Is the Emotional Brain Good for Anything except Depression?
During the 1950s, psychiatrists started doing prefrontal lobotomies under the mistaken premise that when someone was severely depressed, one could just eliminate the brain tissue that produced emotion, and the problem would be solved. Unfortunately, doctors learned too late that the emotional brain is absolutely necessary for decision making. To eliminate depression by surgically removing brain tissue meant the person could no longer live a normal life.
During the 1950s, psychiatrists started doing prefrontal lobotomies under the mistaken premise that when someone was severely depressed, one could just eliminate the brain tissue that produced emotion, and the problem would be solved. Unfortunately, doctors learned too late that the emotional brain is absolutely necessary for decision making. To eliminate depression by surgically removing brain tissue meant the person could no longer live a normal life.
People who have severe tissue damage, and can feel no emotion about things can make no judgment between two things. They are physically incapable of limiting their choice of possibilities and so they end up choice-less. For a person incapable of feelings there is no emotional difference between a vanilla and a chocolate cone, or between a tree and their own daughter
A person can retain all his motor skills, have all his faculties of intellect, language and reasoning intact and fully functioning, but without the capacity for emotion they will lose the capacity for decision-making. They can know everything but they will no longer care that they know it. They can understand the meaning of a joke, but it will no longer be "funny." Without emotion, people have no psychological meaning to us. Without emotion, life has no psychological meaning to us. It is all just an endless stream of unconnected facts.
This is also the trouble with anti-depressants. It's not to the same extent as surgical removal of brain tissue, but drugs blunt our connection to life by incapacitating our normal connection to our emotions.
Which brain is it that would help someone say "No" better, the emotional brain or the thinking brain? It's difficult for some people to say "No" to people.
Many people "feel" like saying "No" but find themselves saying "Yes" anyway. This is due to fear, lack of preparation, and lack of practice. In a way these people have become "owned" by the other person, almost like a slave. If a person has trouble doing it buts want to say "No" when people ask them to do things, they need to practice doing so. They should prepare first by thinking up some good excuses, or some diplomatic way of saying "No" to those who have been taking advantage of them. Then they should prepare themselves to be absolutely terrified the first time they actually do say "No." We do not overcome our fears easily. As you practice saying no, it becomes easier.
"Thanks for asking me but I just can't do it this time."
"Sorry, I've been doing a lot lately. I need to take a breather."
"Sorry, I just can't. I've got a lot on my mind right now. Catch me another time."
"Sorry, but I'm just not able to help out right now. You'll have to find someone else. "
Usually people who ask you to do things you don't want to do actually know it. However, they don't care what you want. They just care that you do what they want. When you develop a backbone, they'll move on to wimpier people.
Do I use my Emotional Brain or my Thinking Brain to Cure Insomnia?
Most people don't realize that the trouble with sleeping is that instead of thinking about going to sleep they think about NOT going to sleep. The fear about not going to sleep triggers your fight-or-flight response and the stress chemicals prevent you from relaxing. You must get out of the emotional brain, the subcortex, into the thinking brain, the neocortex. Then from the neocortex you can fool your mind into becoming calm. By rote dumb exercises like counting or nursery rhymes you can bore the neocortex into going to sleep. By using the same exercise over and over you will link the neural pattern of the exercise with the neural pattern of going to sleep.
All of us struggle at times with insomnia. Human nature is such that we don't have to have big problems, or indeed any problems at all to suffer with insomnia. Sometimes a stray line of maverick thinking can spark up, magnify, and entrench itself before we realize it, and cause us to toss and turn. Remember that the brain works by learned association (think "salt" and the thought "pepper" pops up, think "up" and the thought "down" activates). So the mind always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought. Whenever you think a stressful or anxious thought, that is really instructions to your brain to put you in touch, via learned association, with all the other stressful and anxious thoughts stored in your memory bank.
Anxious thoughts is the mother of insomnia. The best way out of insomnia is the same method you got in it. Start thinking some non-emotional thought like counting 1-2-3-4, or saying some nonsense rhyme over and over like row, row, row your boat. This will start the neurons arcing in the neocortex and power down the subcortex that is producing all the unwanted emotion.
The brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought. Don't allow anxious thoughts to become dominant. The way you make the non-emotional thought dominant is by thinking it over and over repetitively until the brain turns in that direction away from the stressful thought.
You may not be used to concentrating on your own thought, rather than getting sucked into paying attention to your anxious thought,but you get better with practice. It is not easy to give up thinking stressful thoughts because we are scripted to pay attention to our subcortex as it is the seat of our psychological defense mechanism. You have to keep turning away from the stressful thought to your chosen non-emotional thought over and over. It's difficult but doable.
A person can retain all his motor skills, have all his faculties of intellect, language and reasoning intact and fully functioning, but without the capacity for emotion they will lose the capacity for decision-making. They can know everything but they will no longer care that they know it. They can understand the meaning of a joke, but it will no longer be "funny." Without emotion, people have no psychological meaning to us. Without emotion, life has no psychological meaning to us. It is all just an endless stream of unconnected facts.
This is also the trouble with anti-depressants. It's not to the same extent as surgical removal of brain tissue, but drugs blunt our connection to life by incapacitating our normal connection to our emotions.
Which brain is it that would help someone say "No" better, the emotional brain or the thinking brain? It's difficult for some people to say "No" to people.
Many people "feel" like saying "No" but find themselves saying "Yes" anyway. This is due to fear, lack of preparation, and lack of practice. In a way these people have become "owned" by the other person, almost like a slave. If a person has trouble doing it buts want to say "No" when people ask them to do things, they need to practice doing so. They should prepare first by thinking up some good excuses, or some diplomatic way of saying "No" to those who have been taking advantage of them. Then they should prepare themselves to be absolutely terrified the first time they actually do say "No." We do not overcome our fears easily. As you practice saying no, it becomes easier.
"Thanks for asking me but I just can't do it this time."
"Sorry, I've been doing a lot lately. I need to take a breather."
"Sorry, I just can't. I've got a lot on my mind right now. Catch me another time."
"Sorry, but I'm just not able to help out right now. You'll have to find someone else. "
Usually people who ask you to do things you don't want to do actually know it. However, they don't care what you want. They just care that you do what they want. When you develop a backbone, they'll move on to wimpier people.
Do I use my Emotional Brain or my Thinking Brain to Cure Insomnia?
Most people don't realize that the trouble with sleeping is that instead of thinking about going to sleep they think about NOT going to sleep. The fear about not going to sleep triggers your fight-or-flight response and the stress chemicals prevent you from relaxing. You must get out of the emotional brain, the subcortex, into the thinking brain, the neocortex. Then from the neocortex you can fool your mind into becoming calm. By rote dumb exercises like counting or nursery rhymes you can bore the neocortex into going to sleep. By using the same exercise over and over you will link the neural pattern of the exercise with the neural pattern of going to sleep.
All of us struggle at times with insomnia. Human nature is such that we don't have to have big problems, or indeed any problems at all to suffer with insomnia. Sometimes a stray line of maverick thinking can spark up, magnify, and entrench itself before we realize it, and cause us to toss and turn. Remember that the brain works by learned association (think "salt" and the thought "pepper" pops up, think "up" and the thought "down" activates). So the mind always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought. Whenever you think a stressful or anxious thought, that is really instructions to your brain to put you in touch, via learned association, with all the other stressful and anxious thoughts stored in your memory bank.
Anxious thoughts is the mother of insomnia. The best way out of insomnia is the same method you got in it. Start thinking some non-emotional thought like counting 1-2-3-4, or saying some nonsense rhyme over and over like row, row, row your boat. This will start the neurons arcing in the neocortex and power down the subcortex that is producing all the unwanted emotion.
The brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought. Don't allow anxious thoughts to become dominant. The way you make the non-emotional thought dominant is by thinking it over and over repetitively until the brain turns in that direction away from the stressful thought.
You may not be used to concentrating on your own thought, rather than getting sucked into paying attention to your anxious thought,but you get better with practice. It is not easy to give up thinking stressful thoughts because we are scripted to pay attention to our subcortex as it is the seat of our psychological defense mechanism. You have to keep turning away from the stressful thought to your chosen non-emotional thought over and over. It's difficult but doable.
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By A. B. Curtiss
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