• Hard-wired information.

• It knows that as a small child you could not have survived physically without a series of felt sensations of safety in the form of emotions of love and human touch; thus, you did some heroic things as a child (subconsciously) to protect yourself and ensure you get the love you needed to survive. (See blog post on early survival-love map.)
• It knows that, even as an adult, perhaps more than physical sustenance, you continue to need (not merely want) meaningful emotional, intellectual and artistic (spiritual?) stimulation.
• Thus, it prompts you to continually take care of your needs for positive physical and emotional nourishment, knowing the happier you are, the healthier you are, physically, mentally, the more likely you are to survive.

• It knows you are wired to (consciously, at will) activate optimal emotional states, such as happiness, and that your physical health depends on learning how to create healthy emotional states, and to do so regardless the circumstances.
• It knows your brain can spark optimal states in other brains around you (or spark fear-based states!), and that the happier you are, the healthier you are, and the more likely you are to energize optimal states in yourself and others, and form healthymeaningful connections.
• Thus, it prompts you, at various times throughout your life, to meaningfully relate, contribute, self-actualize, etc., to keep stretching your capacity to wholeheartedly give and receive primarily out of love (not fear).

• Soft-wired information.

• The data your five senses are picking up from life around you: visual (sight), auditory (hearing), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell) and gustatory (taste).
• The thoughts you are thinking in the moment, your “self-talk” – which may be focused on past, present or current experience, or a combination of these.
• The current beliefs or belief systems your subconscious mind holds up as perception filters to interpret any incoming data, as well as what is going on inside you, i.e., thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, wants, inborn strivings, etc.

• It’s not wired to act primarily as an alarm (what a waste!) that keeps coming to your rescue, to save and protect you.
• Like an overprotective parent, this blocks you from growing your capacity to handle your fears without activating your body’s fear response.

Habitual thinking patterns that cause intense feelings of fear, anger, shame or guilt are not only toxic, but also addictive in nature.
Why? They stimulate pleasure and learning centers of the brain similar to addictive substances.
Toxic thinking is characteristically compulsive in nature and causes intense fear-based feelings, which can overwhelm or zap our body’s energy supply. It consists of thoughts that habitually forecast disaster, perpetuate worry, instill doubt, obsess on perfection, describe self (or another) as a victim, or point fingers at others.
So, how can these pain feelings stimulate pleasure?
Though toxic thoughts paint images of self and others with colors of lack, gloom or failure, subconsciously, they are protective strategies that get activated automatically in our defense when something triggers us. Thus, our body associates them with pseudo “feel good” feelings that lower our anxiety, albeit in ineffective, quick-fix ways.
In recent decades, neuroscience research has increased our understanding of the processes that lead to the formation of healthy and unhealthy habits, to include addictions.
Pleasure – and fear – as stimulants and “teachers”?
We now have a better understanding of how intoxicating highs stimulate the “reward” centers of the brain, and the role mixed emotions of — pleasure and fear — play in stimulating these centers to establish an addiction, addictive relating patterns, or emotional reactivity in general.

• The high is produced by neurochemicals that induce pleasure, dopamine in particular.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger of the brain that plays a major role in forming addictions, and habits in general, healthy or otherwise. It transmits “teaching” signals to the reward centers of the brain responsible for acquiring new habits.

• The other, less known, catalyst that stimulates the reward centers for the release of hormones is: fear.

Whether related to risk taking, taboo or past trauma, fear is a chief chemical-stimulant that works together with pleasure to enhance and intensify the highs in the brain’s reward centers. In fact, the brain is in its most alert state of receptivity to learning in the presence of danger.
This makes sense, considering that survival is the primary directive of the part of the mind, the subconscious, that runs the body and is in charge of all the processes involved in forming or breaking habits.

• Thus, fear not only reinforces learning, it also increases the chances that a particular memory will receive preferential attention from the subconscious mind.

This means the subconscious mind will record the “experience” in a special place in memory, an “intelligence report” of sorts, which the subconscious mind turns to whenever we get triggered or feel threatened in some way.
(The use of “fear” to condition behaviors also explains why commercial and political advertisements use fear to condition us to behave in certain ways.)
Toxic thinking patterns act as “drugs of choice”?
Certain thinking patterns, in particular ones that subconsciously activate the body’s fear response, or “fight or flee” system, are powerful.

• How?

They activate powerful inner processes that produce dynamic physiological changes in the body. They prepare us to run away or confront a perceived threat. When fear is the basis for behaviors, it is connected to the part of the brain that is responsible for ensuring survival — the fight or flight stress response.

• They are automatic.

They cause the subconscious mind to automatically perform an instant coup d’état of the body’s normal processes. Unfortunately, this disengages the higher thinking processes of the brain by cutting off much of the oxygen flow.

• They are limiting in varying degrees.

And herein lies the problem. The brain is always in either “protective mode” or “learning mode.” When it’s in “protective mode,” its otherwise amazing capacity to make informed choices, decisions is not fully functioning. It is no longer in “learning mode.”

• They are toxic-thinking patterns.

The subconscious mind has a seemingly limitless capacity for memory and multitasking, processing millions, and some say billions, of bits of information per second. It does no original thinking, however. It relies on our thoughts (and associated beliefs, feelings) to form the “perceptions” it uses to determine whether or not to activate the body’s fear response.

• They are not “real” thoughts.

Our thoughts or “self-talk” are an inner running commentary, a stream of about 60,000 thoughts a day. A good portion of this habituated thinking consists of rigid, black-and-white thoughts — in other words, toxic thinking patterns — such as blame, fault-finding, self-pity, etc. These negatively charged thoughts are not real thinking at all. They are habituated thoughts that emerge from limiting beliefs, many of which are subconscious and carry over from the formative years of childhood.  Examples of limiting beliefs are:

If I say no, I will be rejected or abandoned.
If someone says no to my request, it means they don’t love or appreciate me.
It’s wrong to put “demands” or need something from others.
It’s not love if you have to ask; he/she should know what I want/need.
Anger means you are not loved, accepted by or adequate enough to another.
Psychological or physical violence is OK when it is “deserved.”

• They are based on beliefs that were imprinted in our memory the formative years of early childhood early survival-love maps.

Where do these thoughts come from? Beliefs.
In this case, certain core beliefs that form our self-concept, for example, what it means to love and be loved, what it means to “matter” or feel value in life, in relation to our self and others. They are thoughts that the subconscious accrues in a special record it keeps of all past “scary” moments. These pockets of memory contain related data, such as feelings, images, beliefs, and so on. I refer to these records in cellular memory as our early survival-love maps.
Many of them spawn unhelpful and limiting views of anger, whereasanger is designed to be a healthy emotion that moves us to action to stand up for our selves and not give up on our dreams – once, that is, we accept and respect its value, and learn how to express it assertively – rather than defensively. Some examples of limiting beliefs that produce toxic thoughts about anger include:

Never be angry.
Never talk about your anger.
Men can be angry, women cannot.
Anger leads to abuse and pain.
Anger means you are not loved.
If you make him/her angry, they will abandon you.

• They offer quick-fix “pseudo” relief that lowers anxiety and restores body’s equilibrium in varying degrees.

The instant relief we get by activating our protective strategies, such as blasting someone with our anger or stewing on how we “always” get the short end of the stick, is what makes toxic-thinking addictive. They are old and “comfortable” ways of protecting ourselves, that is, by lowering our anxiety with instant pseudo “feel good” toxic thoughts.

• The subconscious does no original thinking.

Our subconscious mind is completely dependent on the conscious mind to wisely discern between “feel goods” that are healthful and those that are harmful. By design, it has no capacity to do its own thinking.
Whenever something “works” to lower anxiety and restore our body to natural state, the subconscious mind automatically puts it on the “list of things that work to ensure survival.” Hence, “things” that neuro-chemically produce pseudo “feel-good” feelings in our body.

• The subconscious cannot discern between what is toxic or healthful.

The subconscious mind cannot discern between what “feels good” that is toxic or even destructive, such as junk food or drugs or toxic thoughts, and what “feels bad” yet is healthful, such as learning a new subject or giving a speech or changing a toxic thinking pattern or two.
With repeated stimulation, old reward centers form new neuropathways that demand more of the same, thus, producing more intense cravings. As the body habituates to the highs that repeated stimulation produces, other processes that seek to restore equilibrium then form new neuropathways, which demand greater intensity and frequency to achieve the same stimulation.
An addiction is formed, and along with it, a wide array of emotional, physical and mental health costs.
Genuine versus “pseudo” feel-goods?
This combination of stimulating emotions of pleasure and fear literally conditions our brain to live life at odds with self, a life of contradictory desires and passions that, if not stopped, has power to control and take away what is of lasting and real value to a person’s life.
It’s safe to say that what distinguishes “genuine” feel-goods from “pseudo” feel-goods is that the former, in contrast to the latter, seeks to delight us yet also enhance our health, growth, transformation, or at minimum, cause no harm.
Toxic thinking patterns and pseudo feel-goods block change and healing. Like addiction, toxic “feel good” thinking patterns are an escape, a series of actions that fail in their attempt to help you to get control over your life, and that lead instead to abandoning control to lies, falsehoods and acts of desperation.
At root all addiction is a fear of intimacy, in particular, an intimate knowing of self.
It is a topsy-turvy system of beliefs that imprisons the mind with lies that lead us to avoid, run away from, block, or “protect” ourselves against what we most need and yearn for in life: To feel alive in meaningful connection to self and life around us, to contribute the love we aspire to express, courageously, with our whole heart.
Speaking of thinking patterns, Carl Jung, one of the most brilliant thinkers in the modern era, was first among other theorists and psychologists to point out that the human mind, or psyche, continuously strives toward a feeling state of wholeness, in search of meaning and purpose. In contrast to pseudo feel-goods, genuine “feel goods” work alongside the directives of the body to ensure that you both survive, and thrive in health and wholeness.
The solution is simple, and though not easy, it’s achievable with determination: You are wired for a life time of learning, healing and change.
More on how to re-wire changes in an upcoming post.
RESOURCES:
Begley, Sharon (2007). Train Your Mind Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves. NY: Ballantine Books.
Cozolino, Louis (2006). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Brain. NY: W. W. Norton.
Damasio, Antonio (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. NY: Pantheon Books.
Siegel, Daniel J. (1999). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. NY: Guilford Press.




No wonder we cry at birth! From the get go, it seems, Mother Nature gives us a series of challenging tasks to overcome, and doesn’t just wait to do so in later periods of our lives.
It starts from the very first breath.
And, each task seems customized to teach us how magnificently we are endowed, equipped with everything we need to reach our developmental milestones, for example. We also appear to have inborn miracle-making resources, such as for imagination and possibility thinking, that seemingly invite us to transcend the physical limits of our nature.
Born with a burning curiosity, not unlike scientists, we yearn to know everything there is to know about ourselves and our world. That is one of our key attributes as human beings, by the way. A healthy brain is most always in “learning mode” and only in “protective mode” in situations that pose real threats or danger.
How could we have known then, however, what we hopefully learn later in life, that: the purpose of certain life tasks, as painful as they may be, is to grow, strengthen and enrich us to live and love authentically with our whole heart?
We are wired to struggle, learn, and engage in processes that make us feel vulnerable yet expand our reach, as the work of researcher Brene Brown reveals. In any case, it is safe to say, we have abilities far greater than we think or could have imagined as children.
The First Task of Life?
As infants and small children, our first task is to win our parents’ love. Babies do not survive without love. Food, shelter, sustenance do not suffice.
As studies of attachment show, small children actively seek a love bonding with their caregivers. To live, newborns must form some type of bond, whether secure or not, with their mother or a “mothering” person, at least one.
Clearly the driving Principle that moves young children to do what they do is: to be loved is all that matters; it is life itself.
The recent works of neuroscientists, such Ramachadran, have uprooted old ideas and views of human nature. In his words,

“The curious reciprocity between self and others is especially well developed in humans and probably exists only in rudimentary form in the great apes. I have suggested that many types of mental illness may result from derangements in this equilibrium.”

Love, and not survival, is the most compelling force for our species.
There is perhaps nothing more frightening to us as children than the possibility that we would not be loved or accepted by key persons in our lives. We have inborn yearnings for belonging and acceptance, for example, and these can activate associated core fears, such as rejection or abandonment.
Since our bodies come pre-wired with knowledge of what we need to survive, it’s safe to say that we were born with a felt “knowing” thatour physical survival completely depended on these early emotionalbonds.
Our parents’ responses were like mirrors that sent emotional messages to us, telling us what they needed from us, whom they thought we were and what they thought the world was like. The work of neuroscientist Damasio on “mirror neurons” shows, among other things, that infants’ faces reflect back the emotional data they receive from their parents’ faces, such as happy, sad, worried or calm.
If our parents were scared and insecure about their value in relation to us, or key adults in their lives, and many if not most are in our culture, we likely learned to disconnect from or mistrust our inner abilities to think, feel and be present to our self, especially emotions of vulnerability.
Why? Because that’s how our parents dealt with their own inner world of emotions and thoughts.
How could they be present to our fears when they didn’t know how to be present to their own?
Love is the first task of life, and it is no small matter. For a small child, it is imprinted in memory as a life or death proposition.
As adults, we can lose sight of the fact that, in early childhood, this compelling drive to feed on love and human connection is also a question of physical survival.
Like all autonomic processes of the body, when it comes to survival, the subconscious mind is in charge.
Built-in Safety – “Early Survival-Love Maps”
Even in optimal conditions, the quest to be loved makes early childhood inherently wounding, a fragile period of life at best.
It is just as impossible, for example, for a child not to experience fear and pain as it is for an adult. We may hide, mask or numb it, however, our core fears and vulnerabilities are as much a part of life as breathing.
The truth is, we experience scary moments all the time.
Thankfully, however, the human brain is designed with a built-in safety feature!
I like to call them “early survival-love maps,” as they are neural patterns that, as protective mechanisms, played a critical role in our survival in childhood.
These neural patterns “worked” to keep us as emotionally healthy as possible in childhood. How? They helped us get quick-fix doses of hormones released in our bloodstream, the “safety and love” hormone oxytocin in particular.
Our “own” survival-love maps were first formed in early experiences within the first 3-5 years of our life. These early relating or attachment patterns between us and our parents were imprinted in the neural circuitry of our brains, forming a set of instructions or “rules” that can endure throughout life, according to Dr. Daniel Siegel.
This transmission of sensory data also formed our earliest sense of self as separate from our parents. As we developed, this pool of data largely formed our self-concept, even though we carried a lot of our parents’ stuff mixed in with our own.
Memories of when and what activated our body’s “fight or flee” system received special attention from our subconscious mind, which is in charge of early survival-love maps, among other similar processes, such as the formation of habits and memories. Whenever our human parents were upset or anxious, for example, regardless whether their anxiety was directed at us, or some other person or event, this likely activated our own survival response. The brain is in its most alert state when the body’s survival response, or “fight or flee” activates.
Mostly subconscious, these often limiting “rules” tell our brains how to relate to those closest to us, for example, how to get quick-fixes of love to survive. They can endure a lifetime, and tend to become particularly rigid in trauma.
Why “early survival-love maps” no longer work?
Literally, early survival-love maps allow children to subconsciously distort their experiences and to create illusions instead, whatever it takes it seems — for them to feel the level of emotional safety they need, with regard to their hardwired impulses to feel loved.
This map consists of a set of rules our brain learned to follow that was shaped directly by our early experiences as children. Subconsciously, we “decided” or “learned” certain rules that best ensured we would receive some measure of “good feelings,” albeit quick-fixes, by releasing certain hormones in our bloodstream.
At some point in adulthood, this map outlived its usefulness to us. No longer the solution, it became part of the problem instead.
Unless we break free of our dependency on these “early survival-love maps” in adulthood, they take charge of our mind and body, as follows:

• They block us from connecting inwardly to get to know ourselves and others intimately.
• They come to our (emotional) rescue by activating our protective defense strategies.
• They keep us thinking that we are dependent on others to love and value us before we can feel loved and valued.
• They persuade us to rely on (addictive) sources outside of ourselves for safety, strength and happiness.
• They hijack our efforts to remain calm, confident, centered when we feel stressed or triggered.
• They treat us as if we are more vulnerable than we actually are, like an overprotective parent who decides what’s best “our own good.”

In short, early survival-love maps block the formation of healthy intimacy and relationship bonding in adulthood.
Nevertheless, it’s interesting to ponder why nature would make illusions part of the plan in childhood.
Make no mistake, it’s a deliberate process.
Every human being has universal strivings to matter and feel valued in relation to life and others. In order to survive, a small child must attempt to fulfill a task that is, truthfully speaking, impossible to achieve, even in the best of family circumstances!
How do we make sense of this phenomenon?
Relationships in life follow formulas as precisely as the field of mathematics. One of these rules of nature is that life is not about the destination; it’s about the process.

Life is about the journey, and not the destination. It’s about showing up, with a heart open to learn to love.

Nature’s plan has never been about getting our parents and others to unconditionally love us; and rather about the lessons, and what we learn about ourselves and life, along the way.
Now, as an adult, it’s a matter of who you want to put in charge of the power you have to make life-shaping choices. Will it be you as a conscious agent and choice maker of your life – or your subconscious survival-love map?
Emotional pain is part of life.
The good news is that pain is more of an asset than a nuisance. It is a vital teacher and guide, alerting you to pay attention, or signaling you what works and what doesn’t work to help you do more than merely survive — also thrive.
There’s more good news. Human beings are resilient! The human brain has a capacity, known as plasticity, which makes it possible for you to heal and change limiting patterns throughout life.
If you are alive, with most of your faculties intact, regardless your childhood experiences, you have all you need, inside, to create and to live a vibrant life.
Whereas the most compelling principle of early childhood is “to matter is to be loved,” a distinctly different principle operates in adulthood. More on this and the “Later Task of Life” in an upcoming post!
In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you, your thoughts, insights, experiences!
RESOURCES:
Damasio, Antonio (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. NY: Pantheon Books.
Brown, Brene (2010). The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You. NY: Hazelden Publishing.
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. (2011). The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest For What Makes Us Human. NY: Norton & Company.
Siegel, Daniel J. (2010). Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation. NY: Bantam Books.