Does life seem like a high school cafeteria sometimes?
It’s not your imagination. The human brain wires itself in youth, so we all see the world through a lens built in adolescence.
That lens doesn’t make sense from the perspective of adult logic, but it makes perfect sense when you know how mammals mate. We have inherited the brain system that motivates animals to seek mates as if their life depends on it.
Animals are incredibly picky about who they mate with. They look for traits that promote the survival of the young, according to biologists. That means they’re often competing for the same individuals. I was shocked to learn this, and wished I had known it sooner.
An animal’s ability to compete depends on a strong body and strong social alliances. Natural selection built a brain that rewards you with good-feeling chemicals when you do things that give you the appearance of strength and build your social alliances. This is why we humans have such strong feelings about these things.
Animals don’t know what genes are. They compete for desirable mates because it makes them feel good. We have inherited a brain that rewards us with happy chemicals when we do things linked to what biologists call “reproductive success.” Any setback in your mating quest triggers threat chemicals because it threatens the survival of your genes.
You don’t intend to think this way, but our conscious thoughts do not control our neurochemicals. They’re controlled by brain structures we’ve inherited from earlier mammals, like the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus, pituitary, and other structures collectively known as the limbic system. Animals can’t talk, so your mammal brain can’t tell you in words why it releases a chemical. This is why we’re so mystified by the things we do to feel good.
Neurochemicals work like paving on your neural pathways. This wires us to turn on good feelings fast in situations that were linked to them before. We turn on bad feelings fast in situations that sparked them for us before. We’re not aware of doing this, but we use the pathways we have because the electricity in the brain flows like water in a storm, finding the paths of least resistance.
Your biggest pathways build when you’re young because that’s when we have a lot of the highway-building material called myelin. Myelinated neurons are so efficient that we rely on them for life, without consciously intending to.
So whatever made you feel good when you were young wired you to seek good feelings from that. This is why we flow into behaviors that promoted our “reproductive success” long ago, and expect it to feel good. And it’s why we have such strong feelings about our appearance and our social alliances, without consciously caring about “reproductive success.”
Your verbal brain thinks it’s the showrunner, but it’s just the narrator. It tries to explain your big surges of emotion, and since it doesn’t know how you create them, it jumps to the conclusion that your feelings are caused by others. And it accepts explanations that are popular with others, like the theory that bad feelings are evidence of something wrong with you and wrong with society. You are better off knowing the basic biology.
Nothing Is Wrong
When bad feelings turn on, it seems like a crisis because threat chemicals are designed to make you feel that way. Your verbal brain tries to help by finding “evidence” of the crisis. That just sparks more bad feelings and you can end up in a cortisol spiral. Instead, you can remind yourself that your brain evolved to promote survival, not to make you happy.
You may say, “I don’t care about the survival of my genes!”
But when you have strong feelings about something, look for the link to your reproductive success. You will find links to your appearance and social alliances in high school, as much as we hate to admit this.
The mammal brain also has a strong response to anything that affects the survivability of the offspring. This is why people stress about tiny ups and downs in their kids’ lives. They’re not consciously trying to promote the survival of their genes, but their mammal brain sees it that way. Our ancestors tried to have as many kids as possible, but modern humans pour all of that survival energy into fewer children.
Fortunately, you have the power to redirect your electricity into new neural pathways.
But it’s hard. It’s like trying to divert a river into a soda straw. We have billions of extra neurons ready to respond in new ways, but the electricity in your brain doesn’t want to flow into undeveloped neurons. It takes your full attention to activate them. You can’t do anything else while you’re trying out a new thought or behavior. This is why people stick to old responses that do not really serve them.
You may not be aware of your power to redirect your electricity. You’ve been flowing into your big pathways all your life, and they create the sense that you know what is going on. When you explore the backroads of your brain, you feel lost.
Those old roads lead to good feelings sometimes, and bad feelings at other times. When you feel bad, you don’t know how you created the feeling, so it’s tempting to see it as a fact. You blame external forces because it’s so hard to see how you’re creating the response internally.
If you activate a new pathway repeatedly, it develops and the electricity starts to flow. Repeat it for six weeks and it becomes your new normal. So choose the new behavior or thought pattern you’d like to have and repeat it every day consistently.
The best place to start is with self-acceptance. Accept the fact that we’re all wired in youth. We’re all eager to do things that spark our happy chemicals. We all have a mammal brain that turns on our chemicals for reasons that are hard to make sense of. We’re all looking for healthy ways to stimulate our happy chemicals, with a brain that evolved to focus on “reproductive success.”
Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with us. We’re mammals!
Loretta Breuning, PhD, is Founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay. She is the author of many personal development books, including Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Endorphin Levels.
The Inner Mammal Institute offers videos, podcasts, books, blogs, multimedia, a training program, and a free five-day happy-chemical jumpstart. Details are available at InnerMammalInstitute.org.
How does the human brain's wiring from adolescence influence adult behavior?
