Money Neuroscience ... the Reptilian Brain & Money

Welcome back to Financial Therapy. We'll be back with lots of interesting guests joining us in a bigger conversation about us and money soon. But in the mean while lets discuss a little more about money neuroscience, in particular money and our three brains. 

Well, the three areas of the brain that can relate to us and how we do money. In this episode of Money Neuroscience – we are talking the Reptilian Brain and Money.

Our Reptilian Brain, also known as the primitive brain, is the oldest part of the brain and the first part of the brain that is developed when we are in utero. It controls the automatic self-preserving systems and responses, the basic bodily functions such as feeding, pooping, reproduction and our responses to threat. Getting our body to fight, flight and freeze, if needed to survive. This area of the brain sits at the top of our spine, where the spine meets the head or the bottom of our brain structure. If we could scan someone’s brain as they considered the reality of them having lost their job in recession, with a family and a large mortgage, without much in savings, we would see this area of the brain, along with some other areas, really light up. Because the circumstance described above is a threat to our modern day survival a threat to the organism. Now if you have been triggered in anyway by this, just take a moment right now to take a big breath in and let it go. 

But it is important to consider this is where we sometimes go in our financial lives. Our primitive brain has alarms going off when we experience the shock of being told we are losing our job, or our business goes bankrupt, or the stock market crashes, or we are going through an acrimonious financial separation in divorce, or when we feel incapable to change our financial circumstances, drowning in debt or underearning. Essentially it feels like this organism is under threat. And where do we go when we are under threat, we fight, flight or freeze.

Thank for joining my at the Financial Therapy podcast.