Mind Hack: Dealing with lions, tigers and bears

Part One – The Problem With Our Brains

By Reese Ramos, Director & University Ombuds at Virginia Tech

Ever wondered why exactly people don’t like change or conflict? The problem is with our brains. No, seriously, bear (see what I did there?) with me.  Here’s the problem: Our brains crave predictability, stability, certainty, security -all those words associated with the “known” and the brain just doesn’t like the unpredictable, the unstable, the uncertain, the insecurity – all those words associated with the “unknown.” 

As a matter of neuroscience fact (full disclosure I’m not a neuroscientist but these facts can be confirmed in any reliable publication), our brains can detest change of any sort because that change can be perceived as threatening to that stability. At one point in our evolution this ability to detect change served a tremendous purpose. Imagine walking down a path we had often walked (the known) and out suddenly jumps a tiger (the unknown). Our brain would immediately then go into a default mode where a small, walnut shaped part of the brain, the amygdala, would shift all focus from the rational to the instinctual. At that point the reaction would be fight or flight. That ability to react served us well in our ultimate physical survival.

The challenge now is that actual tigers don’t exactly jump out of street corners. The lions we face now are of a different sort. Sure, there are real world dangers still in the world but on a daily, consistent basis most of us reading this do not experience daily physical danger of the type our brains evolved for. In essence, we have a lesser need today to daily tap into a resource that has helped us survive in the past. For the most part, and yes there are exceptions (food insecurities, domestic abuse, natural disasters, etc.), we live in a world that gives us quite a bit of stability. Just think, when you go home your residence (which most likely you didn’t have to physically build) will be there, and the fridge will most likely have food (which you didn’t have to hunt or gather).  And though you may have a bed that you can comfortably fall asleep in (and not worry about actual lions, tigers and bears eating you in the middle of the night) I’m pretty sure that not all of us will sleep peacefully because of the modern-day tigers that haunt us.

Our brain, evolved to help us react, treats every day modern-tigers the same today as it did ages ago. I’m talking about the tigers we create in our minds; around having enough money, around being treated respectfully by our colleagues at work, about being accepted, having good relationships, dealing with job changes, whatever it is that keeps us up at night. We might not have the same stressors we had ‘back in the day’ but there are plenty of stressors in our modern day lives. In some ways, these bears are even worse than the ones from days pass because these bears follow us consistently. Our brains are designed to deal with short-term stress (back in the day in about 2 minutes you would know if you lived or not) but nowadays we’ve got mental tigers that not only create uncertainty in our lives but also seem to stick around for a long time. Change and conflict, which is sometimes experienced at work, are great examples. The organizational restructuring happening at work will take months, the new boss who is giving you a hard time isn’t leaving any time soon, you’re reminded daily of your colleague’s rude remark daily every time you see them, your merit increase was not as high as your colleague’s. The examples of “triggers” can go on and on.

So, what happens in our brains when instability is introduced into our lives by way of some sort of threat? Part of our brain hates it. It is the unknown. It is a threat. Called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC), this part of the brain registers this uncertainty created by conflict and change as an “error”, as something that must be corrected before one can feel comfortable again. Again, here’s the kicker: the brain doesn’t automatically differentiate between physical threat or emotional threat. And this is why we don’t like change or conflict. Our brains crave stability and now that certainty is in jeopardy.

Is all conflict and change bad? No. Is all conflict and change good? No. But sometimes we resist so much that we forget that the reality may be that the lion is here to stay and so we need to adapt to the circumstances. In the wise words of the Borg, “Resistance is Futile.” So how do we tame the tiger? Just like the problem lies in our brain, so does the answer, and we’ll explore the solution in next month’s blog post.