Living In Your Three Brains
You may not know it, but you were born with three brains!
Well, not exactly. Of course no one is born with three brains! The concept of Three Brains is not a scientific representation of brain chemistry or an explanation of the pathways the brain takes to process information. It is a visual metaphor for conceptualizing three distinct ways our brain responds to stressful events.
THE THREE BRAINS METAPHOR LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
Three Brains was designed to be a visual image to demonstrate you have the power to:
• process information differently
• improve how you feel about yourself
• have more successful relationships with others
Control which brain you are processing information in — human, mammal, or reptile — and you control your responses to stressful situations and events.
The Human Brain
The “human brain” (the largest size of the brain diagram) symbolizes having the emotional capacity for problem-solving and critical thinking. When you are in your human brain, you are emotionally flourishing. You have some ups and downs–everyone does–but overall you are emotionally doing well.
When you are processing information in your human brain, you receive information through a filter of feeling optimistic and productive. You see, the glass as half-full.
Problem Solving: When you are thinking with your human brain, you are able to solve complex problems and perform critical thinking.
Finances: You have financial goals in life that you feel confident you can accomplish. You probably have a formalized retirement plan, for example, a 401K or IRA.
Self-Esteem: You feel good about yourself. You feel like you have the ability and the competence to manage anything that comes your way.
Destiny: You have a curiosity about what is next in life. You have an excitement about where life will take you. You feel as though you are in control of your destiny.
Leisure: You spend quality time interacting with family and friends. You spend more time having experiences or participating in a hobby than watching TV.
Health: You take care of yourself physically by staying hydrated, eating well, getting enough rest, and remaining physically active.
Employment and Housing: You have a comfortable, safe, stable home. You have a satisfying, rewarding job that financially provides for more than just basic needs.
Relationships: You have intimate, close, caring relationships. Your relationships are based on love, honesty, trust, respect, commitment, and vulnerability.
Your Mammal Brain
The “mammal brain” (the medium size brain diagram) symbolizes a focus on the present as opposed to planning for the future. When you are in your mammal brain, you are functioning.
When you are processing information in your mammal brain, you receive information through the filter of being in survival mode. You will be living a philosophy of “it is what it is” and of “going with the flow”. You see the glass as half-empty.
Problem Solving: When you are thinking in your mammal brain, you are able to solve simple problems, for example, “What will I have for supper?”, “How should I spend my weekend?”
Finances: Your retirement plan is Social Security.
Self-Esteem: You are in survival mode. You “put one foot in front of the other”.
Planning: You look forward to immediate events, for example, your plans for the upcoming weekend versus what you will do when you are 65. You feel others are in control of your life (parents, teachers, spouse, boss, the legal system, etc.).
Leisure: You spend time interacting with family and friends. You spend a lot of time watching TV.
Health: You try to take care of yourself. In times of stress, you may eat too much or eat foods high in fat and salt. Sleep may be elusive. Exercise is nonexistent.
Employment and Housing: You may have a comfortable, safe home, but no commitment of it being your “forever home”. Your job pays the bills, but you have no commitment to your employer.
Relationships: You may be in a relationship, but it is merely one of co-existing. Trust, respect, commitment, communication, and a sense of romance are elusive.
Your Reptile Brain
The “reptile brain” (the smallest size brain diagram) symbolizes escapism as a coping skill. You are living in the here and now. When you are in your reptile brain, you tend to be floundering or struggling in life.
When you are processing information “in your reptile brain,” you receive information through a filter of escapism and pessimism. You live your life in passive resistance to the rest of the world. You are not focused on solving problems, but on just “getting by”. Your retirement plan is playing the lottery. Living in your “reptile brain” includes a complex web of skepticism, despair and insecurity. When you are in your reptile brain:
• You are floundering.
• You react to events around you.
• You feel powerless and hopeless.
• You frequently struggle to maintain a relationship, a job, or stable housing.
• You live life with the philosophy of “one step forward and two steps back.”
• You use primitive escape coping skills of:
Fight: You don’t “play nicely” with others.
– You are often irritable and have a hard time maintaining a long-term relationship or job.
Flight: You “escape”.
– Isolating, you don’t answer the phone and rarely attend family holiday celebrations.
– “Chemical Escape,” you drink alcohol to excess, smoke cigarettes and/or indulge yourself with comfort foods high in carbs and sugar.
– “Geographic Escape,” you go from one relationship to another, or home to home, or job to job.
– “Emotional Escape,” you spend hours and hours listening to music, reading a book, watching movies or playing video games.
Freeze: You do nothing.
– You don’t make decisions.
– You feel “like a deer in headlights”.
Frenzy: You deliberately keep yourself busy so there is no time to think.
– You may be a regular volunteer to work overtime.
– You may be a compulsive “neat freak”.
Fawning: You make sure everyone around you is happy.
– You make sure others have their needs met before you meet yours.
– You put yourself last. Every time.
The Circle
The red circle on the diagram below is a visual to demonstrate that there is fluid motion between the functioning of your human, mammal, and reptile brains.
Ideally, you would like to live in your human brain all the time. However, due to the ongoing barrage of stressful events, being in your human brain all the time is not possible. Some of the stressful events you may have no control over. For example, a loved one passes away, a cancer diagnosis is received, or a global pandemic strikes. As stressful events occur and unfold, you move from your human brain into your mammal or even your reptile brain.
It is also important to remember that everyone needs psychological “down time”. Being in your mammal or reptile brain on occasion isn’t a problem. What is of concern is when you “spend your life” in the mammal brain or the reptile brain. Hope is a quality of the human brain. Hope is based on successful problem-solving, thriving relationships, goal setting and long-range planning. Hope is finding yourself in your reptile brain, and in a fluid movement utilizing skills to move back to your human brain. This would be an example of a full circle.
The primary skill for fluidity in moving back to the human brain is recognizing when you have moved into the mammal or reptile brain. Everyone has cues, but do you recognize them?
When you recognize which brain you are in, human, mammal, or reptile brain, you can do something about it.
Resilience
Resilience is the ability to rebound when a stressful event occurs. It is a skill that originates from believing in yourself, and is used to:
• cope with adversity
• adapt to change
• accept uncertainty
• overcome challenges
As a stressful event occurs (a hurricane, loss of a family member, or a pandemic) you may move from the human brain to the mammal brain. You will be “putting one foot in front of the other” until you can utilize positive coping skills to return to the human brain. It is possible during these stressful times to go directly into your reptile brain. The reptile brain provides you with an escape from the stressful event.
If you have ever been in the human brain, no matter the adversity, you will be able to return. If you have lived most of your life in your mammal brain, and you find yourself in the reptile brain, you can learn coping skills to move back to the mammal brain and even to the human brain.
Suggested Coping Skills:
1. Get active, take a walk, do something physical
2. Spend time with positive family and friends
3. Have a new experience
4. Turn off the TV, computer, phone
5. Develop goals (a “bucket list”)
6. Pay it forward; do something nice for someone else
7. Practice good sleep hygiene (dark, cool, quiet bedroom)
8. Eat healthier
9. Drink water
10. Find, work toward, and maintain hope.
What Brain Are You In?
The theory of the Three Brains focuses on three different types of coping skills to process information and problem-solve:
• Critical thinking coping skills: taking action and looking forward with optimism (the human brain)
• Problem-solving coping skills: observing what is, with a focus on today (the mammal brain)
• Escapism coping skills: reacting to stress by trying to escape, with minimal thought for the future (the reptile brain)
Example:
Terry works 12-hour shifts as an ICU nurse at the local hospital.
It is a job requiring Terry to balance paying attention to detail with patients, demonstrating compassion with family members, and interacting with peers in a professional manner. During work, Terry is processing information in a human brain.
The 45-minute drive home is one of “autopilot”. Terry takes the same route home, carefully observing the rules of the road. It is all so routine that Terry couldn’t even recall pushing the garage door clicker to open or close the garage door. It is about getting home. Now. This is processing information in a mammal brain.
Once at home, Terry turns on the TV and, while watching a recorded rerun of the People’s Court, he eats half of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. This is an example of being in a reptile brain.
As Terry is finishing the half-pint of ice cream, there is a realization that eating ice cream isn’t a very healthy meal. Terry then goes out to the kitchen, starts drinking a glass of water, and prepares a healthy meal.
Terry recognized the reptile brain behavior (eating ice cream for supper) and made the conscious decision to move back to the human brain (Terry drinks water and eats a well-balanced meal).
Summary
Sometimes it is not easy to be in your human brain. It is easier to open the container of ice cream than it is to make a well-balanced meal! It isn’t “bad” to sometimes be in your reptile brain when you just need to “shut down and regroup”. The idea is to be in your human brain as much as possible by:
• Self-awareness (recognizing when you are in your reptile brain) and
• Coping skills (using your skills to return to the human brain).
Which brain are you in?
Published: 09/2020
Revised: 06/2024
Revised: 07/2026
Revised: 10/2026
AI has not been used to create any content for my website, articles, blogs or books. All material is original unless otherwise noted.
All photos and graphics within my website and blogs were taken or created by David Harrington or Kathryn Maietta.