What is Default?
What is Default?
And how does it lead to self-sabotage?
“Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”—Francis Xavier
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Xavier was—though he didn’t know it—referring to what neuroscientists today call the Default Mode Network, (DMN).
The Default Mode Network, or what I call Default, is responsible for a self-referential introspective state; it constantly mediates one’s thoughts and feelings when at rest, (i.e. when we’re not doing something engaging) remembering one’s past and forming beliefs for the future, (Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008; Raichle & Snyder, 2007).
Here’s the kicker: By four years of age there is a marked increase in connectivity and the DMN becomes similar to what is observed in adults, (Damajuru et al., 2014; Gal el al., 2009; Lee, Morgan, Shroff, Sled & Taylor, 2013).
Xavier knew what he was talking about, even though he didn’t.
How does Default lead to self-sabotage?
The events and emotions experienced in our childhood is our personal reality. Which then, in adulthood, becomes our personality.
If you grew up with a silver spoon in your mouth, is it any wonder why you unconsciously self-sabotage your way to being an Overgrown Infant now that you’re grown up?
If you witnessed your parents together one week, broke up the next, being verbally and physically abusive with each other all the while, might that have something to do with you finding calm in the chaos of toxic relationships now that you’re a parent?
If you were taken from your dad as a toddler, and then he was taken from you as a teenager, (death) maybe that’s why you are in a constant state of remembering your past as a victim while forming that same belief for your future?
Default instills an innocent inauthenticity that makes us guilty of clinging to the catastrophes of our childhood despite the fact that we’re adults. In other words, the child becomes the man.
That’s how Default leads to self-sabotage.
References
Buckner, R.L., Andrews-Hanna, J.R., & Schacter, D.L. (2008). The brains default network: anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 1-38. http://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1440.011
Damajuru, E. Caprihan, A., Lowe, J.R., Allen, E. A., Calhoun, V.D., & Phillips, J.P. (2014). Functional connectivity in the developing brain: A longitudinal study from 4 to 9 months of age. NeuroImage, 84, 169-180. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.08.038
Lee, W., Morgan, B.R., Shroff, M. M., Sled, J. G., & Taylor, M. J. (2013) The development of regional functional connectivity in preterm infants into early childhood. Neuroradiology, 55(2), 105-111. http://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-013-1232-z
Raichle, M. E., & Snyder, A. Z. (2007). A default mode of brain function: A brief history of an evolving idea. NeuroImage, 37(4), 1083-1090. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.041