Old Brain vs. New Brain: Who’s in Charge?
Picture this: you went on a few dates with someone. You enjoyed yourself on these dates. You enjoyed the person you went on these dates with! You begin to see them as someone you want to spend more time with, and this feels good (if a little scary). You’re beginning to feel comfortable with the idea of allowing this person space in life, and so when you see something that reminds you of this person, you text them about it. Minutes go by, and then hours… and intense feelings of discomfort emerge. While you tell yourself rationally there are many reasons they have not texted back (they work an intense job, they had plans with friends that day, their phone is on do-not-disturb…) you cannot shake the negative emotions you experience as you wait for a text back. You may ask yourself: why is this simple text causing me so much discomfort? This is a perfect example of our “old” and “new” brains in action.
You may have seen a model of the brain in middle school science class and remember that on a basic level, the brain’s functions can be divided into parts (brain stem, cerebellum, prefrontal cortex…). When attempting to understand ourselves, we can conceptualize the brain into two parts: the old brain and the new brain.
The Old Brain:
The old brain’s functioning goes mostly unnoticed by our conscious selves. It controls those necessary functions such as breathing, swallowing, and the continual beating of our hearts, all working to keep us alive. It also stores our long-term memory, and can induce strong emotions. The old brain categorizes people in our lives into general categories such as someone to nurture, someone to be nurtured by, and someone to run away from… This part of our brain has been functioning throughout evolution, and is even described as our “reptilian brain”. Its basic function? Survival.
The New Brain:
The new brain is one way that differentiates Homo sapiens from our ancestors. It controls our cognitive functions (thinking, observing, making decisions, etc.). We are conscious of our new brain as we use it to plan, anticipate, respond, and create new ideas. It is generally logical, and tries to find a “cause and effect” relationship between events.
So, who is in charge? The short answer is, generally, both. In our initial example of waiting for a text back, your old brain is tapping into long term memories that you may or may not remember, for example waiting for a late parent to pick you up from school, asking a caregiver to play and being told no, or crying out from your crib and being ignored. Your old brain cannot tell this present situation from your past feelings of abandonment, so the negative emotions emerge from deeply ingrained neural pathways created in formative childhood years. These feelings can emerge in spite of your new brain’s attempts to look at the situation logically!
Your power emerges in building new neural pathways, ones that reinforce safety, competence, and compassion. This can be accomplished in therapy through gaining insight into your unconscious motivations, and creating behavior changes to redirect yourself where you want to go.
