We all want more trust at work and at home because it smoothes the rough edges of life. You can build trust when you know how animals build it and why your limbic brain makes careful decisions about when it turns on the great oxytocin feeling of trust.

1. How To Create Trust
with Your Inner Mammal
Loretta G. Breuning, PhD. Inner Mammal Institute

2. A mammal lets down its guard
when with its herd because
the burden of vigilance is shared.

3. It feels good to let down
your guard in safety.

4. This good feeling is a
release of oxytocin.

5. Our verbal brain calls this
feeling “trust.”

6. It would be nice to enjoy this good feeling
all the time, but our brain is not designed to
release oxytocin all the time for no reason.

7. Our brain evolved to promote
survival, not to make you feel good.

8. It rewards you with good feelings when
you do something good for your survival.

9. Misplaced trust can threaten survival,
so the mammal brain makes careful
decisions about when to release it.

10. Your brain is
constantly
making
decisions
about when
to release
oxytocin.

11. It’s not easy being a social mammal.
Others’ horns get in your way.

12. You’d rather just wander off sometimes.
But an isolated mammal is quickly
eliminated in the state of nature.

13. Natural selection built a brain that
motivates you to stick with
the safety of the herd.

14. Oxytocin falls when you’re isolated,
which triggers your cortisol alarm.

15. Cortisol creates the feeling that your survival is
threatened. You are not consciously fearing
predators, but cortisol makes it feel that way.

16. The mammal brain is always balancing
the urge to seek
against the urge to stick with the herd.

17. Life in a herd is not all warm
and fuzzy. Mammals compete.

18. Natural selection built a brain that rewards
you with the good feeling of serotonin
when you assert and prevail.

19. When a rival prevails, your brain releases
cortisol, and it feels like a survival threat.

20. How does a mammal
know when to trust?

21. Short answer:
Neurons connect when oxytocin flows, which
wires you to trust in similar future circumstances.

22. Neurons connect when cortisol flows,
which wires you to withhold trust in similar
future circumstances.

23. You may say
“I do not think this way.”

24. You do not think this in words.
Your verbal inner dialogue comes from a
cortex that’s unique to humans.

25. But your chemicals are controlled by your
limbic system—
core structures common to all mammals, like
the amygdala, hippocampus, and pituitary.

26. The limbic system cannot process
language, so your two brains are literally
not on speaking terms.

27. Your verbal brain lacks insider info
about your chemical ups and downs.

28. Your verbal
brain thinks it’s
in charge.
It has learned
to say things
that get
rewarded.

29. You have more power over your chemistry
when you understand the mammal brain.

30. A mammal is not born knowing when
to trust. It learns from experience.

31. A reptile never
learns to trust.
It leaves home
the instant it
cracks from its
shell, and if it
doesn’t leave
fast enough, a
parent eats it.

32. Reptiles keep their distance because
their colleagues bite if they get too close.

33. Mammals are born without hard-wired
skills. They must trust others to meet their
needs while their skills are building.

34. We mammals are born into a
surge of oxytocin because the chemical
causes labor contractions.

35. That oxytocin is soon metabolized, but
licking and cuddling stimulate more.

36. All the neurons active at that moment build
connections. This wires a young mammal to
trust in situations similar to its oxytocin past.

37. In adolescence, a mammal transfers its
attachment from a parent to a herd in
order to survive once its parent is gone.

38. The pathways built from early experience
have more power than we realize.

39. We are all born with billions of neurons but very
few connections between them. Neurons
connect build easily in youth, and grow with use.

40. The electricity in your brain flows like water
in a storm, finding the paths of least
resistance. It flows into the paths you have.

41. Early experience builds our cortisol
pathways as well as our oxytocin,
serotonin, and dopamine pathways.

42. In the state of nature, anyone close enough to touch
you is close enough to kill you. This is why betrayed
trust triggers so much cortisol. It wires you to feel
threatened in similar future circumstances.

43. Each brain
builds its
danger radar
from early
experience.
You can end up
feeling
threatened a lot.

44. How do mammals get along?

45. They bond around
common enemies.

46. They bond against in-group rivals
as well as out-group threats.

47. For example, two beta monkeys bond to
overthrow the alpha. As soon as they win,
they spar for dominance with each other.

48. As you move through your day,
notice how each group you are with
focuses on its common enemy.

49. Big-brained primates groom allies. They
invest effort today to get support tomorrow.

50. Sometimes those you groom don’t groom
you back. Sometimes they fail to protect you
as expected. It feels like a survival threat.

51. Cortisol surges, and wires you to
withhold trust in similar future contexts.

52. You can end up
withholding trust a lot.

53. What’s a big-brained
mammal to do?

54. Remind yourself that your
sense of threat is an internal
chemical, not an external fact.

55. You have to remind yourself
a lot because old pathways
are so well-developed.

56. And because cortisol
feels so urgent.

57. When your internal alarm is
triggered, remind yourself
that the threat was created by
your expectations,
your chemicals, &
your pathways.

58. Knowing your inner mammal frees
you to take a new perspective.

59. You can make new decisions about when to
trust by feeding your brain new experiences.

60. You will build new pathways
to enjoy oxytocin in new ways.

61. This may seem hard or impossible from
where you’re standing. The good news is that
small steps are enough if you repeat them.

62. So take a
small step
toward social
trust with
someone, and
another small
step with
someone else.

63. Wait for the other person to take a
small step in return. While you’re
waiting, take more small steps.

64. New pathways will
slowly build.

65. You will enjoy
more trust
and others
will mirror you
with their
mirror
neurons.

66. Get the full story at
InnerMammalInstitute.org
videos, podcasts, blogs, books,
infographics, slideshows, & training

67. Habits of a Happy Brain
Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin,
dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels