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Dr. Glover, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, with a doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy, is married to Elizabeth Oreskovich, a psychotherapist who with Dr. Glover co-directs the Center For Healing And Recovery. They have four children and make their home in Tacoma, Washington.

Emotional Integration, Part 1
by
Robert A. Glover, Ph.D. ©2008
author of
No More Mr. Nice guy

I’ve had an enlightening opportunity to observe my “lizard brain” in action over the last couple of weeks. For those of you who don’t know what a lizard brain is, let me explain.

As we evolved as a species, the first part of our brain that developed was a tiny, almond shaped lump at the top of the brain stem called the amygdala. This primitive, yet essential part of the brain regulated functions needed for basic survival. Just as it was the first part of the brain to develop early in our evolutionary history, it is the first part of the brain to develop in an infant human being.

When a tiny baby pops out, the amygdala is fully functioning long before other parts of the brain (the frontal lobes – the part of the brain used in decision making – don’t fully develop in men until around age 25). That means when you and I were just little, bitty babies, a tiny, primitive part of our brain was in charge of making sure we survived.

The amygdala is often called the “primitive brain”, “reptilian brain”, or “lizard brain”, because it functions at a very primal, instinctual level. The amygdala has no language capability but seems to store up emotional memories that later influence other parts of the brain and the central nervous system. It is the center for the “fight–flight–freeze” mechanism that is so crucial to our survival both as a species and as individuals.

When we were young, we internalized life events at a feeling level into this part of our brain. We didn’t have the reasoning skills or maturity to evaluate the experiences. We just reacted. If something felt threatening to us – like mommy frowning, or daddy yelling, or when we felt hungry, cold or wet – our amygdala kicked in with some kind of survival response. This response was typically some manifestation of fighting, freezing, or fleeing (we were of course limited in our range of behaviors). Our primal brain also stored up the emotional memory of these events as a way of trying to prevent them from happening again in the future.

Research suggests that if the amygdala is over-stimulated in infancy and childhood, it seems to stay on hyper-alert into adulthood. This might explain social anxiety, obsessive worry, and irrational fears in adults. The more your lizard brain got triggered before the rest of your brain developed to guide you, the more it seems to influence how your mature brain functions today.

Here’s another interesting phenomena. When you experience stress, anxiety, change, or other life events that mimic the events you experienced as a young child, your amygdala will respond in much the same way today that it did when you were a few months old. Depending on the situation, you will still attempt to manage the current situation with behavioral responses that were programmed in infancy. You will still either fight, freeze, or flee; much the same way you did when you were a helpless child.

I often state that the Nice Guy Syndrome is an anxiety based disorder. It tends to develop pretty early as a way of trying to manage the anxiety of threatening or unpredictable events in childhood (the events didn’t have to actually be threatening, they just had to seem that way to a small child). Since most Nice Guys don’t believe it is okay to get angry and “fight”, they spend a lot of time “freezing” or “fleeing” when anxious (Often though, if a Nice Guy has spent a lot of time freezing or fleeing, he might occasionally switch and lash out with a “fight” response. These are the “victim pukes” that anyone who has ever been in a relationship with a Nice Guy knows all too well).

Seeking approval, avoiding conflict, and hiding one’s needs are all “fleeing” type behaviors. Not being able to think of anything to say in the presence of an attractive woman or angry spouse are examples of “freezing” responses.

Most of the time, we are unconscious to our lizard brain behaviors. We’ve done them for so long that we just do them instinctively. They are part of our roadmap or paradigm for handling life. Nice Guys often aren’t even aware of how anxious they feel. Yet, they spend most of their lives managing their anxiety of real or perceived threats (i.e., someone rejecting them, not liking them, getting angry at them). Typically, Nice Guys have no idea when they are in their lizard brain. They assume that their way of reacting makes perfect sense, even when what they are doing is totally ineffective or their reaction seems totally out of proportion to the situation.

This is what brings me to my story of a great chance to watch my lizard brain in action.

I recently lost the lease on my office. I moved into a new office space with a few other psychiatrists and psychologists from my old building. Since was I was going to be out of town the first week in our new offices, I worked ahead of time to get my office painted, moved, and all set up before leaving town. When I returned a week later and entered our new suite of offices for my first day seeing clients, I got triggered into my lizard brain. My colleagues had brought 40 years worth of furniture, equipment, and “crap” from the old building to the new one. A bunch of it was crammed into our new, smaller waiting area. The hallway leading to the offices was crammed with old chairs, dead plants, empty cardboard boxes; most of it pushed down toward my office. The kitchen was so filled with old desks, office equipment, and more boxes of stuff that you couldn’t open the refrigerator door.

The clutter triggered my memory of growing up in a family with a pack-rat father who couldn’t throw anything away. Plus, I had an attachment to an outcome of wanting to work in a clean, uncluttered, professional looking space (That’s not such a terrible attachment, is it?). Since no one person was in charge, there was really no one to complain to. I felt helpless.

I vented my frustration at a meeting of my colleagues a couple of days later and heaped some self-righteous shame on the doctors I thought were most responsible for my frustration. I volunteered to work on the waiting room to try and make it look less like a garage sale and more like a doctor’s office. Apparently, my offer combined with the stress the other docs were already feeling from the move was too much. Without going into detail of my colleagues (and one spouse’s) fight, flight, and freeze response, let it suffice to say that a major lizard battle ensued (picture a scene of giant prehistoric reptiles thrashing away at each other in an old black and white “B” movie).

As I began to remove some old, worn out, and unnecessary pieces of furniture, art (if you can call cheaply framed prints of flowers and sailboats art) and overgrown plants from the waiting area and replace them with more attractive and well-arranged furnishings – the fun began. I encountered resistance, passive-aggressiveness, criticism, threats, hostility, avoidance, and at times, out and out absurdity from a number of my colleagues.

All of these reactions put me into major memory of what it was like growing up in my family. My colleague’s reactions to what seemed to me to be a gracious and much needed gesture on my part was just like the emotional mine field I walked as child with a bipolar father and codependent/vindictive mother. I never knew when I would get it or from where.

Over the next two weeks as I attempted to achieve my goal of creating a professional and comfortable waiting area that the majority of my colleagues would approve of, I experience a myriad of emotional and physical responses. My lizard brain went into over-drive.

I developed fever blisters, sinus problems, a sore shoulder, and my lower back went out on me. I found myself obsessing about the project day and night. I had to take a friend shopping with me because I was experiencing so much anxiety I couldn’t make decisions. I rehearsed scenarios in my head of witty, self-righteous things I could say to my colleagues about their pettiness and resistance to change. I began avoiding the other docs, even staying away from my office at times. I had flashes of fear that they would kick me out of the group for stepping on toes and rocking the boat. All of this just over a simple decorating project!

The amazing thing was that I realized that I was in memory and I was back living in my family again. My amygdala was dialed in and effecting me emotionally and physically. My reactions were the same reactions I developed as a child in an attempt to survive my crazy family. I was five years old again and I knew it.

Sound familiar? I’m sure you’ve had many similar experiences where current day events mirrored feelings from childhood and triggered your response to fight, freeze or flee. Everyday, these kind of events can pop up in relationships, with friends, on the job, in your car. What do you do? How do you keep your lizard brain from driving the bus now that you are no longer a helpless, naive child?

Hang on, because that will be the subject of part two of this article. Tune in next time to see how I dealt with my lizard brain. I’ll also tell you what you can do to integrate your emotions in times of anxiety and stress so you can act less like a reptile and more like an adult human being.
 

Email Dr. Glover robert@nomoremrniceguy.com
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Phone Dr. Glover:  253.874.1308