Our Brain in Survival Mode
CORNERED
Survival mode is like a cornered animal — it will do whatever it takes to survive.
When humans are in survival mode, we behave in ways that are often counterproductive to the life we want to build in the long run — this can be frustrating for ourselves and those around us. But this “counterproductivity” is, in fact, a biological adaptation to stress that functions to keep us alive.
The problem is that, in 21st century life, stress is not as life threatening as our body’s and mind’s over-reaction to it. This is like when the body’s immune system goes on overdrive and wrecks havoc on our bodies, more than the virus itself.
To manage our way through and out of survival mode, we need to first understand and appreciate it and learn to recognize the signs. The more we can notice survival mode, the more power we have to consciously redirect ourselves towards longer term aims.
Think about a cornered animal — threatened, scared, ready to attack - or a people in a state of all out war. This is the essence of survival mode.
Below and in the pages to come, we’ll walk through the important aspects of what survival mode means for our brain’s modeling process, and how that impacts our ability to develop a sense of self and relate to others.
Assume nothing, learn quickly: in battle, the state of the world changes quickly — one minute you’re fine, the next you’re under attack. The brain in survival mode doesn’t put much confidence in old models of the world, and weights new information much more heavily. The focus is learning and adapting as quickly as possible.
High sensitivity: it pays to be highly sensitive in survival mode — small changes in yourself or the environment can be very important and completely change your tactics for navigating the environment.
Shortcuts: With so much information to attend to, we tend to develop shortcuts or heuristics to process it all. Our thinking becomes simpler, less complex, more rigid. Blue is bad. Green is good.
Now is all that matters: thinking about and planning for the future are a luxury that we can’t afford. Besides, things change so frequently and abruptly, that a plan for the future today may be junk tomorrow. Your focus becomes the present, and nothing else.
Bias for action: In a knife fight, thinking gets you killed, and the fastest draw often wins. In survival mode, we train our minds to bypass thinking, and create a highway directly from feeling to action, so we can rely on our instincts to survive.
Conserve energy: All non-essential systems get shut down. Literally. Despite reproduction being a critical biological aim, in many species, including our own, reproductive systems shut down under stress or starvation — organisms tend to go into standby mode, expending only the energy required to stay minimally alive, in the hopes of surviving the drought and being able to reproduce under more abundant circumstances.
This state creates a set of “settings” in survival mode that cause some interesting traits to emerge:
Limited executive function: “bias for action” bypasses the prefrontal cortex…
Agency: creating a sense that we don’t control our own actions…
Objectification: and are just objects subjected to external forces.
Mentalization: This view limits our interest and need to build nuanced models of our own or others minds.
Fragmentation: the short timescale on which we make inferences in survival mode means we only ever reference a few data points at a time. Our identity, therefore, is based on just a few disorganized facts rather than building up a cohesive self-narrative over time.
Splitting: In survival mode, we are good or we are dead — constantly evaluating ourselves in a zero sum game — I’m good, so you’re not good; or your good, so I’m in trouble. Like in any war, it’s us vs. them in a battle to the death.
Fragility: This rapid, high stakes game forces us to engage in moment to moment evaluation of our status — are we good now? how about now? We’re constantly on the lookout for threats, making us react aggressively at the first tight of trouble.
Over the next few pages we’ll explore what these properties and their implications in more detail.
