The Struggle to Balance Our Two Minds

Human beings are unique among animals in the need to balance two opposing drives. The drive to be autonomous – able to decide our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior - must compete with an equally strong drive to connect to others. We want to be free and independent, without feeling controlled. At the same time, we want to rely on significant others - and have them rely on us - for support and cooperation. Other social animals – those who live in groups and packs and form rudimentary emotional bonds – have no discernible sense of individuality to assert and defend. Solitary animals are free and independent but do not form bonds with others that last beyond mother-infancy. Only humans struggle with drives that pull us in opposite directions, where too much emotional investment in one impairs emotional investment in the other.

Competition between the drives for autonomy and connection is so important to human development that it emerges in full force in toddlerhood, which is why “the twos” can be so “terrible.” Toddlerhood is the first stage of development where children seem to realize how separate they are from their caretakers, as they become aware of emotional states that differ from those of their parents. They had previously felt a kind of merging with caregivers, which provided a sense of security and comfort. The new realization of differences stirs excitement and curiosity but also endangers the comfort and security of the merged state. Now they must struggle with an inchoate sense of self prone to negative identity, i.e., they don’t know who they are, but when aroused, uncomfortable, or disappointed, they know who they’re not – they’re not whatever you want. Thus we have the favorite two words of the toddler: “Mine!” and “No!”

The increasing conflict with parents wrought by the drive for autonomy endangers the other powerful human drive - to connect, to value and be valued, to be comforted and to comfort. Hostility toward their parents, however short in duration, stirs uncomfortable feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety, which fuel intense emotional distress – the classic temper tantrum. Internal emotional conflict is overwhelming for toddlers, because they have so little development in the regulatory part of the brain. As mentioned in a previous post, the primary survival function of the limbic system, which dominates the Toddler brain, is to generate an alarm. But it has little reality-testing capability, i.e., it can’t distinguish what is really happening in the environment from what is being thought, imagined, or dreamt. Reality-testing falls to the prefrontal cortex - the Adult brain.

The prefrontal cortex is unique to humans, at least in the vastly articulated form observed by scientists, and not fully developed until around age 28. Its primary function is to interpret and organize perceptions, sensations, emotions, thoughts, and impulses into a coherent model of reality. It regulates Toddler brain alarms by assessing their accuracy and appropriateness within the model of reality it has organized. It then formulates a blend of thoughts, emotions, and behavior to negotiate its model of the environment, using sophisticated tools like analysis, foresight, creativity, self-regulation, and the ability to improve, appreciate, connect, and protect.It can set goals and meet them, based not only on the drives and preferences, but on its unique ability to create concepts and objects of value. The Adult brain provides a level of self-awareness and awareness of others unparalleled in the animal world, by virtue of what psychologist’s call, “theory of mind.” That’s the ability to ascribe mental states, such as beliefs, feelings, motives, and desires, to self and others. Perhaps most important, in terms of social interaction, the Adult brain understands that others have beliefs, desires, and intentions that are different from its own. It is, therefore, able to mediate our most humane qualities, such as appreciation and higher order compassion (sympathy for vulnerabilities we do not share). It is thus able to create connections of value with other people. As a byproduct of its combined processes, the Adult brain creates the meaning of our lives.

From a survival standpoint, the gap in development between the Toddler brain and the regulatory Adult brain makes sense. The only way that toddlers can take care of themselves is to sound an alarm that will get adults to take care of them. There is little survival advantage in regulating the alarm as long as the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex is incapable of figuring out how to make things better. Because they can do very little for themselves, toddlers must manipulate their caretakers into doing things for them. Later in toddlerhood they are able to cajole with sweetness and affection. (What is more adorable than a three year old?) But early on they coerce caretakers through their greatest tool – the alarm, ranging from persistent whining to full blown temper tantrums. (We tolerate the harshness of the alarm in toddlers because they’re so damned cute and lovable.) When comforted, instead of punished, for the experience of intense negative emotions, toddlers learn that they do not have to hide part of themselves to gain connection. When connection persists during positive and negative experience, i.e., when parents do not react to the alarm by either rejection or withdraw of affection, children learn gradually that they prefer the positive experience of the connection to their reflexive reaction of “No!-Mine!” They begin the lifelong task of balancing the Grand Human Contradiction - a solid, independent self, able and willing to connect to others, to support and rely on them, to love and be loved by them.

But for many people, the emotional intensity of those early struggles to balance autonomy with connection forged strong neural pathways in the developing brain. Under stress, these fortified neural patterns – reinforced countless times over the years - lay powerful traps that all of us fall into at one time or another. The Toddler brain hijacks higher cognitive processes to validate its alarms and justify its impulsivity and overreactions, instead of modifying them with assessments of reality.

For adults in the Toddler brain, life and love are dominated by perceived emotional needs, manipulation, and occasional lashing-out aggression. Life and love in the Adult brain are dominated by commitment to deeper values, desires, assertiveness, and cooperation. In the Toddler brain, people are good or bad, depending on how we feel at the moment. In the Adult brain, we can see the complexity and humanity of other people apart from how we feel about them at the moment.

Switching out of the Toddler brain under stress is a skill that anyone can learn and everyone must master for a meaningful and happy life.

Copyright, Steven Stosny in Soar Above: How to Use the Most Profound Part of Your Brain under Any Kind of Stress 2014.