Your Brain Is Designed To Keep You Alive; Not To Make You Happy

6000 thoughts cross our minds everyday.
Around 80% of our thoughts are negative.
Around 90% of our thoughts are the same as the day before.

“I went into a full-blown panic attack and was convinced that I was going to die, that was it – I mean – it’s always the case when you go through one of these episodes. It doesn’t matter if you have gone through it a thousand times, which I have. This is the one… I meditated and meditated, nothing was helping, I felt like I was going to faint.” 

– Carlos is a successful tech worker from LA who had so many panic attacks triggered by everyday activities such as getting in a car or being in the supermarket he could barely function and was certainly not feeling happy and fulfilled. His brain was picking up non-threatening activities as threats to his survival. It would seem that his brain was working against him, but it was following its evolutionary blueprint. 

Humans are not the strongest, biggest, or fastest, but we have managed to dominate the planet. Charles Darwin called it – the most adaptable species will survive. We became super adaptable thanks to our brain power. We got really good at looking for threats because the longer we could stay alive, the better we could fulfill our evolutionary purpose of reproducing. A threat-focused brain is essential, but it can also make the inside of our heads a miserable place to be. We all know that voice – the one telling you not to take risks, to definitely avoid speaking in front of big groups of people, reminding you regularly that you aren’t good enough in a multitude of ways.

Aside from threat scouting, humans developed more neuronal density and a sophisticated cerebral cortex that gives us our human-specialized functions such as language, tool making, reasoning and social cognition. Thanks to these advanced functions, we even developed the field of studying our own brains. A big discovery about the brain was neuroplasticity – the ability to form or reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning/experiences. This means the brain can be changed by positive and negative stimuli. Your brain is the result of everything that has ever happened to you from conception to the present day. Every life experience forms part of your operating system and creates the unique lens through which you see the world and how your threat detection system is programmed. Your Reticular Activating System is the part of your brain that controls response to all of the information filtered in through your senses. You can train what your brain filters in by paying more attention to the things that you want to see. In effect, you can create your reality. 

This means we can move away from the default threat-focused negative bias of the brain. How? Like training muscles in the gym, you need to regularly flex the positivity response. Sounds cheesy? It is a bit, but here is some science to explain it. 

Neuroplasticity requires a trigger, repetition, and consistency to wire the neural connection. The more the neurons fire together, the more they wire together to make the action default. Take driving as an example – painful at first (at least for me), grinding the clutch, stalling, confused by gears, and now I can drive on autopilot without really thinking about it. In the case of overriding the brain’s negative bias, the trigger can be gratitude, compassion, and positive thinking, which then need to be repeated many times every day. Create gratitude lists, do short compassion meditations, look for the humor in a situation, visualize what you want to create in your life and how that would feel (your Reticular Activating System, then look for information to support this). It isn’t about suppressing or dismissing negative thoughts, it’s about creating more positive thoughts and looking for them wherever you can. 

Circling back to Carlos, he had tried many things to reduce panic attacks, including overriding the brain’s negative bias. This is where we need to dig a bit deeper. At Rē Precision Health, we use the term Sympathetic Dominance, which means the chronic activation of the sympathetic branch of the nervous system. The Autonomic Nervous System has two main branches – sympathetic (fight/fight/freeze/fawn) and parasympathetic (relaxation/digestion/healing). We should enter the sympathetic state to respond to the threat and then return to the parasympathetic state to recover. When the ‘threats’ are chronic, we enter a state of sympathetic dominance, which comes with various symptoms: sleep issues, digestive problems, hormonal imbalance, fatigue, brain fog/cognitive impairment, muscle tension, depression, and anxiety, amongst others. There are many things that can trigger the sympathetic nervous system response (‘threats’), they can be physical, mental, emotional, nutritional, or existential. 

Physical: Chronic inflammation, overtraining, injury, impaired gut, sleep deprivation, toxic chemicals

Mental: Over-working, over-thinking, worrying

Emotional: Unresolved emotional issues, PTSD, anger, guilt, loneliness, sadness, fear

Nutritional: Food allergies, deficiencies, inflammatory foods

Existential: Financial pressure, difficult relationships, feeling lost, not feeling understood

Our Rēset programs address all of the above through education and immersive experiences with the ultimate goal of creating more coherence between the brain and body through nervous system regulation. This isn’t an ad but rather proof based on over 700 people completing the program and having transformational results to show that there is hope. Carlos was one of them. Since completing the program, he has had one panic attack, which he was able to control. He and his wife have traveled around the world, and I met them in Amsterdam, where his wife said, “Thank you for getting my husband back.”

Being in sympathetic dominance means that our brain in in survival mode, this creates a narrow focus and it is much harder to develop a positive mindset and happiness. The body needs to feel safe. Often, ‘threats’ are not at a rational level and have to be processed somatically. Just know that there are options. 

One more example from an inspiring human who completed our program through Rē Foundation. Richard works with refugees seeking asylum in Ireland. He had taken on a very high level of secondary trauma by helping these people through some of the most challenging days of their lives. Like a lot of Frontline Workers, the chronic stress had taken a toll to the point of having to choose between his own well-being and continuing to help others. He attended our program as part of Rē Fondation.

“I have had lots, but particularly two incidents that have happened at work that I have never been able to let go of. One was someone losing a family member in Afghanistan because they went to get a document for a visa to travel to Ireland, walked into a Taliban-controlled building, and never walked back out. I have carried a lot of guilt about that for the last two years, and I have never really managed to get over it. I have talked to colleagues, therapists, family, my wife, and everything. In this program, I was able to cry, let go, and find a catharsis from it that I haven’t been able to find anywhere else… A huge takeaway for me is that there are ways to work with stress and trauma that transcend language.“

Survival mode is exhausting and detracts from our true potential. What lies on the other side of your threat response?

5 day Rēset: https://www.reprecisionhealth.com/reset-intensive
10 day Rēset: https://www.reprecisionhealth.com/reset

FEATURED in USAWire: https://usawire.com/the-evolutionary-blueprint-why-your-brain-favors-threats-over-happiness-and-how-to-change-that/

At Rē Precision Health we teach tools to regulate the nervous system through education and immersive experiences online and in our bubbles of paradise in Mexico and Portugal. Our programs have positively impacted (and even saved) hundreds of lives. 

Guest stories here: https://www.reprecisionhealth.com/reviews

All information provided in our resources in for informational purposes only. It is not intended to replace a medical/mental health professional.