Out of the Closet and Away From the Lizard

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It’s Christmas Eve in Brazil

Everybody gathers around the Christmas tree. The whole family is around you. You’re all eagerly waiting with a drink in one hand and a camera in the other. Uncle Peter reads out the labels on the presents. There’s an electric feeling of anticipation in the air. Who’s the next present for? Will it be for me? Suddenly, something hits you — an insight! You’ve got something important to say. Something beautiful, meaningful. Something that will draw everyone in the room to clink their glasses in a toast. A toast to the family and to the future. Your stomach tightens up. You have to share it. So, you take the teaspoon from a cup at your side and hit it lightly yet energetically against your glass. The living room drops in absolute silence. All eyes run from Uncle Peter to you. Your hands grow oddly cold. You swallow… “errrm”.

[Hey there! This is Drix! And this is an English Therapy podcast.]

You’ve got yourself into a very tight psychological situation here. You’ve raised some serious expectations in the room and failing to meet them has a social cost. The moment you clink the glass you’re already communicating a few things:

(1) I want to say something,

(2) what I’m going to say is to everyone’s mutual interest,

(3) it cannot wait, and

(4) I expect you to stop doing what you’re doing and listen to me.

Everyone’s attention lies in your hands from now on. If you don’t deliver something meaningful, ouch! You have possibly spoiled the fun everyone was having. That would be inconvenient, to say the least, and it wouldn’t feel good, would it? Giving a speech and coming out thinking it would have been better if you hadn’t said anything. And now, with all eyes on you and all ears waiting to hear what have to say, you feel the danger pricking your skin. What was it that you were going to say? Your mind is suddenly empty. Psychologists call this an overtaking of the lizard brain.

Say ‘hi’ to the lizard in you

The human brain is structured in layers, a bit like an onion. On the outermost layer, before the meninges and the skull, we have the neocortex. It is the latest update on our brain’s hardware. It’s the home of language, of your personal memories, and of pretty much everything that makes us human and not a chimp. Our brains evolved as an extension of our spinal cords on the top of our neck. Over millions of years, it inflated like a balloon inside our cranial bones. In many ways, going down from your scalp to your spine is like travelling back in time and examining the brains of our primitive ancestors. It’s literally all inside your head right now!

Take one step down from the neocortex and you’ll find brain structures that we share with any mammal on Earth. And if you go down yet another layer, you’ll come across areas of our brain which we share with chickens and geckos. This area is known as the lizard brain! It’s been there since before the dinosaurs and it’s mostly responsible for our sense of fear. Every time you get close to the edge on a tall building, your lizard brain is what makes your heart race and holds you back away from the danger. So, fear is a fantastic technology because it might literally save your life. Imagine, for example, that you’re in the woods and you see a wolf. In the split second, you have a rush of adrenaline and decide whether to run or to fight the wild beast. This survival instinct is always inside you and it’s not only concerned with high places and wild animals. It’s also concerned with our social status, with what other people think of us.

You hesitate and stumble on your words by the Christmas tree because the lizard brain sees no difference between your family and the wolf. The moment you see everyone is looking at you, the lizard knows that danger is imminent. Your face is at risk. Don’t deliver the speech properly and people might resent you. They might think you’re a nuisance. They might not feel like being around you so much. And, because humans are social creatures, this is a real problem to you. It feels like you’re actually getting kicked out of the group. You clink the glass for a speech and the next thing you’re in the woods, naked and alone, with wolves lurking in the dark. You suddenly become incredibly aware of yourself — aware of your dry mouth, your cold hands, and the lack of anything minimally interesting to say. Your lizard brain, a primitive version of you, is looking for survival. It’s overriding the neocortex, forcing it to spend its resources into finding ways of either escaping or fighting the threat.

I was explaining the dynamics of the lizard brain to one of my clients and she said she did not see how it was responsible for what actually happens in a situation like the speech by the Christmas tree. She added that “nobody actually gets up and jumps out of the window like a scared cat or starts biting people like an angry dog when they’re scared of delivering a speech”. “We actually do”, I told her. Of course, we don’t physically jump out of the window, because that would be even more detrimental to what people think of us, right? If the risk of being ridiculed is what makes us nervous, jumping out of a window wouldn’t help much. It would be like calling the wolves and throwing barbecue sauce over your body. We don’t do that. Nor do we grab a chair and start smashing it against everybody like a gorilla just because we’re angry at them. We’re social creatures. What people think of us is inherently important. Their opinion is like a wolf to our primitive mind — a matter of life and death.

So, if you don’t learn to notice and to consciously avoid the workings of your lizard brain, it will hijack your neocortex. It will subdue your creative power and divert it into talking you out of that sticky situation. Let me give you an example of how that could be. You’re at the party. You clink the glass with a spoon. Everybody stops and looks at you. A shiver runs down your spine. You give a nervous laugh and squeak out “I thought maybe we could have a selfie?”. That IS the equivalent of running away in a social context. Don’t you agree with me? You see a beautiful speech to deliver. You start moving towards it. Everybody looks at you and suddenly you’re staring at the wolf. Your lizard brain overtakes you. The content of the speech becomes fuzzy in your mind. The next thing, you’re tempted to propose a selfie instead. You see that? You’re running away from the beast. If you cave in and actually utter the words “let’s have a selfie”, that’s it! It’s gone! No wolf anymore. Of course, people might find the proposal of taking a family picture at that particular time a bit weird and out of place, but at least you didn’t have to hold their attention for so long, did you? The damage was controlled. God only knows what kind of crap you might have said in front of everybody if you’d carried on with a speech that was no longer clear in your head. You might have made a complete fool of yourself, right? So, it’s probably best you never said anything. Uncle Peter delivers all the presents without ever noticing you had something to say. A couple of hours later, you’re in the porch outside, feeling like a failure. The message is back to you in full-HD, but the moment, the opportunity you had to make a difference, to change your life and the lives those around you, that moment is gone! The lizard brain kept you in the closet.

The lizard meets the bilingual

It’s Sunday afternoon. You’ve invited your friend John from work for a beer at the park. You haven’t told him you started studying English yet. John speaks the language really well. He spent a couple of months studying in Canada and he’s always in touch with the company’s legal team in the US. You’ve been watching Breaking Bad, a series he recommended to you on Netflix. No subtitles. You can’t spend some time abroad like he did at the moment, so you understand that watching the series is an opportunity for you to somehow immerse yourself in the language. You’ve been watching at least two episodes a day, one at breakfast and another one before going to bed at night. Sometimes you have to watch the same episode twice, just to make sure you understand it right. Sometimes you have to pause and look up a word or two in the dictionary in order to move on. Sometimes you glide without even noticing the language for a few minutes. Sometimes you have a bit of a headache and you don’t understand much of what the characters say, but overall the strategy is proving efficient. It feels like your mind is opening up to the language. You’re halfway through the 4th season and after watching nearly 40 episodes, you are 100% sure you can understand a lot more in the language. You started noticing that you could understand parts of your favourite songs and created a playlist on Spotify to listen to them in the shower and while you are driving. You’ve also downloaded a language-learning app onto your phone and started watching some grammar tips on Youtube. The improvement in your capacity to understand the language is undeniable, yet there’s something missing.

Although you understand a fair bit of what people say, you never get a chance to talk to anyone in English. So, you started talking to yourself at home, describing what had happened in your day and what your plans for tomorrow were, as if you were talking to somebody else. But there’s only so much you can talk with yourself about and, after a few minutes of doing so, you can’t avoid feeling a bit mentally deranged. You considered hiring someone to talk to you, but you felt that was a bit silly. You could talk to John for free. That would be a lot better than having a class. You could imagine you were, like, in New York or something and just have a chat. This afternoon would be perfect for that, and the tv series should be a good excuse. You’re sure he won’t mind, of course. But, you feel that you need to explain why you want to chat with him in English. After all, if you switched languages in the middle of the conversation without prior notice, you would just confuse him. So, you plan how you will approach the conversation. You’ll tell him that you want to practice the language and that you thought the two of you could talk about the series he recommended. In your mind, he promptly agrees. You tell him to ask you a few things like “what’s your favourite character?”. If you understand the question, you could try to answer it. Maybe, that will get you talking. The plan is perfect! The decision is set in stone! You will talk to John in English this afternoon, even if only just a few minutes!

A few hours later, you’re both at the café in the park. You order a couple of beers and start talking about life as you usually do. Before long, John goes on and mentions another tv series he started watching. You jolt yourself straight on your seat! Here it is! This is the right moment to talk about Breaking Bad in English with John! There’s no doubt about it! In your mind, you hear yourself saying “let me tell you something, John! I started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix, in English, with no subtitles!”. But, the words fail to come out of your mouth. The pint of beer is shaking slightly in your hand now. Your breath is incredibly short. John goes on and on about the new series he is watching. You can’t really seem to focus on what he is saying. You’re distracted. All you can think about is that this is the right time put your plan into action. The right time to ask John to help you improve your communication in English.

You miss one, two, three chances. You know this will be good for you. It might even save you money with private lessons in the future. But, your jaw… your jaw is locked. Four, five, six chances. Your mouth is dry. The lizard is back. Seven, eight… and the opportunity is gone! John moves on to talk about his mum and her new cat, and you sink in your seat. A mix of discontentment and relief takes over your body. You start breathing normally and regain your ability to focus on the conversation. The lizard is back to sleep. “Oh, well, maybe next time”, you convince yourself. Except, there won’t be a next time. Not at the park. Not on a Sunday afternoon like this. You had the perfect place and the perfect time to improve your English with somebody you like, somebody who cares for you, a friend. You had the perfect opportunity to help yourself and your career. You know speaking English is really important nowadays. But, now you feel like you’ve failed. Everything was right for you to have a chat with somebody else in English, so why didn’t you do it? Why did the lizard stop you? Why did it see a threat in speaking English with your friend at the park?

The answer to this question is very complex and it varies a lot from person to person. But, the lizard can see a threat in your speaking English with John for the very same reasons that it can see a threat in your delivering a speech by the Christmas tree to your family. Language puts us in the spot. It has a cost. It demands attention from other people and if you have any reason to believe they might be judging you, bam! — it makes you feel like you’re naked. What if you say something silly? What if the verbs you use are in the wrong place? What if John says “no, I don’t want to talk to you in English like this”? What if you can’t understand what he says and find yourself having to ask him to repeat over and over again? For a social creature like us, the risk of damage feels extremely high.

Will you be rejected and kicked out to the wolves naked and alone just because you can’t speak English properly? Not literally, but it certainly feels like it to your brain. It makes you feel vulnerable like a child and incapable of expressing even the simplest ideas. It certainly makes you feel like you’re less than those around you and that you don’t belong to the group of people who speak English. You’re a wannabe! You’re wasting people’s time in talking to them. They’ll think you’re inconvenient. You don’t want to bother them. It’s too risky. The lizard has overtaken you. Of course, you probably don’t even know that this part of the brain exists, let alone that it’s preventing you from talking to John. You just kind of know that the plan of having a chat with him is not going to happen. It feels like you have no choice. It’s just not happening. So, you tell yourself it will be better in the future, even though you know it never will. It won’t because tomorrow the lizard will be back with you and, unless you overcome the fear, there will be no chatting in English again. There is no easy way out! The lizard is as much a part of you as your arms and legs. It will always be there. Let me give you an example of how this primitive brain can silence you, even after you’re fluent in the language, like me when I was studying in England.

The high-achieving lizard

Cambridge is a city full of exciting things for students to do, to release the stress from all the studying. I was at King’s College Middle Common Room, one of these communal areas in college where postgraduate students socialise. My friends and I were there for a party, which was going really well until I heard some rap music coming from one of the corridors outside. I’m not a big fan of rap, but the words seemed to be saying things about college life, so I walked there to listen a bit closer. In the corridor, I spotted the singer. He looked a bit like a young skater in a baggy basketball sweatshirt and a hat. He was standing on the steps holding a portable speaker in one hand and rapping out a million words per second to a small audience around him on the landing. I was dumbstruck by the whole thing. His words were so clear; his insights so perceptive. He sang a couple of songs and stopped a little for a drink. I approached him. I said I was amazed by his performance and asked where he was from. “Germany”, he replied. It felt like liquid nitrogen had been poured on top of me! I froze from head to toe. I couldn’t believe German was his first language! Of course, I knew he wasn’t from the UK because of his accent. But, I was sure he was going to say somewhere like “America” or “Canada” — not Germany! So, when I understood he was a second-language speaker of English like me, the lizard overtook me. I swallowed up, turned to him, said “oh nice!”, and pretended to be busy looking for my glass of wine on the table.

I felt threatened by him, you see. English was not his first language — or at least I think it wasn’t because I never checked — and he could use it so much better than I could. So, so, so much better! I was gutted. There was me feeling on top of the world, doing a masters in the Psychology of Language Processing and Learning at the University of Cambridge, after having graduated first in my class with a BA in English Language and Linguistics at the University of York, and after many years of teaching English to private students in Brazil. There was me proud of myself and then this happens! In the blink of an eye, I am an impostor. I was embarrassed at being myself. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew that, if I tried to say anything, whatever I said would be obviously off target. It would just sound wrong. So, I dreaded the mere possibility of him asking me what I studied. I was uncomfortable just to be around him, let alone talk to him any further. So, I carried on looking for my imaginary glass and only found it at the other side of the room, as far as I could from the German rapper and his second language genius. He probably never noticed anything. He just got his drink and went back to firing a machine gun of flawlessly pronounced words in his singing. His show continued normally. Mine was over. I told my friends I was tired and left.

Looking back on it, I regret having done that. I should have stayed longer. I should have talked a bit more with the German rapper. But, I was not so aware of my lizard at the time, so there was not much I could do. I never asked his name or even checked if English was indeed his second language. The opportunity is gone. Perhaps I could have made a friend and learned to rap as well. Perhaps I could have interviewed him for my research in second language acquisition. Perhaps I’d be in Germany right now — who knows? But, none of that happened. In the end, I just ran away. The lizard was determined to protect me that night and it only went back to sleep after I was safe in my dorm room at the other side of town in Downing College. I must have spent a couple of hours awake staring at the ceiling that evening, digesting my feeling of being a fraud in one of the world’s most renowned universities. Of course, all that feeling of inferiority didn’t make any sense. I had all the evidence I needed to know I was pretty good in the English Language. But all I could think of was that there was another second language speaker at Cambridge. Someone rapping away in front of an audience whilst I was literally hiding in my room. I felt sorry for myself, but not for long. Fortunately, I was studying linguistics and psychology at the time. Eventually, I figured out the mechanics of what happened that day. I learned about the workings of the lizard brain and how it reduces our capacity to speak and to connect with other people, especially in our second language. So, I started making sure it never happens again.

Whenever I talk to anyone in English, I always observe how I’m feeling. After all, what’s the point of being threatened by somebody who speaks better than you? Are you in a competition? Because if you are, you’re probably going to lose. There are over 7 billion people on the planet. You can be sure there’s somebody who’s better than you at every single measurement you can think of. Eloquence in English is just one of them. And what is the point of comparing yourself with other people? So what if the person you’re talking to sounds like a native? Are you in a language pageant of some sort or are you only trying to have a conversation? I’ve seen people who barely speak the same language fall in love with each other. I’ve also seen people who speak the same language not understanding each other at all. How well you speak a language should never be a reason to walk away from an interaction. Never! If you feel like you should walk off because your language is not right, you can be sure the lizard brain has overtaken you. Stop right away and defuse it! Don’t let it waste another opportunity.

The sleeping lizard in children

So, it should be clear now. The lizard steps in. The opportunity steps out. That’s it! No more speech by the Christmas tree, no more talking about Breaking Bad with your friend John in the park, no more making friends with the German rap singer at the party. The lizard isolates you and this is a problem if you’re learning a language because there is nothing better than face-to-face real life interactions for that. Just think about it. How do children learn their first language? There are definitely no grammar books involved, no teachers, no classrooms, no lessons — no studying really! We all learned our first language by observing our caregivers and by interacting with them.

Children learn to speak by trying to speak. They fail a million times before they can say their first words. We all know this. We all intuitively understand that it is precisely in the process of trying to say a few words that a 2-year old eventually becomes a teenager lecturing her parents on the benefits of being a vegetarian. The fact that children don’t know they’re learning a language is at the core of why they learn it so fast. Language is invisible to them. So, there is no way the lizard brain can fear it. There are no such things as words, verbs or prepositions. There is no right or wrong way to say things. It’s like expecting your dog to be concerned about global warming — It is not going to happen! If you’ve ever had the opportunity of correcting a 3-year old, you know what I mean. Tell a toddler that she should say “I cut the paper” and not “I cutted the paper” and you’re bound to hear back from her “no, mummy, I cutted the paper not you”. Whatever feedback you have about the words they use or the way they say things goes right over their heads, because to their little brains language is not a thing yet (even though they’re constantly using it). Now, try giving an adult the same feedback to see his whole world come apart in front of you.

To an adult, the language is a thing. A real thing! A mind-blowingly complex real thing that she can never be 100% sure of. Something that can give her a better job or get her fired. Something that other people can observe, like the clothes she’s wearing. Yet, something way more elusive. Something she’s not completely in control of. A slippery demon that can only be checked once it’s out there visible to her and to others alike. A patchwork of problems that she can only see once it’s too late to fix. A show of horrors every time she tries to say something. Whenever I offer some feedback to some of my clients during English Therapy, I always try to be very careful in the way I deliver it. Giving constructive feedback is an art in my profession. Whenever I manage to offer some, I observe how the person reacts. His body says a lot. The more visibly disheartened he becomes with his mistake, the less likely he is of becoming bilingual. So the first thing I have do is to help him fix the emotion, the way he reacted to the feedback. How can he reposition himself so that making mistakes won’t put him off? Only then can we fix the language.

Look, I’m sure what I’m saying sounds pretty obvious to you, but it certainly isn’t obvious to everybody — even though it should be! If you decide to learn a language, it means you don’t know the language. You can’t order a coffee in it. You can’t tell your friend about the puppy you adopted last week because you don’t know the word for “puppy”, or for “adopting”, or for how to express the past tense in the language. You’re like a child again and if you can’t accept this you’re doomed. Why? Because if you suffer with every shortcoming you have — and at first shortcomings are all you have by definition –, if your shortcomings embarrass you, if they make you feel bad, then you have this constant feeling of shame when you speak. You feel people are judging you. You are sure people can see everything that’s wrong in your English as well as you do. You feel responsible for your mistakes. They’re your fault! They are a sign of your lack of ability in the language, or perhaps you’re just not disciplined enough, or you haven’t committed yourself to speaking properly. God knows! You panic! It’s obviously all wrong and you’re obviously not in control of the situation. This is a social threat. Can you see that? It exposes you to the wolves.

So, it’s not surprising. Your lizard brain kicks in and you avoid talking to your friend. This creates a vicious circle. You avoid making mistakes by not saying much. You don’t say much, so you don’t get much practice. You don’t get much practice, so you make more mistakes. And on and on. It’s very hard to learn this way. You convince yourself you’re only allowed to say something in a classroom with a teacher. Or that you can only talk about things in the present tense because you haven’t learned the past tense yet. That logic is insane! You wouldn’t tell a child “mummy will only talk about things that are happening right now because you haven’t learned the past tense yet, darling!”. Of course, you wouldn’t! You just talk to them and, when they reply, you just patiently try to figure out what they’re saying to you. That’s the job. Nobody ever panics about it! You might panic if you’re crazy, but the child most certainly will not.

Children are naturally immune to language embarrassment. They just don’t suffer with it because language doesn’t exist to them. It takes them around 5 or 6 years of using the language to realise it’s there. That language is something like the air around them. Something they can observe and talk about. And because language is invisible to them, it can never be a problem. So children never miss an opportunity to practice. They just go on trying to talk with whatever they’ve got. First, they babble to themselves, then they direct their babbling to those around them. Over the course of the first year, they start zeroing in on few simple words like “mum” or “dada”. Then they start stringing a few words together into some short poorly-articulated sentences like “more juice” or “nice dog”, and so on. If you’ve ever had a chance to see a child learning her first language you know what I am talking about. It doesn’t happen overnight. By no means is it something easy. They invest a lot of time and energy into it. But, crucially, there is no suffering! You will never see a child giving up on learning a language. Unaware of what is actually going on, they just continue pushing further and further. Getting better and better with every opportunity.

The birth of a word

Deb Roy, who’s a professor of cognitive science at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and his colleagues designed an interesting study back in 2006 to capture “the birth of a word”. Deb and his wife, Rupal, found out they were expecting a baby. So, they installed 11 cameras and 14 microphones throughout their house and captured over 200-thousand hours of video and audio recordings in the first three years of their baby’s life. The results are incredible. With the help of a computer algorithm that managed to compile all the data into a coherent flow, we can observe Roy and Rupal’s baby boy going from babbling unintelligible sounds to clearly producing his first words and sentences over thousands of failed attempts. In a TED Talk, Professor Roy compared the emergence of a new word to the blossoming of a flower. It doesn’t happen at once. But if you observe it in time-lapse, it gets more and more refined, more and more complex, like the words adults use, every time the child has a go at it. Listen to the evolution of the word “water” recorded by Professor Roy as it is learned by his child over the course of 6 months.

[EXERPT RECORDING].

Yes! You heard it right! It took the child 6 months to go from “gaga” to “water”. Six months!

What I want to highlight here is that we don’t learn languages overnight, not even when we’re kids, and making mistakes is part of the process. We should celebrate the imperfection of our words. We shouldn’t see a failed attempt as being wrong. Of course, it might be off-target. But, once you consider the learning curve, once you see the bigger picture of language acquisition, you’ll realise that what seems wrong right now is a natural stage in the process. If you had the opportunity of recording yourself using the language every day, you’d see that everything makes much more sense in time-lapse. You’d clearly see the unfolding of a bilingual life. If the words you’re using are off-target, it only means they’re still work-in-progress. It means your words are only buds and not flowers yet. So carry on pushing through! Because every time you shut your lizard brain (the only thing that is holding you back) and say something, every time you connect with someone in your second language regardless of how well you speak, a bit of that language miracle happens. You’re learning. You’re becoming someone who actively uses your second language to talk to your friend at the park. It means you’ll have another go, and another one, and another one, until it becomes easier, until you’re able to express complex ideas in the language. You’ll expose yourself more and more to your second language, creating a positive feedback loop. The more you expose yourself, the more you use the language. The more you use the language, the more you practice. And the more you practice, the better you get at being bilingual.

There is no actual wolf in making mistakes. No threat. No embarrassment. No shame. No actual grounds for the lizard to wake up. So, go ahead and get out of the closet. No more hiding. Tell your friend John you’re learning English. Show him how little you know, but also how excited you are to talk to him in these crazy sounds from another country. Be proud of your still imperfect words. Raise your glass. Look people in the eye and speak from your heart. Seize every opportunity to make a difference with your words. They really matter. So, take pride in being a bilingual in the making. Step out of the closet and away from the lizard. The journey has only begun, dear bilingual. And there’s no need to go far because abroad is a place within.

Drix Silva

Cognitive Linguist | English Therapist |M.Phil. Psychology of Language Processing and Learning (University of Cambridge) | B.A. English Language and Linguistics (University of York) | drix@harmony-co.com

Listen to this article as a podcast on Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/episode/0VqQxWTpK9JrPUZJVD5Bs9?si=tZbDlVqAQ0qhnN-FTKca3A

Find out more about English Therapy: www.harmony-co.com/englishtherapy .