Understanding Executive Brain vs. Primitive Brain
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Brent: Welcome to another podcast from the Firefighter Support, peer support team. We're here today with the first time we've had four people, so this is pretty cool. We got Tyler new member of the peer support team. We have Sophie. We'll have you tell us about yourself here in just a second. Sure. And our peer team lead, Adam.
So appreciate you guys being here and being a part of this. So Sophie, why don't you just start off, just give us a little intro to you and your background and. And we'll kind of go from there.
[00:00:29] Sophie: Sure. So my name is Sophia Archibald. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I practice in the state of Utah and I support people who experience anxiety related disorders, post-traumatic stress injuries O C D.
And I was born and raised in France. Been here in the US for 25 years or so. And a lot of my work as a clinicians included working with first responders and specifically firefighters. So that's where the connection is. Yeah.
[00:01:05] Brent: That's great. And we just had an awesome training by you and you mentioned something in that, that I think would just be a good way to kind of kick things off that something that has It kind of stood out to you about our purpose in life as choice.
Yeah. And tell us just a little bit more about that. Cause I, as you talked about that was kind of, that intrigued
[00:01:24] Sophie: me. Yeah. So one of my belief in life, I think life purpose, maybe you could say is that I feel like life is meant to be chosen, right? We get to. Choose that. And we get to choose what we do in it.
And that there is actually a lot of things that get in the way of being able to make that conscious wholehearted soulful choice of what this life may be for us. It could be a lot of things, but I believe it's. We made to choose it in this, in a specific way. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:02:04] Brent: And I love that because I feel like everything we do, even on the peer support team is to help people, enable them to make better choices or to make, you know, choices that have the lasting impact on their family and, you know, just kind of grows the ripple effect from.
Each of our decisions, but what is informing our decisions and what we're basing them off of. You know, if it's off one of the storylines we talked about earlier or you know, then that has a huge ripple effect on life. And so kind of going into that with the two parts of the brain that has been the, been, maybe you can introduce us a little bit to that and then just how.
You know, I think understanding basically how the brain works again, just kind of empowers our decisions a little bit. That much better,
[00:02:50] Sophie: right? Yeah. So we can talk about that a little bit. And so in terms of decision making, I was saying earlier there's a lot of things that might get in the way of are authentic wholehearted choice things that we do in life and sometimes what might get in the way it.
It's how brain health, right? So there's basic regions of the brain that we often talk about. One is a primitive brain. Another one is the executive brain. In terms of the primitive brain, we are referring to the parts of the brain, the regions of the brain that are really close to the brain stem.
Everything that is. What we say we call subcortical. So when we look at the picture of the brain, we see the outer layers, the folds of the brain. That's usually what we see when we look at pictures. We Google and we pull up a picture and we see the folds of the brain. That is those are another subcortical regions connected too.
The permeable. Primitive brain. The primitive brain regions are beneath that, underneath that folds that we call the neocortex. So the primitive brain are regions connected to what we often say is a fight, flight, and freeze response. Those are very important functions that. Should be coming online and very important for our survival.
And so we want to be aware that that should be working, that should be coming online, and that there's times when that is not necessary anymore. And so that other part of the brain then should be Taking the lead and engage and inform our decisions. And so when there isn't danger anymore that the primitive brain doesn't need to be engaged, then we are looking for another part of the brain that's more an executive functioning part to engage and be active.
When we are making certain decisions. So, those two regions are really important. It's not about a right or a wrong one. It's about the function and what we're needing to do in the moment and what is helpful for life, right. Decision making.
[00:05:20] Brent: Yeah. Thank you. And Adam, Tyler, jump in here. Cause I, I remember the first time I heard about those two pieces just.
Kind of blew my mind for a minute. Just, and just being able to categorize and organize kind of how the brain works, like immediately became helpful for me in all aspects, like from relationships to work to everything. And just understanding those two things. What kind of effect did it have on you guys and especially Tyler here, maybe for the first time today?
Yeah. How did, what were your thoughts and takeaways from just kind of. Laying the brain out there and showing these, those two functions? Well, I mean, like,
[00:05:57] Hammond: I've heard the fight or flight or stay and play, you know, res terms before, but I always kind of considered that in a way of like, somebody's initially like trying to hurt me or like I'm in like a sporting event and that I have that fight or flight response and then when I'm sleeping is the stay and play kind of thing.
But to think about it in. Terms of like how we respond to outside sources, how our brain reacts with those fight or flight responses was super interesting to me. Just to kind of see like, okay, you know, after a traumatic call or something that, that happened, you know, your brain is responding appropriately in a fight or flight response.
You know, and we learned about today the mine shielding. Right. How to get the brain to do, be come into that stay and play and make you think more cognitively about what happened, what you, things you can control, things you can't, story lining, you know, stuff like
[00:06:57] Brent: that. Yeah, I think you hit on a really good point cuz if nothing else, I think if just understanding those two things.
Gives you so much more intention with how you think and why you're doing things, even if you don't understand all the details and aspects of it. But just like you said, just understanding that you now can approach a traumatic call with that much more intention and that much more purpose trying to figure it all out.
For you, Adam, and having been on the peer team for a while and being the peer team lead, how important is it for you to see. People start to understand kind of these, some of these concepts. I think that's the important
[00:07:35] Adam: part is it's that recognition and the intention that you just talked about.
And then being able to, sorry, lemme turn this down. Recognize that all we have to do is breathe most of the time to check back into that executive function. You know, are you recognized like, This isn't really what I want to be doing right now. Like I'm on autopilot. So that's the first step. And you just breathe.
And depending on what literature or whatever, it's tactical breathing or it's whatever it is, but it's just breathing, you know? And then
[00:08:04] Brent: firefighters like tactical, it sounds so cool. It sounds way cooler,
[00:08:07] Adam: right? But you know, that's the key. And so I think as a department we're getting way better at recognizing some of that, you know, and it's just continued training to help us recognize in ourselves like.
You know, why right now, why am I kind of going down this rabbit hole? Why am I, whether we call it storylining or whatever it is, you know, and you just, you take that breath and you're able to, no, I'm good. I'm gonna keep doing that. Or like, you know, I'm going down a trail right now, I don't really like, you know, and it's interfering with being able to get over that call or be nice to my wife or I'm yelling at the kids or whatever it is.
Like, what's going on? You know, and just that breath, and it's that key, is that breath. And it's super simple. But it's really important too. I think that's probably, from my perspective, probably the more important part that we're trying to get out to everybody, just to
[00:08:56] Brent: understand that. Yeah, and I think going back to what Sophie said, it's recognizing you have the power to choose, right?
When you recognize that, oh, I'm going off these certain directions, I have the power to choose to change directions or to pause or to. You know, I don't have to be at the mercy of my emotions or the circumstance of the event. Yeah. It's a pretty
[00:09:19] Adam: powerless feeling if you feel like you don't have control.
Right. And that's a place where people can find themselves pretty easily sometimes if you don't take that time to kind of. Examine your feelings or your emotions. You know, that's something that we talked about too, is thought labeling and all sorts of different tools that, that we have if you've learned how to use them.
But the most basic one is just breathing, you know, and then being able to kind of bring yourself back. And sometimes we don't, it feels better not to bring yourself back. Just to be in that moment. It's not healthy necessarily, but it feels better in that moment. And I,
[00:09:56] Hammond: sorry. I think it's easier. Yeah.
You know, to not consciously be like, okay what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? Let me just pause and think. It's easier just to react right to your situations.
[00:10:09] Adam: Well, and that's what we're trying to do. We're reactive people, that, that's literally what we do. We're presented with a situation and we react to it through our training, through everything else.
We had to stop. And take the time to like, think through every little thing that we would do. Sometimes we have to do that and somebody has to do that, but for the most part, we're very reactive and we're really good at that. But there's a time that we have to like slow it down and not only react to everything.
Right. And that's kind of the key.
[00:10:37] Brent: Yeah. One, I like something you pointed out, Sophie is, and you know, it's something that actually hit me a little bit harder today during the training is that sometimes I feel like we put the primal or the primitive brain in like a negative light, but Right.
We have to have it, like, the very reason we're alive is because we have it, right? We have that ability to think primi and survive. And so it's just about keeping the executive brain and the. Primitive brain in harmony or balance. Right. Right. Maybe talk to us a little bit about what happens when those get outta whack and what are some of the symptoms and things people will start to recognize if okay, those two functions are not working together properly, or one's way over working or whatever.
[00:11:20] Sophie: Yeah. I think one of the ways that we see that we're balanced that way the brain is function is Disorganized, I would say we start hearing a loved ones give us certain feedback, right? So, there's all these different ways that our loved ones remind us that we are not in Very skillful.
It could be maybe we're, they remind us that we're irritable and or we disengage and we either fall into some addictions and avoidance and just and so some of the main signs are that they're like, our loved ones are really good at giving us a little bit of a clue that we're. Going off track.
And then some other signs are like I was starting to mention about addiction sometimes that comes to play and some signs in the day-to-day life. I think it's about. You know, are you able to do the, what you are wanting to do? So if the goal of what you're doing is your day job is to get on a call and be effective in what you're doing, and that the planning and the organizing of what needs to get done, gets done are.
Emotions able to come and go and cuz they should be coming and going. This is just kind of the organic breath of of emotions. And so. There's a certain order that these things happen in in life. So emotions are supposed to come and go and float. There should be a movement of thought and movement of emotions.
And what we're seeing is that when, for example The limbic system, part of the primitive brain is overactive. So we know the limbic system is connected to emotions. It it, that's the emotion center in a way. We talk about it that way too. And so when the emotions either linger for too long or they don't show up at all, you know, we want actually A regular flow of emotions that come and peak and then release and go.
And then another one comes. And so there's a flow of that. And the same with the thinking. Well, sometimes it is the thinking that's Too much. So there is more thinking than there is feeling. And then some signs of that, that the executive functioning is overactive is that we may be all about doing things perfectly.
We're fixated. On maybe perfectionism as part of the equation here, that things have to be done a very specific way and it's by being done and executed this way. And that's it. There's a rigidity around that sometimes that we can see as markers that the executive functioning is over overactive.
So there should be a balance between the logical mind. And the emotional mind.
[00:14:30] Brent: Yeah. You know, I haven't really thought about it like that before because usually with like going on calls and stuff, I've always put that with primitive, right? Like, we're reacting, this is life or death. This is survi. This is literally survival, right?
And yet, now that you put it that way, like I think about after the call, like we executive the brain, the hell out of that, you know? And. Way overthink like every possible thing that could have happened or what did we do, what do we didn't do? And while that's part of our training and to review and get better, I think that probably is a source of burden for a lot of guys because they don't switch it back off.
Yes. Right. It's good to take that moment to process. And so is there some, so we talked about the tricks to get out of primitive brain into executive brain. But what about switching off the executive brain? How do you, is it the same tool bag or is there different sets of tools?
[00:15:26] Sophie: It would be the same. Tool bag, I think.
So one of the tools that we talked about earlier today was tuning to your senses. And what we mean by that is bringing to awareness of sensory experience. And what are those? They are connected to sound and touch and everything we need to our bodies failed sounds. So, we connect to the, our feet on the ground.
That's tuning to our senses. And so yeah, that would be a good example of one tool that we use for regulating regardless of what part of the brain is overactive. Yeah.
[00:16:06] Brent: Yeah. Perfect. And then kind of Adam Tyler, and is this, what have you guys seen with your crews and your shifts? For, you know, if you start to notice this happening on either side, like just getting outta whack and Sophie brought it up too, it's usually other people that are gonna see it first.
Right. And so I guess what are some appropriate, helpful, productive ways to help somebody in that situation, whether it is, I guess, a crew member or a spouse or a child to do that without immediately making them defensive or making, you know, or giving them that opportunity to. Even get worse because now you've just poked the bear.
[00:16:42] Adam: Well, I think big key was you already have a relationship, right? Because if you didn't have that and you're just coming outta nowhere and you're like, Hey, what's wrong with you? It's not super productive. But if you've already got that trust and that relationship with somebody where you can be like, dude you're not yourself.
Like, can I help you with anything or What's going on? Are you okay? You know, and just. Kind of opening the conversation. That seems to be fairly effective. You know, obviously not doing it right at the kitchen table. Usually like maybe when you're out in the bay or you're working out with 'em, or you know, you find a time or even just a text cuz we're that society now or we just text each other everything.
But I, that, I don't know. I think that's the opening of it All right. But if we haven't taken the time to, to get to know. The guys on our crew or you know, even on other crews but are in our station, you're not gonna see those little cues. You're not gonna see when somebody's not the same or they just seem down or whatever it is.
And you're probably not gonna have the confidence to maybe ask 'em the hard
[00:17:44] Brent: questions. Sure. You know? And as much as we hate transfers, like what a better moment though on that two hour-ish drive back
[00:17:52] Hammond: that, that's where I've gotten to know people the most is on transfers. Yeah. Driving home, it's been good cuz you do build that trust, that relationship.
You can maybe share experiences and stories or try and relate to them a little more in a setting where it's just the two of you where you've had that confidence where, you know, like, this is like, I like the saying between us girls, you know, like this is just between us, right? Like between us girls, you know, and it just you feel.
More comfortable talking about it in a situation where it's just the two of you. And I mean, what Adam said was, I feel like right on the head, like having that relationship to be like, Hey, you know, I noticed like you're not yourself. Like, is everything okay? And having them be comfortable enough to actually be like, no, like I was on this call and it bugged me, you know?
[00:18:41] Brent: Yeah. Well, and I think and it I think we all kind of arrive at the same point, but it's, it gets to less probably us talking and more just asking the right question. I think that's where trained professionals are the best, right? Because they have a whole library of good questions to get people to kind of get themselves out of that imbalance.
Right. Do you have some go-to. Questions or way to phrase something Sophie that we could use as we're not always the most sensitive people in the world, or tact, but, or tactful. But is there, I don't know, is there a way that, that you approach questions or to just try to get somebody to, to recognize, you know, without saying, Hey, you are being primitive and you need to change, you know?
[00:19:28] Sophie: Yeah. So, Generally speaking, what I like to do is taking myself as a Guinea pig and I throw myself under the bus often. And what I, so what I mean by that is that I use my own experience with things like, wow. I mean, if I, this is the kind of situation that would put me in my creative brain. Is that where you find yourself right now?
You know, You know, when I got a similar, you know, crisis call, I was spinning for a couple days. How about you? You know, and just being able to recognize what's happening with you. Then you can use that as an anchor to then ask questions. So if I'm noticing that. I'm I'm not necessarily in the present moment and I might be having some mind clutter and tension and I might even start with that.
Well, that's super activating, you know, just right now he is a Is that something that's going on f for you right now? And so what happened? An example that happened earlier today when I ask the the crew member, is that okay if we, if, can I interrupt you? Take a breath for me. You know, it's sometimes there is that relationship where we can say can we pause right here and just take a breath?
But generally speaking, I do use my own experience just so that I can say, oh, if wow, if I were in your shoes, I'd be right there. You know? Yeah. I'd experience that. How about you kind of deal.
[00:21:10] Brent: Yeah, I know that's that's why they pay you the big bucks. That's perfect. You know, cuz I think that gives them permission to know it's okay to feel that way.
Opens that door. And then if they take it, great. If they don't, then it's not an awkward waiting for them to answer. You know? It's kind of a very soft but effective approach. So. That's great. I think just to wrap up what's if and this goes to everybody, but if there is just one thing that you wish everybody knew today about executive and.
Primitive brain and they don't remember anything else. What's kind of the main takeaway that you'd wish everybody had?
[00:21:49] Sophie: So, what jumps out at me? We're going back, I guess to also, to the very first question that you asked me about choice. I don't think we're I think we're meant to choose and not and guide our human process.
And not being necessarily your victim to what is happening that when we're in the primitive brain response, this is an experience that's not who you are. Right? What, what can I do? This is not who I am. This is what my experience is. So that would be the takeaway to give people, is that you met to coach this brain of yours to coach and train, mentor guide, just like you would do for any part muscles of the body.
Yeah.
[00:22:39] Brent: Perfect. Love that. You know, and like I said, that struck me earlier too, just with the choice, you know, and we can choose to change, we can choose to handle things differently. We don't have to ever be just Yeah. At the mercy of our circumstance. So. Thank you for sharing that again. Anything else from Adam Tyler that,
[00:22:58] Adam: no, I like what she said about being a victim to it.
You know, like it, it's okay. And I think that's the other key too, is it's okay. Yeah. Like that's where you are right now. Sit with it. Yeah. Don't be a victim to it though. Recognize it. Sit with it, and then it's time to take a breath and move forward. Yeah. Let it flow.
[00:23:14] Brent: Yeah. Yeah. Anything,
[00:23:15] Hammond: Tyler? Just, I really like what Sophie said at the end about the, when she, when we were talking about the questions to ask and she really made it like, so, like, I have these problems and I'm feeling this way.
How do you feel? You know? Cause I think especially as you know, first responders, law enforcement, military we're very like, it's almost like a sign of weakness. To ask for help, which is super wrong, right? But that's kind of like the mentality. And that's, I feel like it's changing, which is great, but for them to realize like, they're not alone in feeling this way.
That it's normal to feel this way, and like they have help, they can get help. It's something that you know, happens and it's okay. You know, just the feeling of not being alone and having that support. You know, I think is huge. Yeah.
[00:24:04] Brent: And that's kind of how I'd wrap it up too is just that all these things that we learn about training our own brain, it just seems like it always comes back to how we're connecting with others, you know?
And it just enables us to have better relationships and whether it's crew members or family you know, and I just. Can't help but think that, you know, if I said some of these things more often to my wife, right, we'd probably be in a better place to connect more often, right? When I give her that permission or I, or give a crew member, you know, same thing.
Just let them know we're all kind of in this together. We don't need to keep this facade up. But and so with that, I think, you know, for anybody listening in today, I think remember this is exactly what the peer team here is for. You don't have to have. You know, this deep crisis problem to want to talk about this stuff.
You know, sometimes it's just good to dig into brain stuff and you don't necessarily have to have this major problem, but we're always here, we're always happy to talk. So we'll catch you guys on the next one. Thanks to everybody for being here today. Thank you.
[00:25:07] Hammond: Thank you.
