Red Brain Blue Brain

Living, loving and leading without fear

John G Corrigan

• Publisher: Castleflag Pty Ltd
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780994604439
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership in Education

We all have two brains, the ‘blue brain’ where we are at our best – confident, collaborative and creative – and the ‘red brain’ where we become self-focused, impulsive and emotional, where we lack choice.

It seems we were born this way, but we weren’t.

The ‘red brain’ is a consequence of how we are brought up, how our society is structured and how society is replicated through our schools. We learn to manage the ‘red brain’ to a greater or lesser extent, we all know we can do that.

But, we can also cause it to fade away … and not create it in our children in the first place.

It is this insight and how we put it into practice that is key to living, loving and leading without fear.

Chapter 1

What is a red brain?

ALAN, A YOUNG GRADUATE employed in a research department, found himself suddenly flustered as the head of department approached his desk. His heart began to thump and a strange feeling began welling up inside. He thought, “What have I done?” and his last few days’ work flashed through his mind.

Margaret was a very competent deputy principal in a large girls’ school, the school where she had been a student herself. She had a meeting with the father of a girl in year eleven, a likable and popular young woman, but easily distracted in class. Margaret expected a business-like meeting and so was not concerned. However, upon seeing the girl’s father, Margaret felt a sudden twinge of anxiety and her mind started racing; she blurted out her good morning, then felt she had been too abrupt but it was too late to change it. She worried that the meeting was getting off on the wrong foot, but she could not think straight.

Both Alan and Margaret, successful as they are, are experiencing “red brain” events. Something in their environment – a teacher-like figure for Alan, a male authority figure for Margaret – has triggered memories from the past with attached negative feelings. These memories – probably subconscious – have set off a physical response that begins with an upwelling of emotion, and which narrows their focus (onto themselves), limits their ability to think and gives rise to negative self-talk. The net effect is to reduce their ability to engage fully with another person and to behave to their full capacity. They lack choice in their responses; they can only handle simple tasks; and will tend to generalise their negative experience.

As we will see, almost all of us operate in two brain states. In one, which I call the “blue brain”, we are at our best: confident, generous, receptive to ideas, empathic and collaborative, creative, motivated and productive; we achieve and empower others to achieve; we do more together than we could alone; we intuitively know what is right and we have the courage to do it despite the consequences. In the other, the “red brain”, we are well below our best. In the red brain, we lose access to our brain’s cerebral cortex – the “higher” or “thinking” brain, operating instead from the more primitive areas or “lower” brain (more on this in chapter 3).

The following account of road rage by Frank Robson is a classic and spectacular example of the red brain taking over and driving us toward unhelpful outcomes.

He won’t move over. He’s in the overtaking lane, driving under the speed limit, but he won’t budge. Assuming he’s just another Oblivious One, I flash my lights. No response. When I flash again he hits the brakes, so I back off. Then he raises a middle finger and holds it before his rear-vision mirror.

Okay, not oblivious.

A gap appears in the inside lane, so I indicate a turn and move left to pass him on that side. He swerves across in front of me then brakes again, the finger still held motionless above his left shoulder.

It’s the finger, more than anything, that gets me going. “You f---ing silly prick,” I say aloud. My voice sounds thick and strange, and I can feel a chemical fizz in my veins. It’s a weekday afternoon, I’m almost home and have no reason to hurry, yet it suddenly seems imperative that I show this idiot a clean pair of heels.

But each time I change lanes he cuts me off. Then, just before the multi-lane section ends, I feint left, floor it and roar past on the right before he has time to react. Glimpsed in passing, he looks about 25, his otherwise unremarkable face twisted by fury. (Why is he so pissed off? I have no idea, but for some reason seeing his anger increases my own.) For a moment we snarl at one another like dogs through a fence, and then he’s behind me and we’re in a 60km/h zone.

Har! Cop that, you mad little Millennial bastard!

But he isn’t going to cop it. In fact — Jesus Christ! — he’s overtaking me, almost forcing oncoming traffic off the road, then cutting in so abruptly I have to brake to avoid a collision. He slows to a crawl and his arm comes out the window and jabs across the roof towards the grass verge on our left. He wants to fight.

These are the moments when lives change. When warnings of catastrophe — of injury, death, prison, anguish, grief, penury — should pound like drums in our brains. When, according to experts, we should “remember our common humanity” and exercise forgiveness, or take deep calming breaths, or play soothing music, or speak to ourselves in “friendly, reassuring” tones.

But, let’s face it, real anger drops its pants and moons such conventional wisdom. Depending on our personal reserves of the stuff, it can blind us to everything but the need to deal with whoever has wronged us so badly. Even when muted by fear it provides no sane plan, just a furious sense of indignation.

This is pretty much my condition when I pull up behind my fellow rager. Incredibly, all I have in mind is the delivery of a scathing lecture, but before I’m even out the door the other driver is sprinting towards me with a steel steering lock. Boom! The driver’s side window explodes, showering me with fragments. I shove the door open, forcing him back, and stumble out.

When he raises the steering lock above my head, I grab it with both hands and hang on. So does he. We stagger about like this for a while, neither of us saying a word, watched impassively from the footpath by an enormous Pacific Islander with a flowery shopping bag on his arm. Moment by moment the absurdity of the situation builds until, visited at last by a coherent thought, I call to the onlooker, “Hey mate, could you help me get this thing off this maniac?”

The big guy puts down his bag, steps across and plucks the weapon from our hands with ridiculous ease. The kid bolts, leaps in his car and roars off. Knees rubbery and heart pounding, I sag against my own vehicle, suddenly aware of all the idiot impulses that have controlled me for the past few minutes. Not for the first time, only a propensity for farce has saved me from my 64-year-old self.

Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 2018

When the red brain triggers

When the red brain triggers it prepares our body for fight or flight. We respond physically in three ways: we are overwhelmed with emotion; our focus narrows; and we get into a negative thinking cycle.

Triggering may happen in response to a person, an event, an idea or new information that challenges our beliefs. It is most likely to occur when we feel threatened in some way: when we feel unsafe, unvalued, judged, not listened to, that things are unfair or ambiguous or uncertain. In these conditions, we pull up memories of previous, similar situations. We may have lost the visual or motor aspects of the memory, retaining only the negative feeling. This first memory can call up others, causing a cascade of memories and hence of emotions.

Emotion

This flood of negative feeling is the main indication that the red brain has triggered (recall Frank Robson noticing “the chemical fizz in my veins”). To feed this swelling emotion, the older parts of the brain need resources – oxygen and glucose – which become diverted from the advanced parts of our brain via the left hemisphere into the older or sub-cortical regions of the brain. The emotion can be anger (fight), fear (flight) or a combination of both. These feelings can be overwhelming.

As we will see in chapter 2, recognising the welling emotion and allowing it to subside before it takes hold of us is an important step in being able to effectively manage our red brains.

Narrowing of focus

When the red brain triggers our focus narrows – physically, relationally and in our thinking. Physically, we lose peripheral vision and our attention is restricted to about one and a half degrees around the main axis of our eyesight. We have a physically narrower focus for attention.

We become narrower in terms of our connections. Imagine the self at the centre of a circle, surrounded by family and friends. Further out are colleagues and, beyond them, the broader community. We generally engage with and think about people across this circle. In the red brain, however, our focus shrinks back to the centre; we become self-focused.

In the red brain, our thinking becomes more backward looking, more negative, more closed, more black-and-white. We tend to justify and defend our position, and to generalise – thinking things like “this always happens to me”.

Rumination

The third effect that we experience is an increase in rumination. We keep going over and over in our minds the same situation – typically the events that have caused the red brain to trigger – and engage in negative self-talk. In the absence of anger, we may feel deflated, worthless and hopeless – that things will always be like this. We tend to feel a victim, or deserving of whatever bad thing has happened. Conversely, anger can lead to extreme loss of control and violent action; if controlled, it can lead to internal “seething” as our focus narrows and rumination kicks in.

Research by Moore and Windcrest in 2002 showed that rumination is the form of self-attention most closely related to depressive symptoms. Shannon Kolakowski, who wrote When depression hurts your relationship, points out that the vast majority of thoughts during rumination are, at best, random and, at worst, destructive; and that ninety-five per cent of our thoughts are simply replaying past events or other random memories.

Chronic rumination is linked to anxiety as well as to the onset of depression. Although the primary driver of anxiety is worry rather than rumination, when we ruminate we are more likely to start worrying. Similarly, if we worry we are more likely to fall into rumination. Rumination, then, is linked to poor wellbeing.

The more we play a scenario over in our minds, the more likely it is that the scenario will occur again in the future. For example, my red brain might trigger during an interaction with a child. If I ruminate over the interaction, I am likely to recall whatever triggered my red brain the next time I see the child – which will trigger my red brain again. In effect, rumination adds another set of memories with negative feelings attached, which reinforces the original trigger. The more we ruminate on something the more likely it is that the same situation will occur again.

Isabel had been a primary school teacher for five years. She looked forward to getting to know each new class and watching them grow in ability through the year. Isabel got on easily with most students but as she saw Jared she felt a twinge of dislike. There was something about the way he talked, sort of out of the side of his mouth, and he had an odd laugh. She dismissed the feeling as she switched her attention to other new students. As the year progressed, however, the feeling about Jared continued and she found herself being a little harsher and colder with him than with the other students. Half way through the year, she realised that the other students had noticed her attitude to Jared; some of them were picking on him and even looking to her for affirmation when they did it. Isabel could not shake the feeling of dislike that she had for Jared and recognised that she was treating him differently. It felt wrong, but she could not stop. It was clear that Jared also knew by now that she did not like him, and he was falling behind in his work.

Taking an instant dislike to someone has little to do with the other person and a lot to do with us. Something in the other person triggers a memory or response that cascades and causes us to treat the other person differently. This is the red brain at work.

Recall that the red brain triggering is preparing our body for fight or flight, flooding it with chemicals that make us ready to respond and resist injury. But we were designed to be in such a position only very rarely. In normal circumstances, these chemicals – which can persist in our blood stream for as long as a month – dissipate and the body returns to normal. With frequent triggering of the red brain these chemicals are chronically present, generating long-term health issues as well as shorter-term issues such as difficulty in sleeping.

Having a red brain that we do not know how to control is, increasingly, a liability in today’s world: damaging to both our physical and mental health. Our first step in managing the red brain is to learn how we can get out of it again, once it has taken us over.

Chapter 2

How to get out of the red brain I – immediate steps

I WAS IN MY EARLY THIRTIES and studying German as part of an MBA. While I was studious and excelled in class, some other students attended only the minimum number of classes required to graduate from the MBA program. In one class I found my red brain triggering when a sporty American football player – a big guy – arrived. Suddenly, I could not say anything right. My teacher, I could see, was surprised: her best student was barely able to function.

Some years later, in Australia, I noticed that Australian rules football players would often trigger my red brain – in particular, a commentator and former player who I often saw on television. I had played rugby at school and believed that the triggers dated from that time, but I had no explicit memories of how these red brain triggers had been formed.

However, it is possible to prevent ourselves falling completely into the red brain when it triggers. Using strategies to reduce my red brain triggering, I learned systematically to neutralise the triggers until I could watch this commentator talk about football without my red brain triggering at all.

Chapter 1 described the three physical responses that occur when our red brain triggers: we experience an upwelling of emotion, our focus narrows and we fall into rumination. To lift ourselves out of the red brain, we can apply three strategies to each of these responses: that is, there are nine possible things that we can do. Getting ourselves out of the red brain is like pulling ourselves out of wet cement; we need all the help we can possibly get, so having multiple strategies is essential.

Red brain triage

What can we do immediately our red brain triggers? As soon as we feel the welling up of negative emotions, we must act. We need to physically shift our attention away from the three effects that are all beginning and growing in strength. This is like a paramedic’s work on a wounded patient: the first priority is to stop the bleeding. When the red brain triggers, we need to widen our focus, stop the rumination and wind down the negative feelings.

Move to widen your focus

The first key actio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. What is a red brain?
• 2. How to get out of the red brain I – immediate steps
• 3. Where the red brain comes from
• 4. Why the red brain persists
• 5. How to get out of the red brain II – reduce triggering
• 6. Strengthening the blue brain
• 7. How we can avoid creating a red brain in our children
• 8. How to get out of the red brain III – eliminating it altogether
• 9. What this means for our schools
• 10. What this means for us
• Acknowledgements