Thank Your Brain for Not Shutting Up

The mind’s threat system is a primal, somewhat vestigial, part of the brain left over from the days of Lucy. This threat system was created when our ancestral beings lived in the open among their predators. It allowed the brain to turn on its super good hearing to listen for any cracking sticks indicating something was near. It let our ancestors run faster, be stronger, and survive the very real threats that were around them. 

To enable the mind to be ready to achieve all of these things, the brain filled its fuel tanks with chemicals. All synapses of anxiety and panic were prepared to fire at any signal with their Cortisol, norepinephrine, and adrenaline ammunition locked and loaded. It was a very necessary and intelligent design that enabled our ancestors to live. It is how we came to exist.

In 2022, the mind’s threat system is not particularly needed. I refer to it as somewhat vestigial because, for the most part, it has no purpose. When we are tucked in our beds we can trust our door locks, smoke alarms, and walls to protect us. When we are living our day-to-day lives, we do not need to be on the lookout to be eaten. Yet, there are still small uses for our brain’s threat system, when we’re walking down a dark city street for example. Or if we fall among circumstances that impede our ability to have the privileges of safety. 

Despite its somewhat vestigial status, for a lot of us, our threat system never diminished. The armory of brain chemicals never was closed and our troops of panic synapses were never put at ease. We live with minds ready to fight and flee. 

I wrote the above in my head while I was laying in bed at 3 a.m. trying to rationalize my annoying, never quiet, brain. I had already thrown my pillow around my bed, beating its fluff to try to support my head better. I had put my phone away. I had read my book. I had all but bathed myself in lavender. Yet, I was wide awake with dread and anxiety. 

My mind’s threat system was on alert simply because I was the only one awake and it was dark. Since it didn’t have any real threats to detect, but a lot of chemicals to spare, it allowed my brain to remind me of every single thing that I have yet to accomplish. I became aware that I haven’t published a book (thanks brain I know that, you tell me every day). It reminded me that I have student loans crying in their FedLoan nursery waiting for me to coddle them away from their debt status. It told me that I didn’t have a boyfriend and was approaching thirty, the time I have set in my brain to be married so I can have kids while I still have energy (I’m quite literally 26). Above all else we are still in the midst of a pandemic to which my scientific brain thought would move to endemic status by now.  It also set my back into a fiery mess so itchy I thought I dislocated my shoulder relieving the annoyance with my nails. 

In response to my lovely threat system, I canceled my most recent Amazon purchases, changed my shirt, and checked Hinge. After all “necessary” actions were complete, I closed my eyes and wrote the first few paragraphs of this essay (if we can call it that). 

I have found that sometimes remembering the reason why our brains are so vastly annoying enables me to appreciate them for all they have accomplished. I learned of the threat system and our primal brain through years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The repetition of reiterating its place in our modern world through what can only really be described as a short answer quiz administered by myself to me in the middle of the night, helped me to relax. 

While what I’m about to say may seem disgustingly annoying to anyone suffering through anxiety at the moment, it was helpful at 3 a.m. and if Gwenyth Paltrow charged 75 dollars for a postcard with it written on it we would probably buy it; Taking a moment to appreciate your brains complex system that has led to your existence allows you to connect to yourself in the present. 

When I look around the room and see that there are no predators, there are no sticks to listen for their snap, there are no berries I need to remember to forage for, I am safe. I do not need my threat system and I can try to tell it to settle down. It may take a long while for it to fully do that, that’s just my brain chemistry, but I have the power to tell it that it is not needed here. 

So, after the threat system did its job and invaded my consciousness with the predators of 2022, I thanked it and said I am okay now we can all get some rest. At 4 a.m. I was asleep.