A Car Analogy
Part 3
Really?
It’s just one car?
Yes. Really it's just one car. Time to debunk the Triune Brain Theory.
BCA Holistic Mental Health Therapy defines: 1) emotions as power, 2) thoughts as direction and 3) behavior as movements. The Car analogy defines: 1)our emotional power as gasoline; 2) Thoughts as steering direction and 3) behavior as tires for movement. All of this functioning happens within just one person. Or just one car, if we use the car analogy.
However, have you ever hear about our emotional “lizard brain?” or “Reptilian brain?” This term come from the Triune Brain theory that our brain is actually three brains: a new thinking brain stacked and developed on top of the older emotional brain, that is stacked on top of an even older lizard brain.
None of that is true. The Triune Brain theory is completely false. We don’t have a lizard brain. Here’s the car analogy to drive the truth home.
The Triune Brain theory developed by Paul MacLean, and espoused by Dr. Daniel Siegal, Carrie Contey and others, states that our brain is actually three brains that developed over time. That first was a reptile or lizard brain wired for basic survival. Then a mammal brain that gave us emotions and memory. Then a human brain that gave us advanced intelligence.
Using the car analogy, first there were tires, then gasoline, and finally steering. That is true, the wheel, gasoline and Steering were all developed separately. However, the first wheel was not a “wheel car,” it was just a wheel. There is no “gasoline car” or “Steering car” While each is a separate function, they are not separate types of cars. Never have been. Never will be.
The same is true for our brain. While basic survival functions, emotions and thinking are separate functions, they are not, and never have been separate types of brains. Brains don’t work that way.
Furthermore, If you instead decide the Reptile brain is the oldest type of car, with the Limbic a newer car and the Neocortex the newest car, the problem is that all three cars have all the same car parts – wheel, gasoline and steering. Just different specs and abilities.
Saying that we have a car inside a car inside a car or a brain within a brain within a brain makes even less sense. The picture on the bottom show a brain, as a brain with different functions. Trying to define each of those functions is a brain [wheel, gas, steering] doesn’t make sense. Or, saying each of those cars doesn’t have all of the car parts a car needs to function also just doesn’t make sense.
So, why do people, smart and educated people continue to say parts of a brain are a brain? Or, we have three brains in our brain?
Well, it’s because of how we act. How we express our emotions. It’s a bass-ackwards approach to defining our brain based on how we are using it. To use the car analogy to explain the triune approach – if we drive too fast, we are using our “fast car.” Too slow and we are driving our “slow car.” When we drive just right, well that is our “just right car.” So we need to have three cars to explain why we drive too fast, slow or just right.
Now saying we need to have three cars to drive fast, slow or just right is just silly. But, I’ve looked at some recent web sites that use the lizard brain approach, and they say just that. That different brains or different brain parts are the reason we act differently. Here is a cringe-worthy recent example of a therapist trying to explain why children act the way they do with their different brain parts.
How does your child act in each part of the brain?
Now its time to find out what your child looks like, sounds like and acts like in each part of the brain states. Below are some of the different behaviors you might see when you child is in each of the three brain states. That’s why understanding these brain states is important.
HUMAN – Green Brain: relaxed and easy-going, using language, thinking, is compliant, happy to do what you ask, funny and delightful, loving
LIMBIC/MAMMAL- Yellow Brain: whining, clinging, not listening, resisting, bossy, speeding up, nervous laughing, crying, everything’s NOT right.
REPTILE/ANIMAL – Red Brain: full-on fight or flight. tantrums, kicking, biting, screaming, hitting , spitting, fighting, aggression OR shutting down, running away, avoiding eye contact, freezing, collapsing, meltdown.
I say cringe-worthy starting with the judgmental labelling of behaviors. The author expresses green brain is when you’re complaint; red brain is when you are defiant and Yellow brain is when you are unsure. Why is being complaint good and being human, but being angry is bad and being a reptile? So if someone is being insulting or disrespectful towards you, should you fight that [red-brain] or accept that [green brain]?
I say cringe-worthy because emotions are being labelled good or bad without a sense of context. If you are feeling anxious about an up coming important meeting, does that mean you are in your “yellow brain?” If you are angry about politics, does that mean you are using your “red brain?”
I say cringe-worthy because all three brains are happening at once. Such as a child being happy to bully a peer to get a toy from them, but worried someone might take it away. Or an adult doing the same, but with more cunning and skill.
I say cringe-worthy because emotions are happening all over the brain. Loving is green brain; anger is red brain; nervous is yellow brain. This conflicts with the neurological understanding that the amygdala is our emotional center, and the cortex is our thinking center.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that our one brain is capable of being used in many different ways based on our skills and thoughts and emotional power. That different behaviors doesn’t mean different brains.
We need to realize that it doesn’t take three cars to go fast, slow or just right. Or three brains to be loving, angry or nervous. The triune brain theory just doesn’t make sense. It’s time to park that idea and get a new one.
All Cars and vertebrates
have the same brain parts
