How Your Inner CEO Regulates Stress Hormones
Corporations have a CEO. So do you. An inner one. Think of your inner CEO as responsible for making assessments, decisions, and commitments. It carries out this work in its executive suite: the prefrontal cortex. Like most CEOs, yours is freed up from having to attend to routine tasks. In the subcortex of your brain, a sort of mental autopilot carries out routine tasks for you with little or no conscious attention.
Your Autopilot
How does your autopilot learn to perform routine tasks? When first carrying out a new task, you do so by focusing on it. The same is true the second time. But as you continue repeating the task, repetition causes some steps to be memorized. The memorized steps are carried out automatically. The unmemorized steps, as before, are done consciously. As repetition continues and more steps are memorized, more of the task is performed automatically. Finally, the entire task is done with little or no conscious thought.
Think of teaching a child to tie a shoelace. You have to go over it again and again. Finally, the child can do it for herself, albeit slowly and methodically. Soon, however, it becomes automatic. Before long, the child can carry on a conversation while tying her shoelaces.
Over time, many activities are committed to memory. In some cases, sets of memorized steps can be sequenced to produce a lengthy routine. For example, when first learning the waltz, you stumble your way through three basic steps (the man: left foot forward, right foot forward and to the side, left foot together with the right; the woman: right foot back, left foot backward and to the side, right foot together with the left). Three steps follow this with the woman going forward and the man going backward.
Your cortex is, of course, doing this consciously. Three steps in one direction and three steps in the other direction are a total of six steps. On the conscious level, in what is called working memory, the number of things the cortex can keep in play at one time is around seven (plus or minus two). If seven is the limit of what a person can juggle consciously in the cortex, how do we do more complex things? How do we recite a poem of more than seven words? How do we master the waltz?
Fortunately, unconscious procedural memory in your subcortex can hold millions of steps. By repetition, you transfer a few words at a time, or a few steps at a time, from conscious working memory (in the cortex) to unconscious procedural memory (in the subcortex). Repetition signals your subcortex to memorize what you are doing.
Have those first six steps been memorized? At your next lesson, you check, and sure enough, the steps are in place. Now you are ready to try them while turning left. After turning left a few times, you try turning right. By the end of the second lesson, you have six additional steps transferred to unconscious procedural memory. Think about the word unconscious: Before long, this amazing memory system will enable you to perform an extended routine with little or no conscious thought. To add some sophistication, you need a couple of fancy steps, the whisk (three steps) and the chassé (five steps). Once again, through conscious repetition, you transfer these steps to unconscious procedural memory.
At this point, your instructor shows you how to use all the steps you have learned in a sequence. The sequence has twenty-some steps, ending with the chassé. The chassé leads you back to the beginning of the sequence, thus allowing the sequence to be repeated seamlessly. Though it might have seemed impossible at the outset, you can now let the music float you around the dance floor, as you and your partner perform the sequence again and again without a thought. Through repetition, the dance routine has become, literally, routine. While your subcortex is moving you around the floor, your CEO is free to focus on more important things, such as the face of the person in your arms. That’s the magic of ballroom dance.
Your Inner CEO and Autopilot as Partners
When you go from a private studio to a crowded ballroom, if your subcortex simply carries out the routine, you are going to collide with other dancers. You have to use your cortex and your subcortex. Your CEO (in the cortex) needs to fit the memorized steps stored (in the subcortex) into a sequence that navigates you and your partner around the other dancers. Once the plan is complete, your CEO commits to it, and the subcortex carries it out.
Let’s consider a different example: driving on a multilane highway. The autopilot in your subcortex is doing the driving. Your CEO is thinking about dinner; “Umm, how about a nice filet of sole, with a little white wine, butter, and lemon juice?” Your inner CEO gets so deep into the thought of Sole Française that you can almost taste it. Uh, oh. Target fixation! If you can remember a time on a multilane highway when you missed your planned exit, you can understand how your CEO, fixated on Sole Française, might not notice a car drifting into your lane. Though the autopilot in your subcortex sees this happen, it has no decision-making capacity. It is like a deer frozen in the headlights. It cannot make a change.
Some out-of-the-box thinking is called for. Who is going to make the call? Your CEO is busy thinking about Sole Française. Fortunately, the amygdalae are monitoring what is going on. If everything is routine, the amygdalae, while remaining alert for anything out of the ordinary, chill out. But if they notice anything non-routine, they notify your inner CEO.
To bring a non-routine situation to the CEO’s attention, the amygdalae do not politely knock on the door. Rather, they zap your CEO with a shot of stress hormones. Thoughts of Sole Française vanish. All you are aware of is a car coming at you! You think, “Where the hell did that come from?” Well, simple. It came from the lane next to you, but since you were otherwise occupied when it first started drifting toward you, you didn’t notice it. How it got so close feels like a mystery. Never mind. There’s work to be done.
Your Inner CEO’s ABCs
When signaled by your amygdalae, your inner CEO functions like a real CEO. It uses its Executive Function to quickly do three things:
A. It assesses whether this non-routine situation is an opportunity, irrelevance, or a threat. (The amygdalae only know whether something is routine or non-routine.)
B. It builds a plan of action—or inaction—based on what is most likely to produce desired results.
C. It commits to action or to inaction. (In some cases, the commitment is to watchful waiting, or to dismissal of the situation as irrelevant.)
Assessment? That’s easy. The car coming into your lane is a threat. Build a plan of action? You could blow the horn. You could turn the wheel to move away. You could hit the brakes to drop behind where the other car is headed. You could do all three. Once you decide, the next step is commitment. Commitment puts your plan into action. Then, something remarkable happens.
Commitment Terminates Stress Hormone Release
There is a dedicated neurological pathway from your inner CEO’s office, the orbitofrontal cortex, to the amygdalae. This is one of the pathways built early in life between areas of conscious thought and areas where unconscious processes regulate emotion. This neurological pathway has but one purpose: At the moment of commitment, it is used to send a signal to the amygdalae that causes them to automatically reset. Stress hormone release stops. The amygdalae return to monitoring, ready to alert you to the next non-routine situation.
There is a reason why stress hormone release stops, even if the situation requires further action. If stress hormones were to continue post-commitment, they would be a distraction that would get in the way of carrying out the plan. When a phone rings, at the moment you take action and answer it, the ringing stops. Think how distracting it would be to carry on a conversation with the phone still ringing.
That’s how your inner CEO responds to stress hormone release. You may need a shot of stress hormones to get your inner CEO’s attention, but once it is on the case, it needs no further hormones to maintain its focus. As necessary, your inner CEO reassesses the situation, reevaluates the plan of action, and recommits until the job is done, and things are again routine.
In case your inner CEO comes up with a plan that requires physical exertion, your body is prepared. When the stress hormones alerted your inner CEO, they also increased your heart rate and breathing rate. Take note: Neither the release of stress hormones, nor the feelings or the elevated heart and breathing rates they cause, signify danger. They only mean a non-routine situation has been detected. The amygdalae don’t have enough brainpower to assess whether something is safe or unsafe, nor can they make a decision about what to do. After all, each amygdala is merely the size and shape of an almond. Assessment requires far greater resources, those in the cortex, under the command of your inner CEO.
Self-Activation
I don’t understand. I can get on my motorcycle and go one hundred mph and I’m fine. But I can’t get on an airplane.
Some anxious fliers can ski, ride a motorcycle, or go rock climbing without undue anxiety. They wonder why flying is so different. It appears that being in control keeps them from feeling anxious. To some degree this is true, but being in control does not necessarily regulate anxiety. When in control, if you can’t decide what to do, anxiety persists.
A risky activity requires continuous ABC activity. Some kind of assessment, decision, and commitment takes place every few seconds. With almost continuous commitment signals being sent to the amygdalae, stress hormones—and thus feelings of fear—are kept at bay.
A well-disciplined person can stay focused on a task even if it does not involve risk, and even if it is not exciting. Airline pilots have an expression. When they see a pilot leave the cockpit, they jokingly ask, “Who’s minding the store?” The pilot making that comment knows, of course, that someone is still at the controls. But this inside joke has a point. Airline flying is boring. We intend to keep it that way.
In the cockpit, duties are shared. One pilot monitors the radio and handles the communications with Air Traffic Control. Another pilot stays focused on the instruments to make sure the plane’s speed, altitude, and navigation are as they should be. Though this is boring business, it has to be done to make sure there are no nasty surprises. Since being an airline pilot is, if anything, less exciting than being a storekeeper, we jokingly refer to it as “minding the store.”
Stress hormones rarely are triggered when a disciplined individual “minds the store.” Events that would trigger stress hormones are preempted by constant management. When your inner CEO “minds the store,” it is as if it is telling the amygdalae, “Hey. I’m on the case. You don’t need to zap me with stress hormones. I’m already paying attention.”
On the road, an expert driver doesn’t wait for stress hormones to activate Executive Function. The driver is constantly doing his ABCs. He is continuously assessing, continuously building plans of action, and continuously committing to them. A commitment of some kind is taking place every few seconds. This means the amygdalae are almost perpetually being signaled to hold back the stress hormones. When driving, if you “mind the store,” you are not subjected to the release of stress hormones. If the car in the next lane starts to drift toward you, you notice it right from the beginning. Though it is non-routine for the car to be moving toward you, its position is so nearly the same as its previous position that, though it is perceptible to you, the amygdalae do not react to it. When you “mind the store,” you can sense smaller differences than your amygdalae can.
By self-activating and “minding the store,” you can avoid stress hormone release altogether. You take notice of non-routine situations and act on them before they reach the threshold at which the amygdalae can sense them. Executive Function beats the amygdalae to the draw.
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The Social Engagement System can moderately or completely inhibit stress hormone release. Executive Function can terminate stress hormone release if it can do all three ABC steps. Self-activation by your inner CEO can preempt stress hormone release by “minding the store.”
We all know that if we can keep something out of mind, it doesn’t bother us. This leads anxious fliers to focus on other things, and try to keep the flight out of mind. During taking off and when in turbulence, the “keep it out of mind” strategy doesn’t work. Non-routine noises and motions trigger the amygdalae; they release stress hormones that forcibly bring the facts of flight to mind. Would it not be a better strategy to do the opposite and “mind the store”? By staying keenly aware—taking conscious note of every noise and motion of flight—Executive Function beats the amygdalae to the draw, and keeps stress hormones from being released.
The Mobilization System can regulate anxiety only if the person is assured of immediate escape. Executive Function can regulate anxiety only if the person is in control. The Social Engagement System, however, can regulate anxiety even when not in control or when unable to escape.