The human brain

By Martin Guay and Julie Taylor

Are you familiar with the basic anatomy of the human brain?

In order to be able to truly understand - and possibly bring about change - I believe this knowledge is important.

Millions of years ago, there were only reptiles on Earth. Then there were reptiles and mammals. More recently there were reptiles, mammals, including humans.

Brains have changed and evolved along with these population changes. For our purposes here, we can divide the brain into these 3 parts.

1. There's the oldest (ancient) part of the brain, the brain stem - also called the ancient or reptilian brain - which forms the core of our brain.

This part of the brain is present in reptiles, mammals and humans and is responsible for autonomic and automatic reactions like the beating of the heart, breathing and the fight or flight response to danger. Instinct and safety are controlled from here. Picture a lizard, whose pure instincts are so finely tuned and fast that you can never catch him...

2. Next to the ancient-brain - or brain-stem, as its known today by doctors - is the newer (in terms of time) mammalian brain. This part of the brain is responsible for love and other emotions and is present in mammals as well as in humans. Picture a cat, lovingly caring for her kittens – all instinct and emotion, but no thinking...

3. The part of the brain that is unique to humans is the grey-matter, technically known as the cerebral cortex, which has more recently developed (in terms of time). This is a large area of brain that surrounds the mammalian brain and brain stem and is responsible for our thinking. Picture a human child, learning about his environment and integrating instinct, emotion and thought but concentrating on his thinking skills...

The speed of each part of the brain is also important to know. The grey-matter and thinking part of the brain is the slowest. The mammalian and feeling part is a bit faster. And the ancient-brain and instinct for safety is the fastest.

So, if we're knocking on doors in our neighborhood - canvassing for example - and we're confronted by a large dog snarling and coming towards us, the ancient-brain - or safety part - of our brains is automatically engaged. By the time the thinking grey-matter has reasoned that we are in danger and should probably move, our instinct for safety has already moved us to the other side of the shut gate.

The ancient-brain is responsible for keeping us safe.

However, sometimes our safety is not threatened and a fast, knee-jerk reaction is not necessary to protect us any longer. Sometimes we need to use our thoughts and reason to find the answer to a problem.

We may have no conscious idea that our reaction is automatic - or even that we're having a reaction at all. We may think that we have carefully thought out what is really an instinctive, fast, ancient-brain reaction.

Bringing unconscious thoughts to consciousness is an important part of all counseling.

Studying animals and living creatures allows us to see, question and interpret some of our own reactions. Through new understanding we connect the ancient-brain and reaction to the grey-matter and thinking.

We can now connect to our grey-matter thinking - our consciousness. Through new understanding we connect the ancient-brain and reaction to the grey-matter and thinking.

We need to be able to identify our stories, thus making the unconscious, conscious. This results in healing as the unconscious reaction is replaced by conscious action. We don’t need to do anything, just simply believe and understand.

The ancient-brain tends to be fast and unconscious and we need to bring consciousness to it. By thinking and speaking - slowly and repeating the thoughts over and over a few times - we can re-program our brains.

This is where we (Psychotherapy and HealingRevealed) come in: through our story. Like the story of the brain above, it is also based on science. We can re-program our minds to change reactions into actions by allowing connections to be made between the fast ancient-brain and the slower grey-matter: thereby making the unconscious, conscious.