Let’s talk about: The Brain

You ever think about how you can think about what you are thinking about? The brain is wild because it’s not just simply observing reality, it’s actively constructing our experience of it. Our brains are a highly complex machine, interpreting reality through the lenses of survival, emotion, memory, and pattern recognition

You might think you know a lot, and then you realize that a lot of what you know is through the very specific lense of mental conditioning you have been exposed to. The amazing thing about that, is that our brains are flexible, so even deeply rooted neural pathways can be disrupted and rebuilt… that’s the scientific way of saying “you can change your mind.”

The Mechanics of the Brain

• Your brain is highly predictive. It’s not waiting for reality to unfold, it’s trying to predict it. It constantly fills in gaps. It does not perceive reality as it is… It uses past experiences, emotional memory, beliefs, and survival patterns to predict what is happening before we can consciously process it.
• Your brain is neuroplastic. Not too long ago, we didn’t understand the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize. Thankfully, we now know that neural pathways can be strengthened, weakened and reshaped through repetitive experiences.
• There’s limited “mental real estate.” The brain receives much more information than it can process, so it prioritizes and filters incoming data.
• Emotional processing moves faster than logic. Emotions are part of our survival system and often activate before our conscious understanding does.
• Brains optimize for efficiency. Our brains use tons of energy and so they work to conserve where they can. This means habits become automatic, repeated thoughts become default and change feels uncomfortable because it requires more energy.
• Memories are ever-evolving. Each time we “walk down memory lane,” the brain rebuilds the memory rather than replaying it perfectly. The memory reconstructs with each new thought of it.
• Most of our brain activity is subconscious. Our conscious mind is just a small part of our processing. Much of our brain power goes towards automatic functions like pattern recognition, reading social cues, mirror neuron activity and other survival systems like digestions and blood pressure. 90-95% of our brain activity is subconscious.
• The brain commands the nervous system. Our nervous systems are constantly collecting, transferring, and interpreting information from both our internal and external environment and sharing that data with our brains.
• Brain-heart connection. Our brains and hearts are constantly communicating with each other through our nervous system. Our vagus nerve is essentially the information highway between the brain and the hear.

The more I learn about the body, the more amazed I become.

Neuroplasticity Applied

Understanding the how the brain works became necessary when my dad had a hemorrhagic stroke in 2018. For many years, medical professionals believed stroke recovery was extremely limited. That is, until the medical field began to understand neuroplasticity, which was key in his recovery.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I came across during this time was mirror therapy. Mirror therapy is a method used to “trick” the brain into perceiving movement in a limb that is weak or non-functioning. The therapy uses a mirror to reflect the functioning side of the body in place of the affected side. This creates visual feedback that the body is moving normally and strengthens the disrupted neural pathways.

This changed the game for me. I began to understand how adaptable perception is and how much perception impacted our ideas of reality.

Emotional Patterns and Subconscious Programming from Childhood

Because our brains are energy efficient and primarily operate subconsciously, many of our behaviors are “programmed” or automatic patterns. Much of this programing happens in early childhood. Children ages 0-8 spend most of their time in a brain state called theta. Theta is a meditative-like state that is highly observational and allows children to learn survival patterns from their environment.

This means “do as I say and not as I do” doesn’t really work in parenting. Children are animalistic in the way they are designed to learn how to survive in their specific environment from the people around them. This means if as a parent, you lie as a form of protection, something as simple as “tell them I’m busy” when you’re not, your child is learning lying as a form of self-protection.

Since our brains are predictive in nature, they often run the “tried and true” program rather than fully responding to present reality. This can look like avoiding something that inflicted pain once in order to avoid potential pain again. Something like touching the stove when its hot, or being made fun of while participating in gym, both can create feedback loops of avoidance in order to protect us, but both are not equally helpful in the long run. Therefore, it’s important that we are aware that our current perception of reality could be skewed by old emotional patterns.

Big Brain Ideas

Understanding the brain started as a necessity and became a kind of cheat code. While it can be overwhelming to consider how trauma and emotional conditioning has shaped us, it is equally as empowering to know that we are capable of restructuring it.

We are not stuck. We can rewire.

There are tools and techniques that support neuroplasticity, can help regulate emotional responses, and soften the impact of trauma-based patterns. We can unlearn habits and unhealthy patterns. We can make our brains work for us. It’s our responsibility to be active participants in reshaping how our brain interprets the world.

In other words, you run your brain. Don’t let your brain run you.