Living with a Lizard

Deep in your brain lives a lizard.

This “lizard” is our brain’s least-evolved-dinosaur-part (the brain stem). Our Lizard controls our *FIGHT* or *FLIGHT* or *FREEZE* Survival-System (let’s use FFFSS for short) and can highjack all other systems toward this end. Our Lizard and our FFFSS are the featured guests for this post!

Our Lizard-Brain‘s not-so-simple job is keeping us alive all the time (She keeps our hearts beating, lungs breathing, etc.). She is also the “operator” of our body’s internal messaging system - and is known to listen in on calls and hijack conversation when threats are detected. 

For example, let’s say you wake up and see a notification from a person on insta-snap-tik-gram-book-chat-tube who is chronically mean to you - and - immediately before you even read it - something feels like a threat *NOT* to the rational part of your mind - but to the cute little Lizard. So the lizard shoots a jolt of adrenaline,

“WAKE UP, WE ARE F*CKING UNDER ATTACK HERE  PEOPLE- BATTLE STATIONS!”

Now your heart is racing, you are mouth-breathing, and you feel dizzy.

And these LIZARD-Reactions happen to greater or lesser degrees all day long every day. 

Many core functions of our society (politics, economy, marketing) are dependent on hijacking our mind and keeping our lizard in control - from how we fund politics and churches, to how we market products, to push notifications for everything - our lizard-reactiveness is stoked and manipulated. All the reacting turns the temperature up- puts our lizard brain in charge of the steering wheel. Our lizard grabs the wheel whenever we are stressed, anxious, angry, afraid, or in conflict - which is basically every day in an election cycle or on facebook. 

And even worse, if we all live in a world of daily-Lizard fighting - the sum total of our primal-reactions create a world devoid of empathy, where everyone is trying to survive - cut-throat and ruthless.

Egotistical people and Narcissists LOVE Lizard-fighting - because - when we allow our humanity to be reduced to a Lizard-alley-brawl where everyone exists in the lizard brain FFFSS - then trolls and bots and narcissists win - that is the sort of world that they thrive in. If they keep everyone angry, then no one will pay close attention to what they are up to.

Here is another lizard emotion to pay attention: RAGE! Rage, like fear, activates that damn-unevolved lizard-brain, diverting critical energy from our less energy efficient higher-reasoning centers. When we live in perpetual rage, we let the lizard drive. We imagine both our rage and the actions we take as a result of our rage to be justified, merited, warranted, and necessary. This is also likely why many of the world's most rage-filled people are not able to see their own rage clearly. An enraged mob is capable of shocking violence - even on the Internet. Our ability to be self-reflective and value-driven diminishes as our rage-fueled-lizard-brains take over and focuses all our mental resources on FFFSS. Without our ability for self-reflection and clear value judgment, we are capable of great crimes of passion and violence. 

Most humans do not thrive in chronically-reactive environments or when fueled by perpetual rage. Ironically, often when we most need reflection, during a fight or crisis, our adrenaline and FFFSS have the opposite effect - reducing us to lizards and turning off the higher-reasoning that serves us better. Like a computer, often it is only when we reboot that we are able to come to our senses, find our center and allow our new learning and understanding to take hold. This means people’s ability to synthesize new information and grow is effectively shut off when they are living in lizard-land.

The opposite of reaction is not disengagement - it’s mindfulness - finding our true-center and learning to stay present there.

So lean in for a second.

…Relax your body.

….Take a few deep breaths.

….Take a few more.

Thank your Lizard for her diligent service. Speak soothingly to her - give her a name that feels safe and evokes peaceful thoughts for you, like Michelle, or Oprah, or Hazel, or Tegan - Don’t judge her, she is trying to keep you safe - thank her for that - and let her know you can take it from here.

We can learn to respond to life and to notifications from our center, soul, core, essence, true self - and when we develop the skills to pause and get in touch with ourself and to soothe our lizard, we will reclaim the energy of our life to use for our passions and we will thrive in ways we never imagined possible. 

(And all of this connects with my new personal Facebook policy: if the mere notification that a particular person has commented on my post triggers my fight or flight response, they get unfriended and their un-read comment gets deleted. Trust your body.)