ERM* – The Elephant

Who’s the Elephant?  You are!  It’s the unconscious (or sub-conscious), automatic processing, and often very fast-acting, “bottom-up” part of your mind. (As opposed to your Rider, which is the part you are really most [or only] familiar with; the Rider is the conscious, aware, “experiencing” and “thinking” part of the brain.)

Your Elephant may at first be difficult to identify or even believe in – after all, it is the un- or sub-conscious part of your brain, which is by definition the part you are not aware of and can only conceive of as “being there” with your conscious self (i.e., your Rider). But as you’ll come to appreciate, this unconscious brain functioning is going on all the time…and is performing – “in the background” – many critical functions…automatically, simultaneously, and generally quite effectively.

For example, the Elephant is regulating a number of physical processes in your body – like your heart rate, your breathing, your nervous and immune systems, as well as “executing” motions and behaviors involving complex muscle coordination (like walking, taking a drink, even making facial expressions!). The Elephant is also managing other mental processes that enable you to do things – like executing skills you’ve learned, following habits, and even dreaming. It also stores your memories, “holds” your prior learning (like facts, biases, and trauma), and “keeps track” of your beliefs and values as they change and evolve.

And…did you ever wonder where your feelings come from? They’re not something you (i.e., your Rider) “think through” and then create; rather, they are a complex and intricate neural process that your Elephant is continuously performing, resulting in emotions that are “offered up” to your Rider, one of whose functions is to acknowledge (i.e., feel) and [consciously] experience them.

In fact, this Elephant function of creating our emotions – that is, our reactions to events – is arguably the most important one it performs…or at least your Rider (i.e., the part who feels the joy, grief, anger, worry, pleasure and sadness that “comes up”) probably thinks so. Actually – and this is why your Elephant is so important – your Rider is usually and most often on the receiving end (as in along for the ride) of what the Elephant is doing in reacting and thus creating your emotions!

And, as the ERM model implies, your Elephant is in fact also the larger part of your mind, performing the myriad kinds of mental processes in support of your Rider’s experience, as well as directing all those life-sustaining functions your body needs to survive.

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Now your Elephant has been informed – that is, taught and “educated” – by 1) genetics, 2) real-life experiences, and 3) your exposure to ideas and beliefs of what is right or wrong, and good or bad. This last started with your caregiver/parent[s] in telling you, reminding you, lecturing, disciplining, shaming, etc; and soon included others, like extended family, teachers, and possibly priests/clerics. And in growing up, your Elephant has been further subjected to all kinds of other external influences…like friends, social media, entertainment media, and advertisers.

What all this means is that your Elephant has been trained and conditioned by the external life experience. Most if not all of this learning has been “taken in” without questioning its truth, validity, or relevance. In other words, you are the product – and in some sense a victim – of events, experiences, and influences you’ve had absolutely no say in or control over.

But then…evolution saddled our Elephant with an “intelligent” Rider, a (newer) part of the brain that can think, rationalize, and problem-solve. And it can train – or re-train – our Elephant to believe in and thus effect (i.e., “come up with”) different, better, more positive and desirable reactions and behaviors…leading to greater happiness and well-being.

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*Elephant/Rider Model: The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt, 2006.