How to Train Your Crocodile
We’ve most all heard of the Flight or Fight response. I think freeze is due notable mention as well. But these responses are built-in from our Caveman days and they are necessary for keeping us physically safe from harm. In the time that saber-toothed tigers roamed our backyards, this “Old Brain”, also known as the “Amygdala” or “Reptilian Brain”, was the one in charge.
The Reptilian Brain responds to intensity. It is triggered before rational thought, the kind conducted in our “New Brain” or “Cerebral Cortex”, can even have a shot at handling the situation. If we weren’t wired up in this way, by the time we’d logically determined to move our bodies swiftly out of a car passing at great speeds as we attempted to cross the street, we’d simply be HIT by the car. Enough said.
But for many of us, that Reptilian Brain remains incessantly triggered and called into action. Hot-tempered folks have a Fight response that rears its ugly head when intensity strikes. This usually means the person, evolutionarily-speaking, has the gift of language and/or a brute force that could snap most offenders like a twig. Others possess a heightened Flight response that abandons ship at the first sniff of danger in the air. Good cross-country runners, most of them.
Whatever your instinctual orientation, you want this to remain a part of your constitution because it has kept you alive to date.
We want to instead TRAIN our Reptilian Brain.
We like to have some fun with this in our offices. We ask that you buy a Crocodile that suits your fancy. A key chain. A stuffed animal. A hand-puppet…
When intensity strikes and your Crocodile is triggered to respond, you’ll feel it in your body before a single other action takes place. Most often, your heart will pound audibly. Your fists and jaw may clench. Sweat suddenly exits your pores in buckets. Something physically happens that sends an immediate message to our brains, letting us know our Crocodile is in charge.
Carry your Crocodile with you for a few weeks. In your pocket, on the dashboard of your car, somewhere nearby to keep the visual/tactile portion of this exercise within reach.
When those physical symptoms strike, begin talking to your Crocodile.
“Am I in any physical danger?”
Likely, if you’ve managed to answer, it will be “no”.
“Thanks! I’ll take it from here.”
Although the first few times you exercise this practice, your Crocodile will continue its gig… In time, and not very MUCH time, your Crocodile will begin to settle. That great logical-thinking brain, the one that always shows up a good hour and a half AFTER a crisis has passed, will begin to take control and with much more promising results.
You certainly don’t have to take this homework piece so literally, but for those who do, the new pathway formed in your brain to defer that lovely frontal lobe will happen at lightning speed. Our teachers really had something going on in Kindergarten. We like things simple, visual, and experiential.
Kim Sargent
Clinical Director
Canadian Family Health Counselling