There are two paragraphs in Jill Bolte Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight that simply refuse to leave me alone. I wake up in the middle of the night and find myself mulling them over. They arrive unbidden and unexpectedly and show up almost daily in conversations and interactions with friends and colleagues. They are these two paragraphs I’ve written about previously where Jill describes the process of bringing her left-brain language centers back online:
One of the most prominent characteristics of our left brain is its ability to weave stories. This story-teller portion of our left mind’s language center is specifically designed to make sense of the world outside us, based upon minimal amounts of information (my italics). It functions by taking whatever details it has to work with, and then weaves them together in the form of a story. Most impressively our left brain is brilliant in its ability to make stuff up, and fill in the blanks when there are gaps in its factual data. In addition, during its process of generating a story line, our left mind is quite the genius in its ability to manufacture alternative scenarios. And if it’s a subject you really feel passionate about, either good or awful, it’s particularly effective at hooking into those circuits of emotion and exhausting all the “what if” possibilities.
As my left brain language centers recovered and became functional again, I spent a lot of time observing how my story-teller would draw conclusions based upon minimal information. For the longest time I found these antics of my story-teller to be rather comical. At least until I realized that my left mind full-heartedly expected the rest of my brain to believe the stories it was making up!. . . .I need to remember however, that there are enormous gaps between what I know and what I think I know (again, my italics). I learned I need to be very wary of my storyteller’s potential for stirring up trauma and drama.
A Cacophony of Competing Voices
Jill Taylor isn’t the first neuroscientist to recognize this lying, domineering capacity of yours and my left brain (not to mention, our children’s). Here’s a recent NY Times article by Benedict Carey describing the work of neuro-ethicist, Michael Gazzaniga:
Michael Gazanniga
In studies in the 1980s and ’90s, Dr. Michael Gazzaniga and others showed that the pattern was consistent: The left hemisphere takes what information it has and delivers a coherent tale to conscious awareness. It happens continually in daily life, and most everyone has caught himself or herself in the act — overhearing a fragment of gossip, for instance, and filling in the blanks with assumptions.
The brain’s cacophony of competing voices feels coherent because some module or network somewhere in the left hemisphere is providing a running narration.
Gazzaniga decided to call the left-brain narrating system “the interpreter.” Knowing the breed well, he also understood its power. The interpreter creates the illusion of a meaningful script, as well as a coherent self. Working on the fly, it furiously reconstructs not only what happened but why, inserting motives here, intentions there — based on limited, (often) flawed information.
One implication of this is a familiar staple of psychotherapy and literature: We are not who we think we are. We narrate our lives, shading every last detail, and even changing the script retrospectively, depending on the event, most of the time subconsciously. The storyteller never stops, except perhaps during deep sleep.
A Brain Divided Cannot Stand
And if Michael and Jill are not authority enough, here’s Iain McGilchrist offering a very fun RSA animation describing pretty much the same process concerning the dictator that lives in the left brain: The Divided Brain.
To me, the implications of these anecdotal and research accounts are potentially revolutionary. If parents could model, and children could learn at an early age, exactly how their left brain is constantly making up stories that seem to be absolutely true, more often than we understand, simply are not true. The process is simply a necessary by-product of having a split brain. Imagine what children’s worlds would be like as adults when they learned only to rarely believe what they think, especially when such thoughts “stir up trauma and drama” that results in great suffering. For one thing, kids would learn not to believe and not become so easily emotionally high-jacked by the things other kids (and kids in adult bodies) say and do around them.
Another implication: on any day we might deeply understand that we simply can’t readily believe or trust what we think and/or feel, good or bad, about other people. Especially if we’re worked up about what we think. Any time any of us are feeling fearful or emotionally disturbed in any way, there’s a high probability that the Inner Dictator in the brain’s left hemisphere is busy making stuff up. That’s enough of a challenge in and of itself. The real dilemma arises out of the fact that the left hemisphere is SO adept at getting us to A: take the BS it makes up seriously; and B. absolutely believe it to be true! How does one deal with an Inner Dictator as crafty as that?
I put a question mark in the title of this essay because … suggestions we can readily apply are not only welcome, but desperately needed in each of our personal worlds!
Great post and comments. I too came here from Greenland’s blog. I would like to bring up E. Tolle’s “A New Earth” because that book attempts to craft a schema in which we come to know this left-side brain, see it for what it is, and overcome it (if in fact it needs to be overcome). I very much appreciate the comment above reminding us that labels of “good” and “bad” are necessarily part of the left brain story-telling, even when we say “the left brain is bad.” The left brain is, in fact, not bad. Though it does like to put things into categories and a narrative of good v. evil. In the end, this is simply the left brain doing what it does best. The answer is perhaps to see the thinking for what it is, and not identify this thinking as emanating from or comprising our core self.
I just arrived here at the suggestion of Susan Kaiser Greenland. Lots of good stuff here *IF* we also recall Mark’s choice of words, “dictator… lying… domineering,” is equally the product of his inner interpreter.
Probably the worst thing I could do for my students or patients is to suggest they distrust everything originating in their perception. While the distortion, deletion and generalization of our left brain has its downsides, it’s also the source of our ability to be logical, linear, utilize language, approach (rather than avoid), openness, and significantly associated with positive affect.
A key here, I would suggest, is developing our mindful observer, rather than mindlessly accepting — or rejecting — the product of our inner interpreter.
Robert Scheinfeld’s take on this “inner dictator” and the lies that govern our lives as we play the Human Game is by far the most compelling, entertaining, and hopeful that I’ve found. I can’t recommend him enough, though you WILL have to put on your thinking cap and translate his philosophy into parenting innstead of business. If anyone has read his “busting loose” book or attended his seminars, please contact me–I’d love to discuss this further! It’s fascinating!!!
Ah!…All too often, Left Brain dances to Amygdala’s tune. I know it well.
Namaste
Graham
I love this post – it seems for very good reason that the left prefrontal cortex does this story telling: to help us make sense of our world and to keep us feeling safe and loved and ok about ourselves.
I have been practicing Zen Buddhist mindfulness for many years and am slowly shifting my automatic identification with those stories and feelings and my belief in their “truth”.
A big part Zen meditation is about being fully present to and aware of these stories and the feelings that they lead to (or arise out of). We may then find some space, some stillness, between this present awareness and following the impulse to act.
Cultivating this little “window of presence” before lurching into action can give us the possibility of acting more skillfully; to act in ways that are less likely to cause suffering to ourselves and/or others.
Steve Brown
I liked this article (an the video linked to it). I am tryin to read it while also surveying my three kids on an inflatable slide (don’t worry – lots of padding)!). Two things came to mind:
1) Don Miguel Ruiz writes about the Mayan philosophy of the “lie” and “dream” we live in. Well, other cultures and religions do as well, but that is the first one I thought of upon reading your parenting suggestion. His writing elaborate on how we all live in deception and suffer poisons that we need not inflict on ourselves. That ties in to the finding on the “story-telling” mode of the left brain in a very the-matrix-like way.
2) I do caution (before telling people not to trust what the mind tells us about others) that sometimes our instincts are correct. Other people also concoct stories and falsehoods around them. As a woman and mother, I have relied on instincts to protect myself from hidden sides of people. Without going into personal details, I can think of more than one occasion where my first instincts about someone’s character proved true later (even when I tried to shut-out the “stories” and dismiss those thoughts). Living in a world where other people project falsehoods is tricky business. How does that play into it?
Okay – I promised to join them on the slide. Off I go:)
My hunch is that if love works out, especially in the very beginning of life, thinking does not go into overdrive. Thus the best place we can place our resources as a society is in supporting parents through pregnancy, birth and the first eighteen months of life in the service of better health, less crime and more compassion and well-being for all of us.
But as for life as most of us are currently, albeit not always consciously, constructing it, once thinking has set off on its race to nowhere, perhaps we are well-served to honor and understand the left brain’s ceaseless story-making as a deep need to prove ourselves in the hope of getting safe and getting love (with the vague, albeit mostly unconscious, notion that if we were safe, loved and good enough then we would be sweet and giving and kind and generous and trusting…)
Maybe most attempts to prove ourselves belie our fear that we are not good enough; maybe the lion’s share of attempts to get safe belie our fear that we are not, and cannot, be safe; perhaps many of our attempts to get love distill down to the fear that we are not lovable.
If we are conscious enough to engage in this discourse, we are conscious enough to choose giving love as our motive (i.e. doing our best to intuit what others think, feel and need, and then doing our best to behave in a loving manner; listening here, protecting there, feeding here, holding boundaries there, etc.).
If we consciously re-program ourselves to give love (rather than get love, or prove ourselves) we leap into a deep sort of relating that discovers our truer Self in the group (including so-called “nature”) and liberates us to relate rather than fear, control or even unconsciously over-give.
yes, this reminds me of “The Work” of Byron Katie (apologies for hashed paraphrasing): “is that true? how do you know it’s true? how do you know that the opposite is not more true?”…..ahh the stories, the stories……
Great post!
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.– Aristotle 384-322 BC
And cartoon character Maxine advises us: Don’t believe everything you think!