The Four Brains in a Relationship
No Wonder Marriage is Hard!
Brains are amazing.
Truly incredible.
Beyond Comprehension.
When you start to think about it, the brain dictates pretty much everything about your life. The brain not only tells you what to do each moment, but it also tells you how to feel about what you’re doing. It’s fascinating to realize what drives your internal and external world is not your conscious mind, but your subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is the part of the brain that’s formed between ages 0–7. It’s essentially the programming you receive from your family, community, culture, etc. One example of the subconscious mind at work is the act of brushing your teeth. You’ve done it so many times, it doesn’t require conscious thought anymore. The subconscious brain manages the activity, so the conscious mind is free to think about the day ahead.
My conscious mind has been fascinated by the topic of the subconscious mind this year. How is my subconscious dictating how I show up for my family, my patients, my business and for myself?
Here’s an example:
My subconscious mind thinks, “as a mother and a physician, it’s normal (i.e., culturally expected) to put others’ needs in front of my own. This makes me — again, subconsciously — feel depleted because it’s more comfortable to sacrifice my own self care for the care of others.
It makes more sense to fill your own cup first because if your cup is dry, no one truly benefits. This may make conscious, intellectual sense, but, if your subconscious mind is still conditioned to give to others what you yourself do not possess, the depletive patterns will keep repeating themselves, over and over and over again.
Recently, I signed up for a free trial of an online coaching program for female physicians. Spoiler: all coaching programs tell you to take care of yourself first. The first lecture I watched was from a neuroanatomist named Jill Taylor. At age 37, she suffered a stroke that affected the left side of her brain. She wrote a book A Stroke of Insight and has one of the most popular Ted Talks ever. She discusses the knowledge she gleaned from the experience of having access to only one side of her brain for several hours.
Dr. Taylor explains that there are four areas of the brain dictating your personality. There are two hemispheres of the brain. The left side is the quintessential masculine side that prefers to learn about the world in a linear and methodical manner. The right side is the feminine side that learns through movement and pictures. Dr. Taylor describes how each hemisphere has a thinking portion and a feeling portion. This is demonstrated on the left side of the brain as the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind (associates) takes everything you experience and relates it to what the subconscious mind already knows from your past (experiences between the ages 0–7). The conscious mind visualizes what it thinks this present experience means in the context of the future. Many people live completely on this side of the brain, and therefore are being led by their subconscious mind. This is why knowing what your subconscious mind really thinks is extremely important.
During Dr. Taylor’s stroke, she lived 100% from the right/feminine side of her brain. Although disabled from the massive stroke, she describes the experience as being blissful and happy. All she knew was the present moment. She jokes that she forgot her 37 years of emotional baggage. She knew no boundaries between herself and everyone and everything. It was nirvana. She knew in her heart that we’re all connected. Her overall message and takeaway from the stroke is that we are love, we are perfect, and we are connected to something greater.
A Revolution in Mindfulness
There is a revolution in mindfulness occurring right now. People are learning how to live from the right side of their brains - in the present moment and in the connectedness.
Elena Radford, an incredible Incan Shaman, once said to me, “when our conscious and subconscious merge is when we become multi-dimensional beings.” When the conscious and subconscious merge, we experience the present moment. Because Dr. Taylor is a neuroanatomist, she can take these concepts and relate them to specific areas in the brain. My subconscious likes this because, as a physician, it’s what I know (see how it shows up everywhere). But because she lived it and she understood what was happening, and she has since shared it, we all can now see through the eyes of a neuroanatomist how the present moment is a truly magical place. It’s here that we know no distinction or separation, only connectedness to the oneness of all things.
Dr. Bruce Lipton is best known for his work in the Biology of Belief, but he wrote another book titled The Honeymoon Effect that has always stayed with me. In this book, he talks about how there are four brains present in every relationship - each person’s conscious mind and each person’s subconscious mind. When you first meet that special someone and you’re totally enthralled, you’ve fallen for their conscious mind. Because the relationship is new, both of you primarily act from your conscious brain. Then, as the relationship becomes more comfortable, you spend more and more time in your subconscious brains. If one person acts out a painful program or behavior that they learned in childhood, it can activate the wounded subconscious in the other person which can evolve into a big fight. Paradoxically, when you feel that crazy in-love sensation, you might trigger or activate your subconscious mind (inner child), which makes you do and think things that don’t make sense rationally (consciously). This all plays out in your subconscious, not your conscious!
While the ideas presented in Dr. Lipton’s book help me get a lot of clarity in my own relationships, I feel equally empowered learning what I have from Dr. Taylor. So, whether it’s the four brains in your own head or the four brains in your relationship, you know the subconscious mind plays a huge role in your relationship dynamics. And since the reality is that we do spend a large amount of time in this section of our brains, it’s your duty to analyze this portion of your mind so you can show up as your best self.
Where do you begin to analyze your subconscious mind?
To Be Magnetic is an online program designed to help you recognize and ultimately reprogram the parts of your subconscious mind that aren’t really serving you. It uses journal prompts, meditation, and hypnosis to help identify, access and reprogram subconscious patterns. Some of which, before you start the reprogramming process, you probably didn’t even realize you had. I highly recommend this program. It’s affordable, easy-to-access and easy to navigate, and it has the power to truly transform your life — if you commit to it and do the work. Want to learn more? Read AAO member Hope’s perspective and experience with To Be Magnetic here.
I’m so moved by how we might live in the present moment together, as Dr. Taylor’s life circumstances forced her to do. By honoring the here and now, we connect to one other on a deeper level as well as with something greater in mind – love.
