.
You must begin to understand that all of your life experiences are programmed into your lower brain for survival purposes. Your lower brain remembers every negative thing that ever happened to you. It remembers anything that ever caused you pain. Because those are the things it wants you to avoid in the future.
On the flip side, the brain also remembers things that drive pleasure. Anything that lights up the pleasure and reward centers of the brain is remembered as something pleasurable, and therefore important to survival (according to the lower brain).
In the animal kingdom all of life is driven by seeking pleasure (food, water, procreation, etc.), and avoiding pain (danger, threats, things that could be harmful or result in death). And we as humans still have this primal brain functioning for us every day of our lives.
But through it all, your higher brain remains untouched.
You see, your higher brain is not where all of this chaotic programming occurs. And this information can change your life.
Let me explain:
You can think of your life experiences like storm clouds. Some are white and fluffy (your positive or pleasurable life experiences), and some are dark and stormy (your negative or traumatic life experiences).
And as your life progresses the clouds of your life experiences are constantly rolling through your being, while your lower brain downloads all of it into its hard drive. Unfortunately, this programming is what can lead to pain, suffering, harmful behaviors, and mental health challenges like eating disorders, anxiety and depression.
Now if your life experiences are the clouds, your higher brain or higher self is the blue sky.
The blue sky of your higher self is ever present and untouched by all the clouds. It is impervious to pain. It can’t be hurt. It can’t be broken.
And lucky for you, this is where your true identity resides. Your highest self. Your brightest spirit. Your inherent wholeness.
So please hear what I am saying. You are not sick. You are not diseased. You are not broken.
Your lower brain remembers all of the clouds that have passed through the blue sky of your being, but your higher brain, your highest self, your true identity… remains untouched. Ever present. Ever whole. Always healthy.
Let’s look at an example of how the lower brain functions in our lives. As you read this example take note of how the lower brain is trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Please also notice how unsophisticated this process is. Notice how it doesn’t actually make a lot of sense…
Example:
You had a stressful childhood. Your mother told you your body was wrong and that you needed to lose weight (pain). Your lower brain tried to protect you by constantly reminding you that you need to lose weight in order to be loved by your mother (seeking pleasure to avoid pain). You start to diet (pain). Your body thinks you’re starving (pain) so it up-regulates appetite so that you eat more food (pleasure). You start binge eating to restore your nutritional status (pleasure). You discover that binge eating makes you feel good and helps you relax (pleasure). Your lower brain starts to remind you that food makes you fat (pain) and that if you’re fat no one will love you (pain). So you go back on another restrictive diet (pleasure). But the diet sends a message to your body that you’re starving again (pain). And your lower brain once again drives you to eat excessively to survive (pleasure). But then it reminds you that fat = PAIN. So you diet again… (pleasure to avoid pain)…
So how do we begin to break these types of patterns? We must start to align more with higher brain! We have to start turning to higher self to gain clarity and the answers we need. Up until now we’ve let lower brain drive the show of our lives. And it’s not doing a stellar job…. So it’s time to let higher brain start parenting all of those parts of your lower brain that are keeping you stuck in self-limiting and destructive behaviors.
Before we start that process, let’s take a minute to learn just a bit more about your lower brain.
Your lower brain is actually where all of your thoughts come from. And I’m talking about the endless stream of nonsensical intrusive thoughts that you hear in your head from dawn to dusk.
Have you ever noticed how this “thinking” never stops? How it literally never shuts up? And how oftentimes your thoughts make no sense or are about things that you don’t actually think, or believe, or would ever do?
The reason for this is because your lower brain is like a computer hard drive. It’s like having a computer in your head that has downloaded a virus and is throwing non-stop pop-up boxes onto the screen.
How annoying! And yet, this is what lives inside our heads.
Now remember, your lower brain isn’t YOU. It’s the computer brain. Therefore, hear what I’m saying…
YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT YOU.
You are not the thinker. Your higher brain or higher self is the silent wisdom underneath that incessant stream of thought. You’re not the one thinking, you’re the one who’s aware of your thinking. You’re the one noticing or listening to your thoughts. Put another way, if you can notice your thoughts then by default there is (1) you, and (2) your thoughts.
So if you’re not the one thinking, and it’s all coming from the lower brain, then that means you can’t really trust or believe much of what you hear in your thoughts.
Just heard a thought that you should restrict food because you ate too much yesterday? That’s your lower brain. Just heard a thought that you’re a pig for eating so much at dinner? That’s your lower brain. And it’s dropping these thoughts into your mind because it’s unsophisticated, and it thinks that thoughts like this will drive you toward pleasure and away from pain.
It’s like having an annoying inner roommate who keeps giving you crappy advice. And who’s kind of mean… Or very mean. Or even downright cruel.
But once you realize that your lower brain is always trying to protect you through seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, it becomes easier to be kind to yourself as you seek to understand your inner critic (lower brain).
Now another thing to know about your lower brain is that it sort of fragments into a lot of different personalities or “parts” over the course of your life. Every time you have a pleasurable or painful life experience, a new “part” is born to either drive you to do that same thing again or drive you away from similar painful experiences in the future.
So just like in the above example, you have parts of your lower brain driving you to do one thing (diet) and other parts driving you to do another thing (binge). Both parts think they know what’s best for you. Your dieting part believes that being thin is pleasurable and being fat is painful, so it constantly drives you to diet. Your binge eating part believes that not eating is painful and eating is pleasurable, so it keeps driving you to binge. Can you see how even thought they’re in conflict with each other, they’re both trying to drive you toward pleasure and away from pain? Can you see how they’re both trying to protect you? The lower brain is well-meaning, but often misguided!
In reality, only your higher brain or higher self really knows what’s best for you, but we often don’t turn to higher self for guidance, because we’ve never been taught how.
So I want you to pause right now and map out the “parts” of your lower brain. Who are the major players? Who are the loudest personalities?
You will start to find that you have wounded parts (like the part who believes you have to be thin to be loved), and protective parts like the part that wants you to binge so that the wounded part doesn’t feel that pain. Wounded parts have experienced pain. Protective parts do anything they can to keep you from feeling that pain again.
You might have a busy part (protector), a procrastinator part (protector), an insecure part (wounded), a part that thinks you’re never good enough (wounded), a part that’s afraid of talking to other people (protector), a part that’s afraid of things that could be dangerous (protector), a part that’s super obsessive (protector), a part that feels unloveable (wounded), a part that drives you to be compulsive (protector), a part that plays the victim (protector), a part that has been traumatized (wounded), and/or a part that’s super mean or super critical (protector).
ALL of your parts have either experienced pain, or are trying to protect you from pain. All of them mean well, but none of them are sophisticated. None of them actually know what’s best for you.
Because that is the job of your higher brain. And very few of us are letting our higher selves be the wise parent or guiding light in the midst of all of this chaos. But learning how to do that will single handedly change your life.
Here’s Where to Start:
Map out your parts. If you’re finding this confusing, start by thinking about all the things you’re doing that you would like to not be doing. Are you struggling with disordered eating behaviors? Are you compulsive? Are you a procrastinator? Do you have social anxiety? Are you obsessive? Do you have a lot of anger? Write out all the things you do or behaviors you engage in that you would like to change. Then ask yourself what part is functioning that’s driving that behavior? If you binge eat, you have a part that wants you to binge for pleasure to avoid pain. If you restrict food, you have a part that believes restricting is pleasurable and eating will drive pain. If you are always angry you have a part that thinks being angry will protect you from feeling pain.
Now spend some time trying to get to know your parts. How are they trying to protect you? How are they seeking pleasure and avoiding pain? If you have a binge eating part, can you see how that part believes binge eating will protect you from emotional pain? If you have a restricting part can you see how that part believes restricting food is pleasurable? If you have an angry part do you see how that part believes yelling is less painful than what it’s going to take to solve the real problem?
Now spend some time aligning with your higher brain or true self. Write out all the things you really want. All the things you desire. All the things you really believe. Examples: I don’t want to binge eat. I don’t believe binge eating is in my best interest. I don’t want to restrict food. Intuitively, I know restricting food doesn’t make sense. The wisest part of me sees that restricting food has caused me a tremendous amount of pain. I don’t want to be angry. My wisest self see’s that anger does not solve problems, but instead drives a lot of suffering.
The more we begin to see the lower brain for what it is and align with our higher selves, the more swiftly we will see changes in our thinking and in our behavior. The good news is that the lower brain is adaptable. And it will listen to your higher brain once your higher brain takes back control.
Your lower brain is sort of like an untrained dog. It will engage in all sorts of mischief and chaos and dysfunction if that’s all it knows. But once it realizes it has a master who has taken back control, it will be obedient. It will learn new things. And it will ultimately live a more peaceful and enjoyable life, under the guidance of a loving and nurturing parent.
So notice your thoughts. Seek to understand your parts. And start aligning with your higher self, who is and always has been in control.
And if you’re interested in learning more about the work that I do and how I can help you better implement these concepts into your life then please click the “free consult” link at the top of the page to schedule a complimentary call.
Wishing you peace and good health.
Stephanie Michelle
Stephanie Michelle Scott is a Registered Dietitian and Psychotherapist based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She utilizes unique holistic approaches to help people end cycles of disordered eating and chronic dieting and develop healthier relationships with food, body and self. You can contact her team with questions or to request more information on counseling services by clicking here.