Survival brain is a universal feature of parenting. When our inner cave person is activated, fear dominates, as we worry about our kid’s ability to survive a dangerous world. When survival brain comes online, everything is an emergency, our ability to think rationally is short-circuited, and molehills become mountains. As our brains quickly spiral, we imagine that the kid who isn’t doing his homework tonight will be doomed to a lifetime of failure and destitution. 

While the threat-mitigation behavior coded in our DNA helps us protect our offspring from the most dire threats, it prevents us from accessing the patience and perspective we need for everyday kid problems. Survival brain eats up our mental resources when activated, and once it’s firing we can’t get to our wiser mind no matter how hard we try.       

So what is a modern parent with a cave person brain supposed to do? How do we quiet the huge reactions we have to family problems that are big, but not dire? How do we know when a threat actually is dangerous enough to warrant an emergency response? How do we tame the survival brain so it will leave enough juice  to run our wisdom-centers? 

Today we’ll talk about how primal survival instincts operate for parents. We’ll talk about how survival brain drives parents’ actions and how kids’ mental health struggles are rooted in their need to feel safe. We will also discuss how therapy helps parents navigate through even the most difficult moments with their kids, including school refusal, substance abuse, and eating disorders.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• The way survival instincts block our ability to access higher-level thinking
• How survival brain distorts reality, causes disproportionate reactions, and spreads to others
• A reframe for shifting perspective and limiting scope to right here, right now
• How therapy gives parents a space to speak the unspeakable, and how that disrupts unhealthy family dynamics 
• The role of making sense of seemingly impossible situations, which enables new perspectives and opens up solutions to even the stickiest problems 
• How talk therapy creates a foundation of safety and understanding that other modalities (like CBT and DBT) build on for comprehensive treatment plans
• What parents can do when things are stable to support family regulation and wellbeing

Learn more about I Hate You. What’s For Dinner?

Connect with Gillian Boudreau, PhD.:

• Website
• Instagram @clearconnectionpsychology

Connect with Rob Galligan, PhD.:

• Instagram @dr.robert.galligan