Taming the Chimp – Living our Values, Shaping Society

Prof Steve Peters, renowned psychiatrist, (particularly for his work with Sports teams) has written a brilliant book called ‘The Chimp Paradox’, which I regularly recommend to my patients. It’s well worth the read and full of helpful and practical tools to enable effective mindset and behaviour change. In it, he teaches about the 3 main parts of the brain when it comes to our habitual behaviours – what he calls The Chimp (Limbic System – where we make our immediate responses – based on our feelings and impressions), The Computer (the parietal cortex, which stores our automatic programmes and responses based on our beliefs and experiences) and The Human (the frontal cortex, where we do our thinking and make more conscious choices based on fact, truth and evidence, usually from a place of compassion and empathy). Many times we find ourselves acting in ways which are simply responses of our chimp brain – we’re not being guided by conscious choices or values, or even if we want to, we can’t seem to overcome the strength of our chimp. The problem is that our chimp is 5x faster than our human brain. And if we also have ingrained trauma-based responses to certain situations, when we are triggered (e.g. when we feel scared or lonely or whatever), our chimp gets ready to act, checks its facts with the computer which agrees that this is how it should/would usually respond and a bar of chocolate later……. Same old cycle, same old shame…..

 

 

So how can we change these patterns? Well, we need to feed our computer brain some new messages, so that when the chimp starts acting out and checks in with the computer, the computer no longer agrees with that old way of reacting, puts a pause on the chimp and allows the human brain to kick in with more positive choices. This happens, by consciously renewing your mind by feeding your mind your core truths and values. When you fill your mind with what you know to be true and the values you want to live by, you begin to make different choices. Your computer begins to store new and different information and therefore when your Chimp begins to act out, it will check in with your computer and find that the automatic affirmation of a learned behaviour can begin to change. This has huge implications in how we think about ‘taking responsibility’ and managing our own behavioural choices. I also think it has a wider application to our corporate mindsets and behaviours which cause us to continue acting in certain ways in society (which I will come onto later).

 

So, I have some core truths and core values which my lovely wife has painted on a board in my office. I have them written in my notebook, and (now less then I used to – to begin with it was at least twice a day) I remind myself of them regularly.

 

Here are the Truths that I live by:

1) I am unconditionally loved by the community of God (who unconditionally loves everyone and in whom we live, move and have our being), my wife and a bunch of other people

2) I am seen and accepted for who I am

3) Being a husband and a father are more important than any status I can ever achieve in work

4) It’s OK to make mistakes – in fact, failure is a gift

5) I can’t do everything – limits are important and so are teams!

6) Life is not always easy and happy, in fact it is unfair and really sucks at times – pain is part of the journey

7) People may not always deserve love and may not be easy to love, but you can still choose to love them – even your enemy

8) Forgiveness is a choice and it sets you and the other person free

 

Here are my Values:

Love people unconditionally

Walk with humility and integrity

Listen with kind eyes

Seek first to understand

Encourage and Forgive others and yourself

Act gently

Live generously with extravagant hospitality

Be open, honest and vulnerable

Leak joy

Release healing and hope

Walk in peace

Be faithful

Speak truth with compassion

Embrace pain

 

If you don’t know what is true and you don’t know what your values are, you cannot line up your behaviours to match them. If every time I experience pain, in whatever form that may take, I need to find comfort in a self-destructive behaviour, I have lost sight of my truths that I am unconditionally loved, that life sucks sometimes and have let go of my value to embrace pain. However, if I accept that I mess up sometimes. then I can forgive myself, and get back on track. It doesn’t have to mean a downwards slide. This is how change happens – slowly, but encouragingly as I learn to focus on who I am becoming, rather than believing I will never break out of unhelpful habits.

 

In her brilliant book, ‘The Value of Everything’ in which she talks about an Economics of Hope (how good is that?!), Mariana Mazzucato applies some of this thinking into the realm of how we build a society based on our values. What if we broke out of some of our self-defeating societal norms and built our economy from the best of our compassionate values? I wonder how many of our corporate chimp-computer agreed behaviours might change if we really examined what we value when it comes to the way we build society, through our economics and politics.  So much of the time we are sleep walking with our eyes wide shut to the mindsets we unconsciously imbibe, which shape our corporate behaviours and choices. How often do we examine our core values or the truths that we live by? It takes determined effort to demolish strongholds set up in our minds and replace them with a renewed set of values with which we can build a more loving and kinder world. What would this mean for health inequalities, poverty, and who or what we might choose to prioritise? Without this work, however, we will continue to behave in ways which tolerate huge social injustice and climate destruction. But things do not have to remain as they are. We can change! Hold onto hope! In this apocalyptic moment, in which we are seeing the realities behind the facades more clearly than for many years, it remains time to rest, reflect, reimagine and reset.

 

 

Share This:

Share

Obesity (Part 2) – Let’s Talk About Trauma

In my last blog I looked at the complexity that surrounds the issue of obesity in our society. We have become far too focused on the individual and personal choice, whilst clouding the whole issue in shame and blame through stigmatisation. My hope is that we can talk about obesity with humility and compassion and re-frame the conversation from the all too often over-simplified position of ‘calories-in-calories-out’. Let’s be really clear as we begin to focus on what we can do as individuals, that we do not all start on a level playing field. We have different genetics, different sexes, different body types, different ethnicities, grew up in different environments, have differing belief systems and different personality types. We are different and this should be celebrated! So, this cannot be a game of comparisons. Tough though it may be for me to accept, I am never going to look like Joe Wicks! When I started to write this blog piece on how we might think about obesity as individuals and communities (given all the other complicated factors which make living well in an obesogenic environment so much harder), I thought that I would be able to write it fairly easily. However, I’m discovering that it could easily turn into a book! And so, I’m going to continue this a mini-series and write several more posts, partly so they are not too long and partly, so that I can explore the issues in more depth. The series does not aim to be the answer to every practical question about obesity, weight loss or positive body image, but I hope that it will be really helpful in setting out a way of thinking about the issues affecting us. I will look at some of the deeper causes and then some possible ways to find ways forward.

 

The Impact of Trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences

 

I think we have to start here.

 

In the 1980s, Dr Vincent Felitti, Director of Preventative Medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Health System in San Diego, California, began to discover something troubling in his weight-loss clinics: there was a very high drop out rate and he couldn’t understand why. What we went on to discover, in conjunction with Dr Robert Anda, over the following 15 years was that around 50% of people in his clinics had suffered from a significant number of ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’. Initially his patients would do well and lose weight and then stop attending and put their weight back on.Something I think we see again and again in the ‘diet world’.

 

Further studies across the USA and UK have shows that 50% of us have been through at least one ACE and around 10% of us have been through at least 4 of them. Trauma, especially in our early years, but actually at any time, can have a profound effect on our lives. The eminent Professor of Psychiatry, Bessel Van der Kolk, writes in his book ‘The Body Keeps The Score‘ about what changes take place in our brains, our genes and our subsequent coping mechanisms and behaviours as a result. The issue for many of us, who are ‘overweight’ is not that there is something wrong with us, but rather that something happened to us which has deeply impacted us ever since. My friend Lesley, an incredibly brave woman, whom I really admire, puts it this way:

 

I wasn’t loved or nurtured as a child – I was abused. Sadistically. In every way. Although to the outside world we were a model family. I craved love and substituted it with food. I believe ACEs are a huge factor in obesity. In seeking comfort in food, I developed an emotional relationship with food. Rewards, celebrations, socialising, commiserating – we are all guilty of using food in these ways to a greater or lesser degree. Crack ACEs and I think we’d go a long way to tackling obesity and other ‘dependency’ type issues.

 

(If you are familiar with this blog, you will know that I have blogged several times about what ACEs are and why they can have such a profound effect on our lives. There is also a link to a book I have co-authored on this subject here, – we have a new one coming out soon!). If you prefer podcasts, we have done one here.

 

For those of us who work in clinical settings, giving someone the chance to tell their story, rather than just referring them through to some new service or other can have a much more healing effect than we realise and might significantly change the next steps the person in front of us chooses to take on their journey. Giving a bit of extra time, to listen with kind eyes and to understand someone’s experiences can make all the difference in bringing real and lasting change.

 

Although not all of us who are overweight or obese have been through a terrible experience or trauma – it is true for many of us. Recognising the hard reality of trauma in our society and how rife it is, even within ‘model families’ helps us realise again the complex relationship we can develop with food and the resulting issues we can have with our weight.  So firstly, let’s have some compassion in how we view ourselves and others, let’s not make assumptions about what people are like or what they may or may not have been through, because we don’t know their stories. Let’s also be committed to being trauma informed and a) help create the kind of society in which we see an end to as many ACEs as possible, whilst b) putting more protective factors in place to help children who are going through them and c) enable each other to get healed from the traumas we have experienced, without judgement. There are many things which can help us heal from trauma – the most important step is breaking the silence and the shame by telling someone we love and trust the truth about our story. Simply sharing the burden, being heard and validated is in and of itself deeply healing. Particular talking and psychological therapies like EMDR, family systems therapy and trauma-focused CBT are a helpful next step, alongside various physical therapies, which help us learn to live in our bodies without having to be defined by the traumas we have experienced. These can be available in certain NHS mental health teams, through various charities and private therapists.

 

 

Share This:

Share

Reimagining Health and Care – An Apocalyptic Moment?

Tweet   There is a ‘kairos moment’ available to us to reimagine how we think about health and care, here in the UK and indeed globally. It’s true that COVID-19 is going to continue to take our attention and shape our health and care services in a particular way for many months ahead. But some [Continue Reading …]

Share

Metamorphosis

Tweet I was thinking over the weekend about isolation and this time of lockdown that we find ourselves in as a result of COVID-19 and I started to reflect on the word ‘cocooned’. When we shut ourselves in and button down the hatches, during a storm, we often talk about it as a cocoon-like experience. [Continue Reading …]

Share

I Am a Medical Feminist

Tweet One of my fellow speakers at TEDxNHS2019 was the amazing Dr Sarah Hillman. We both graduated medical school in the same year, and have both become GPs, but Sarah has taken a more academic route. I was blown away by the power of what she has to say and believe every doctor and medical [Continue Reading …]

Share

My TEDxNHS Talk

Tweet Last year, I was invited to submit a proposal for a TEDxNHS talk. TEDx are independently organised TED events, and it turns out that TEDxNHS is the biggest of these in the world. I submitted two ideas – one around how we can work radically differently with our communities and one around how we [Continue Reading …]

Share

Love Ecology – Part 3 – Gabriella Gilkes

Tweet The final speaker at our ‘Love Ecology’ was the wonderful Gabriella (Gabi) Gilkes, Head of Ecology and Health and Wellbeing at Eden North. Gabi talked to us about the real nature of ecology, connectivity, community and friendship. She also took us on an amazing tour of how the Eden Project will help the people [Continue Reading …]

Share

Love Society – Part 2 – Triads, Weaving a Web and Panel

Tweet Bev Skeggs gave us so much to think and talk about with each other. If you haven’t had a chance to watch her amazing talk yet, then please do so! You can find it in Part 1 of this blog series. She left us with a question – “How can we build value with [Continue Reading …]

Share

Love Society – Part 1 – Prof Bev Skeggs

Tweet   Here in Morecambe Bay, a very eclectic group of us are having some conversations about how we might reimagine life together based on love and kindness towards people and the planet. In April, we were together around the theme ‘Love People’ and in May, this became ‘Love Society’.   To help us and [Continue Reading …]

Share

Love People! – Part 2

Tweet Share This:

Share