Lizard
I’ve heard of this thing, or condition, maybe, called the lizard brain.
My understanding of lizard brain is it’s when your mind pulls you back into a state in which you reside in response to threat or hunger, and I’m sure it works great for lizards.
Instincts are a good thing. They are a mechanism by which the mind protects the body by allowing an automatic response. Some things are too fast and too dangerous to risk any time thinking about. If you’ve ever been burned, you’ve likely also flinched at the touch of warmth, like when you’ve got the water running to hot from the tap, but it’s not hot yet, and you put your hand under it to test, then jerk it back because it’s north of cold.
The lizard brain isn’t really subject to conditioning like the rest of the brain; it’s too basic to learn because that’s not built for that. It’s fundamental, and binary in it’s directives, which are fight, or flight, and those are good things to do; that’s about all you need to do if you’re a lizard. Lizard brain is supposed to take over and protect the body in the presence of threat or food in the interests of survival, but it’s just a small part of the brain, the human brain, and it’s not supposed to be running the operation all the time, but, if it could think, it would think it should, I think.
But we don’t live like that, and we don’t think like that. We want. Even those of us who ritually practice detachment would rather comfort than discomfort, would rather progress over stagnation. We would choose love over fear if it were that simple.
It’s a very powerful part of the brain, that old lizard, and the more it gets used, the more circuits get wired to it, but it’s not light that is created in that connection, it’s darkness, and the first victim of darkness is reason, and by extension, trust.
The tragedy of the violation of trust is that trust is permanently linked to all good things; more than that, trust is the bridge that you have to cross in order to reach them. If you don’t have trust, you have only longing.
It’s not as if there’s isn’t a good reason why those areas of the brain have been wired together. People suffer all manner of abuse, and the system works, that’s what it’s for. In the battle for safety, it’s the blockade on the bridge, keeping it all away from you, that beautiful, vulnerable person that just wants to cross. But if the battle goes on long enough, you’ll burn that bridge because you have to, and cut those raiders off so they can’t hurt you anymore, and because you’re so tired of fighting to thrive that you accept survival, and it’s the right choice.
That’s trauma, the cognitive dissonance of a retreat from safety because what you thought was safe, what should have been safe, was dangerous, and what you believed was love, was cruelty or base need. How can one trust after such a shattering? How can one build a bridge to love when all they see on the other side are hordes of raiders, when that’s all there has ever been there?
I don’t know. I wish I did. I wish that I had some answers, I could use them right now. All I have is a theory.
In the decimation of trust that is any manner of abuse, labels are given to things for easy reference, and, in the melee, we use whatever is nearest to hand so we know what to protect ourselves from. Love becomes threat, safety becomes threat, peace becomes threat, and so on. These wonders all still exist, but can’t be seen clearly because trust, your link to reality, is broken.
How do we know what’s real? We trust our senses; we have no choice but to do so because there is no other way. If we are to extend ourselves outside of our own bodies, the same rules apply. Trust is mandatory. Trust in others.
We trust more than we think we do, which is evidence of my labelling theory. We trust others not to harm us, we also trust others to act in their own best interests to a degree that their base competence is enough that they are not a threat to us as, as exemplified by an airline pilot, or a chef, or an electrician. It might not seem like much because we generally do it without thinking about it, but it IS trust, and if you can hold that much, it’s possible that you can hold more.
In the acknowledgement of its existence, a tenuous thread spans the gap between the charred shores where your bridge once stood and connected you to what was on the other side. Maybe you walked out there too soon once, or more than once, and all fell away beneath you, but you’re here again, willing strength into that thread, and into more threads, and more, and maybe soon you’ll wonder where all these other threads are coming from, and when you look up, you’ll see that it’s not an enemy coming from the other side, it’s just a person like you, unsteady, hopeful, determined, and trying to find their way back, to love.
