Week before last, my quite girly younger daughter had the opportunity to pet-sit for her best friend’s dad’s pets, which included two toads, a bunch of fish and snails, a bearded dragon, and the dubia roaches that make up the (I’m guessing) tastiest part of the lizard’s diet. The bearded dragon’s name is Spike, and he’s kind of cute–for a reptile. Spike lives in a decent-sized plywood box with heat lamps, rocks, fake logs, fake greenery, his food and water bowls, and even a hammock. He gets everything he needs.
In the wild, Spike’s little lizard brain would hone in on only one thing: Survival. He would eat, drink, have sex, and go wherever he needed to to regulate his body temperature. He lives in the here-and-now. He doesn’t fret over if he’s going to get fed or when. He doesn’t worry about if he’s going to roast under the lamps. He exists in each and every moment as it’s happening.
We humans have lizard brains, too. This is the brainstem, that part of the brain that serves only to keep us alive. It keeps our hearts beating, our lungs functioning, and our temperatures in check. It helps us to survive. This part of our brains doesn’t worry about what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week. It’s not, for example, stressing out about birthday parties or what its daughter’s community college is going to do about classes in the fall. It doesn’t stay up fretting over the snide barbs that supposed friend shot at us. It has no thought about bills or doctor’s appointments, or anything that jumbles up the other, bigger parts of our brains.
My challenge to you is to embrace your lizard brain. Let it have the run of your head for a few minutes. No, don’t take this to mean you have to propagate the entire species by yourself. But be like the lizard. The lizard only concerns itself with what is happening in this very moment. It only responds to threats that are right here in front of it right now. So, if there’s nothing trying to kill you or eat you, then there is nothing to respond to. That threat or that worry that wants to plague your mind doesn’t actually exist, so it doesn’t deserve your attention.
This looks like pushing the pause button on the other two parts of the triune brain. This looks like letting those two parts of the brain rest while the primitive lizard brain, which never rests, runs the show for a bit by itself. So, for a few minutes–two or three or five, at least–close your eyes and be in the moment. Focus on what you’re feeling against your skin. Think of what you’re smelling, what you can hear. Focus on your breathing as the air goes in and out of your body. Taking this time will reduce your anxiety and ease your stress, lowering your heart rate and your blood pressure. In this time of Covid-stress, we all could use some of that!
