Are you familiar with the lizard mode? It is a concept introduced by one of my anti-aggression-coaches. No, not because I was aggressive, but it was a seminar about how to deal with aggressive behavior in youths.

It is basically saying that once you are emotionally activated in such a way that all your rationale and rational decision making is set out and your cerebellum is taking over. You will basically be acting like a lizard in distress, instinctively either fighting, flying (in the sense of getting away) or freezing.

I don’t want to get too deep into aggression here, but the basic mechanism is true to a variety of emotional activation: Fear, aggression, depression, and, to a certain extent, impulse control in ADHD.

Don’t quote me the science or ask for it, this is more or less my own “modeling” in understanding and working out methods for my clients.

It all boils down to the one thing that I have been writing about earlier, and that is why -I think (for myself) – it is so difficult for us neurodivergent folks, addicts, anxiety patients and so forth to actually learn from experience, if we didn’t have this or that condition.

What is common to all these conditions is that the prefrontal cortex won’t be addressed as well or as much as it would be without the emotional activation through

1. ADHD – lack of dopamine, leading to impulsive behaviour
2. Addiction – Craving will trigger succumbing to the impulse to have a substance or a behaviour easing the addiction pressure
3. anxiety and or panic attacks – Catastrophising and overthinking will trigger fear and anxiety, leading to the “lizard mode”.

All in all, we tend to avoid rational decision in favor to a quick fix to solve the situation to get a boost in dopamine (at least I guess that’s what happens).

And since this urge is so important and the prefrontal cortex doesn’t have a chance to get through the fireworks of impulsivity, it will be hard for our rational parts of the brain to build neural connections that actually lead to a rational learning effect.

And that leads me to the outlook to the follow up posts: How can I (or we) utilize our rationale in times where we give our logical parts of the brain breathing space to build up resilience and resources to mitigate the effect of impulsivity.

Again: Medication helps. And behavioral change.

Until then, keep up the faith in yourself and take one step at a time.