The Frontal Lobe a Two-Edged Sword?

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A dozen years ago, I went to El Salvador after two massive earthquakes turned innumerable towns and villages into rubble and devastated innumerable lives. As organizer and translator, I accompanied three doctors who provided medicines and care.

In one large town where the doctors were treating long lines of people, one of them asked me to change roles. Someone, he said, had to “treat” the emotional problems that resulted from losing husbands, children, siblings, parents, homes and schools. So like a sort of Lucy in the Peanuts cartoon with her 5-cent psychiatrist stand, I sat in a folding chair in a litter-strewn street and announced I would listen to anyone who wanted to talk. A long line soon formed behind the chair and I spent much of the next day or two listening to the horrors of earthquake destruction.

Among the most disturbing stories was one from a distraught teen who told of watching a huge sink hole suddenly develop in the middle of her classroom. Many students and their desks fell in, and two were killed as she and other classmates watched helplessly.

I was practicing psychology without a license, I suppose, but I actually did little more than listen and make what I thought were occasional appropriate comments. After telling me about their personal disasters, most people went into their worries about the future: How can I get along without my husband and his income? How can I cope with the death of my daughter? My house is gone, where will I live? My leg is broken, how can I work?

These people were already among the poorest on the planet, with few personal resources and virtually no public assistance. My heart ached for them, but what could I say that would be meaningful?

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I noticed the large number of stray, mangy dogs roaming the streets and decided to offer them as examples. The dogs lived in the present, looking for anything that would sustain their lives, eating anything they could find to put flesh on their skeletal frames. They didn’t worry about the future. I don’t know whether the message “worked,” but people seemed to go away calmer than when they came. What I was asking people to do, I now realize, is to ignore the function of their frontal lobes.

I’m reading a book called, Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard. He describes the evolution of the frontal lobe in the brains of humans and how important it is for human progress. Basically, he writes, the frontal lobe is responsible for our ability to mentally project into the future. If not for that part of the brain, we – like the people whose frontal lobes have been damaged – would be stuck in a permanent present.

The ability to anticipate the future has its downside, however. Anxiety disorders affect over 40 million Americans, but that’s just counting people who have an anxiety classified as a mental illness. Unlike the people in El Salvador who had every reason to be anxious, many of us are needlessly stressed about the future. The American Psychological Association says seventy-five percent of adults reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress in a recent one-month period, and nearly half reported that their stress had increased in the past year. We worry about every manner of possibility, but principally about money, relationships, jobs, family, death.

Gilbert, the Harvard psychologist, says hardly any of the bad things we dread actually happen. Many of us simply refuse to stop worrying and be happy. We settle for the idea that we’ll be happy some time in the future after we make a certain amount of money or after we’re in the right relationship. In my view, all this worry gets in the way of focusing on the important things in life, including the search for God.

I believe that’s what prompted Jesus to provide this insight, one of my favorites in Luke’s gospel: “Therefore I tell you, don’t worry about your life and what you will eat, or about your body and what you will wear. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Notice the ravens: they do not sow or reap; they have neither storehouse nor barn, yet God feeds them. How much more important are you than birds! Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your lifespan? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest?”

(Next week: Practical tips on minimizing anxiety for people searching for God.)