Limbic language vs pre-frontal language

I recently discovered the concept of ‘limbic language’. According to the authors of Unlocking the Emotional Brain¹, limbic language is a particular style of ‘vivid, present tense, first-person, emotionally candid highly specific phrasing for naming one’s living knowledge of what is at stake, what one’s vulnerabilities are, and what measures are therefore urgently necessary’.²

In coherence therapy, patients are guided to use limbic language to express a ‘pro-symptom schema’: that is, a perspective from which the problematic behaviour they’re in therapy for makes sense. The example of limbic language in UtEB comes from ‘Richard’, a man who felt unaccountably shy about expressing his ideas at work:

“Feeling any confidence means I’m arrogant, self-centered, and totally insensitive like Dad, and people will hate me for it, so I’ve got to never feel confident ever”.³

As a person interested in psychology and also as a writer, I find this fascinating. In another note⁴, Bruce Ecker, one of the authors of UtEB, says that limbic language should involve (among other things):⁵

• Present-tense phrasing

• Maximally personal (I, me, you) phrasing.

• be[ing] utterly candid emotionally, unflinchingly naming what’s at stake with no sophistication, face-saving or downplaying.

• Get[ting] very specific and concrete; do not use blurry abstractions. Words must be vivid, specific and concrete enough to do justice to the passionate, definite knowings, feelings, purposes, sufferings and stakes involved.

This interests me because this is like a list of tips I might give to someone who wanted to make their writing more vivid. Why is this? Plausibly it’s because emotionally activated people are more engaging to interact with. That’s why reality TV will always focus on tears, tension, angry fights; why an animated presenter is more likely to hold your interest than a dry, abstract lecture; why we love to watch actors; and why someone yelling in distress is hard to turn away from.

Why would this be useful for therapy? In the Internal Family Systems paradigm, you’d understand the ‘pro-symptom schema’ as the perspective of a part of you: plausibly a child part who got trapped in your psyche, frozen at a young age, in a moment of trauma. And children often use ‘limbic language’ of this kind. It’s simple and natural. Talking (and writing) in non-limbic language is actually something we have to learn: it’s the language of inhibition, of nuance, of considered maturity. To a child, things often feel very extreme and black-and-white. So limbic phrasing of this kind allows the child-part who holds the pro-symptom schema to be in the driver’s seat, which (in turn) allows them to let go of the outdated beliefs embodied in the schema when they can clearly see that your current reality conflicts with those beliefs.

What should we call language that is not limbic? I already suggested that a dry, abstract lecture might be non-limbic. Ecker says that non-limbic language might involve ‘up-in-the-head language of objective factuality, depersonalization, [or] abstraction’. Since the term ‘limbic’ is a reference to the brain’s limbic system—reputedly a seat of emotion—we might call this more abstract, depersonalized form of language ‘pre-frontal language’, naming it after a part of the brain associated with complex reasoning, planning, and emotional regulation.

Academics, policymakers, and lawyers tend to write in very pre-frontal language. This makes sense: an academic article, a position paper, or a legal judgment is generally not focused on the transient emotional experience of the author. These things are talking about ‘objective factuality’ and ‘abstraction’, or at least that is the aim.

Or consider nonviolent communication (NVC). NVC is a communication technique developed by Marshall Rosenberg, designed to help people connect empathetically with others and resolve conflicts. In NVC, when in a conflict with someone, you should try to focus on stating your observations, how you feel about those observations, and how those feelings relate to common human needs; and making requests (not demands) of your interlocutor. An example from Rosenberg:

‘A mother might express [this] to her teenage son by saying, “Felix, when I see two balls of soiled socks under the coffee table and another three next to the TV, I feel irritated because I am needing more order in the rooms that we share in common”’.⁶

Conversely, when practicing NVC one ideally avoids⁷:

• Moralistic judgments (selfish, lazy, needy, aloof, insensitive, over-sensitive, bad, good)

• Evaluations (‘Doug procrastinates’)

• Over-certain predictions (‘if you don’t eat balanced meals, your health will be impaired’)

• Exaggeration, for example using words like ever, never, whenever (‘you’re always busy’, ‘you’re never there when I need you’)

• Feelings that subtly attribute actions or attitudes to others (‘I feel abandoned’ ‘I feel unwanted’ ‘I feel attacked’)

I notice that a lot of this ‘violent’ communication is limbic: blunt, vivid, black-and-white, exaggerated, schematic. People in highly emotional situations are often tempted to speak this way. If NVC works to defuse conflicts, perhaps that’s because by changing from (more emotive) limbic language to (more detached and analytic) pre-frontal language, you actually regulate your emotions and gain some critical distance, which allows room for a more nuanced, and perhaps more compassionate, view of the situation.

But I think I disagree with Rosenberg’s implication that limbic language of this kind is inherently violent; more that it’s misplaced to bring it to an interpersonal conflict, to use it to get your needs met from another. Rather I think that limbic language and pre-frontal language express different aspects of our experience and come from different parts of us. If you’re trying to defuse a tricky situation or explain the truth about a detailed area of reality, then you need pre-frontal language; but if you’re trying to write an engaging story or therapeutically express something that isn’t exactly true and yet is deeply felt, then limbic language is your tool.

1. Bruce Ecker, Robin Ticic and Laurel Hulley

2. Unlocking the Emotional Brain, p. 50

3. Unlocking the Emotional Brain, p. 50

4. https://coherencetherapy.org/files/CNOTE3_Verbalization_Guide.pdf

5. These are direct quotes from the note, but I’ve left out other bullet points.

6. Nonviolent Communication, p. 6

7. I’m trying to avoid saying ‘one should avoid…’, since Rosenberg says—and I somewhat agree—that ‘shoulds’ are often ‘violent’ and (self)-coercive. The examples are quoted from throughout the book.