Our brains have to model the world to navigate it
Before we start to understand ourselves, we need to understand our brain
Our brains have evolved over millions of years to solve specific problems for us — the key one being, how do I survive?
We often start conversations in psychology by talking about what’s wrong with us, what we want to fix, what we want to do better. We’re so fixated on the way our brains are failing us, that we don’t have much empathy for the incredible problems our brains are trying to solve in the first place.
Without taking a step back to understand what our brains are trying to do, why they’re trying to do that, and how they try to do what they do, it becomes very easy to constantly work across purposes with our own internal wiring — leaving everyone involve (e.g. you, yourself and your brain) very frustrated indeed. No one is getting what they need!
In this section, we’ll take an evolutionary perspective on the brain — what it’s trying to do, and how it works. At the end, we’ll start the conversation on, not just what “brains” in general do, but on how brains differ in how they solve problems — process information and make decisions to get our needs met, creating the diversity of personalities we encounter every day.
