Your Neurochemical Self

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

by Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D.

Self-Harm in Animals: What We Can Learn From It

Some apes pull their own hair out and many animals have self-destructive habits. Stress doesn't explain it. The mammal brain evolved to manage stress by focusing on behaviors that get rewards. When self-destructive behaviors get rewarded, the mammal brain repeats them. We can help reshape behavior with closer attention to the behaviors we reward. Read More

Four Common Obstacles That Interfere with Goal Setting

The first step to meeting goals is setting them carefully. Yet people often fail to do that. Here are four common obstacles that interfere with goal setting and ways to overcome them. Link your goals to your survival needs and you will achieve them. Read More

Relationship Lessons from Apes

The field notes of a primatologist sound like the lyrics of a country western song. A biology textbook sounds like a soap opera script. We have inherited the brain structures that keep animals focused on promoting their genes. Read More

Excitement and Calm In Just the Right Mix

With sincere gratitude to my readers, I wish you just the right blend of excitement and calm in the holiday season and the new year. Read More

Five Ways to Boost Your Natural Happy Chemicals

You can stimulate more happy chemicals with fewer side effects when you understand the job your happy chemicals evolved to do. Here's a natural way to stimulate each of your happy chemicals, and avoid more unhappy chemicals. Read More

Clear the Decks For a Fresh Start

Six weeks ago, I challenged myself to clear off my desk. I did it! Self-acceptance was the key, since my desk is full of reminders of past frustrations and disappointments. I re-wired myself to feel caught up and let go of feeling behind. Read More

How Baboons Choose Their Leaders

Baboons have curiously familiar ways of winning support. They share meat after a hunt. They groom the fur of influential troop-mates. They fight lions while their troop-mates climb a tree and watch. Patronage works. A baboon becomes alpha when his alliance is capable of overpowering the reigning baboon’s alliance. Read More

Partisan "Science"

Most social scientists are liberal. Their research on the “conservative world view” sifts for evidence of fear and greed while ignoring these human weaknesses in liberals. They produce "data" on liberal empathy and tolerance and ignore those virtues in conservatives. Read More

How Psychologists Promote Greed

When laboratory subjects exhibit spiteful behavior, psychologists call it an "urge for fairness." They imply that feeling deprived justifies vengeful behavior. Instead of rationalizing our mammalian urge for the one-up position, we need to understand the reality of it. Read More

How to End the Distraction That Saps Your Productivity

An un-distracted mind is the key to productivity. Distractions are easy to avoid when you have a habit, and hard to avoid when you have to think about it. Here's a strategy for building anti-clutter habits. Read More

Why It’s Always High School In Your Brain

The traits linked to “popularity” in high school are eerily similar to the traits that promote reproductive success in mammals. Life often feels like a high school cafeteria because the brain builds its mental model of the world in adolescence. Read More

Why I’m a Registered “None”

I lived in a liberal bubble where the only Republicans were played by liberal comedians on Saturday Night Live. But when my kids were damaged by "non-judgemental" low expectations, I transcended partisan orthodoxies. Surviving without a herd is hard for a mammal, but I think it's worth it. Read More

Superheroes: Here’s How To Boost Your Superpowers!

Superheroes: don’t you hate the droop that comes when you’re not rescuing the galaxy? Maybe you restore your superpowers with a secret potion, but that erodes your batteries. Instead, you can learn from ancient baboon superheroes. Their force generator (adrenaline) is in you. It will always be there if you replenish it with sleep, exercise and nutrition. Read More

Cave-Man Approach to Stress-Management

Humans have used the same basic stress relievers since we first walked the earth. This cave-man guide to anxiety shows how to put new stress-relief tools in your tool kit. Read More

Win, Lose or Quit?

Losing feels bad, but if you avoid all risk of loss, you never win. How can you stay in the game, in school, in love, at work, when your animal brain wants to run? You can build a new neural pathway that focuses on skill-building rather than score-keeping. Here's how. Read More

Good Habits Make You Feel Like You're Gonna Die

When you give up a bad habit, your mammal brain feels like your survival is threatened. Even though you're doing what's good for you, your brain tells you it's bad. Live with that threatened feeling for 45 days and you will be able to replace a bad habit with a good habit. Read More

Valuing your own culture as well as others

I learned in school to glorify other cultures and critique my own. But my ancestors came from a place full of cruelty and hunger. Learning about it taught me acknowledge the good in my world.. 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

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

more...

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.