If you’re like me, some part of your life has been spent avoiding or turning away from things that make you nervous. For example, in my life a number of traumatic experiences have happened while I’ve been traveling. As a result, I tend to avoid travel, especially to foreign countries. I’ve taken only a single travel vacation in the 14 years I’ve lived here on Whidbey Island. It was to the Oregon coast, and my wife and I (mostly I) decided we’d prefer to come home early!
I’ve also avoided job interviews for much of my life. As an education consultant and an independent contractor, people usually reach out and initially contact me. Since my nervous system experiences most all evaluation as threat – job interviews are all about evaluation – I managed to orchestrate a reasonable workaround.
Unfortunately, this neurobiological vulnerability has caused me to miss out on a lot of experiences I might have had but didn’t. For example, I spent ten years semi-retired and underemployed working at a Stanford think tank. Every Fall MacArthur geniuses, Guggenheim fellows and Nobel Laureates would come and spend a sabbatical year. Many were warm and welcoming, and yet I never interpersonally interacted meaningfully with a single one of them.
Another example: my former wife’s family had a number of close friends who were successful Wall Street traders and hedge fund operaters. All I had to do was ask and any one of them would have been happy to have me come and shadow them as they made and lost fortunes in the financial markets. It could have be an eye-opening education. And while I wanted to do it, I never asked.
Abdication Is Not Integration
Integration means: the organization of constituent elements into a coordinated, harmonious whole. Where our brains and bodies are concerned, it refers to neural networks that are not richly connected being able to become enriched in their connectivity. We know there are 12 areas in the normal human brain (Rich Club Networks) that are richly populated and connected with brain cells. Energy and information easily flows within and between these networks (think Grand Central Station or major airline hubs).
![An Analysis of Delta Route Maps : Networks Course blog for INFO 2040/CS 2850/Econ 2040/SOC 2090](https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/files/2015/09/DeltaUS-Route-map-24mtlxy.png)
Traumatic experiences, poverty, chornic stress, other adverse life events, even an imbalanced left-brain education (think STEM) can fragment and impoverish this connectivity in different parts of the brain. For example, trauma I experienced in junior high school significantly adversely impacted my speech and language centers, making it especially difficult to speak in front of groups. For many years I avoided that possibility completely, even when specifically requested to address such groups. Nevertheless, the healing/integration urge continued to draw me in that direction, and after a number of painful false starts (like being fired from my first three teaching jobs), I finally managed to figure out ways to comfortably stand in front of a classroom and engagingly connect with students – the integration phase that unfolded after years of abdication.
Whole Brain Living
In her book Whole Brain Living, Jill Bolte Taylor identifies four neural network complexes and the characteristics of each. Below is a list of some of those characteristics:
![](https://bradyonthebrain.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/brain-thinking.jpg?w=960)
![](https://bradyonthebrain.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/brain-feeling.jpg?w=960)
The careful observer will notice that many of the characteristics of Left Feeling & Right Feeling and Left Thinking & Right Thinking are in conflict with one another. I would posit – and I’m pretty sure that Jill would as well – that such conflict results from a lack of neural integration.
What to do? Jill’s recommendation is to learn the specific characteristics of the four individual networks and whenever a “disturbance in the force” arises, call a Brain Huddle and give each network a voice. Once the “unconscious” has been made conscious, a clear path forward generally emerges. It seems like a worthwhile practice, one that Jill implies has contributed greatly to her almost full recovery from the left hemisphere stroke she experienced in 1996.
Other possibilities for increasing network integration could include meditation: we know from research by Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin and Andrew Newberg (then at Penn) that long time contemplatives have more robust fiber tracts between hemispheres and that run from subcortical regions up to the six layers of cortical cells where the potential for wise action lives.
Finally, there’s the possibility of working with somatic therapeutic modalities that have proven effective in ameliorating retained traumatic memories. Here’s a collection of nineteen that I put together a number of years ago. There are probably new ones that have come into being since then that I’m not currently aware of as well. Best wishes for skillful integration going forward.
Thank you for this, Mark.
You’re welcome, Janis. I hope it encourages you to turn towards something you might otherwise have turned away from. Blessings, Mark
On Sun, Feb 27, 2022 at 7:16 AM The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Thanks Mark, at this time your words had very significant meaning. Has made me think of issues I have not addressed or willing to address.
Mark, hope you’re well and life is good.
Like what, Linda? 🙏 XOXOX Mark
On Sun, Feb 27, 2022 at 11:08 AM The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Thanks Mark as always. You are a wise guide. One of the biggest and most important lessons I have taken from our nearly 6 years of connection is that Integration is the way. The more I can create, the more ease and enjoyment I will experience in my life. Turning away always invites disintegration – and just let me count the ways that I turn away… some of them so very subtle I don’t even know I am doing it. Back to the turning toward.
I’m constantly amazed, when I actually pay close attention, Hilary, to just how often fear and ignorance rule my day-to-day living. Becoming the boss of my adrenal glands is definitely not work for the faint of heart. Turn on, woman! 🙂 XOXOX Mark
On Sun, Feb 27, 2022 at 4:24 PM The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Hi Mark; Thank you for the great post. I appreciate the charts, referrals and the techniques you point out to navigate daily life. I can also recommend Barratt Breathwork…it is a restorative breath work that has been most helpful during these stressful times. With gratitude, Susan
Thanks, Susan. I’ll add Kathleen’s work to my resources pages to make an even 20! 🙂 XOXOX Mark
On Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 9:05 AM The Flowering Brain wrote:
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