An Approach to the New Year – One Resolution at a Time

From time immemorial, people have looked to the New Year as the benchmark of a new beginning and hence a time for resolutions. Unfortunately, statistics confirm what we all know intuitively—most resolutions get broken. Why is that?

Five years ago, when I began writing these weekly messages—which later turned into my book Brain Drain—I sought to figure out why we lose motivation so easily. We all get inspired—whether by a motivational speaker, a member of the clergy, a book, or a movie—only to fall back into our daily routine, where we quickly lose that inspiration and remember that, after all, we’re just ordinary mortals.

Our primitive nature, our automatic brain (AB), wants to protect us from danger. The familiar is the comfort point and anything unfamiliar (unknown) is inherently dangerous, at least to our primitive brain. Without strong motivation it is easy to slip back into the old, counterproductive habits. The AB knows just two ways to “protect” us: fight or flight. So it fights or flees the unfamiliar (in this case, the new behavior we’ve been motivated to adopt) at the slightest sign of change.

When the New Year rolls around, we decide we’re going to make those changes we’ve put off since the failed resolutions of last year. The resolution list may be long. The problem is, if our AB fights or flees every little unfamiliar change, a long list of resolutions to adopt new and unfamiliar behavior is going to put it in overdrive. It’s too bad that we allow ourselves to be played like this, but if we are not aware of the machinations of this primitive part of our nature, we are condemned to have it control us.

One trick I find useful to remove the AB from the resolution equation is to change the focus from plural to singular. For the New Year 2012, I suggest you aim to make a New Year resolution. That’s right, not multiple resolutions, just one. Your resolution list may include quitting smoking AND losing weight AND not biting your nails AND being nicer to people AND watching less television AND exercising more, etc… But if all of these behaviors are unfamiliar territory for you, your AB will fight or flee all of them, and it is unlikely you will be successful at any. But be careful with this. I have seen people say, “This year my resolution is to stop eating sugar.” Well, since sugar is in many foods, you are actually resolving to cut out everything from orange juice to cheesecake. Your AB will fight or flee all of the dietary changes, a practical impossibility.

One resolution means one resolution. Focus on one change at a time. For example, if losing weight is your goal, resolve to eliminate one specific food. Move on to eliminating another only after the first change has become a habit. If quitting smoking is your goal, don’t try to lose weight at the same time. If you want to exercise more, don’t try to diet at the same time.

Habits are the fuel of the AB because they represent behaviors that are familiar and that define us. As humans, we possess the universal danger trigger of the unknown. As we approach the unknown, our AB will cause us to fight or flee it and this is precisely what happens when we try to break habits, as self-destructive as they may be. To begin taking this primitive, reactive brain out of the equation, take one step at a time. You’re far more likely to achieve a successful resolution, one that will be the start of a New Year that is bright with possibility, excitement, and renewed hope.

Happy New Year to all!

A Unified Theory of the Brain - Explaining the incomprehensible

Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach accused of child abuse, has helped me think of my automatic brain theory on a larger scale. I will tell you how in a moment.

Albert Einstein sought for much of his life to develop a Unified Field Theory—a theory of everything. In some respects, my work to define and understand what I call the automatic brain (AB) is similar. It’s my attempt to develop a unified theory of why we do the things we do and think the things we think, especially when they are self-sabotaging or hurtful to others.

I do not claim to be an evolutionary psychologist, nor a neurobiologist, nor to be recognized as an expert on the brain. In seeking to learn about the AB, I did not rely on the results of laboratory or clinical experiments. I looked no further than myself. And what I came up with was a theory that seems to apply to many life situations—and not only for me.

For those who are new to my work, the AB can be summed up as the primitive part of our brain. It runs 24/7 in its effort to detect danger, threat, or vulnerability, and then causes us to fight or flee by conjuring up thoughts or behavior. The AB reacts essentially the same way it did for our prehistoric ancestors, even though now the dangers are different.

If my theory is correct, it must explain a wide range of human behaviors, including those at the extremes, such as psychiatric illness. In other words, a very strong danger trigger must be behind someone’s psychological illness. And if my theory of the AB explains the basis of psychiatric illness, then dealing with the general angst of everyday life we all feel should be simple!

Danger triggers mostly appear before the teen years. Once they take root, they become the instigation for every subsequent fight-or-flight response later in life. That doesn’t mean that traumatic adult experiences have no effect, but often the brain interprets the new trauma as a validation of the childhood danger. The more serious the psychiatric illness, the more severe must have been the childhood trigger.

When a child witnesses trauma or abuse, it becomes part of his or her AB database for life. As an adult, the AB will interpret every hint of stability and happiness—and every tendency to let its guard down—as potential vulnerability. And the AB will fight or flee the “vulnerability” of stability. Some fight with aggression and rage; some flee and become depressed or escape into a fantasy world of schizophrenia; others do both (bipolar disorder).

Over the past few weeks, we have learned about extreme deviant behavior in the case of Jerry Sandusky. I usually recommend not watching the news because over time the steady drum beat of bad news numbs us and makes us less aware. The Sandusky case is an exception, because I think we can learn something from it. It has helped me better understand the workings of the AB.

Applying my AB theory, the explanation for his extreme behavior (alleged, it must be added) lies in his childhood. From 1952 through 1985, Sandusky’s mother and father ran the Brownson House, a recreation center and the center of activity for the blue-collar town of 14,000 about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh where Jerry grew up. The family lived in an old red brick building. What I find interesting is that the same language now being used to describe Jerry was used to describe his father: “an icon”, “could have run for mayor of the town”, “an outstanding citizen”, “standup guy”, “generous”, “heart of gold” “in one of the most respected families in town”.

Our AB fights and flees what it interprets as dangerous, threatening, or making us vulnerable. I believe a few things happened in the developing AB of Jerry Sandusky. It stored memories of his father’s participation with young boys and how that brought his father respect, esteem, and even adoration. That was the father’s safe place, and anything that didn’t fit in would cause his father to fight or flee.

Surrounded by many other boys, it is also likely that Jerry needed to compete for his father’s love. I suspect Jerry did not feel his father’s love, and the lack of love is a very strong danger trigger. (As I describe in Brain Drain, the AB has a love receptor, and it detects lack of love as danger.) Fighting and fleeing the AB’s danger trigger of lack of love from his father combined with a need to be surrounded by young children, Jerry’s AB had him flee to the safety of relationships with many boys, thus feeding the AB’s love receptor and its need for familiarity.

But how does this explain the allegations of abuse? When anyone forces another to perform an act against his or her will, it means that the aggressor has been triggered somehow by the victim and is responding with a fight reaction. How in the world could a 10-year-old boy represent danger or vulnerability to Jerry Sandusky, a middle-aged man?

As I’ve said, the more egregious the behavior, the more severe the danger trigger must have been. It has to have come from his childhood as his AB developed. The gestalt of Jerry Sandusky’s home as a child must have been heavily centered on the recreation center. I suspect anything that caused even the slightest threat to the elder Sandusky’s stature in the community would produce dire consequences. My guess is that those dire consequences could have included abuse of Jerry, his mother, and/or the boys.

Jerry’s adult AB steered him into the familiar pattern of seeking love and affection (and stature and power) from an affiliation with young boys. I suspect that any threat of the boys’ pulling away from him, not accepting his hugs and physical closeness, and losing their love and affection, would result in violent (fight) reactions. Hence the aggressive behavior of sexual abuse.

Jerry Sandusky’s autobiography does not support my speculation nor does his recent NY Times interview, but they also make no mention of his abuse of children either.

Does this have anything to do with our own health and wellness? As I mentioned, if my AB theory can explain the egregious, it must explain the regular, mundane reactions that most of us experience on an everyday basis. It explains such things as why we can’t stick to healthy lifestyles (our unhealthy lifestyles are familiar to us and we fight or flee the unfamiliar healthy ones), why we get stressed and argue with people from the cashier to our spouse (we fight or flee the primitive danger of being one-upped by someone else). And of course, much of what we fight and flee as adults is what we learned was dangerous as a child. Not only is our AB primitive, but for the most part it is a child’s brain in an adult body.

Just because we may not have experienced direct abuse, the developing child’s automatic brain is subject to all sorts of erroneous associations, what the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh calls errors of subjectivity. The AB and all its baggage does not have to lead us to hurtful or illegal activity, but it can certainly stand in the way of ultimate progress or success. All of that will affect our health and happiness.

I suggest next time you do something that you later regret, look closely to see if you were fighting or fleeing some erroneous danger, threat, or vulnerability. See if my unified brain theory resonates with you and whether or not an understanding of it can help you to a more fulfilled life.

What I Wish Steve Jobs Had Realized

As I learn more about the death of Steve Jobs from a form of pancreatic cancer and the attempts he made to treat it, I think about how we all go about making decisions.  Most of us, including this author, tend to fight or flee what we perceive as dangerous, threatening, or making us more vulnerable—however unfounded that perception might be. We create definitions of ourselves, place ourselves in limiting boxes of thoughts and beliefs, and then react by fighting or fleeing anything that questions those belief systems.  One of my favorite quotations, by an anonymous author, is “Follow those who seek the truth; avoid those who have found it.”

As much as I love that quote, the reality is that people who fight or flee their own insecurities by claiming they know the truth may in fact have some information that could be valuable to us. Let’s look at this more closely in the case of Steve Jobs, as I feel all of us can learn from it, especially when it comes to medical care—both preventive and therapeutic.

In Jobs’s authorized biography, we learn about his reactions to learning he had pancreatic cancer. Jobs had spent time studying Buddhism in India, and he felt it served him in his work. “The main thing I’ve learned,” he said, “is intuition—that the people in India are not just pure rational thinkers, that the great spiritual ones also have an intuition.” In a report recently broadcast on “60 Minutes”, CBS News says that Jobs refused surgery after his diagnosis and for nine months after, favoring instead dietary treatments and other alternative methods. Interviewed on the 60 Minutes program, his biographer, Walter Isaacson, said that when he asked Jobs why he had resisted it, Jobs said “I didn’t want my body to be opened…I didn’t want to be violated in that way.” His early resistance to surgery was apparently incomprehensible to his wife and close friends, who continually urged him to do it.

But there seemed to be more to his resistance than just fear of surgery. “I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something,” Isaacson told CBS, “if you don’t want something to exist, you can have magical thinking. And it had worked for him in the past.”

Another element of Jobs’s decision-making process was, according to Isaacson, his trust of his own instinct. But what of this instinct? To me, it appears that Jobs feared more putting his life in the hands of doctors who implicitly claim to “have found the truth” than he feared pancreatic cancer itself. Maybe he also feared the possibility that his intuition may not have been as reliable as he liked to think. Through Buddhism, Jobs was a seeker of truth. When, despite his belief in the intangible power of the human mind, he got pancreatic cancer, I can only imagine he dug his heels in deeper. He probably fought and fled the rational, practical, empirical world of science and medicine—and the self-proclaimed holders of truth.

As intelligent as Jobs believed himself to be, at that time when it came to making his decision, he did what most of us do when making decisions—he relied on his ever-present primitive automatic brain. Instead of stepping back and reflecting, he unknowingly fled the “danger” of considering what his doctors recommended.

Being a doctor who would not have judged Jobs’s beliefs (and might share many of them myself), I still think Jobs could have received better counsel. To be sure, his doctors either to his face or behind his back, considered him a lunatic and rejected alternative approaches, relying on” tried and true” conventional medicine. If someone had only sat down with Jobs and explained it like this, I believe he would have elected early surgery, which could very well have cured his early-stage, slow-growing form of pancreatic cancer:

“Steve,” a wise counselor might have said, “you have a growth in your body. It got there somehow. Neither you nor I know how it got there. You may speculate that it was from toxins in your system or the environment, or the result of your stress and hard work. But the bottom line is that we don’t know what caused this abnormal growth, and whatever has caused this has allowed cells to grow to a point where they will not stop unless something drastic is done.

“I will be with you from start to finish,” the wise counselor would have continued. “I will help you develop visualizations and meditations to make the process non-threatening. Once you remove what does not belong in your body, let’s implement some of your beliefs. Listening to these doctors now does not invalidate your beliefs. If the other doctors recommend further treatment down the road, like chemotherapy, we will address that later and, with my help, you will determine if it is right for you.

“I know that other doctors are skeptical of your beliefs, but I’m not. Try not to let your fear of giving into the ‘finders of truth’ cloud your judgment of what is the best treatment for you. Steve, if your mother told you to wear a raincoat everyday because it might rain someday, what would happen if you never wore one simply to avoid being told what to do? Right—you would eventually get soaked. You decide when you are going to wear that raincoat, Steve.

Jobs’s wise counselor might have concluded: “Steve, don’t decide against surgery just because you know that the surgeons don’t believe in what you do and may even be hostile to it. Make the decision that is right for you. Let them remove from your body what does not belong and what has become too big for your body to remove on its own. Make that mindful decision and then move on from there with further mindful approaches. Don’t let your fear guide you, because it will NEVER lead you to what is right for you. “

My words would be the same to any patient.

We all have our own beliefs. Those who have “found the truth” often dismiss the seekers as magical thinkers. But seekers must not use their hostility toward the “finders” as an excuse to fight and flee any of their suggestions. As we seek our personal truth, it likely will intersect with aspects of others’ truths, even those of the “know-it-alls”. Don’t discount ideas simply because they seem at odds with your cherished belief system.

If you are skeptical of the medical establishment, doctors, or conventional medicine, join the club. There is much ammunition for your doubts. However, the same can be said about alternative therapies. The truth is, there are incredible therapies available to you within both, and the wise approach is to consider all ideas, and determine the best approach, or combination of approaches, for you.

I wish Steve Jobs had realized that. 

Why you should think twice when your doctor is so certain what you should do.

One Size Does Not Fit All

There’s quite a rift in the medical profession between those who wear blinders and those who don’t. OK, maybe those are fighting words and certainly one could say that about many other professions.                  

What prompts me to make this observation of my profession? I have never accepted the status quo as necessarily the best or right thing for my patients, my family, or myself.  In medicine, the benchmark for the “right” or proper care is what falls within generally accepted standards of medical care in the community. 

Why should one question these standards? After all, doesn’t the medical community look out for the best interests of patients by making sure the care they get has passed the test of time or passed the scientific tests in the laboratory?

Well, it’s not quite that simple. I like to get to the root of all human interaction—the individual. And all of us possess a primitive, automatic brain (AB), which mostly unknowingly runs most of our behavior. This brain looks to protect us as individuals, and later as we become groups of individuals and still later as we become whole communities. The AB always looks for ways to make us fight or flee danger, so we seek the comfort of a group, a community. This is an entirely human trait, and doctors are no different. 

We doctors like to think of ourselves as scientists. Scientists like to propose theories and then prove them. Then, as practitioners, we feel comforted that we’re practicing “evidence-based medicine” supported by the data we’ve developed. 

But how comfortable should we really be? The data, after all, came from studies conducted by individuals—every one of whom has an AB. Take the hypothetical Dr. Jones, a world-renowned researcher from Harvard. Because of Jones’s and Harvard’s reputations, having their names attached to a study would bestow enormous credibility. For that reason, the hypothetical drug manufacturer MegaPharm wants Dr. Jones to study its new hypothetical drug Zpill. 

Dr. Jones is reluctant to take direct payment from MegaPharm, so, instead, the pharmaceutical giant makes grants to Harvard for their research labs. Harvard sees that Dr. Jones can bring money into the university, thus pretty much guaranteeing him a job and increasing income as long as he wants to stay.

With a family to support and a mortgage to pay, Dr. Jones is going to think twice before reaching negative conclusions in his MegaPharm-financed research facilities. The good doctor’s AB, probably unconsciously, will work hard to get him to fight or flee the potential danger to his family’s well-being represented by a negative finding for Zpill. 

The AB rears its ugly head elsewhere in medical research as well. Researchers must publish to maintain their jobs, their stature in a university, and their very livelihoods. If they have a choice between publishing generally accepted ideas and ideas that fly in the face of the scientific community, which way will their AB steer them? Some will march to a different drummer, but many will take the safe route—the route that is surer to be published. So the body of accepted medical thought becomes based, in part, on researchers’ aversion to risk. 

Do I question science altogether? Absolutely not. I am a big fan. What I question are the individuals behind the science, and their unconscious AB-driven motives. Sounds a bit harsh, but we all have this pesky brain.

As I say, though, some doctors are willing to follow the path their consciences dictate, albeit at great risk. In 1628, William Harvey wrote that blood was pumped from the heart and moved around the body through arteries. He was ridiculed, but is now regarded as a pioneer.

In the Nineteenth Century, Ignaz Semmelweis suggested that surgeons were killing large numbers of new mothers by assisting with births after working on other patients’ festering wounds, without even washing their hands. But the concept was too radical for the medical community to accept, so he was ignored. His suggestion to disinfect hands by simple hand washing prior to obstetrical or surgical procedures was ridiculed. Semmelweis ended up in a mental hospital, and his ideas, later vindicated by Louis Pasteur, caught on only after his death.

The skeptics will say that such ridicule of new thinking could not happen today. But consider that though a cure for cancer may actually be right before our eyes, we’re blinded by a collective AB that shuns some innovative researchers and thinkers. And while I predict that autologous (from our own body) adult stem cell therapies will replace most orthopedic joint replacements within the next five years, that theory would not get much traction in the present-day medical community. 

So what do you do if your doctor suggests something that doesn’t sit quite right with you? Go with your gut. It is likely that the doctor is recommending what is the standard of care in the community. It might be right for some, but maybe not for you. At the very least, have a discussion with your doctor.  If he or she isn’t willing to do that, then find a doctor who is. A lot of medicine is worthwhile and effective. But the one-size-fits-all approach might not be what’s right for you.

As Summer Ends

(I published this article for the September Issue of Families Online Magazine)

For me, the beginning of ninth grade was uncomfortable. I remember feeling out of sorts. It wasn’t as though I was going to a new school, as the school I attended was for grades seven to twelve and I entered the year before as an eighth grader.  No, the discomfort came from a different place.

As school started, I kept drifting back to memories of the beginning of the summer. And the beginning really marked the end of the school year prior with the completion of the final testing period. That was such a great feeling. Even more great for me was going over my friend’s house, sleeping over, and fishing at Miller’s Pond—a small private pond that we got to by hiking a short distance through a thick wooded area. 

That memory was a distant one as I clutched my books and walked into school on a cool September morning, so different from the warmth of the June mornings and afternoons when we were fishing at Miller’s pond. I could not get that out of my head. In fact, it followed me for the first month or two of ninth grade.  The result: I did very poorly, academically, in the first few weeks and I broke my wrist playing freshman football. In fact, the latter was most disturbing. Although, I was on the smaller side, I was always a fast runner and the freshman coach was giving me a chance to start as a running back. This was a recurrent theme for me. I recall while a counselor at summer camp, the counselors and some of the older campers would get together after lunch during rest hour and play softball. I loved this time. As the summer wound down, we scheduled the final game. I could not bring myself to playing because I did not want it to end. Something was going on in me, and now I have a better idea of what it was.

Self-sabotage comes in many shapes and sizes. However, its origin is always from the same place. Our built in protector—our primitive, automatic brain (AB)—instinctively, automatically and subconsciously, attempts to insulate us from danger, threat, or vulnerability. The only data to which it refers in order to figure out what will be dangerous exists in its memory banks, i.e. the past. Even if the memory is not a good one, it is still more familiar than the unknown of the future. Therefore, it responds by triggering us to fight or flee the future as it prompts us to latch onto the memories of the past.  After all, will I ever have as much fun as I did back then? Will I ever be able to play as well? Or, if one has bad memories, “will it be discovered that my childhood was dysfunctional?”

The majority of our fear and anxiety, hence stress, arises from the unknown of the future. Therefore, our AB either latches onto the past with its known outcomes, or tries to manipulate the future in an effort to make it known. That manipulation comes in the form of thoughts. What my AB did and still tries to get me to do is hold onto the past or conjure up what the future might be—good or bad—in order to protect me. This protection, when followed, predicatively leads to self-sabotage. That is, as we try to move forward (become healthy, fit, more positive, more successful) our AB causes us to fight or flee back into the familiarity of the past when we were less or more so.  Furthermore, our AB conjures up thoughts of what the future might look like, even though thoughts are merely speculation, or even fantasy.

So, as your summer winds down, take the advice from one of my all time favorite songs, The Voice by The Moody Blues, “…With your arms around the future, And your back up against the past…” Look forward to the mystery, excitement, and yes, vulnerability of the upcoming fall and winter. Keep a daily goal journal and each day enter one new meaningful goal. As you string these together, you will see that your future is even better than the past for which you once yearned.

Breaking Habits—Easier than You Thought

One of life’s most frustrating features is habits. Now I’m not talking about the good habits. Those are very easily broken. It’s the bad ones. Why is it that we have so much trouble breaking bad habits? Things that we know in our core are bad for us, yet we keep doing them, day in and day out.


My Habits

You see, when I first started writing my patients weekly emails some four years ago, this question of habits was my greatest challenge. After all, I saw this as the biggest obstacle in achieving total health—in mind, body, and soul. I had to look first into myself to see what it was that kept me returning to habitual patterns of thought and behavior. For me, it was not the obvious things as, for example food, or cigarettes, or procrastination. It was more a habit of looking into the past and drifting into negative scenarios about the future.

The Pesky Primitive, Automatic Brain…Again

So, I ask, why does my brain work this way and why does yours work to keep you stuck in a place from where you would like to leave? I knew that my thoughts were not serving me well and creating unnecessary worry.

My writing brought me back to meditation, a practice that I started while in residency, revisited on and off over the years, but now do regularly. During meditation, I was guided to an understanding of the difference between our brain and mind. The former is the portion of gray matter dedicated to preserve our ability to procreate. In order to do that it must be on alert 24/7 for any evidence of danger, threat, or vulnerability. Even the mere possibility, as unlikely or improbable as it may be, that signals danger will be enough to flip the switch. Once on, this brain will cause you to fight or flee the possible danger. It is the same brain, little changed, as possessed by our prehistoric ancestors. It is primitive, binary (only on or off), and highly powerful.

The problem is that it does not think or reason—just reacts. How does this brain know danger? It compiles data throughout our lives and stores it so that it can reference experience (both internal and external) as being threatening. There is no greater time of data storage than from birth to adolescence and during this period our brain stores a lot of information of what we will view as familiar and comfortable, thus safe, as adults.

The Great Unknown

Generally, habits are those things with which we become comfortable. They are familiar to us. Even if they are not good for us, they are familiar and comfortable. We know what to expect. A cigarette, for instance, is a reliable companion for the smoker—always there in times of need, always there when a deep breath is needed.

But the habit, as self-sabotaging as it may be, is well known. One of the greatest triggers of our primitive brain (and I believe this is a genetic imprint that our brain possesses at birth) is the unknown. No matter how bad is your present situation or habit, the uncharted waters of the unknown, to the primitive brain, is much more dangerous. As we have seen above, danger causes us to fight or flee. Breaking bad habits signal danger of moving into unknown, unfamiliar territory. Therefore, no matter how hard you try your primitive brain automatically and instantaneously brings you back to “safety”.

What to Do?

Understand that if you are struggling with habits that you just can’t seem to break, whether they be patterns of behavior or thoughts, it always means that breaking the habit signals danger to your brain. The truth is, though, that if you began living opposite of what you are doing now, your brain will view the bad habit as dangerous.

Here’s a simple exercise that you can do every day and it only takes a few seconds. When you awaken from sleep, do not get right out of bed. Lay in bed for a minute or two with your eyes closed. Only focus on one behavior or thought pattern that you would like to change. Begin visualizing yourself living as though you do not have this habit. At first, you will develop slight anxiety/nervousness. This is because your automatic brain reacts to thoughts just as actual physical danger with the same fight or flight discharge.

As you make it your habit to visualize yourself not living with an undesirable habit, and you do this every day, your automatic brain will begin helping you fight or flee the bad habit, as it becomes more unfamiliar, thus dangerous.
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As we go through life, much of what we think and do seems out of our control. When we begin to realize that we actually possess the ability to control the automatic inclinations of our primitive brain, it opens up an entire new world, one that is innately familiar, very safe and secure, and nourishing to our mind, body, and soul.

How to be More Than a Caveman

Judging by some of our behavior, men often times seem not to have changed much from our prehistoric ancestors. Certainly, women wronged by members of my gender will be quick to agree. What is it that drives the competitive, aggressive nature of many men? Are woman any different?

Men & Women’s Brains

In Dec. 2009, at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, researchers presented MRI findings revealing that when faced with danger, men's and women's brains respond differently.

When viewing negative images, men showed activity that was more pronounced in the area of the brain involved with involuntary functions, including sweating, heart rate, and digestion.

In other words, activation of this area evokes what most people consider a typical “fight or flight response," telling men to either face up to or run from danger.
Women, on the other hand, showed activity that is more pronounced in the left thalamus, which controls the pain and pleasure areas of the brain, meaning that they may react on a more emotional level, the research suggests.

But Are We Really So Different?

The way I look at the "fight or flight" response is as wide spectrum of behaviors (including emotional) and thoughts. Men and women possess what I have termed the Automatic Brain (AB). Each gender responds to perceived danger, threat, or vulnerability in only two ways - fight or flight. The Thalamus (where the above study shows women respond) is actually a part of the same autonomic nervous system (limbic system) that causes the very typical physiological reactions that happen automatically when we feel endangered. Therefore, although men and women may seemingly behave differently in response to danger, the reactions are still only efforts to fight or flee perceived danger.

Women's automatic brains help them fight or flee with behaviors that are more emotional, whereas men might do so more physically, which on the surface appears more aggressive and competitive.

In my opinion, women and men, both, should not take direction from this brain.

The Key to Happiness - Understanding Our Behavior

Although it is important to understand someone else, in this case women, it is much more important to understand ourselves. Lao Tzu, in the Tao de Ching, wrote, “Understanding others is wisdom; understanding yourself is enlightenment.” So, men, let’s start understanding ourselves!

Indeed, much of our behaviors are driven by a primitive, mechanistic brain (the AB), which is not much different from that of our cave dwelling ancestors. Therefore, yes, we are cavemen most of the time. And if unaware of this primitive influence, anything—person, place, or thing—that makes us feel endangered, threatened, or vulnerable will be enough to flip the switch on and prepare us to fight or flee. The danger may be as simple as someone taller than you at a party; or the threat may be as simple as someone cutting ahead of you in the checkout line; or the vulnerability may be not getting to a sporting event on time. From simple to complex, our brain will always default to the worst-case scenario in order to “protect” us. This is what gets us in trouble.

What Happens When the Switch is Flipped On

So your girlfriend takes you to task for leaving your underwear and socks on the bedroom floor. Your primitive AB automatically, instantaneously defaults to the worst-case scenario of this woman trying to rein you in and control you and thus flips your switch on and you fight or flee. The fight may be yelling or screaming, or worse. The flight might be either walking out on her. What if your wife tells you that she needs money for some home improvement or your daughter’s piano lessons as you walk in the door. At worst, your AB picks up the danger of being disrespected by another person (doesn’t matter who it is—wife, father, stranger). Here the brain detects that she takes for granted how hard he works, a form of disrespect or being one-upped. Fight or flight ensues, and the result isn’t good.

Someone cuts you off on the road. Doctor told you that you had high blood pressure. The waitress brings you cold food. Your neighbor tells you that he’s building a pool, planning a two-week family trip to Bermuda, and asks you if he should get the 7-series BMW or the S-series Mercedes. Your AB senses all these to be in some way dangers or threats and your switch will flip on, automatically and often unbeknownst to you. The resultant fight or flight behavior is unhealthy and uncomfortable. Often it is manifest by aggressive and “counter” competitive behavior.

Calming the Brain, Exposing the Mind

The fundamental component of the fight or flight response is a shortening (tightening, tensing) of our skeletal muscles and a more rapid, shallow breath. The former is to help us fight and flee, expeditiously, with spring-like action and the latter to increase air exchange during this time. The dangers or threats we face in the 21st century (as exampled above), do not require our body to do this. However, it does, automatically.

Recognizing when your switch is flipped on will allow you to begin to calm the AB. Calming the automatic brain is the first step in unmasking your true potential, your personal power, an inner guide of sorts; in essence, your mind. Following the fight or flight edict of your AB makes one do things that end up putting us in situations that are more precarious. The fight or flight action of the automatic brain causes such turmoil in our body with the electro-chemical discharge of hormones that it clouds our sensibilities and blocks access to our mind—our true nature, the place where we instinctively know how to attract exactly what is right for us.

Simple Steps When in the Heat of the Battle

1. The very first step is removing yourself from the “danger” either mentally or physically. For example, if your children or spouse flip your switch on, say that you need to take a brief timeout and will return in a minute or two when you have settled down.

2. Next, since your breath will quicken and become shallow when danger triggers your AB, I suggest consciously overriding this reflex by slowing the breath down and taking deliberate slow steady, deeper breathes. Counting the inhale and exhale helps. Try first counting to five for both inhale and exhale. As you get more experienced, I suggest counting to five on the inhale and ten on the exhale.

3. As your muscles tighten, picture one of your socks resting on your bed. See how the sock lies limply on the bed. Recite in your mind, “there is no danger, there is no threat.” As you recite this phrase, visualize that limp sock. See your muscles, from the top of your head to your toes, become that limp sock. The most important muscles to relax are those on your face. Let them relax into a smile.

Relaxed muscles will be more open to receive blood and thus be healthier and better prepared for any problems.

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Where most of us go wrong is when we think that we have no control over what we call human nature. For us men, this nature is the nature of being a man—chock full of machismo and testosterone. But our true nature and talents lie beyond the reflexive nature of our automatic brain. We will go a long way at clearing up our reputation as cavemen when we recognize this.