What my dying neighbor is teaching me about lizard brains

What will you do when your brain goes offline? 

A counselor once taught me and Erik about the triune brain theory (which is apparently obsolete in neurobiology but still a useful model for lay people like me to understand how the brain works under duress.) In this model, humans have three levels of brain function: our human brain, our monkey brain, and our lizard brain. The human brain is our rational, thinking brain that uses words and logic. Our monkey brain is the less sophisticated layer that handles emotion, memory and some instinctive behavior. The lizard brain, managed in our brainstem, handles reflexes, quick reactions and survival responses. When a person gets emotionally triggered, he/she can lose the ability to process rationally or to use words very well. The lizard brain takes over, processing data extremely quickly to determine whether the person is safe. The person won’t be able to access his/her higher levels of brain function until the lizard brain is satisfied that the situation is safe and reroutes more blood flow to the frontal lobe or prefrontal cortex, or wherever the other brain functions are housed. 

The counselor told us, for example, that when our friend with PTSD was caught spinning in the emotion of some triggered memory, it wouldn’t be helpful for us to try to talk him out of it because he couldn’t verbally process in that moment. For lack of a better illustration, that would be like trying to reason with a toddler. Instead, it would be more effective for us to start by convincing his lizard brain that he was in a safe place by sending him simpler signals: maybe a hug, a calm tone of voice, smiling eye contact, even humming a song. The things that make each person feel safe can be different, so the counselor encouraged us to have a conversation with our friend during a non-triggered time when he could tell us what would be most helpful for him. 

I’ve been thinking about lizard brains a lot lately because I see this concept in action every time I hang out with my neighbor, who is slowly dying. 

That’s a crude way to phrase it, but if you saw her, you’d agree. She weighs less than 85 pounds-  just a shadow of the round woman she once was. Hospice workers come to the house periodically. They’ve transitioned her into diapers and sometimes a wheelchair because she can’t control her own bodily functions well anymore. 

She was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia, and she has been going downhill fast. For a season, I avoided going to her house because it was awkward and I never knew whether I’d be able to follow her disjointed conversations. Then a family friend wrote a very raw book about the multi-year struggle of losing his wife to the same illness. The book lit a fire under me to push through the awkwardness and keep trying to connect with my neighbor, even if it was just to sit for a while and listen to her babble incoherently so her husband could go check his email. 

She demands constant attention and can be pretty controlling. In fact, I think one of the things that makes this particular woman’s “lizard brain” feel safe is being in control. Sometimes on days when she can speak in complete sentences, we end up playing an odd game like Simon Says where she tells me with great urgency to stand up, then to sit down, then not to move or speak. I comply because it keeps her calm. But it does feel like playing with a toddler. 

My neighbor also has frequent hallucinations, so she’ll have whole conversations with someone else in the room I can’t see. Recently she wanted help walking to her bedroom, so we were standing face to face and she was holding both my hands for support. As I shuffled along backwards to match her pace, she stopped and asked loudly, “are you doing OK?” I started to say “I’m fine–” but she cut me off with a “Shh! I’m not talking to you!” 

At other times she will ask me to hand her the (invisible) baby on the couch next to me, or mutter with concern, “do you know that man standing by the door?” when there is no one there. I don’t want to be dishonest with her, but sometimes I play along because it seems to give validity to her emotions. Just because I can’t see a man in the room doesn’t negate her fear. It calms her if I say “He’s OK” or “Would you like me to ask him to leave?” more than if I say “Oh, there’s no one there.” I want to help her lizard brain calm down its warning sirens even when I can’t access the logic of her human brain. 

I’ve noticed that her husband takes the opposite approach, and I think that’s also very appropriate. He maintains his position as her bastion of truth. He simply tells her, “You’re imagining that,” even though it makes her upset to be disregarded. I have also seen her turn toward him and beg, “Tell me something true!” It’s good that he can be a trustworthy source of reality for her. But I think it’s also appropriate for someone like me to come in as a friend and validate the reality of her feelings, whether or not they match my perception of the actual situation. It gives her dignity when I can participate in her conversation, even though it’s not relevant to my world. 

Sometimes she comes across as ungrateful, especially towards her husband. I know that’s a symptom of the disease and not her fault, but the more I sit with her, the more I find myself asking God to cultivate in me a heart of gratitude and trust now so I will hopefully reflect those things to my caregivers one day if my brain is gone. If I end up with dementia and I can’t process situations rationally or understand what is happening to me, I hope I will still have the capacity to trust God and the people he has put in my life to support me. Even if their caregiving doesn’t seem good to me, I hope I will be able to believe that I am safe with them and they are doing what I need. 

Another thing I’ve noticed about my neighbor is that it calms her to care for someone else. Many of her hallucinations are about orphaned children in her house that she needs to care for, and that makes sense to me: she still longs to be needed. She spends most of her time at the very bottom of the totem pole. She can’t cook, make decisions, or even dress herself anymore. The other day as we sat on the couch, she reached over and silently began giving me a foot rub. At first I struggled to receive that, thinking I should be rubbing her feet, not the other way around! But then I realized it must give her dignity to take care of someone else for a change. And what a gift to us both. 

Another reason I’ve been thinking about lizard brains lately is because I will probably have my own turn to experience that soon. Everything is going marvelously well with our pregnancy (praise Jesus!) and we’re already in the third trimester, so I often find myself thinking about childbirth and how I will fare through that experience. I’ve heard that the brains of women in labor often go into a more primitive mode where they can’t speak in complex sentences or process logic. They need people around them to give simple instructions and be a calming presence. 

We’re doing everything we can to be prepared and informed. I’ve read every childbirth book I can get my hands on. My sweet husband has even been sitting through Bradley Method classes with me so he knows how to be an effective labor coach. I’m wondering what else I can do to prepare myself to rely on him well when my human brain is offline and I’m in instinctive survival mode. Mainly, I’m praying that Jesus will still be present to me and I will still be able to find peace in Him on some primitive level during that time. I’d love to hear about others’ experiences in labor, or in any other time when you didn’t have full control of your rational mind. 

If you share your thoughts, I will owe you a foot rub. 😉