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My TRIUNE BRAIN. Come on, Dude... · Mental Health and the Mission of the Church

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, everybody.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I'm a little bit late.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I actually got caught up uh kind of uh studying or getting into what we're gonna talk about, and uh I lost track of time.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry about that.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I do enjoy this stuff and enjoy uh the opportunity to share it with you.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, what we're gonna talk about today, I've been dancing around it almost like teasing you with it for a while, is the triune brain.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for some of you, this is probably gonna seem a little bit strange, um because it's it's it's it's kind of research driven, it's science-driven, and um I could I I could say a whole lot about that, the church's war with science, which we need to grow up and realize that God's not afraid of science.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: But that's another subject for another time.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I have found over the years, working with people, my own journey, uh some of the struggles and challenges that I've had, that it's helpful to understand, at least have a basic, fundamental understanding of how the brain works, because the brain affects everything.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like the dumbest understatement you could ever make.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: The brain affects everything.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, how I learned this is working with people and doing the spiritual stuff, doing some of the counseling stuff that I'd learned, and and and realizing that in some situations it just didn't solve the problem.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that led me to you know continue to read, continue to think, pray, study, seek God, and and and and and eventually it led me to the brain itself.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna walk through talking to you about your triune brain.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this, in and of itself, the information is not gonna be like, ooh, I'm set free, but it's gonna help you possibly uh manage your life better, understand your life better, and the people around you, and um and possibly help you find ways to um enjoy life, freedom, etc.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I found it helpful in my studies to think of the brain, and this is based on research and articles I've read, um, but I found it helpful to think about the brain as three cooperating but competing parts.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is you'll see as we as we keep going here, but the the brain inside of the mother develops in stages.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna read some of this and uh add lib a little bit.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you might say from the bottom up, back here in the back, up into what the part of the brain that only we humans have, and uh the emotional brain, the the the brainstem develops inside the mother, the emotional brain develops during the first six years of life, and then the thinking part of the brain that only human beings have developed to the place that it is, uh, develops after that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some people say it's not fully developed until you're 25.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: How about that?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we're giving young people decision power at ages where they're absolutely not prepared to make those kinds of decisions.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right, three parts of the brain.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about them.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, you know, only because it's sticky and easier to remember, we call the lizard brain.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And again, a lot of this is based on uh people that believe in evolution.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a problem with that.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't want to get into it right now, but we may do an episode on that later.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: But um, it's the part of your brain that's right above your spinal cord, connects to your spinal cord and the rest of your brain, and it has an influence over all the functions going on inside of your body.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It uh it regulates breathing, eating, sleeping, your sleep cycles, crying, your your waste handling, urinating, defecating, all that kind of stuff.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's kind of like it's kind of like this control center that keeps you alive and keeps all your functions working.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: It also controls, and this is pretty interesting, what you might call your energy levels.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And um, what that means is like because it controls breathing and all these other functions, it controls how how rested you feel, how engaged you feel, or you know, run, etc.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: All the kind it it regulates kind of like an air uh heating an air system, but much more involved and complicated than that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The key to this, the brainstem is it's it's foundational to life and everything about life.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right, most psychological problems uh are related in some way to the bodily functions.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Again, which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you have imbalances in your body that cause psychological problems, or is it possible to live in such a way that you, in a sense, dishonor the way God meant for the body to be treated and create body problems?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's adrenaline addiction, uh ignoring the Sabbath and things of that sort can cause, you might say that's a spiritual problem, a soul problem that creates a body problem.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um hope I'm not getting too complicated.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if if this freaks you out a little bit, just hang around for a few weeks because we're gonna build on this and talk about this.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the best way, one of the best ways to talk about how uh the lizard brain, the brain stem, can be affected and effective in your behavior is trauma.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma can, since the lizard brain's function is to protect you to some degree, mostly internally, bodily function, but also externally, um it becomes involved in trauma.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, it it becomes involved in determining what's dangerous and how to respond to it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that'll make more sense here in just a minute, or if we can't get to it today later as we talk about it.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard probably lately, it's kind of a buzz topic out there, that the body has a memory.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And some of that, not all of it, but some of that has to do with what we call the lizard brain.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that's the first part.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Second part is the emotional brain.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, this is what we call the limbic area.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And some people combine the two when they talk about what I teasingly call the lizard brain.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the this part of the brain is just above the other part, and it starts developing the moment the baby's born.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the child starts developing its emotional constancy, state, reactions, etc., uh, when it's born, according to research.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's interesting: how that emotional regulation center develops is depends to a large degree on the child's experience.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's things like attachment and other things that come into play.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Genetic predisposition, in other words, did it inherit anything from mom or dad or whatever that has predisposed it to certain responses or capabilities, and um, and the temperament of the environment that it's in.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Important thing to really get, because we're gonna build on this later, and this is really important for some of you in what you deal with, is between the lizard brain and the limbic system, the emotional brain, and the way they work together, they're responsible for danger identification and response.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just simply like to call it the threat detection center.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna do a lot with that because the threat detection center and its status, condition, and general operating has a lot to do with uh anxiety, obsessive, compulsive, and things of that sort.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: And um anger.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna come back and talk more about that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But again, part two of your brain is the emotional center.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um we're gonna talk more about that as we as we get forward.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they've done a lot of, gosh, they've studied this stuff and come up with some really, really helpful stuff.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is where some of your, well, if you've heard about serotonin, this is where some of the information about serotonin levels comes into play.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because your serotonin levels, again, your brain does what it does through interactions of chemicals and electrical signals.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, your chemical levels, like serotonin, determine your sensitivity to external events.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: They found that lower serotonin levels, lower serotonin levels, listen to this now, lower serotonin levels make you more sensitive and overly responsive to threats.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Lower serotonin levels, in other words, when your serotonin levels are depleted or lower for some reason, and we'll talk more about what sometimes does that, your responses to negativity, threat, etc., are enhanced, magnified, intensified.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's an important observation, that's an important piece of information.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma, trauma, trauma, trauma affects the lizard brain and the emotional center immensely.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna talk more about how that can create a hijacking situation and um and why it it it trauma is an interesting thing and needs to be treated and administered to carefully.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right, the third part, you got brainstem, emotional brain, and then we have what we call the rational or thinking brain.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Differentiates us from all other animals.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: What does the thinking brain do?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It plans, it anticipates.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's an important word.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's able to perceive the passage of time, past, present, future.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: We don't think about stuff like this often, but it's interesting if you do think about it to think of the implications on our emotional health and well-being.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: No other animal can think about the past, the present, and the future.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: All other animals live in the eternal now.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hungry now, I'm this, I'm that, I'm the other.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: You and I can think about what happened yesterday, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: We can think about what might happen, what could happen, what should happen.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the challenge, if you will, is we don't live in the moment we're in only.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: We pull yesterday and tomorrow into today and emotionally react to all of that.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you can learn how to manage that better.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a blessing, but it's also a challenge.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma can get stored in the emotional brain in such a way that the thinking brain is not able to manage it.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the thinking brain is responsible for maintaining healthy relationships, making decisions about right and wrong, is this a good decision, a bad decision, and helping to regulate the impulses from the other two parts of our brain.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, this is not freaking you out, but this is so important that you understand, and where do I find this in scripture?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in Romans when it talks about the members of our body.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh hand's a member, fingers, legs, heart.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the brain is a member, a part of our body, and it can work with us or against us in our efforts to build life the way we want to do.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're gonna do over the next weeks, we're gonna continue to talk about the role that your triune brain plays in solving some of the challenges you face.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um hopefully it's you're enjoying this and hopefully it's helpful to you.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Love you guys.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.