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Many years ago I recall sitting in Madison Square Garden with a friend of mine watching his son box in the National Golden Gloves tournament. Between the ninth and tenth round, without any provocation whatsoever, a guy two rows in front of us suddenly stood up and hurled a beer bottle toward the ring. It smashed against the corner post sending brown glass shards flying everywhere.
“THIS IS THE GUY WHO THREW IT! THIS GUY! RIGHT HERE!!” No sooner had the bottle landed, when a slight, sandy-haired teenager sitting several rows behind me raced down and began fearlessly pointing out the offending bottle-thrower while I simply sat there in shock and dismay.
Over the years I’ve often wondered what allowed that kid to respond so immediately and fearlessly to what was essentially a dangerous criminal act. In his recently published book, Iconoclast: A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently, Emory University professor Gregory Berns provides some answers that make a lot of sense to me.
Iconoclasts R Us
Iconoclasts – dissident, nonconformists – are mostly made, not born, Berns argues. He lists three brain processes as primarily responsible. As children such people get strong parental encouragement and generally receive great support for perceiving people, places and things in the world in unique ways. Iconoclasts see the same things as you and me – that is, their eyes take in the same images – but their brains have learned to “translate” what they see into unique perceptions. Seeing and perceiving are very different neurobiological processes. So, for example, a child versed in neuroscience early ( ;-o ) might see a picture of a neuron and readily say, “Hey, that looks just like a mini-version of the whole universe!” One key is that such children are rarely ridiculed or shamed for translating what they see into unexpected perceptions.
Social Intelligence
The second brain process that contributes to the growth and development of fearless children involves things that contribute to social ease and intelligence. 
Successful iconoclasts have generally good connectivity in the so-called “resonance circuits.” This allows them to connect with other people, especially kindred spirits. It’s not an accident that Bill Gates had a Paul Allen and a Steve Ballmer at Microsoft (and now Warren Buffett and his wife, Melinda for his Foundation work), that Sergey Brin has a Larry Page, or that Albert Einstein had the three other members of his Olympia Academy. Such comrades are critical for an iconoclast’s success. So is good repeated parental modeling along with many of the things that contribute to optimal Executive Function (EF). All can work in support of increasing social ease and intelligence. The challenge here for many parents, is the requirement to grow their own social ease and intelligence should they find it lacking in themselves. We can’t authentically model and teach what we haven’t fully integrated in ourselves.
Regulating the Fear Response
Finally, the third brain process necessary for iconoclasts of any age to master is how they learn to recognize and manage the neurophysiological experience commonly known as fear. If you’re someone who thinks and acts differently than other people do, you’re most likely going to be the recipient of grief from those who either don’t understand you, are envious of you, or are frightened by you. Fear affects the brain in ways that negatively affect perception and limit the ability to take effective action.
The Three Flavors of Fear
Fear primarily comes in three flavors: fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and fear of looking stupid. From a neuroendocrine perspective, each of these fears has the same things in common: they activate our limbic system, flooding the body and brain with cortisol and adrenaline, often unnecessarily. In order to help kids effectively deal with these different kinds of fear responses to their “differentness,” we first of all, need to effectively model for them, and then teach kids all about how adrenaline and cortisol operate in the body in response to such real or imagined frightening things.
Learning ways to regulate our neurophysiology after our limbic system has been hijacked – and it happens more often than we realize – is critical information to be able to provide our children and to model ourselves. Fear and anxiety are the enemies of intelligence, and so knowing effective ways to reduce these internal experiences and restore ourselves to optimal functioning are essential. Here are a few: physical exercise, 7-11 breathing, Smart Moves, wood cutting, talking to a trusted friend, listening to someone else going through hard times, dancing, martial arts, yoga, and any other activity that involves physical actions that invite cross-body motion and movement. Many of these activities help strengthen the neural network in the anterior prefrontal cortex, an area known to regulate impulse control and help delay gratification. Good things for budding iconoclasts to be able to easily do.
If you’re paying any attention at all, it’s difficult to miss how much neuroscience is infiltrating just about everything that has to do with anything these days. From parenting to professional poker, from therapy to theology, from advertising to economics to education to ethics, neuroscience is making rapid inroads. Some of these areas desperately need the perspective that neuroscience has to offer. And much of the excitement, it seems to me is fully warranted. Take this experimental study that used transcranial magnetic stimulation to rouse a man who had been laying in a minimally conscious state for over a year. If that one’s not good enough for you, how about this experiment where V.S. Ramachandran at UCSD used a simple mirror to reroute brain neurons in order to eliminate phantom limb pain in a veteran’s amputated arm. And if that’s not enough to get you excited, how about this research that holds the promise to one day be able to restore functionality to fully paralyzed limbs. If you’re one of the people who has benefitted from these creative advances that are the result of increasing understanding about our living brain and how it works, I’m guessing you feel thankful … and hopeful. And these are just first successes in a very nascent field. For that reason and others, more and more I’m thinking of neuroscience as the science of hope.
Hope for the Heart
I’ve seen perhaps two dozen therapists as a client over roughly 35 of my 62 years. Of those two dozen, only two stand out as being especially helpful. (One of those two, Kay Godlewski, died in the middle of our work together. I tried not to take it personally). Over much of that same period, I’ve had four significant long-term relationships with wonderful women. Each of these relationships changed significantly when pain, confusion and overwhelming stress and suffering arose. Unknown to me (and I have a two year Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family systems with honors, as well as a separate five year Ph.D. degree in psychology!), the root of these challenges came from resurfacing traumatic memories stored without benefit of language – memories that I could not find words or feelings for. After repeatedly seeking out, but finding so little help that really helped, I essentially gave up hope. Looking back through the lens of social neuroscience, simply knowing that much of my struggle was resulting from a “damaged” brain with resonance circuits poorly connected to the frontal lobes, would have made an appreciable difference for me – it’s not me that’s the problem, it’s my brain! Learning and practicing some of the proven effective techniques of somatic psychology, would have restored that lost hope. Hell, even something as simple as learning there was a word for not being able to say what I feel – alexithymia – would have been a hopeful help.
Hope for our Children
Each generation surpasses the previous one in many ways. One simple measure is in brain capacity – the ability of the brain to process energy and information. We are Hardwired to Connect, and optimizing those connections early on, significantly increases capacity. My own daughter processes multitudes more energy and information than I did at her age – 25. Her children will process multitudes more than her (something actually pretty difficult for me to fully imagine!). Some simple evidence for this is represented by the story that I’ve pointed to several times in this space – Bruce Perry’s Kindness of Children chapter from his book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. I can easily envision a collaborative community of Special Agents – kindergartners whose part-time volunteer job is to help regulate other kids whose brains are not able to easily perform that function for them … to help them grow the neural resources that will permit greater control their emotional impulses. This collection of kids would continually be answering the Big Brain Question with a resounding “Yes” for those not getting that question positively answered elsewhere.
A number of years ago I had a bumper sticker printed up that I placed on my truck and gave away to friends. It was a quote from the writer and poet, Alice Walker. She suggested a template to overlay onto education or social programs or impending life decisions. It was the simple question, “Is it best for the children?” I think the answer to her question in terms of the hope and the creative possibilities offered by social neuroscience is an unequivocal, “Yes!”
Strength of heart seems to be a kind of ineffable quality that we mostly know after we’ve seen it. Last time I suggested the first three of six things that we might offer our children – instruction and modeling gifts that I feel ultimately contribute on a variety of levels – to strength of heart. Below are the last three of the six practices.
Practice Contingent Communication
The evidence seems pretty clear – secure early attachment lays a solid foundation upon which children are able to build strong brains eight ways. Sort of like breadstuff for brain, only better. If you’re a parent and you were raised by loving parents who provided you with secure attachment, then your work with your own children may be different than those of us who weren’t provided such a base. It turns out that secure attachment emerges out of one primary interaction between parent and child – something known in the literature as contingent or collaborative communication. Contingent communication is manna for brain development – not only in children – but all across the lifespan. What exactly is it and why will we wither neurologically without it? There are essentially three elements. The first is we need to be paying attention. We need to be able to recognize that something is being communicated to us. Oftentimes, this is not so easy or obvious. Great shades of subtlety can be involved, including what’s NOT being communicated – those things that “go without saying.”
So, once we’ve given our attention, we need to be able to make appropriate and accurate meaning of the message being sent. If a baby’s crying and we change her diaper, attempt to feed her, rock her and sing her a lullaby and she continues to cry, we haven’t accurately understood the message. This need for being accurately understood continues throughout the lifespan. How that understanding gets communicated back to us (and I consider this a great contemporary failing) is by being responded to in a timely and effective manner – the third and final critical element of contingent communication. Think about how much of the communication in the world today – from movies, tv and radio, to advertising and email spam to preachers and teachers preaching and teaching at us. Even this column – to the extent that I send it out to the many and only hear back and exchange ideas with a few – falls into the category of non-contingent communication. What to do about this? Ironically enough, this is a question that I will be answering in a variety of ways in future columns. (Hint: NOT in a way that the five finalists in the most recent Turing Test competition have in mind for us).
Model Relationship Repair
More often than not, our neurophysiology plays havoc with our relationships. From being outraged at the things our kids say or the clothes they choose to wear, to the real or imagined slights inflicted on us by the important people in our lives. The good news is that the breeches, ruptures and misattunements resulting from reactive responses to things that rattle our cages, more often than not can be attended to and repaired. But mostly only from our side of the struggle. Here’s a useful guideline: whenever we’re upset with someone, it’s our job to initiate the work of repair. Now that you know this guideline, hopefully it will niggle you in the future. How exactly do we repair relationships ruptures? Very carefully, and probably only in season. And why should we? At some point in the future I will also explore this topic in further depth, since the research evidence seems to suggest it is a critical one for healthy neuro-cardiology.
Provide Simple Instruction in Basic Neuroscience
As I mentioned in an earlier column, learning how my brain works has made it work infinitely better. Learning about the protective functions of my limbic system has been invaluable to me. Learning how real or misperceived threats to my survival trigger the release of adrenaline and cortisol in my body and brain, and what that actually feels like when it happens, allows me to have both awareness and some increased capacity for self-regulation. I can more easily recognize that MY upset is something originating in ME, often triggered by external people, places and events perhaps, but ultimately caused by my neurophysiology acting defensively, protectively. Learning about how all this works early on, with living examples, the way Bruce Perry’s kind kindergartners did, would have afforded me repeated opportunity to practice growing and mastering my own reactivity responses – often unwarranted and uncalled for out in the real world. What greater gift can we provide our children than learning to be able to self-regulate their neurophysiology in order to be able to feel safe and at home in the world?
These are six experiences that often show up missing for clients of therapists and doctors. They show up missing in school principals’ and pastoral counselors’ offices, as well as in astrologers’ planet charts and yoga teachers’ asanas. If you want to learn of a manageable number more (get ready, here comes the pitch!), you might click on this LINK and send me an email. I’ll take care of the rest.
As children, our worldview is pretty much shaped by what happens in our immediate household, especially in the early years. As a result, it isn’t until we are older that we begin to see that not every family operates the same way ours does. We begin to notice things going on in other kids’ homes that might be missing in ours. We also begin to realize that some of the things that go on in our house might not be all that great. Here’s a small list of things that can have profound consequences for how well our brain develops and its parts integrate: Early Events Scale. What’s particularly challenging to determine the effects of, are the beneficial things that might have happened in our childhood home, but didn’t. We rarely miss what we never got. Here are the first three things I wish I had received as a kid. By my writing about these now, and three more next week, I hope more and more children in the world will end up receiving them.
Furnish Support for Embodied Wisdom
It wasn’t until my late 40s that I discovered I was allergic to chocolate! It seems astonishing to me now, that from around age six I suffered from allergies and headaches, but I never made the connection between eating chocolate and the pain that immediately ensued, nor did any of the adults in my life. In the best of all possible worlds, from as soon as I could understand words, I would have been trained to listen deeply to my body, and I would have been encouraged and supported to honor whatever it was that my body was attempting to communicate to me. I would have been taught to ask questions of my heart, inquire earnestly of my stomach, and attend to the places where my body was holding tension. The possible emotional meaning of diarrhea would have been readily investigated. There would have been regular discussions and explorations of waking and sleeping dreams – those embodied messages from procedural memory stored in the emotional centers of the brain. I would have learned that we get sick for a reason, and often that reason is that we have not been listening very deeply to the subtle, insistent urgings of our bodies. This is an extraordinary gift to bestow upon our children.
Offer Adequate Amounts of Loving Touch
For the first years of life, parents primarily serve as an adjunct brain for their children. They are required to perform the emotional regulation that young children’s brains are inadequately prepared to easily accomplish on their own. Physical, nonsexual touch that soothes and stabilizes most easily accomplishes this regulatory function. As a grief counselor for many years, I would get advance permission to use gentle touch to help regulate emotional overwhelm: I would simply put my hand on a person’s arm or shoulder, and it would almost magically calm them down. This also works extremely well with children, and in fact, often serves to reassure them that it’s all right to be upset – that they won’t be abandoned to flounder in their overwhelm. Once it becomes safe to go to scary emotional places, we become less fearful of going there.
Of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word touch has the most definitions listed. Clearly, touch an important word for human beings. It appears to be vitally important for grieving children who, with attentive supervision, will engage in all manner of physical interaction with one another. Non-sexual touching, when done with awareness, sensitivity and respect is a connecting, unifying experience. It helps us feel loved, valued and accepted. I think it’s worth deeply exploring both our attraction to it and any aversions or personal apprehensions we might have to it.
Provide Instruction in Thoughtworks
Knowing how my brain works makes it work better. Learning and paying attention to how thinking works – how thoughts simply arise and fall away, mostly in response to our external and internal environment – improves our thinking ability. If we haven’t done this already, we can learn it ourselves. 
It’s a learnable skill that organizations like Susan Kaiser Greenland’s Inner Kids are doing an excellent job with. So we can teach our children how to both observe thoughts mindfully, and how to not be emotionally tossed away by fearful thoughts when they arise, nor by the angry feelings often generated by such thoughts. It’s something we can attend to with curiosity and wonder and then begin to take action to move in less fear-based directions. Our brains and our children’s brains will thank us when our brains and thoughts begin working well.
As children, our worldview is pretty much shaped by what happens in our immediate household, especially in the early years. As a result, it isn’t until we are older that we begin to see that not every family operates the same way ours does. We begin to notice things going on in other kids’ homes that might be missing in ours. We also begin to realize that some of the things that go on in our house might not be all that great. Here’s a small list of things that can have profound consequences for how well our brain develops and its parts integrate: Early Events Scale. What’s particularly challenging to assess the effects of, are the beneficial things that might have happened in our childhood home, but didn’t. We rarely miss what we never got. Here are the first three things I wish I had received as a kid and by my writing about them, I hope more and more children in the world will receive them.
Furnish Support for Embodied Wisdom
It wasn’t until my late 40s that I discovered I was allergic to chocolate! It seems astonishing to me now, that from around age six I suffered from allergies and headaches, but I never made the connection between eating chocolate and the pain that immediately ensued, nor did any of the adults in my life. In the best of all possible worlds, from as soon as I could understand words, I would have been trained to listen deeply to my body, and I would have been encouraged and supported to honor whatever it was that my body was attempting to communicate to me. I would have been taught to ask questions of my heart, inquire earnestly of my stomach, and attend to the places where my body was holding tension. The possible emotional meaning of diarrhea would have been readily investigated. There would have been regular discussions and explorations of waking and sleeping dreams – those embodied messages from procedural memory stored in the emotional centers of the brain. I would have learned that we get sick for a reason, and often that reason is that we have not been listening very deeply to the subtle, insistent urgings of our bodies. This is an extraordinary gift to bestow upon our children.
Offer Adequate Amounts of Loving Touch
For the first years of life, parents primarily serve as an adjunct brain for their children. They are required to perform the emotional regulation that young children’s brains are inadequately prepared to easily accomplish on their own. Physical, nonsexual touch that soothes and stabilizes most easily accomplishes this regulatory function. As a grief counselor for many years, I would get advance permission to use gentle touch to help regulate emotional overwhelm: I would simply put my hand on a person’s arm or shoulder, and it would almost magically calm them down. This also works extremely well with children, and in fact, often serves to reassure them that it’s all right to be upset – that they won’t be abandoned to flounder in their overwhelm. Once it becomes safe to go to scary emotional places, we become less fearful of going there.
Of all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, the word touch has the most definitions listed. Clearly, touch is an important word for human beings. It appears to be vitally important for grieving children who, with attentive supervision, will engage in all manner of physical interaction with one another. Non-sexual touching, when done with awareness, sensitivity and respect is a connecting, unifying experience. It helps us feel loved, valued and accepted. I think it’s worth deeply exploring both our attraction to it and any aversions or personal apprehensions we might have to it.
Provide Instruction in Thoughtworks
Knowing how my brain works makes it work better. Learning and paying attention to how thinking works – how thoughts simply arise and fall away, mostly in response to our external and internal environment – improves our thinking ability. If we haven’t done this already, we can learn it ourselves. It’s a learnable skill that organizations like Susan Kaiser Greenland’s Inner Kids are doing an excellent job with. So we can teach our children how to both observe thoughts mindfully, and how to not be emotionally tossed away by fearful thoughts when they arise, nor by the angry feelings often generated by such thoughts. It’s something we can attend to with curiosity and wonder and then begin to take action to move in less fear-based directions. Our brains and our children’s brains will thank us when our brains and thoughts begin working well.
