What makes us Human?

Many in the past have asked this question and I expect many more will ask in the future. Here are my thoughts on what makes us human.

Compassion, kindness and understanding, our ability to love and equally our ability to hate. Our rational thoughts and processes, which drive us consciously and unconsciously. Our innate ability to judge and in doing so clouding our clear vision. Whilst we can judge we also fear being judged. Fear and anger, love and loathing, laughter and loss. Our emotions and experiences wrap themselves around our human self and are part of what I believe makes us human.

What makes us Human?

It is our Cortex, which makes us human, our imagination, our creativity and innovation. Our ability to control our emotions and equally our ability not to be able to control our emotions or even to be aware of the emotions which are controlling us. This is what I believe makes us human.

It is our conscious thought processes, lifestyles, choices we make, our characteristics and ways of being. We can evoke fear, we can evoke emotions that are unconsciously processed. For example, you can be sitting in a restaurant and see fire in the distance and a fire engine goes zooming past and you think:

‘Oh my house is in that direction’

In that moment in your mind, through your cortex thinking process, you may imagine that your house is on fire! This can evoke an unconscious response in your Amygdala which will initiate the flight, fight, freeze response and that will raise your heart rate, increase levels of cortisone, which will flush round your body and it may then make you get up and go to your house to make sure that it is not on fire as your anxiety levels will be raised so high! This is what makes us human! The ability to create a sequence of events in our own imagination, which sets off a physiological flight, fight, freeze response!

To be Human

To be human is to be unique and to be human is beautiful. To be human is to understand who we are and knowing who we are can be one of the hardest things in the world, which seems like an oxymoron because we are with ourselves all of the time! Being with yourself all the time does not necessarily mean you know who you are. Quite often we have the ability to hide the most important things from ourselves, this may be an inbuilt survival technique! We are very complex creatures and that is what I find so fascinating about being human and I believe that this is why there seems to be the forever question of ‘what makes us human?’

There are many different answers and interpretations to this question and each one in there own way is right, this is one interpretation of mine, which I am sharing with you.

Written by your local counsellor in Fleet, Caroline at Caroline Ellison Counselling – this is my experience and these are my opinions. Carpe Diem.