So the dangers lurk, like a snake in the grass. Or a crocodile in the wetlands, submerged, waiting for some naive or careless creature to act unknowingly.

And so it can be, for those who are motivated to prove others wrong, that dangers lurk too, that counter-intuitively, they are more likely to fail to achieve what they so desire. This applies to athletes, for coaches, for business-people, parents, performers, surgeons, in fact, anyone who operates in an elite or demanding environment and seeks to achieve optimum and elite performance, under pressure, with the incentive of substantial rewards, emotionally charged outcomes and a burning desire to win or succeed.

To explain, let’s return to a functional explanation of the human brain, as noted in the last post. Neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean introduced the concept of the triune brain some decades ago, whereby we consider human behaviour in terms of the brain’s three significant functional areas.

The first area is the hind-brain (aka the reptilian brain). This is the survival centre, it is fully formed and operational at birth for a healthy baby, it is the seat of instinct, like a ‘black-box’ system, and for convenience, we could consider it to be a key component of the ‘unconscious’ mind. We do not need to be clever, conscious, mature or knowledgeable for this system to do its best work. However, if this system is catastrohpically damaged in a trauma event, we will die. It is the foundation of the brain from which the rest of the brain develops from birth, in a scaffolding manner, bottom up.

The second area can be known as the mid-brain, the limbic system or more easily as the emotional brain. The centre of fear, of excitement, of shame, of other emotions, of personality, and of motivation. This emotional system develops both in accordance with nature and nurture. We are bequeathed a genetic predisposition from our biological parents, a substrate that subsequently and in infinite ways interacts with our life experiences in our early days, weeks and months of existence, to build the ‘whole’ that we dynamically shape and modify throughout subsequent life.

This limbic system is also vital for the subsequent development of memory, and so increases our capacity to learn and create further ‘reinforcement’ scaffolding to support the ultimate development of the cerebral cortex or third area. The development of the cortex is largely inevitable in most humans born with an intact and healthy neurological system. Time and inevitable lived experiences will boot-strap cortical development.

Nevertheless, the extent to which every healthy infant develops to their potential as mature adults is substantially influenced by the quality of the stimulation they receive in the first few years of their young lives. While we do not need  love and emotional safety to survive as an infant (just a functional hind-brain), we do need these special mammalian qualities if we are to optimise a young person’s social, emotional and cognitive intelligence.  Accordingly, the emotional brain’s optimisation is most sensitive to the quality of its nurturing environment, and where love and psychological safety are in short supply during this critical period, ’emotional’ and ‘social’ intelligence will be compromised in due course. As the neuroscientist Cozolino has said, psychotherapy owes its very existence to this fact, being a ‘catch-up’ process for deficits of the past.

Let us categorise the three systems for the sake of further conversation and explanation. The number one system, let’s refer to as the unconscious mind, number two as the emotional mind, and three as the thinking, smart or conscious mind. For the mature human adult, we do hope that the brain achieves functional integration, with each key area and related structure contributing, in priority order, to our survival, to our motivation and to our success.

In survival mode, the 2-1 systems combine to maximise physical systems such as breathing, heart rate, body temperature regulation, mobilisation of oxygen and energy to critical systems (muscles and brain), etc,  assisted by the detection of threat (fear / anxiety) and its fast acting response in the emotional system, being the stress response known as fight – flight – freeze.  The body activates in response to fear before we often know why, and this is so helpful when survival or not can be measured in fractions of a second.

However, our number 2 system often activates ‘false alarms’. For some people, this is a common and disturbing experience. They may have an anxiety disorder. For those who do, relatively innocuous events experienced may become conditioned as threats and so activate a stress response all too frequently. In the young child, fear is learned from an early age, although as responsible parents, we aim to shield young children from frightening experiences as best we can, until they reach a level of maturity where they can better process what they perceive (saw or heard predominantly).  Children can learn, growing up in a safe, loving yet imperfect environment, with ‘good-enough’ parents, that anxiety is a normal human emotion. It is sometimes there to help and warn, to prioritise safety and related actions.

We nurture our children to better manage their anxiety. While we seek to protect them from trauma and threats to their lives and physical health, we also understand the importance of exposing them, incrementally and increasingly, to more anxiety-provoking scenarios. Like going to child-care and being separated from their care-giver. Starting school, public speaking, night-time, exams, etc. We know or learn as parents that molly-coddling them, over-protection, or being too risk averse (such as preventing them climbing trees or ride bikes)  actually stunts a young person’s brain development. First they need to be safe, but once the ‘secure base’ of the loving parent is in place, the growing child is more likely to explore their world, to develop confidence, to develop new skills, to be the best their genetic inheritance can permit. Their number three system develops to its potential, in so many ways they become so clever and skilled. This intelligence emerges as optimised memory, learning capacity, language and motor skills, problem solving and decision making, abstract thought and  imagination, creativity, innovation, musical ability, and so on.

When a human perceives they are safe, the 2-3 system combines in the most sophisticated, complex and infinite ways. This is high-ordered processing, this is elite performance, this is extraordinary achievement, and  just as often, personal best outcomes. We need emotional intelligence to be our best. Emotional intelligence is when our 2-3 systems remain connected and continue to communicate, even when we are under significant distress, stress, weight of expectation, or so want to achieve an outcome, to save a life, to save ourselves, or to win, etc. It is indeed a special human quality that some are ‘taught’ (usually role modelled by primary care-givers) and others learn as adolescents and adults. Some never learn, and continue to fail, under-achieve and ‘lose’.

So, to ‘the hidden folly of seeking to prove others wrong’.  Simply, in the context of the above narrative, it creates unnecessary anxiety. It may get us to the finals or play-offs as an athlete. More so if we are part of a team, where others can compensate if we experience decrements in performance under pressure (choking). It may get us through medical school or other extended personal objectives. However, in the moment of winning a game, winning a gold medal, or saving a life by the road-side or in surgery, anxiety can well up, interfering with our high-order processing, and creating a failure scenario. It might be a life-or-death moment, it might involve prize-money, becoming famous or a boost to self-esteem. Regardless, in the big moments, we do not want anxiety to rear its ugly head and destroy our task-focused attention. Potentially, we did not seize the moment, we missed the moment.

Don’t do it to prove other people wrong! Do it, because it brings fun, the consequences are helpful to a constructive life and it can bring joy into yours and others lives. Do it for the best of reasons, where our higher-order self integrates all brain functions in that special moment, rather than a primal response, even if only momentarily, which switches our consciousness to survival mode, triggered by anxiety.

And day-to-day folks, its just not supportive to your mental health. Enjoy your life!