The Brain’s Watchtower with the Mohawk of Self-Awareness

The Watchtower is the medial prefrontal cortex. It’s that part of the brain that’s located just above the middle of our eyes. Besides acting as a counterweight to the amygdala (fight or flight response), it functions in the way you would expect from a person who has watchtower duty. In the Medieval Times, those who kept watch over the castle were in charge of reporting what they saw. The message passed through the chain of command, who decided how they would respond. If those from the watchtowers reported “all is well” then the inhabitants were free to explore and develop. However, if the castle was under siege, it was the opposite.

If we can think of our bodies as our own castle, we can appreciate what our Watchtower is doing for us. It passes its observations down the chain of command known as our Mohawk of Self-Awareness. It’s called this because if we shaved our heads into a mohawk, we would be tracing the path of those parts of the brain relaying and responding to the Watchtower’s messages. When we feel safe, we are free to be curious, explore, play, and develop. It creates harmony between the Watchtower and the Mohawk, where we can tune in and understand ourselves. However, in child development trauma, our Watchtower became an “expert” on living under siege. Its chain of command, exhausted from living in a constant state of dread, adapted by numbing. This altered the flow between our castle/body and our Watchtower.

Some Fundamental Resources

Trauma Glossary 3 (Section 1) lists and defines 10 different parts of the brain most relevant to psychological trauma. This, of course, includes the Watchtower. In this article, we will be exploring four additional parts, which are not in the glossary but are within the Mohawk of Self-Awareness.

The Watchtower was first introduced in my article on the most important parts of the brain for healing trauma. I covered how the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, timekeeper, and watchtower work together as a unit. That article is here. Then I followed up by exploring problems that might come up in our day-to-day lives and how we can strengthen first, the thalamus, and then the timekeeper. Now we are concluding this series with the Watchtower.

The Mohawk of Self-Awareness

They are, in order, from closest to the Watchtower to farthest away from it:

Parietal Lobes: They integrate our body’s sensory information. This is first in line. The Watchtower sends its information to the Lobes, which feels the news somewhere in the body. The Lobes integrate the body’s information and passes it on to the insula something along the lines of “The Watchtower has news and here is the report on my body’s response.”

Insula: This receives our body’s sensory information from the Lobes and then sends it to our emotional centers. It’s responsible for “connecting” our body sensations with our corresponding emotions. For example, an increased heart rate can be connected with fear or excitement. The insula is also the only part of the Mohawk that’s located deeper in the brain, towards the Limbic System, which makes sense, considering the Limbic System is the emotional part of our brain. (As a side note: A weak insula has been linked to alexithymia Trauma Glossary 2).

Anterior Cingulate: This coordinates our thoughts and feelings. The AC sifts through the emotional “language” it has received from the insula and processes it with connecting thoughts. It’s how we understand what we are feeling and the beliefs that might be influencing it.

Posterior Cingulate: This is our internal GPS. It’s in the very back of the Mohawk and it gives us our physical sense of where we are. The strength of the PC’s GPS signal relies on the strength of its predecessors in this chain of command. It’s how the PC understands its purpose is more than mere orientation in space.

The Mohawk’s Disconnection from the Watchtower

An interesting note is in brain scans of those with chronic trauma, the only area that lights up is “our internal GPS” (posterior cingulate). In other words, there tends to be an awareness of where we are, but not much else. So, what does this breakdown in our chain of command mean?

Trauma is stored in the body and repeated exposure creates blockages between the parietal lobes and our body sensations. This gives our insula less information on understanding our emotions. So, it gets further distorted when it reaches the AC and it’s time to coordinate some thoughts with the emotion. Without a clear understanding of the emotions and body sensations, the thinking side takes over. Unfortunately, this robs us of what it means to be alive. So, by the time it reaches our internal GPS (posterior cingulate), there is no emotional meaning to help us gage our purpose. Without a purpose, where is our sense of direction? We are merely existing in the moment. Nothing more, nothing less.

We did what we had to do to cope through the ongoing dread of growing up in an adverse home. Unfortunately, our brain responded accordingly over time by altering its relationship with our body sensations. The good news is, there are things we can do to get our brain to reconnect with our body. Just to quote the lovely Complex-PTSD YouTuber, Tanja Windegger, “The brain has a tremendous capacity to change.” She is correct! We just have to be consciously willing to do the work and stay with it long enough for our brain to start tuning inward on autopilot.

Interoception: Reconnecting the Watchtower and the Mohawk

Interoception is how we purposely tune in to our body sensations, which are the basis of our emotions. But how do we do this?

Step 1: Reserve some quiet alone time. Start with five minutes out your day and then try to work up to 15 or 20 minutes (eventually), but for beginners, five minutes will do.

Step 2: Concentrate on your breathing. The reason is, you need to turn off your thoughts as much as you can. The problem is, we as humans are always thinking about something, so when we concentrate on our breathing, our thoughts are better aligned with what our body is doing.

Step 3: Be prepared for two extremes, but in both cases, keep going! The first is what typically happens when we first develop the habit of interoception. We don’t sense anything and it feels like the most boring and useless waste of time. I assure you, this is quite normal. The second extreme occurs once you’ve developed the habit for a little while. This is when you become aware of your first emotional trauma fragment. You’re aware of an uncomfortable emotion but not so aware of its context. Stay with it until your time is up and then check this article on how to use the cognition sheet. It may help you better understand where your blockage has been coming from and why.

Other Tools

In Master Toolbox 2, there are tools listed for the Watchtower (in Section 1). Also in Master Toolbox 1, tools for Armoring can be very useful in working with our Watchtower. After all, tension in our body is also the result of unprocessed trauma holding onto us.

Last but not least, Yoga for the win! What have we learned about the Mohawk of Self-Awareness? We tend to understand where we are physically, but not much else. Well, Yoga not only works with our bodies in the physical sense, it also concentrates on our breathing while we are holding poses. If you can be mindful of tuning into your body sensations while practicing yoga, you will be well on your way to mastering interoception and reconnecting your Mohawk and Watchtower.