St Aiden's Health ~ Basic Instincts

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Basic Instincts

Follow your instincts for wellbeing. Our bodies are encoded with an armoury of
instinctual responses that help to keep us safe and sane. Put simply, instinct is an
automatic bodily reaction built into our genetic coding.

‘Instincts are the genetics of the psyche', says clinical psychologist Marc Kahn, 'and
how we manage, interpret and control our instincts, is what makes us conscious and
'above' animal life; is where our free will comes in. As Freud put it, instinct has got to
be universal. If it's an instinct then it's basic to being human'.

Other examples of our instinctual responses to danger are the feeling of being
watched or followed, or a sense of unease around someone for no particular reason.
Often we put these feelings down to paranoia, but we ignore them at our peril.
According to neuroscheintists at New York University, the part of the brain that
regulates the fear response, the amygdala, has an extra-fast link to the eyes and
ears, so we absorb information (a slight hand movement, a change in pace or
unusual behaviour) before our conscious minds can process it. So listen to that
niggling feeling, and forget politeness! Rather shriek at the stranger who offers to
help with your parcels - and apologise later if so warranted - than allow good
manners to compromise your safety.

'Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself'. - Oprah Winfrey Urge
to merge.

Some instincts are not about protection from danger - quite the opposite. Our
potential-partner radar plays a handy role in procreation, possibly ensuring healthier
offspring. According to Robert Winston in Human Instinct (Random House, R310) we
may be drawn to people with opposite tissue types to our own, minimising the risk of
genetic defects in our children. A discerning little instinct that seems to have
eluded the average Jerry Springer Show specimen.

Research done by Craig Roberts at Newcastle University also found that men prefer
the smell of women who have immune systems very different to their own. He gets
women to wear the same T- shirt for days, then asks men which ones appeal to their
sense of smell. Still on the sexual side of sixth sense, women are frequently more in
the mood for sex when they're ovulating - a cunning biological plot designed to
ensure survival of the species.

Secrets and lies

The vast majority of people whose spouses or business
partners have cheated on them will say, with hindsight,
that they knew something was going on. Whether or not
we act on our suspicions depends on whether we're in
ostrich mode or not - sometimes people just don't want
to know so they sublimate their feelings of unease.
If it's a case of your partner having an affair, this may
work for you, but generally it doesn't pay to ignore
those niggling feelings that something's wrong.

Often, if you dissect your suspicions they are actually a whole lot more than just
'niggling feelings'; you've been picking up subtle signals from body language, facial
expressions, eye contact (or lack thereof) or atypical behaviour. Back to the old
high-speed eye-ear link to the brain again - there are things going on, it's just that
your conscious mind isn't processing them.

Troubleshooting tastebuds

Personal tastes, as in which perfumes you prefer, aren't instincts, but when a certain
smell makes us recoil there's usually a good reason and it's wise to take note of your
body's objection. For instance, the smell of rotting meat is something most people
find repulsive - which is fortunate since eating it would make us mighty ill. A classic
example of our tastebuds doing sentry duty is the phenomenon pregnant women's
cravings. Everyone knows someone who suddenly had to have pickled onions in the
middle of the night, or raw spinach for breakfast. More bizarre cravings include those
for washing powder, earth, cigarette butts, paper and paint. Kelly Perlman,
therapeutic reflexologist and nutritional healer, says one of her patients, when
pregnant, had an overpowering urge to eat earth and stones. Perlman perceived
this as a lack of silica, which she prescribed, and within two days the cravings
disappeared. Cravings for sweet things are something completely different.

Perlman believes we are conditioned to like sweet things in childhood. We learn to
associate them with happy events like birthday parties, or comfort and TLC - child
grazes her knee and is given a biscuit; the doctor gives her a lollipop after an
injection. This is perversion of self-preservation instinct, unlike pregnant cravings
which serve our bodies' needs. Breaking the pattern Being thinking and feeling
entities, we sometimes overprotect ourselves into a state of shut-down. You fall off
a horse and get hurt, you may now instinctively associate horses with danger,' says
Kahn. 'It's not that your instinct is bad. But if your fear is impinging on your life, you
need to do some healing work around disassociating horses from the idea of danger,
and once that happens you won't have the fear response.' It's often with emotional
pain that we most effectively cocoon ourselves. After being betrayed by a friend,
we don't allow ourselves to trust again; after being dumped by a lover, we don't
allow ourselves to love again. These self-protective responses are not healthy if they
become a way of life. If you are shutting off from people for fear of being vulnerable,
it's time to start singing like nobody's listening, dancing like nobody's watching and
loving like you've never been hurt.

Expert Advice Marc Kahn is a Cape Town-based registered clinical psychologist and
corporate consultant. E-mail him at psy@global.co.za. Kelly Perlman is a Cape Town-
based reflexologist and nutritional healer. Contact her on 082-334- 4994 or e-mail
reflexology@global.co.za.

Words by Lynne Clement Stafford
This article and others can be viewed at Clicks Health

Red Alert The feeling of vertigo, of being pulled over the edge when we're at
great heights, says Kahn, is '100- percent instinct for survival. People who don't
feel it, like tightrope walkers, have learnt to control the instinct'.