Who Are We? Part 1
Who are we? I believe human beings are herd animals, and we share much instinctive behavior with our animal cousins. The most obvious examples are the mating instinct, the parent-child bond, and the fight-or-flight instinct.
In biological terms, what separates humans from other animals is our cerebral cortex. The more we rely on our cerebral cortex (rather than our instinctive, reptile brains) to guide our behavior, the more mature and self-regulated we become. Unfortunately, we humans tend to live in denial about our instinctive, animal behavior. We unwittingly tend to use our cerebral cortex mostly to justify our instinctive behavior in daily life. We usually call these justifications “reasons” (i.e., “Here is the reason for why I said or did x.”).
Although most of us act from our reptile brains and then justify from our cortexes, we have the potential for more. The theory I use to realize my potential (and to help others do the same) is Bowen Family Systems Theory. My purpose for Bowen Theory is to help myself and others distinguish between the “thinking” of our cortexes and the “feeling” of our reptile brains. Two benefits are: 1) More thoughtful decisions; and 2) More choice as to what feelings we choose to feel.
A successful “coach” (I prefer this term over therapist) addresses two primary tendencies in the human animal: reactivity, and blame. Although the two concepts overlap, I will address reactivity today, and blame at a later time.
Humans rarely observe life as a series of phenomena occurring at the same time. We tend to see things in terms of “this behavior caused those feelings in me.” Much of our delusion stems from incorrectly assigning the wrong “cause” to an “effect” we perceive. An example is the popular paradigm, “I’m messed up as an adult because my parents didn’t give me enough love and attention as a child.” This paradigm is so popular that most people consider it to be truth (just like the Europeans in 1491 who believed, “Of course the world is flat!”).
I believe that in most therapy, too much time is spent articulating feelings, assigning a “cause” to them, and then trying to change or eliminate the cause. I believe this course is an infinite treadmill, since our feelings are like the weather: constantly changing with infinite variations, and difficult to predict.
Although it’s not a quick fix, I believe we can gain more predictable, durable results by shifting the behavior of our minds. For example, if we can reduce the dominance of our feeling-centered reptile brains by only 1%, the increase in thoughtful, cortex-directed behavior will render a whole different life course for us and our clients. Consider the metaphor of a ship’s navigational course. If a ship changes course by one degree, you can’t tell the difference in the short term. However, after the ship has travelled 1,000 miles, to chart the difference between where it would have gone and where it is now is impressive indeed.
