When the Lizard Brain Hijacks an Otherwise Functional Adult
You can have a professional life together and still react instictively like a caveman. You can run a full private practice, hold a graduate degree, earn a hard-earned healthcare license, manage a mortgage, pay your taxes, stay on top of your schedule — and still get instantly hijacked by the oldest part of your brain when someone cuts you off in traffic.
That contradiction used to frustrate me. Now it just makes sense.
Because no matter how educated, regulated, or self-aware you become, the foundation of your nervous system is built on ancient wiring. You have a prefrontal cortex that can do philosophy, therapy, and long-term planning — but you also have a survival system that reacts before any of those higher abilities even get the chance to weigh in.
And if you don’t know when you’ve shifted into that older circuitry, you’ll end up living from it without realizing it.
I see this in myself all the time. Someone merges too sharply in front of me and I feel it right away: heat in the chest, breath tight, tunnel focus. If I’m not paying attention, I’ll immediately take it personally. But when I catch it — oh right, that’s just the primitive alarm system firing — things settle fast. I can even imagine the person rushing, stressed, late. I've been there. That shift isn’t moral—it’s neurological.
The Hardwiring: Survival First, Understanding Later
Forget the poetic metaphors. The brain is mechanical:
The amygdala fires in about 12 milliseconds (that’s .012 seconds) when threat is detected.
The body reacts immediately — adrenaline, muscle tension, threat focus - your body’s sympathetic nervous system.
The prefrontal cortex comes online slower, only if given space, and at about 100 milliseconds.
That means your lizard brain fires 20-40 times faster than your conscious mind.
This creates a lag between reaction and reason.
Humans often live entirely inside that lag.
But, by the time you realize you’re triggered, your body has already:
increased your heart rate
tightened your muscles
shifted your breathing
narrowed your attention
released stress hormones
The problem isn’t the impulse — you can’t control that.
The problem is when you build a whole story around that impulse.
And that brings us to the simplest, cleanest frame for explaining unnecessary suffering.
The Second Arrow: The Pain We Add
Buddhism teaches a concept of “the second arrow”.
The first arrow = the event.
The second arrow = the interpretation.
The first arrow stings — someone cuts you off, someone snaps at you, someone forgets something important. That’s biology. You get hit with a quick emotional reaction and your body prepares for a threat.
The second arrow is everything you pile on:
“They don’t respect me.”
“People always do this.”
“I’m surrounded by idiots and selfish people.”
“No one appreciates me.”
Now you’re not reacting to the event — you’re reacting to your own narrative.
CBT says the same thing in clinical terms:
event → interpretation → emotional consequence.
Change the interpretation and the emotional outcome changes.
Not because you’re denying the stressor — but because you’re removing the unnecessary arrows.
Neurobiology Meets CBT
This is the part therapists know intuitively but don’t always articulate:
Your thoughts are not just thoughts. They are downstream attempts to explain a biological surge.
When the amygdala fires:
you feel urgency
you assume intention
you misread neutral situations as threats
you take things personally
your mind generates meaning automatically
If you don’t catch that early, the interpretation snowballs.
But when you pause — even briefly — the prefrontal cortex lights back up. The meaning changes. The emotion de-escalates. And the behavior follows.
This is why the gap matters.
This is why noticing matters.
This is why slowing down works.
Not because it’s spiritual — because it’s anatomical.
Vulnerability: The Regulator Underneath It All
Here’s the truth people miss: reactivity isn’t just about anger or threat.
It’s about vulnerability.
Brené Brown gets to the core of it: vulnerability is the willingness to show up without certainty or armor.
And the amygdala hates that!!
Most overreactions are just:
fear of not being enough
fear of disconnection
fear of being misunderstood
fear of losing control
fear of being exposed
If you can’t tolerate that feeling, the brain compensates with:
anger
defensiveness
certainty
blaming
controlling
shutting down
Those are not personality traits.
They’re protective strategies.
The moment you can say:
“I feel threatened, not attacked.”
“This feels personal, but it probably isn’t.”
“My brain is filling in meaning that isn’t confirmed.”
“This is discomfort, not danger.”
—you’re practicing vulnerability.
And vulnerability is the only thing that lets you choose a response instead of being run by instinct.
The Actual Practice: Catching the Switch
You don’t need spiritual practice to do this.
You need self-awareness and honesty.
The work looks like:
Noticing your body activate
Naming the reaction instead of hiding it
Asking what story your mind is generating
Checking if the story is accurate or convenient
Considering alternate explanations
Choosing not to escalate the meaning
This is the shift I catch myself in most often — realizing an entire story hijacked my thinking because of a split-second survival reaction.
When I catch that moment, the whole thing softens. It becomes human again instead of adversarial.
A More Humane Way to Move Through the World
This is the heart of emotional maturity:
Recognizing your ancient wiring
Tracking when fear or shame shows up
Staying vulnerable instead of armored
Separating the event from the interpretation
Interrupting the second arrow
Responding with intention instead of instinct
None of this requires religion or philosophy.
Just neuroscience, psychology, and vulnerability.
You can have a thriving clinical practice and still be run by a 200,000-year-old alarm system.
You can have a mortgage and still react like you’re fighting off a predator.
You can hold a medical license and still get hooked by a look, a tone, or a comment.
The point isn’t to eliminate the lizard brain.
The point is to stop letting it run your life.
