Episode 3 Shownotes - How Our Primitive Brains Mislead Us

Hello, my best lifers, and welcome to Episode 3! I am so excited to get to talk to you again today! Today is really cloudy and super windy, but this morning, my husband and I got up and went for a quick walk with our two young dogs. We have a yellow lab and a german shepherd, both of which are under a year old, so they are less destructive if they get some exercise. It started to rain just as we got home, so I was feeling lucky that the world played nice and let us get our walk done instead of pouring on us. Now I am refreshed and ready to get down to work. I wanted to do a quick refresher before we started today. In the first podcast, we talked about allowing our emotions, leaning into them, instead of avoiding, resisting or reacting to them. It is a skill that takes time, and I hope you are making some progress. The second week, we talked about the difference between thoughts and circumstances, and how to start to be more aware of what the thoughts are that are causing the feelings we are feeling. I am amazed that even after all the time I have been working on my mind with these life coaching tools, how often my brain still wants to offer up a lot of nonsense for my consideration. As I write this, in the last week, I released the first podcast, and launched my Facebook page. My brain had been telling me for weeks that they both had to be perfect before I could put them out in the world. I was really scared of putting myself out there, where other people could judge and criticize, and maybe think it wasn’t perfect. The life coaching has taught me to be aware of these sneaky thoughts, though, and I realized that the result of thinking it had to be perfect was never moving forward and putting this out into the world, where maybe it could help someone. I did some journaling about it, a good thought download like I taught you last week, and decided a better thought was “It doesn’t have to be perfect to reach people and help them” and that gave me the courage to put it out there. Just like you, I have to be watching what my brain is doing every day, keeping up with the housekeeping in my head, or my brain will have me doing things that don’t lead to me living the life I really want to live.

As a scientist, I think it is interesting to tell you a bit about our brains and why they tell us things that don’t seem useful or productive. Our brains are wired for survival. The primitive brain sought pleasure, avoided pain, and tried to make things as easy as possible. In cave man times, there were so many threats. The people whose brains were constantly on alert and quickest to respond to these threats were the most likely people to survive, procreate and share their brain genes with the next generation. Their caveman brains also searched for pleasure, made note of things that brought pleasure and told them to do it more often. Things like eating foods that tasted good was prioritized by their primitive brains, because the good tasting foods had lots of calories, either from fats or natural sugars. If they ate more of them, they had to hunt or gather less food than if what they were bringing home was lower in calories. Sex felt good and helped create more humans with brains. A warm fire felt good if they were cold, and let them cook food, so they prioritized learning how to make and control fire. Primitive brains also liked for things to be easy – it is hard to be a caveman, and making it as easy as possible meant less energy used to protect themselves, get food and find shelter. As time went on, our brains began to evolve to allow us more complex thought. As we evolved, the higher brain, or prefrontal cortex, developed more and more. It allowed us to plan and accept delayed gratification, allowing us to tolerate discomfort while we get an education, work hard at a job to move up the corporate ladder, get through a medical residency, or become a partner in a law firm. It allowed us to invent, bringing us airplanes, cars, skyscrapers, vaccines, cancer drugs, and so on. It allowed us to create – art, literature, sculpture, music. The biggest changes in our world have come in the last 200 years as we moved even further away from needing to focus our energy on surviving. More and more jobs have became more focused on what we can create and add to the world. Many of these jobs require that we accept some discomfort to move forward and challenge ourselves. But brains take hundreds of thousands of years to really change, so it is no surprise our brain hasn’t quite caught up with modern life. That upper part of our brain is the rational thinking part and allows us to read, write, speak, do complex math, and so on. The hind brain, or primitive brain, still exists though. It still is trying to fulfill its job of keeping us safe. Most people in developed countries no longer need to worry about lions eating them, about whether they will get left behind and exposed to the elements or whether they will be able to find something to kill to eat. But our brains are still wired that way. In this day and age, it no longer sees tigers, the elements and starvation, for most of us it sees wars, terrorists, news headlines, pandemics, and yes, cancer, as the mortal threats. It wants to make sure we are aware, causing a running dialogue between the upper, modern part and the lower, more instinctual part. These frightening things are things we have a hard time solving or eliminating. Unlike a lion chasing us, where once we got somewhere safe the threat was gone, these modern threats may still be present, for days, weeks, months or even years. This leads to our brain continuing to shout at us, look, a cancer lion – run, hide! Look, a pandemic wolf pack – get ready to fight! It makes us worry and look for all the things that could go badly, even though they aren’t things we can change or address. Our primitive brain does not know the difference between the fear of public speaking and versus the fear of meeting up with an unknown tribe of hostile people. A failed hunt which could lead to us starving vs. realizing there is no toilet paper in any market around. To the primitive brain, both could kill us and should be avoided or fixed at all costs. The primitive brain’s suggestion is to stay in the cave as much as possible, eat the food whenever it’s available and only hunt when you need food, and don’t shake up the routine. For modern humans, this translates to our primitive brain telling us to sit on the couch, eating Cheetos, drinking wine, and watching Tiger King. When you don’t really understand how the brain works, it is often really hard to understand that all these incessant thoughts are really just suggestions from the old brain of what to focus on. There are two ways to deal with these suggestions. One is to allow the fear, instead of avoiding, resisting or reacting to it, and know that it may be there but can't hurt you. Brooke Castillo tells us that fear doesn’t mean stop. We don’t have to be fearless to take action. She reminds us that much of the fear we feel today is irrational and even unnecessary, and if we don’t allow that discomfort, we will never move forward with creating what we want in life. The other way to deal with the fear that our primitive brain puts forth is to engage our higher brain. Once the prefrontal cortex is aware, it can tell the primitive brain, yes, those things are scary, but they are not what we are going to think about right now. You can engage your higher brain to direct the lower brain about what you want to focus on. Learning this really helped me to understand why my brain is so negative, worries so much, and wants to take the easy route, instead of allowing the discomfort of challenging myself and growing. This is also why moving forward with cancer treatment is SO hard for most patients. Moving forward with cancer treatment requires accepting pain and suffering, which our primitive brains really try to avoid. It requires learning something new and challenging, which is in direct contrast to the primitive brain’s edict that we should keep things easy and go with the status quo. It also makes us move forward into our fear instead of away from it. When I first realized this, I thought - Wow – makes so much sense why this is such a huge challenge for so many patients. It also explained a phenomena that I knew was true, but wasn’t sure why. Many patients are really struggling initially when they get diagnosed, but don’t know yet if they will need chemotherapy, radiation, or other treatments. Once they get a plan, they feel better, even if they are told they DO need chemo and radiation. Looking from the outside, it makes no sense that being told they need chemo makes them feel better. One would think they would feel better before, when there was still a possibility they would NOT need it. The explanation is that once a plan is set and the patient understands it, the primitive brain is able to make sense of all of it and stop with some of the “but what if we need chemo? But what if we need radiation? But what else might they say? But maybe it would be better if we decide not to do it and hide in the cave?”
A book I have been reading recently and really enjoying recently talks about this brain divide. It is “Solve for Happy” by Mo Gawdat. I really recommend it. He was one of the founders of Google X, and lost his 21 year old son in a routine appendectomy. His book tells of how he worked through this, and has turned the loss into something that has changed the world, one person at a time. He initially had a goal of increasing happiness for 10 million people. He hit that goal in a very short time, and went on to change his goal to increasing happiness for one billion people. Much of what I teach, he also teaches, but in a different way and with a different voice, so his book is a great addition to this podcast and can reinforce and add to learning. He has a whole chapter about the little voice in your head, and one of the points he makes that I think we all can apply and learn from is that the little voice is not us. You can observe it, so it is outside of you, even if it is in your head. He tells of how other people have interpreted the voice, like the old cartoon of the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Others have named it “the Whisperer”. He also points out “Our brains replay every painful memory from the past and every possible scary scenario from the future over and over, just like a complex computer simulation, in an attempt to scare us away from threats before they can happen and regardless of the probability of their happening at all.” I love this. I don’t know about for you, but my brain really does this. It tells me all the ways my kids could get hurt and die. It makes me worry. It makes me want to be overprotective and a little nuts. But knowing that it is just my old brain trying to protect me by keeping me from any chance of harm makes it a little bit more easy to say, yeah, yeah, and do what needs to be done anyway. I don’t think it matters what we call the voice in our head, but I do think it matters that we are aware of it, know that we don’t always have to do what it says, and know it is not us and not what makes us who we are.

One of the ways to become more aware of this ongoing dialogue in our heads is with thought downloads. I talked about this last week, but if we write down what we are thinking and feeling, it gives our higher brain a chance to see it and debunk some of it. It really is amazing. You write some of this stuff down, and when you look back you think, really?? That is completely illogical, or even blatantly untrue! Like my perfection thought about releasing the podcast. There is NOTHING on the apple podcasting site that says it has to be perfect. Most podcasts I listen to aren’t perfect. I hear a cleared throat or a breath, because they are recorded by HUMANS. I’m pretty sure FB allows us to post imperfect things, based on some of the spelling in my kid’s posts. If I hadn’t written about why I was not getting it done, I would still have been trying to get the first episode perfect, and we wouldn’t be here today! Writing our thoughts down allows us to watch what the primitive brain is trying to convince us is a problem, and I have to say, it is often complete nonsense. It also allows us to really get in touch with what the primitive brain is whispering in the background that we may not have brought to the forefront of our attention yet.

I had the opportunity to have one of these a-ha moments this week and see what my primitive brain was whispering to me. Due to the pandemic, we have been spending more time at home, and I thought a puzzle would help to pass the time. I had received a gorgeous one as a Christmas gift of a giant whale in the water, and a tiny sailing ship on the surface, blissfully unaware. It looked like an oil painting and the colors were gorgeous. I was so excited to put it together and see it finished. We set the puzzle up, and one day when we were working on it, my youngest son accidentally knocked some of the pieces on the floor. I gathered them up, including prying one out of the mouth of my yellow lab. I thought, gee, I really hope I found them all. As we came to the end, it was clear there was one piece missing. I was really bummed out – to my type A mind, this puzzle was ruined! I left the puzzle set up on the table, hoping that I might find the piece. I was tidying up the house later in the week, while brainstorming about something visual I could post on the Facebook page about how often we see the negative and miss the bigger picture. I walked by the puzzle, and there it was. I realized that puzzle was the perfect analogy for what is going on in my life right now. There are 998 perfect pieces, all in place, depicting a wonderful story. There is one mangled piece chewed by the dog, and one piece missing. What I see is the missing piece, not the 998 perfect pieces, with the story it tells. Right now, my primitive brain is telling me that Corona virus, unemployment, the economy are HUGE problems, and I should be WORRIED. What’s more, it chirps, did you remember that the twins’ 8th grade graduation was cancelled, and we can’t see our adopted German daughter’s new baby because there is a travel ban? My higher brain was aware of these big thoughts, and I have diligently worked on all of them, and really accepted that this is how the world needs to be right now. But what snuck by under the radar was the running commentary my primitive brain had about all the things I am missing – coffee with a friend, my weekly ballroom dance class, the theater, sporting events, cooking classes that were planned. Every week, when I would write up my schedule for the week, I would look at all the things that had been cancelled. I hadn’t realized how much I was focusing on the missing pieces in my day to day life, and that it was completely derailing my ability to see all the joy and blessings in my life right now. I posted the picture of the puzzle on my best life after cancer facebook page, and I committed to seeing all the joy in my now story. Right now, I have a family with 4 hysterical teenage boys who are at home and hanging out with us, instead of running to sports and out with their friends, a job that I still get to go to with my awesome cancer patients, enough food to eat, even restaurants offering takeout, 2 young dogs to play with and enjoy, a home I love. The new things this pandemic brought are the chance to work from home one day a week for the first time in my life and a new adventure with this podcast! I am so glad that puzzle was missing a piece, for me to realize that my brain was showing me all that was missing in my daily life.

I see something very similar in many of my patients. They are done treatment, but focused on not having as much energy, not liking how their hair grew back, struggling with changes in their body image, or being pissed about what they missed when they were sick. Their primitive brain is loudly demanding that they see that they are fatigued, probably because it might mean you can’t run from the lion, screeching that their hair is less pretty, maybe because the primitive brain thinks that might make your “tribe” abandon you. It wants to argue with the past, that you shouldn’t have missed that trip while you were sick, because it doesn’t understand that it can’t fix things in the past. That primitive brain is definitely showing them the pieces missing from their puzzle. Let me pause for a moment here. I definitely don’t want you to think I don’t empathize with how hard your journey was. I can see that there are days that it is almost impossible to find any joy when you are vomiting from chemo, in pain from surgery, or exhausted from radiation. But once those finish, and even during treatment on the days that are good days, you can ask your higher brain to show you what is good that day, that week, that year. What is perfect exactly the way it is. What the cancer, or pandemic, or job loss, or other challenge you are struggling with has brought you that you never would have found otherwise. I think that seeing what our primitive brain is telling us, and choosing to see the positive really go hand in hand.

Ekhart Tolle teaches that we have no power but in the present moment. In his book, The Power of Now, he tells us to “Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.” What I interpret this to mean is that we cannot change the past, and we cannot forsee the future, or guarantee anything about the future from our present moment. When we live with our primitive brain trying to change the past, or worrying about the future, we lose what we have, the now, the only place where we actually are present ever, the only place where we have any degree of control. He also says that “some changes look negative on the surface, but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge”.

He is brilliant, but I actually learned this lesson FIRST from my patients (which is why I know that what he says in this case is true). There have been a handful of patients over the years that said that there was a silver lining to their cancer, and they wouldn’t have changed having the cancer for anything, even with the risk they still have of someday dying from it. The silver lining was learning what was truly important to them. It made them stop sweating the small stuff. It made them appreciate the true blessings. It lead them to really being present every day, using each day to find joy for themselves or their loved ones. They feel that if they didn’t have the cancer, they would have gone through their whole life wrapped up in work, stressed out, in their heads or on their phones. After cancer, they felt that they gained more than cancer could possibly take, because they were really, truly, 100% present for the first time ever. These patients are my inspiration. I actually plan to have one of those people on an upcoming podcast to tell her story. I think she will inspire you just like she did me. Keep an eye out for it. These patients have made such a difference in how I view the world, I am sometimes surprised that not all of my colleagues have figured it out. To anyone working in cancer who is still sweating the small stuff, I say, you are missing the lessons our patients are teaching us. You see how fragile life is, but you still choose to focus on the little things that aren’t important! Open your eyes, and see the beauty these people are sharing with us. To all of the patients that have shared that with me, I am eternally grateful. For any of you listening who have found this truth in your life as well, share it with the world, because you will be an inspiration to so many.

Ok – wow , that was a lot this week! I am going to start doing a little recap at the end each week, so if you zone out in traffic, or if a dog is barking when you are walking, at the end you get what I really want you to take from this. So for this week, the highlights, or the take home messages: Your brain has two parts. One thinks and reasons, and one tries to keep you safe. That safety part of the brain is programmed to focus on the negative, because it is how it thinks it can keep us safe. We don’t have to act on these thoughts. We do not have to focus on them. They also are not who we are. They don’t define us. We can choose to look for the positive. Second, all we have is today. Don’t waste it dwelling on yesterday or trying to force tomorrow to be anything other than what it will be.

The work for next week – keep allowing your feelings. Keep doing your thought downloads and seeing what your brain is telling you. Work this week on finding places where your primitive brain is telling you life is scary and awful, and ask your higher brain what good it can find in the situation. If you want to see the Whale picture, go to my facebook page, Best Life after Cancer MD. If you find some things that are positive when your primitive brain was telling you it was all negative, for sure leave me a comment below the whale picture. If you want to follow the page while you are there, that would be great, I’d love to have you and get to interact with you. As always, so glad we were able to have this time together today! I’ll speak with you next week!