”How to Stay Sane” - Philippa Perry (2012)
Despite this huge variety, and despite the proliferation of defined disorders in successive editions, these definitions fall into just two main groups.
In one group are the people who have strayed into chaosand whose lives lurch from crisis to crisis; in the other are those who have got themselves into a rut and operate from a limited set of outdated, rigid responses. Some of us manage to belong to both groups at once.
The solution to the problem is “a very broad path, with many forks and diversions, and no single ‘right’ way.”
This book is about how to stay on the path between those two extremes, how to remain stable and yet flexible, coherent and yet able to embrace complexity. In other words, this book is about How to Stay Sane.
There is no one size fits all solution.
For each person who needs to learn to trust more, there is another who needs to experiment with more discernment.
I want to suggest a way of thinking about what goes on in our brains, how they have developed and continue to develop. I believe that if we can picture how our minds form, we will be better able to re-form the way we live.
Plato compares the soul to a chariot being pulled by two horses. The driver is Reason, one horse is Spirit, the other horse is Appetite. The metaphors we have used throughout the ages to think about the mind have more or less followed this model. My approach is just such another version, and is influenced by neuroscience in conjunction with other therapeutic approaches.
Three Brains in One
The brain is three different structures, which, over time, come to operate together but yet remain distinct.
The Brain Stem. This is the reptilian brain. It is operational at birth and is responsible for our reflexes and involuntary muscles, such as the heart.
The other two structures of the brain are the mammalian, or right, brain and the neo-mammalian, or left, brain. Although they continue to develop throughout our lives, both of these structures do most of their developing in our first five years.
How our brain develops has more to do with our earliest relationships than with genetics; with nurture rather than nature. If we were nurtured by, say, a wolf instead, then our behavioural patterns will be more wolf-like than human.
In our first two years, the right brain is very active while the left is quiescent and shows less activity. However, in the following few years development switches; the right brain’s development slows and the left begins a period of remarkable activity.
Emotional regulation has a firm foundation in the neural pathways laid down in the mammalian right brain in our early years.
The right brain not only develops first, it also remains in charge. With one glance, one sniff, the right brain takes in and makes an assessment of any situation.
The foundations for our personalities are already laid down before the left brain can influence it with logic and language.
You may be aware of the influence of both what I am calling the left and the right brains when you experience the familiar dilemma of having very good reasons to do the sensible thing, but find yourself doing the other thing all the same.
Around about the time we are two, our brains will already have distinct and individual patterns. It is then that our left brains mature sufficiently to be able to understand language.
We become able to begin to use the left brain to put into language the feelings of the right.
However, if our caregivers ignore some of our moods, or knowingly or unknowingly punish us for them, we can have trouble later, because we will be less able to process these same feelings when they arise and less able to make sense of them with language.
Although it is too late to have a happier childhood, or avoid a trauma that has already happened, it is possible to change course.
Introjection
Psychotherapists use the term ‘introjection’ to describe the unconscious incorporation of the characteristics of a person or culture into one’s own psyche. We tend to introject the parenting we received and carry on where our earliest caregivers left off – so patterns of feeling, thinking, reacting and doing deepen and stick. This may not be a bad thing: our parents may have done a good job. However, if we find ourselves depressed or otherwise dissatisfied, we may want to modify patterns in order to become saner and happier.
There is no foolproof prescription.
In every successful course of psychotherapy, I notice that change happens in four areas:
(1) Self-observation
(2) Relating to others
(3) Stress
(4) Personal narrative
Self-Observation\
The unexamined life is not worth living.
The continuing development of a non-judgemental, self-observing part of ourselves is crucial for our wisdom and sanity.
It is to stand outside ourselves, in order to experience, acknowledge and assess feelings, sensations and thoughts as they occur and as they determine our moods and