Your Neurochemical Self

Getting real with a 200-million-year-old brain.

by Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D.

A Culture of Violence With a Gracious Veneer

Sicilians may have good eating habits and gracious manners, but they have had a culture of violence for centuries. My ancestors lived in a world that rationalized violence in the home and against the neighbors. When I hear people focus on the polite veneer, I have to speak up. Read More

Control the World or Control Yourself?

You may think the world is flawed, so the world should change, not you. But if you focus your efforts on controlling the world, you get bad results. It's easy to control yourself instead when you know how the brain works. Read More

Social Comparison: Taming the Beast

Our social radar is inherited from earlier mammals. Animals compare themselves to others because it promotes their survival. Social comparisons trigger threatened feelings that are easier to manage when you know they're a blast from the past. Read More

Don’t Reduce Everything to Nature and Nurture

You were not born with a circuit chip in your brain, and you were not programmed by your culture. You built your neural circuits one connection at a time. So before you blame everything on genes and culture, consider these unique individual experiences with depression, psychosis and obesity. Read More

Independence v. Belonging: Riding the Seesaw

When you succeed at belonging to a group, you may yearn for independence. But when you make it on your own, you may wonder if you're missing out on social bonds. Why do we focus on what we don't have? Read More

Why Love Is a Neurochemical Roller Coaster

Don't blame yourself or your partner if you're not on a happy-chemical high all the time. Happy chemicals evolved to spurt when opportunity knocks, and then sag. How can we manage our mammalian motives? Read More

Good Distraction/ Bad Distraction

Your brain has been deciding where to focus your attention since the moment you were born. Most of the time, your attention flows into your usual channels. But you can build new channels whenever you decide to. Read More

The Dangers of Self-Identifying as “Too Nice”

Deciding that you're "too nice" is a comfortable way to frame a problem. But it may not get what you want. Being too nice can even reward bad behavior. The mammal brain is always comparing itself to others, but the cortex can be open to new information. Read More

Who’s Afraid of Unhappiness?

Cortisol evolved to give you the bad feeling that you will die if you don't "do something, now!" If you do nothing in the face of cortisol, you teach your brain that it will not kill you. Accepting unhappy chemicals starts to free you from any habit you may be using to mask unhappy chemicals. You can build this skill if you can "do nothing." Read More

Your Story Is a Survival Saga

Every brain seeks rewards and avoids pain, but no one likes to think of themselves as a reward-seeking, pain-avoiding creep. So we edit our stories, sometimes gutting our true core out of them. Here are some strategies for honoring your primal self. Read More

Is It Worth Being the Beta Monkey?

A mentor who helps you climb the ladder is nice , but what if he only wants followers? What if he rejects you when you think for yourself, and you lose your investment in the relationship? You may decide that you're not cut out to be a #2. Lighting your own candle is better than lighting someone else's. But are you ready to do without the support of the big kahuna? Read More

Score! Dopamine! Repeat! Or Not

Reaching a goal triggers dopamine, but the spurt soon ends. When a high passes, the return to normal can be unnerving. But rushing to mask it with more dopamine-stimulating activity brings a cycle of frustration. You can free yourself by getting comfortable with the inevitable up-and-down-ness of the human brain. Read More

“I Thought I Could Get Away With It”

Some people believe in their own invincibility, but everyone can learn to expect trouble when they break the law. Read More

Sexual Harassment in the Animal World

Big-brained animals avoid aggression by exchanging favors. Humans seeking political office are giving and receiving favors most of their waking lives. They get good at asking for things. People often comply because they expect favors in return. How can democracy-loving primates choose a leader who's likely to respect the rule of law? Read More

Naked in Shanghai

Lying on a massage table in China, I appreciate the miracle of trust among strangers. It took centuries to build this trust and we should never take it for granted. Read More

The Urge to Be Heard at Your Core

Babies cry as if their lives depend on it because in the state of nature it does. The brain builds on each experience, so our early vulnerability is at the core of who we are. Read More

The Danger of Self-identifying as "Stressed"

You literally hurt yourself when you "lose heart." You can break the habit of stressing yourself by managing your expectations. Instead of thinking something is wrong with the world, you can do what animals do when survival challenges trigger their cortisol: keep trying. Read More

Abuse of the Nuremberg Principle

A dangerous free-rider problem is created when resistance to authority is glorified. Any time you find it convenient to break the law, you can call yourself a courageous ethicist who’s resisting an unjust authority. Read More

You May Already Be Steve Jobs

New ideas would never get launched if visionaries bent to the will of the crowd. Many visions fail, and your vision may fall flat on its face. But it's your face. You get to decide where to invest your precious life energy. Read More

The Animal Urge to Leave a Legacy

Your brain is hard-wired to care about what you leave behind when you're gone. You don't need money to name a building after yourself, or grandchildren to learn your recipes. You need the trust it takes to keep planting seeds though you may not see them germinate. Read More

Pessimists: Stay Away From Me

People pretend concern for the greater good, so why do they sound oddly happy when forecasting doom for the human race? Hell-in-a-handbasket thinking makes people feel strangely good while the predicting pandemonium. Read More

How Could I Be Related to These People?

We humans build our own operating system instead of being born pre-programmed. By the time you're seven, it's mostly built. The circuits that tell your happy chemicals when to turn on and off connect up as a young child interacts with family. This can be a painful truth, but knowledge is power. Read More

What a Let-Down!

When happy chemicals sag, your brain looks for "the problem." Unfortunately, the brain always finds problems when it goes looking. Focusing on let-downs builds neural pathways that shape your outlook on life. Ignoring those feelings is sometimes the best thing to do. They are just your brain's natural re-set after happy spikes. Read More

Don’t Condemn Your Instincts

Your brain evolved to run on autopilot. Condemning your own thought process leaves you frustrated and annoyed. What if we let go of the idea that autopilot is bad? Read More

Your Buttons Turn On Real Neurochemicals

Your ability to analyze the trustworthiness of others evolved for a reason. When the lion laid down with the lamb, usually the lamb got eaten. So the world was left to lambs that made better decisions. Animals that formed sturdy alliances had more surviving offspring, and the capacity to trust wisely was naturally selected for. Read More

Nature Gave Us Four Kinds of Happiness

The happy neurochemicals feel so good that we use our big cortex to figure out how to get more. But try as you might, you can't control your environment in a way that triggers all of them all the time. You could take this as evidence that "something is wrong," or just accept the fact that happy chemicals evolved to promote survival. Read More

The Good Old Days Were Awful

Why do people overlook the good in the present and dream of an idealized past? Today, our brains focus on social pain because there's less of the physical pain that pervaded life in the past. The social snubs in your life feel more brutal than thoughts of the plague and pestilence of the past. Read More

Preventing Corruption with Your Neurons

Human beings evolved to follow a leader. New leaders highlight the flaws of old leaders to compete for followers, but they still focus on their own interests. One corrupt guru competes with another. To get a better deal, we must process information for ourselves. Read More

Duchess of York’s Redemption Story Is Good Theatre

Princess Sarah resents the focus on her recent bribe-taking indiscretion, but she is trying to sell herself as an author of heartfelt ethics books. Can she really expect to sell people on the charity-lady facade while brushing an ethical whopper under the rug? Can Dr. Phil and Suze Orman fix this much emotional dishonesty? Tune in next week to "Finding Sarah." Read More

Don’t Blame the Politicians

When we feel disappointment, politicians are convenient targets for blame. Of course I want everyone to reach their dreams, but the government can't be in the "make-a-wish" business. Read More

Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D., is a Zoo Docent and Professor Emerita of Management at California State University, East Bay.

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About Your Neurochemical Self

You have the same brain chemicals as other mammals. Happy chemicals reward animals for doing what it takes to keep their genes alive. Unhappy chemicals warn of immediate threats to an animal's survival prospects. Your neurochemical ups and downs make sense when you know the job they evolved for in nature. It's not easy being a mammal with a big cortex.