Back in January I was reading Jill Bolte Taylor’s (JBT) book ‘Whole Brain Living’. I mentioned it in last week’s blog. Here I want to share some thoughts I jotted in my journal back in January.

January 21

I have been asking a question of my HS for a couple of months now. It is to understand why younger people are dealing with extreme anxiety and panic attacks. I was given some insight.

I am currently reading Jill Bolte Taylor’s recent book, ‘Whole Brain Living’. She describes how the 4 main parts of our brain (left upper and lower, right upper and lower) can bring forward four different personalities. In the book she has a chapter about the characteristics of the generations of the last 100 years. She describes the events and technological changes that effected each generation as they grew up and explains how each group acts from one of the 4 brain characters.

This gave me what I was looking for!

Millennials and Gen Z are described as more right brained — if they didn’t deal with left side emotional, stuck in the past, character 2, they are overwhelmed with managing anxiety. (These are my words, influenced by my trying to keep this understanding brief, so I expect I am doing a poor job of expressing a really big, insightful theory that has been experienced and researched by JBT.)

January 30

IPS was getting anxious about starting new job on Monday. He texted and I immediately felt the stress in my gut. I put it over to P to speak with him as I ran to the bathroom (sounds more dramatic than it was but it did mess me up for the day until I had my wonderful reflection described in next section).

As I thought about how he was tearing himself apart I just knew I had to share Jill Bolte Taylor’s 4-character brain theory with him. I texted him her Ted Talk and asked him to watch before we spoke. I wanted him to hear of her experience and how her right brain functioned with her left brain off-line.

He FaceTime with me once he had watched the video. I could see he looked a bit brighter from how he looked before the Ted Talk. Now, with him understanding left brain versus right brain functions I was able to explain the 4 characters of: left brain thinking character 1, left brain emotional character 2, right brain emotional character 3, and right brain thinking character 4.

Within a few minutes we were speaking the language of his character 2 (responsible for safety, fight, flight, freeze) having taken over and that he had 3 other brain characters that had made plans and were looking forward to the experiences.

Thank you, God!

He seemed to really get it. It helped that he could relate it to his favorite Disney movie “Inside Out”.

I think that JBT’s Ted Talk testimony, putting science behind these ideas of multiple personalities within our mind/psyche helped as well.

The God connection.

I had some insight of my own thinking about JBT’s 4 characters. It has bothered me that she writes that character 4 is our God connection. I do get that this open higher thinking draws from higher consciousness, God, but I kept asking myself ‘what about the heart?’ I thought this was our connection to God.

Knowing we are more than our minds I say ‘body, mind, and spirit’ regularly to gain perspective on life. This helped me to find resolution.

Our body is connected to God through the heart, our mind is connected to God through right thinking brain. Spirit is spirit which, to me, is always connected to God

me –> higher self –> Holy Spirit –> All that Is

It feels so good to me know to think that such big portions of myself are connected no matter how delusional I may be lost in the idea of separation.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!