How Left Brain Dominance Leads to Depression

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "That Little Voice In Your Head" by Mo Gawdat. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What part of the brain causes depression? What’s the difference between the right and left side of the brain?

Author Mo Gawdat explains that a processing error in the brain occurs when we use the wrong side of our brain to process information. Overusing the left side of the brain can cause you to overanalyze things and block emotions, which leads to depression.

Read more to learn why left-brain dominance can cause mental health problems.

Using the Wrong Side of Your Brain

Gawdat says the left and right sides of our brains have different functions and ways of solving problems—the left side is critical and analytical, and the right side is intuitive and creative. What part of the brain causes depression? That would be the left side when overused.

The left side helps us solve problems, set goals, plan, and so on. The right side helps us build and maintain relationships, feel emotions, appreciate art, play, and be curious. Put simply, the left brain deals with the tangible while the right brain deals with the intangible. Gawdat explains that both sides are important, but unhappiness occurs when we overuse the left side of our brain and underuse the right side of our brain. 

(Shortform note: While Gawdat explains that being left-brain-dominant—more critical and analytical than intuitive and creative—can cause unhappiness, research suggests that things aren’t so straightforward. It’s true that the left brain houses critical and analytical abilities and that the right houses creative and intuitive abilities, but studies show that there’s no such thing as being left-brain- or right-brain dominant—brain scans show nearly equal activity on both sides regardless of whether a person is stereotypically left- or right-brained. So rather than interpreting Gawdat’s discussion scientifically, it may be more accurate to consider it as a metaphor—balance your analytical abilities with your intuitive abilities.)

There are a few reasons why left brain dominance causes unhappiness. 

First, overusing the left side of your brain causes you to overanalyze things—this leads you to ruminate and create problems that aren’t there. For example, if your boss had an exasperated tone, you might overuse the left side of your brain and spend the day wondering why and if you did something wrong. This approach causes unnecessary stress and anxiety, which leads to unhappiness. Instead, you could use the right side of your brain to empathize—realize that your boss probably just had a stressful day. Instead of catastrophizing with your left side, you could use your right side rationale to extend kindness and ask if there’s anything you can do to help.

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Here's what you'll find in our full That Little Voice In Your Head summary:

• How to understand and program your brain to produce positive actions and emotions
• The four processing errors that cause our brains to produce unhappiness
• Why you should get into the flow state more often

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