There’s a wild creature in all of us, occupying the right side of our brains and quietly communicating to every part of our bodies – but we have sorely neglected it and we’re paying a price. So says Steve Biddulph in his new book, Wild Creature Mind.
Steve Biddulph has been in or around my life since the 1980s, when I was one of thousands of Tasmanian participants in his workplace, community and adult education sessions exploring our various social and personal issues.
His big career change happened when he decided to put his ideas into writing about the interesting things that happen to us along life’s journey, including his own, starting with becoming a parent. Publicity for Wild Creature Mind describes him as “the world’s top-selling parenting writer”, and with sales of over six million books in many languages, who’s arguing?
Now living in the Tamar Valley, Biddulph is driven by many things, but acclaim is not one of them. As a psychologist he focused on building in individuals and communities the skills and self-awareness needed for robust mental health, and addressing anxiety and other chronic disorders among young people, which won him an Order of Australia in 2015.
Now 71, he is long retired from practising psychology, but his restless mind has continued to probe the endlessly fascinating human condition and to seek answers to big questions in psychology and neuroscience.
Wild Creature Mind begins with a series of questions. Do you have problems with anxiety, or trouble knowing your boundaries, or does life seem pointless and all too hard, or do you question your own worth, or do you have grave fears for the future of the human race? If the answer to any of these is yes, this book is for you.
Wild Creature Mind, says Biddulph, is based on a radical new understanding in neuroscience about our terrible state of mental health. Our brain evolved in two halves, the left-side thinking and talking part, and the right-side “animal part”, the part that helps us shake off anxiety and bad memories, assert ourselves (be “fiercely strong”) when necessary, and become a more open, balanced and loving person.
Before reading Biddulph’s book I knew very little about the developing knowledge he describes. From a chance radio interview I heard one night with the psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, and subsequently from reading his book The Body Keeps the Score, I learned of recent changes in the way trauma is viewed and treated. But Biddulph has taken my understanding to a whole new place.
I feel quite heavily invested in the idea of Wild Creature Mind. It fits perfectly with an experience I had a while ago while out on my daily phone-free walk – a practice highly recommended for all, alone or in company.
Charging along and thinking of life, as you do, I suddenly found myself turning around and heading home. Emerging out of nowhere, something insisted I had business to attend to. I didn’t know quite what I was going to do or how I was going to do it, just that it had to be done. I now know that was my right brain talking. I did what it told me to do, and it changed my life, for the better.
Wild Creature Mind won’t solve your life’s problems – only you can do that – but it will open some doors for you. It offers practical hints on accessing your animal mind, as well as introducing you in an easy, friendly way to the revolutionary thoughts of other notables about our mind’s inner workings. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Years ago I lost contact with Biddulph, but we rediscovered a mutual interest when I started to write about climate change in 2007. Rivalling human psychology among Biddulph’s passions is the natural environment, and especially the way humans are affecting the climate.
The connection between those rival interests is plain for all to see in Wild Creature Mind. Listed at the end of the book are some of the gains from “being more in your right hemisphere”, where status and possessions fade to irrelevance against benefits like love, happiness and being engaged in “purposes that are bigger than yourself”.
“A hundred years from now, a Wild Creature emerges from some leafy cover,” Biddulph concludes, “and some small creatures tumble into the light. If we are lucky, if we get it right, they are human beings. If we are really lucky, there will still be hospitals and music, aircraft and elephants. We’ll have made it through.”