Feed the mouse: using appreciation to generate inner nourishment
As the nervous system evolved, your brain developed in three stages:
- Reptile – Brainstem, focused on avoiding harm
- Mammal – Limbic system, focused on approaching rewards
- Primate – Cortex, focused on attaching to “us”
Since the brain is integrated, avoiding, approaching, and attaching are accomplished by its parts working together. Nonetheless, each of these functions is particularly served and shaped by the region of the brain that first evolved to handle it.
Petting your inner lizard was about how to soothe and calm the most ancient structures of the brain, the ones that manage the first emotion of all: fear. This article continues the series by focusing on how to help the early mammalian parts …