Part 2

Recognising Your Brain's Key Characteristics

How they shape the way you think, feel, and respond.

Approx. 4–5 minute read

In this part, you’ll learn about the characteristics of the Special Ops brain — and how recognising them can help you spot when it’s in charge, so you can feel more in control.

Our Special Ops brain is fast! And it often makes its initial response before our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain even gets a look in. And that’s because if you were facing a real live polar bear, you wouldn’t want to stop and ponder what David Attenborough might say about polar bears... outside of their natural habitat... their behaviour around humans... and how they might respond in that situation... at this time of year. So our Special Ops brain reacts first and essentially knocks our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain offline — and it all happens in an instant before we get to really think about it. Great when that polar bear is preparing to eat you for lunch — not so great when your computer glitches in the middle of an important Zoom call and your brain goes on strike instead of calmly reminding you how to fix the issue.

Another characteristic of our Special Ops brain is that it can’t really tell whether something is a big issue or a small issue (remember, it’s not logical or rational!). So things like getting stuck in traffic, someone giving you a look that you interpret as negative, or a difficult conversation you’re dreading can trigger the same stress response as real physical danger.

And it’s really important to know that our subconscious mind can’t actually tell the difference between imagination and reality. Which might sound a little crazy — but remember, it’s not that YOU can’t tell the difference. It’s that your subconscious mind can’t. That’s why, if you’re watching a horror film, you might feel genuinely scared even though you know it isn’t actually real — or why your stomach might drop just from imagining something stressful or uncomfortable. In a brighter example, imagining someone you love can make you feel warm and happy in the moment.

The fact that our Special Ops brain isn’t very good at distinguishing between our imagination and the here and now also means it isn’t very good with tenses. It struggles to differentiate between the past, the present, and the future. So every time we find ourselves thinking about something upsetting in the past, or negatively forecasting the future, our Special Ops brain steps in and responds almost as if it’s real and happening right now.

Our Special Ops brain really is just trying to protect us and keep us alive. But this means that it encourages us to think negatively — and tends to look at everything from the worst possible perspective. And it’s only doing that for our self-preservation. If there were a real live polar bear right near you right now, it would be much safer to assume it was hungry. Because if you assumed it had already eaten, the chances are it would eat you.

Our Special Ops brain can also have a tendency to be a little obsessive. And that’s because if there really were a polar bear lurking outside, it would be sensible to remember it was there and keep checking on its whereabouts. In the same way, our Special Ops brain can keep our everyday-life polar bears close to mind, constantly reminding us about things we’d probably prefer not to keep thinking about — worries, pressures, frustrations, and irritations. And it also makes sense that our Special Ops brain encourages us to repeat the things that make us feel safe — the habits, routines, or behaviours that reassure it. For some of us, that might be checking and triple-checking that we’ve locked the door or turned the hob off. For others, it might be reaching for the biscuits — the Special Ops brain loves a good combination of carbs, sugar, and fat, perfect for giving us energy to fight or run from polar bears. And sometimes it might be that we end up running through every possible terrible outcome in an attempt to prepare for every feasible — and sometimes not-so-feasible — disaster.

Our Special Ops brain also encourages us to be vigilant — because if it detects danger — and remember, our Special Ops brain can’t tell whether that danger is real or imagined, whether it affects us on a physical or emotional level, whether it’s simply uncomfortable or frustrating, or whether it actually is life or death — it makes sense that we’ll stay on high alert. So it’s our Special Ops brain that’s responsible for creating the thoughts, feelings, habits, and responses that we might well prefer to experience less of.

If you’re prone to overthinking everything, please know it’s not actually you — it’s your Special Ops brain.

If you find yourself catastrophising, it’s not really you — it’s your Special Ops brain.

If you find yourself snappy, short-tempered, and easily irritated, that’s your Special Ops brain too.

Prone to snacking, scrolling, worrying, avoiding, reacting, procrastinating, or replaying conversations in your head at 2am?

Yep — you guessed it. It’s not you. It’s your Special Ops brain.

That’s why it can sometimes feel like your mind has a life of its own — and isn’t always behaving the way you’d like it to. But when we understand how our brain works, we can strengthen our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain, calm our Special Ops brain, and regulate our nervous system. And that can make a huge difference to how we think, how we feel, how we respond to the world around us, and how we experience life.

So in the next part, let’s take a closer look at the strategies our Special Ops brain uses to try to keep us safe — and how understanding them can help us work with our brain rather than against it, so that we can design and influence our mindset in ways that allow us to get the most out of life.

Because understanding what’s going on in our minds really can change everything.