by John Gottman
As this example demonstrates, problems in relationships may be the result of living with one or more of your emotional command systems overactivated or underactivated. Such an imbalance can reduce your success at bidding and responding to others’ bids. Problems in bidding can also result from misunderstandings that occur between people who have different levels of comfort within the emotional command systems. But you can avoid such problems by learning more about these systems and how they affect you and your family, friends, and coworkers.
The Seven Systems and How They Affect Us
Panksepp, who first identified these emotional command systems, believes there are probably more than seven of them, but these are the systems he has found so far by scouring the scientific literature for the anatomical and physiological evidence that proves their existence in the brains of all mammals. Knowing these systems exist across all mammalian species tells us they are part of our evolutionary heritage. This means we’re born pre-wired with these systems, which respond unconditionally to circumstances in our environment that may affect our species’ ability to survive and prosper.
Below, you’ll find a brief description of each system, what it’s responsible for, and what typically happens when it’s underactivated or overactivated. The chart on this page gives an abbreviated version of this information.
The Commander-in-Chief. This is the emotional command system in everybody’s brain that coordinates functions related to dominance, control, and power. You’re most likely to activate this system when you need to break free from restrictions, take charge of a situation, or force action. You might call upon the Commander-in-Chief inside you when you feel physically threatened, when you think you’re being treated unfairly, or whenever you feel blocked from achieving a goal. It can be a great help during a competitive soccer game or a cutthroat sales contest.
Consider the baby who’s frustrated after being held too close for too long. The system that makes her fuss, struggle, thrash, and cry is the Commander-in-Chief. She wants out of her front-pack, and she wants out now!
Think of a cruel dictator whose authority and power is challenged. The system that makes him lash out and attack the people who rise up against him is the Commander-in-Chief.
Or imagine that you’re walking down the street and somebody tries to snatch your shoulder bag. The Commander-in-Chief makes you hang on tight and fight to keep it.
When your Commander-in-Chief is at its optimum level, you feel confident about the challenges you face, because you’re not afraid to assert yourself to get what you need.
When your Commander-in-Chief is overactivated, you can be driven to anger, rage, aggression—even violence—to get what you want. When it’s underactivated, you may feel impotent, frustrated, and overly passive—especially in the face of obstacles, injustice, or personal attack.
The Explorer. Searching, learning, and satisfying one’s curiosity are the functions that this system organizes. Our distant ancestors probably relied on the Explorer to find food, water, and a dry cave, but we’re more likely to use it on a shopping expedition or while surfing the Internet for cool Web sites.
The Explorer comes into play whether we’re seeking information for a business paper, ingredients for that special sauce, or a date for Saturday night. It may involve behaviors such as questioning, hunting, foraging, sorting, processing, planning, learning, and goal-setting.
You’re likely to give your Explorer a good workout when you travel to a foreign country, take a seminar on a subject you’ve never studied before, or learn to play bridge.
When your Explorer is optimally engaged, you typically feel a sense of high expectation, pleasurable excitement, or intense interest. You’re full of anticipation, and you feel a sense of mastery as you move closer to your desired goal.
When your Explorer is overactivated, you may feel compelled to keep exploring, keep searching, keep pressing forward even in the face of exhaustion. In extreme situations, an overactivated Explorer might be diagnosed as manic or schizophrenic behavior.
When the Explorer is underactivated, you may feel bored and restless, leading to irritability, anxiety, or depression.
The Sensualist. Of all seven systems, the Sensualist—which coordinates functions related to sexual gratification and reproduction—may be the one that seems most familiar. After all, people often describe sexual feelings as automatic responses. We speak of “falling in love” as though rational thought had nothing to do with it. We use the word “chemistry” to describe intangible bonds between lovers. We accept that sex-related hormones drive adolescents (of all ages) to behave erratically.
The Sensualist system can account for all this mystery. It organizes a broad gamut of sexual functions, including erotic dreams and fantasies; feelings of sexual attraction and excitement; involuntary physiological responses such as vaginal lubrication and penile erection; and sexual behaviors like flirting, kissing, and copulation.
When activated to its best advantage, the Sensualist allows a person to feel highly energized and pleasurably gratified.
When the Sensualist is overactivated, people may feel a sense of sexual longing that leads to inappropriate behavior such as the coercion of an unwilling partner. They might take sexual risks that threaten their health, such as having unprotected sex with a stranger. Or they might violate the integrity of their relationships with others through illicit affairs.
When the Sensualist is underactivated, a person might feel an aversion toward sex that causes problems in their marriage or love relationship. They also may feel sexually “shut down,” leading to sadness and depression.
The Energy Czar. This system is responsible for making sure that the body gets the rest and care it needs to stay healthy. When you work or play too long, the Energy Czar sends your body signals that it’s time to stop and get rejuvenated. Mild signals may include feelings of fatigue or boredom. Ignore them for a while and you’re likely to become drowsy or irritable. Ignore them for a long time and you may develop serious problems, such as a weakened immune system or chronic illness.
In addition, the Energy Czar tells us when the body is hungry, thirsty, hot, cold, tired, or otherwise physically uncomfortable. When people find themselves in situations where these needs aren’t being met, the Energy Czar ensures that the brain and body do what’s necessary for comfort and survival.
We activate it when we plan restful vacations, choose activities we find relaxing, or resolve to get a good night’s sleep. The Energy Czar can be a source of great pleasure as we anticipate a soak in a hot tub or schedule a massage. It’s part of the relief we feel when we finish a grueling project or lay our heads down at the end of a long day.
The Energy Czar is operating at an optimal level when we can remain physically and emotionally comfortable without a lot of extra stress and effort.
When the Energy Czar is overactivated, we may become obsessed with issues like fatigue, stress, diet, exercise, or weight control. In extreme cases, such obsessions become the center of people’s lives, leading to problems such as insomnia or eating disorders.
When the Energy Czar is underactivated, we may pay too little attention to issues of rest, stress relief, and physical comfort. We may disregard signs of exhaustion and keep going even when our bodies say it’s time to stop. We may ignore the body’s need for good nutrition, hydration, and exercise. Ignoring such needs can lead to a broad range of health problems related to stress, poor nutrition, lack of fitness, immune deficiency, and more.
The Jester. This system coordinates a class of functions much appreciated but often undervalued by many: play, recreation, and diversion. Behaviors associated with the Jester include playing games, seeking entertainment, telling jokes, engaging in make-believe, and simply “fooling around.”
Imagine having lunch with a friend who always makes you laugh. Afterward, you feel refreshed, lighter, and better prepared to face life’s challenges. Or think about a brainstorming session where the group feels free t
o say whatever comes to mind. All kinds of wacky notions surface, but together you also hatch some great new ideas. This is the Jester at work, helping people to both relax and renew. As the term recreation suggests, playfulness renews our creative abilities. It can lead to the formation of new bonds, enhance cooperation, and bolster our skills at creative problem solving. And because play reduces stress, it may reduce all sorts of health risks as well.
The Jester plays an especially crucial role in childhood. Children learn a tremendous amount through play: how to negotiate complex social structures, for example, and how to regulate emotions during periods of intense excitement. The need for such lessons doesn’t disappear with age—which is why the Jester continues to be an essential part of our journey as adults.
When the Jester is activated to an ideal degree, you’re likely to feel a sense of relaxed stimulation, a combination of serenity and joy.
The Jester can become overactivated, however. Think of children who get so “wound up” roughhousing that you have to separate them physically in order to get them to settle down. Like the person whose Explorer system is highly overactive, somebody with an extremely overactivated Jester might be considered manic.
When your Jester is underactivated, you’re likely to feel inhibited, lethargic, or emotionally “dull.” In the extreme, you might become chronically depressed.
The Sentry. It’s no mystery how this emotional command system relates to survival. The Sentry coordinates functions in the body and mind related to worry, fear, vigilance, and defense. This system can keep you awake at night, wondering when you last replaced the batteries in your smoke alarm. It’s what stops you cold at the sound of footsteps in a dark parking garage. It makes you yank your child out of a busy street or run like hell at the sight of a mountain lion.
When optimally activated, the Sentry helps you to regulate your fear by avoiding danger. Most days, that simply means you’re motivated to take the right precautions. You wear a helmet while bike riding. You lock your doors at night. You don’t pick fights in bars. But the Sentry doesn’t really get to shine until you face an immediate, life-threatening situation, such as an auto accident, an armed robbery, or an encounter with a rattlesnake. In such situations the Sentry rallies your nervous system to make you hyper-alert and super-responsive so that you can fight, flee, or take whatever action you must to survive. In fact, the Sentry may call upon the Commander-in-Chief system to engage the functions of rage and attack, all in the name of defending self and others.
Although the Sentry is extremely active in such threatening situations, we don’t consider it overactive. That’s because it’s helping the body to respond appropriately to threatening circumstances. The Sentry is overactivated when a person experiences unnecessary fears that interfere with living a normal, productive life. One example might be the person who feels constantly anxious about cancer risks—even after having all the recommended screenings. Parents who can never let their children out of their sight—even in a safe environment—are another example.
In extreme cases, an overactivated Sentry may be expressed as paranoia, phobias, or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Post-traumatic stress disorder—a condition that causes people to reexperience feelings of panic and fear long after an initial traumatic episode—may also be the result of an overactive Sentry.
When the Sentry is underactive, a person may not practice enough vigilance to stay safe. An example might be the thrill-seeker who enjoys “cheating death” through dangerous or careless activity.
The Nest-Builder. This system calls to mind all the nurturing, affiliating, and bonding behaviors and feelings typically activated in a solid parent-child relationship. That’s because the Nest-Builder coordinates functions related to affiliation, bonding, and attachment. But we engage this system when we form other types of relationships as well, including friendship and marriage. It may also come into play as we become attached to work teams, jobs, clubs, schools, and other communities of people.
The Nest-Builder organizes our activities when we nurture another’s growth, care for another’s needs, and express affection. The Nest-Builder is what drives you to make new friends in your freshman year, join a church or synagogue, and call your aunt Betty on her birthday. A toddler who cries when his mother leaves does so because of the signals he receives via the Nest-Builder system.
In an ideal situation, activating the Nest-Builder helps you feel loved and needed. It brings about relationships that serve as a source of comfort and support in your life. You get a sense of belonging. And because the Nest-Builder organizes functions related to bonding, it’s also activated when affiliations are broken because of death, divorce, the breakup of an affair, or the deterioration of a friendship. When you feel emotionally hurt because of the way a loved one is treating you, that pain is probably brought to you by the Nest-Builder.
What happens when the Nest-Builder is chronically overactivated? People may have problems establishing personal boundaries in their relationships. A person who constantly subordinates his or her own needs to those of others is one example. A person who seems incapable of making decisions independently, or who constantly seeks others’ approval, is another. Those with overactive Nest-Builder systems may feel panicky at the thought of separation. Sadly, such relationships often collapse under the weight of irritation, resentment, and martyrdom.
A chronically underactivated Nest-Builder may be a result of isolation and loneliness, which leads to feelings of sadness and anxiety. In the extreme, a person in this situation may experience chronic depression and despair.
Command Systems Often Act Together
Although we have described the way emotional command systems act separately, the brain can also activate two or more of them in the service of a specific need. For instance, a mother who lashes out at a bully threatening her child is activating the Nest-Builder and Commander-in-Chief systems at the same time. The Nest-Builder mediates her loyalty to her child, while the Commander-in-Chief coordinates her energy to attack.
Here’s another example: A couple might activate both their Sensualist and Jester systems to have a great time on a date. And if they take their Nest-Builder along, they might launch a romance to last a lifetime.
The Explorer system is often called upon to help other systems find elements necessary to complete their functions. The Sensualist system, for example, might need help from the Explorer to find a mate. And the Energy Czar might depend on the Explorer to forage for food.
What Determines How You Use Your Command Systems?
Many factors can affect how comfortable you feel when your emotional command systems are active at various levels. Some of these factors are “pre-wired.” In other words, we’re born with them. Other factors are the result of our experiences.
The temperament you inherit is one of those pre-wired influences. If your mother was the ultimate trailblazer, for example, you may also have a natural tendency to prefer high activation in the Explorer system. On the other hand, if you inherited your father’s more conservative, homebody nature, you may be naturally prone to seek less adventure. In this case, you’d feel driven to keep your Explorer system fairly inactive.
Gender is also important, according to the anthropologist Richard Leakey. While male and female groups seem to be equally comfortable activating the Sensualist, the Explorer, and the Energy Czar, Leakey points to differences that appear in the other systems. Males generally seem to have a much stronger tendency to activate the Commander-in-Chief system, with its functions of coordinating dominance, and the brain’s Sentry, with its utility for protection and vigilance. Males also show more development in the Jester system, which coordinates diversionary activities, like playing games and seeking amusement. Females, on the other hand, tend to have a more highly developed Nest-Builder, the system that controls affiliation, bonding, and attachment.
In addition to the gender and temperament you’re born with, your life experiences can also influence the developme
nt of your emotional command systems. It may seem obvious that a child raised in a family that displays a great deal of fear, for example, is more likely to grow up to be a hypervigilant person than a child reared in a more trusting environment. And a child who is raised with lots of humor, fun, and play appreciates a good laugh as well. What’s more surprising, however, is the idea that our environment actually affects the way nervous pathways in the brain get built. In other words, the brain is actually quite malleable in its construction, and appears to stay that way throughout life. Brain scientists believe, for example, that the amount of gentle, nurturing attention an infant receives influences the way the nerve cells in her brain are arranged within her Nest-Builder system. Consequently, people who have had lots of cuddling and affection as babies may seek more of this kind of stimulation than people who didn’t get this type of care. By the same token, the amount of wrestling, tickling, and game-playing a child gets may affect the formation of the system that coordinates play—the Jester. In similar ways, the development of other emotional command systems may be influenced by a person’s experiences.
Our emotional command systems may be modified through single experiences as well, although this is probably more rare. As an extreme example, consider what happens to people who survive extremely frightening, life-threatening events and then develop post-traumatic stress disorder. In such instances, the Sentry—the system that coordinates fear and vigilance—produces a bombardment of electrical and chemical signals that cause a strong fear response throughout the body, affecting respiration, heart rate, and other bodily functions. This strong response may be totally appropriate given what’s happening to that person in the moment. But the extraordinary power of this one traumatic event can also change the way the Sentry responds in the future. When trauma survivors are exposed to stimuli that remind them of their initial traumatizing event, their Sentry systems may respond with those same fearful reactions, even if the current situation is not at all dangerous. A war veteran, for example, may always feel panicky at the sound of fireworks on the Fourth of July. A victim of childhood sexual abuse may always feel anxious around sights, smells, or sounds that remind her of her abuser.