Here lizard, lizard, lizard brain

Ok, I am one to overly examine many things and one of the things I over-examine is myself. I've spent countless hours, days, and moments thinking about me and my thinking and how I got there. It's crazy to think about our instincts which may partially have been born with us and which parts are learned along the way. We're all different from birth, right? Our base personality make up is us which is then put into the world into an enironment it must react to and learn from. Hence ourselves change by what we encounter, what we must do psychologically to adapt and survive.

I just finished reading an article about priming which is basically, it seems, how we react to a situation, person, object, etc. when we've been primed by some other factor that is affecting us subconsciously. To use their examples: you tend to clean more when there's a hint of cleaning supply scent in the air, you act more frugal and businesslike if there's a briefcase at the end of a table as opposed to a backpack.

So that got me thinking about how I react to certain people, what patterns emerge over time in reaction to their personality and, conversely, how others react to me and my way of being. I know how sensitive a person I have always been and I can attest to feeling a reaction to something instinctually and then doing something to surpress what might be my more instinctual conscious reaction. I might be offended but I won't say anything because I think it's silly to actually be offended. This article made me rethink that reaction to certain people and how my lizard brain was reaction to whatever it is about them, which happens way before I even realize it, I've had a reaction, and my choice to react is my conscious interpretation of that instinctual decision. I also flipped that equation and wondered about how people, specifically relationships, have been for me. How women have reacted to me for years and years as such a friend, often not a lover. That was something I was looking to adjust personally. The interesting part is going back and considering how I was angry or hurt at them for that reaction which may have been exactly what evolution was telling them, that I was not the aggressive lion-killing meat winner. So to speak. So here's the link to the article about priming in the NYTimes. Makes you rethink at the very least the basis for the decisions you make.