How in Control of your Mind Are you (Part II)
07/11/09 11:55
It’s all about the Brain
3 Cortex
1 Autonomic
2 Limbic
The key principle of evolutionary psychology is that we are still primed to live in small groups on the open plains. Living in the ways we do in modern society requires more of us than our brains are developed to do.
There are 3 parts to the brain:
Sometimes the thinking and emotional brain can conflict. You can’t think and feel at the same time, and when experiences have a strong emotional content (often based on past emotional experiences), the rational brain is bypassed and people get caught in the grip of intense emotions. In his book The Emotional Brain, Joseph Le Doux says ‘Emotions make you stupid’. Emotional decisions aren’t always the best ones.
The brain has evolved this way to enable us to survive as a species. If we were in danger and we thought too much about it, we would probably die on the plains as hunter/ gatherers. One of the biggest challenges nowadays is that the emotional responses we are designed to produce are triggered by the perception of a threat, just as any actual danger and stress can trigger this response. Given the varied sources of stress in modern society, some people can find themselves suffering from an overactive response which can result in significant health problems. The analogy used is that we have a caveman response in a space age society, which causes huge problems when we make the wrong calculations. Our calculations are made on our mental programmes discussed earlier in my blog.
In essence, our brains have adapted to enable us to survive. The most important problems we have adapted to survive are:
Some of these adaptations can be computed wrongly (since, after all, perception is everything), and can result in a variety of problem behaviours e.g. phobias, eating disorders, insecurity and jealousy, fear of failure, guilt, paranoia, social phobias etc.
The good news is that these faulty perceptions can be shifted quickly with cognitive hypnotherapy. You cannot change the past, but you can change its effect on your present and future.
By the way, the woman mentioned earlier in my blog went onto to do the exams and actually enjoyed them; she’s now well on her way to being a dance teacher, fulfilling a lifelong dream
What is limiting you in your life? What are you telling yourself you can’t do? You can always do what you say you can’t. Imagine what you could do, who you could be, without that limitation in your life?
‘There are many ways of going forward but only one way of standing still ‘
Franklin D Roosevelt
3 Cortex
1 Autonomic
2 LimbicThe key principle of evolutionary psychology is that we are still primed to live in small groups on the open plains. Living in the ways we do in modern society requires more of us than our brains are developed to do.
There are 3 parts to the brain:
Sometimes the thinking and emotional brain can conflict. You can’t think and feel at the same time, and when experiences have a strong emotional content (often based on past emotional experiences), the rational brain is bypassed and people get caught in the grip of intense emotions. In his book The Emotional Brain, Joseph Le Doux says ‘Emotions make you stupid’. Emotional decisions aren’t always the best ones.
The brain has evolved this way to enable us to survive as a species. If we were in danger and we thought too much about it, we would probably die on the plains as hunter/ gatherers. One of the biggest challenges nowadays is that the emotional responses we are designed to produce are triggered by the perception of a threat, just as any actual danger and stress can trigger this response. Given the varied sources of stress in modern society, some people can find themselves suffering from an overactive response which can result in significant health problems. The analogy used is that we have a caveman response in a space age society, which causes huge problems when we make the wrong calculations. Our calculations are made on our mental programmes discussed earlier in my blog.
In essence, our brains have adapted to enable us to survive. The most important problems we have adapted to survive are:
Some of these adaptations can be computed wrongly (since, after all, perception is everything), and can result in a variety of problem behaviours e.g. phobias, eating disorders, insecurity and jealousy, fear of failure, guilt, paranoia, social phobias etc.
The good news is that these faulty perceptions can be shifted quickly with cognitive hypnotherapy. You cannot change the past, but you can change its effect on your present and future.
By the way, the woman mentioned earlier in my blog went onto to do the exams and actually enjoyed them; she’s now well on her way to being a dance teacher, fulfilling a lifelong dream
What is limiting you in your life? What are you telling yourself you can’t do? You can always do what you say you can’t. Imagine what you could do, who you could be, without that limitation in your life?
‘There are many ways of going forward but only one way of standing still ‘
Franklin D Roosevelt