The Behavioral System
“The area of the mind that I specialize in is the behavioral system. This consists of a mass of behaviors structured to provide us with the safest and most efficient life. The only job of the behavioral side of the mind is to keep us safe and make us as effective as possible. I slightly resent the psychological theory that speculates that part of the mind acts as our enemy and needs to be fought and suppressed in order for us to achieve happiness. Again, in my opinion, this is just wrong and really unjust. The mind is our best friend and our powerful protector. If our mind does not work properly, it’s only because it is confused and uses its resources to protect us when it is really not required. I’ll explain this in a moment.
“Our behavioral system is formed by a large and well-organized mass of behaviors. Each behavior originates from an unconscious decision. This system, according to science, starts evolving in a fetus around eight to twelve weeks of pregnancy, which is the time when we develop enough cells in our brain to process the first, although still primitive, unconscious decisions. Then throughout our life, we process millions of unconscious decisions that create or update all our behaviors. Every time that we learn something, we are creating a new digital application. This is built with the process of acquiring thousands of unconscious decisions that are then organized in scripts or protocols which become the behaviors that will allow us to replicate and implement what we learned. It’s exactly like writing software programs but unconsciously done.”
“If you remember the process that you had to go through when you learned how to read, you had to learn how to associate letters with sounds, and each learned association was an unconscious decision made by your mind. Your mind then organized all the related unconscious decisions in a behavior called reading. Every time that you read something, that behavior is retrieved and used.”
“We start this process of our life with an empty behavioral system, with no useful protocols. In order to initiate and regulate this process, nature gives us instincts, which act like the operating system in a computer. This is very powerful natural bio software that initiates, directs, and regulates our life. Each area has its own programming; some are for our own safety (the survival system), others are in charge of the continuation of the species (sexual instincts and maternal instincts), to mention a couple.”
“One of the main focuses of my work is one of these instincts—the survival instinct. This is a massive program that runs many aspects of our development as well as the structure of our ‘safety’ system. We will only focus on the safety side of it for now. Liam, this is the guy responsible for your anxiety. Stay with me.”