CHAPTER NINE
THE CHEMISTRY OF
EMOTIONAL ADDICTION
The existence of “emotional control centers” within our heads stirs up visions of a race of robots created by “nature” to experience and act in certain ways.
To an extent, our conscious self—interested in career advancements, personal happiness, or whatever—must negotiate a compromise within the brain’s neural circuits between what we “know” and the ancient knowledge “hard-wired” within our limbic system. Could this explain the ambivalences and paradoxes that have confounded a “model” or theory of the human mind? In a sense, conflicts are built into the system; what we want for ourselves may not be the same thing that would favor the development of the species.
—RICHARD RESTAK, M.D.
THE BRAIN: THE LAST FRONTIER
In chapter 8, we took a look at how we respond both neurologically and chemically to stressors in the environment through the flight-or-fight response. In this chapter, we examine how people become addicted to the familiar host of chemicals that are produced any time we have a thought. When we understand the chemistry of this addiction to our own thoughts, we can free ourselves to evolve.
As we’ve seen, all memories have an emotional component associated with them. Consequently, almost all thoughts are emotionally based, and when we recall them, we are also associating the emotions stored with them. As we recollect our combined memories related to people, places, things, times, and events, each with its own emotional association, we are turning on the independent neural networks connected to each. Once activated, that frame of mind produces a plethora of chemicals, both in the synaptic space and from the midbrain’s hypothalamus, to stimulate both the brain and body. Each thought has its own chemical signature. The result is that our thinking becomes feeling—actually, our every thought is a feeling. We do this constantly and unconsciously.
How does this relate to addiction? The easiest definition of an addiction is this: an addiction is something that we can’t stop doing. Let’s say that you are in a highly agitated state. Your significant other has just brought up something you did six months ago—you failed to communicate an important message—and you’re really ticked off about what seems to you to be the 1,000th reminder of your mistake. Sure, the comment was couched not in accusation but in a subtle suggestion, “You’re sure no one called while I was out?” You can read the underlying subtext, so you respond, “Yes, I’m sure. I’m not an idiot. I know when the phone rings. I know how to ask, May I take a message.” And your partner responds by pouring gas on the fire, “I never said you didn’t know how to take a message. I’m just not sure you know how to pass it on to the appropriate person.”
From that point on, the two of you go at it, dredging up every sin, major or minor, since the two of you met. What if I were to step in at that point and say to either of you, “I know that you’re really angry right now. I can see it in your face, and I can hear it in your voice. I’m asking you to stop. Right now. Just stop being angry.”
Your response is likely to be, “Stop? Are you insane? Did you hear what he just said? He’s talking about something that happened six months ago, when I was at home working on balancing our checkbook, which he can’t seem to do himself. It was nine o’clock at night and he was out with his buddy Phil at the sports bar watching a stupid Red Sox game, while I was here busting my butt with a calculator that had a number five key that kept sticking every time I hit it. And then his moron of a brother called about their damn fishing trip. So I forgot to pass along the message. But I didn’t forget how to seal the potato chip bags so they won’t go stale!”
Stopping that rush of emotions and those recollections of all the wrongs that you associate with them isn’t easy at all. As much as your system is gearing you up to fight or to flee, you can’t do either of those two things in this situation. Social conventions, laws, and your good sense tell you that you shouldn’t engage in a physical confrontation, and it’s often too much fun to walk out on a good verbal battle. So, you’ve got this overabundance of chemicals that have produced all that energy to mobilize you, and you’re stuck. You suppress. You rationalize. You deflect. You get into silly arguments. You drag up everything from your past. You can’t change the channel even if someone steps in and suggests it. Why?
Before I answer that, let’s go back to an example from chapter 8. Remember when I brought up an imaginary scenario about you speeding through an intersection to avoid having to stop at a light? You then spotted the patrol car’s flashing lights in your rearview mirror, and that stimulus initiated the fight-or-flight response. Well, of course you wouldn’t flee or fight in that situation.
But why not? More to the point, why do some people choose to run from the police? Most often, I suppose, they have other legal troubles and they don’t want to go back to jail. But what if you chose to flee and engage in a high-speed chase? I have to admit that I’ve fantasized about it on occasion. Someone might do that because they are already in jail—that jail of their own making: the routine, ordinary, commonplace, everyday life that lacks excitement and novelty. I’m certainly not advocating that you break the law as a means to get out of a rut, but I’ve often wondered what prompts some people to suddenly do something that is completely out of character for them. Can we ever say that an action we take, a decision we make, or a path we follow is out of character for us? After all, we chose to do it; it’s a product of one particular neural network, so where has that action been lurking all these years?
In the case of the arguing couple (who, by the way, share similar neural nets), the reason they both got so embroiled in this argument is relatively simple: it felt good. Good not in the sense that we typically think of it, but in terms of it feeling familiar. And if you’re wondering why two people stay together who clearly have some issues with each other, hang in there, this chapter answers that question as well.
Settling In and Settling For
You’ve surely heard of the midlife crisis, and you have probably seen its effects as well. The number of marriages ended and sports cars bought are probably directly proportional to the number of people turning 50 each year. Why is midlife so fraught with people wanting to make a change in their life? We know that emotions and feelings are the chemical markers of prior experiences. As we grow older and embrace new experiences in life, there is a period in our late twenties and early thirties in which we think that we have experienced most of what life has to offer. Perhaps we have pretty much stopped having new experiences and are repeating the same experiences, which produce in us the same feelings. Because we’ve had diverse experiences in our earlier life, we can say that we know what most of our unique experiences feel like—and so, we can predict them. In a midlife crisis, it is as if we are trying to feel the way we did the first time we experienced the emotions associated with novel experiences.
From childhood through young adulthood, we are learning and growing from our environment. Then we reach a point in midlife—whether midlife is a genetic, natural phenomenon or a learned, environmental effect—in which we certainly have experienced a lot of what life’s experiences and emotions have to offer. By this time, for the most part, we understand sexuality and sexual identity because we have experienced it. We have embraced pain, suffering, victimization, and pity. We know what it is like to feel sad, disappointed, betrayed, unmotivated, insecure, and weak. We have reacted without thinking. We have been afraid. We have sunk into guilt. We have been embarrassed, shamed, and rejected. We have blamed, complained, made excuses, and been confused. We know success and failure. We have been envious and jealous. We know tyranny, control, importance, competition, pride, and anger. We have had moments of total power and recognition. We have demonstrated personal conviction, self-discipline, dedication to something or someone, and self-empowerment. We have been selfish and controlling. We know how to hate and judge another, and more important, we know how to judge ourselves.
All these feelings and emotions are there for two reasons. One reason we are familiar with those feelings is that our life experiences activated preexisting neural networks that we inherited from our parents and forefathers, and we turned these memories into attitudes and behaviors. We also know what those emotions are like because we have created certain situations and experiences in our life, and our environment has prompted our neurons to make new connections from those experiences. When we remember the feelings that partner with those memories, we have come to believe that those thoughts are who we are.
Since feelings help us to remember an experience, and because by this time we have become quite experienced, we have gained scores of memories through countless different feelings. Because we have experienced so many of life’s emotions by our late twenties and early thirties, we are able to predict the outcome of most situations.1 It becomes easy to determine how they will feel, because we have experienced what similar prior circumstances felt like.
In this way, feelings become the barometer to determine our motivation in life. We then begin to make choices based on how they will make us feel. If the personality self knows that a potential experience is familiar and predictable, we feel good in choosing that option. This is true because we feel confident, and that feeling tells us that we have already experienced the event before, so we can forecast the outcome.
However, if we cannot predict the feeling of a situation, more than likely we will not be interested in engaging that experience. In fact, if we can predict that a potential experience is likely to have an unpleasant or uncomfortable feeling associated with it, we will tend to avoid that situation.
By the time we are thirty-five, then, we are thinking almost exclusively based on feelings. Feelings become the means of thinking. The two are nearly inseparable. Most of us cannot think greater than how we feel. The feedback loop of thoughts and feelings that are intrinsically connected to the body becomes complete right around this point in our life, because we spend more time feeling than learning. Feelings are the past memories of experiences; learning is making new memories that have new feelings. At this life stage, we are forced to stop focusing primarily on growing and learning, and start surviving. Jobs, homes, cars, mortgages, finances, investments, kids, colleges, extracurricular activities, and maintaining a relationship or marriage are just the right ingredients to begin living in survival instead of expansion.
And so, given the opportunity for a new experience at this stage of our life, we typically try to predict the outcome based on how it might feel. This is when we say things like, “What will it feel like? How long will it take? Will it hurt? Do I need to bring something to eat? Do I have to walk a lot? Will it be raining? Will it be cold? Who will be there? Will we be able to take breaks? Who are these people?” All these concerns reflect our anxieties about the body, the environment, and time. This is a sign that youth is slipping away and we are beginning to age.
To continue this line of reasoning, now we become further trapped within the limits of our box. We hesitate to step outside the familiar to experience anything unknown or new to us because we will not be able to identify a feeling to go along with that potential experience. The box of our limited thinking creates the same “frame” of mind.
The explanation is simple. A new experience evokes a new feeling. An unknown experience might expose us to an unknown feeling, so it initiates the survival mechanisms of the personality. Because we have not experienced this novel event, the “self” runs through its databases of prior experiences, looking for familiar patterns and associations to forecast what feelings that situation might bring. The neural nets of inherited memories are also activated in an attempt to evaluate the future. When we run out of options, we will simply steer clear of the unfamiliar experience. The chance to experience a novel opportunity is now overridden by the firing of our old neural hardware. In other words, it is outside the limits of our comfort zone. And so, we resist the unknown.
The Chemical Dimension of Addiction
For many years, the accepted model of the brain and its function was that it sent electrical impulses along its complicated nexus of wires (that, if strung together, would cover thousands of miles) to regulate various functions and allow us to operate in the world. Now we are discovering that, in addition to this electrical model based on neurons, axons, dendrites, and neurotransmitters, the brain functions on another level as well.
Candace Pert refers to this chemical brain as a second nervous system, and points out our collective reluctance to accept this model: “Especially difficult to accept was that this chemically based system was one indisputably more ancient and far more basic to the organism. There were peptides such as endorphins, for instance, being made inside cells long before there were dendrites, axons, or even neurons—in fact, before there were brains.”2 This may be a startling revelation for you, or it may be a restatement of what you already know.
Let’s take a closer look at what she’s saying, to help us fully understand how the “self” develops, and how we can become habitually addicted to who we are neurologically (and, consequently, addicted to our emotions). First, we’ll explore the chemistry of thought and emotions. We will build an understanding of how those chemicals work in concert with, and are produced by, the neurological structures we’ve discussed. Just as we are neurologically hardwired to our environment and we react based on the most hardwired neural networks in the brain, we are equally addicted to the rush of chemicals and emotions that our brain and body produce in response to inputs from the environment, the body, and our own private thoughts. To understand this chemical component of emotions and behavior, we’re going to look at two aspects of this chemical dimension.
• What processes take place in the brain to initiate chemical responses and cause them to be released in the body?
• How does this release of chemicals affect the body?
First of all, it is important to understand that we are chemical beings. We are a product of our biochemistry, from the cellular level—where millions upon millions of chemical reactions and transactions take place as we respire, digest, fight off invaders, move, think, and feel—to our moods, actions, beliefs, sensory perceptions, emotions, and even to what we experience and learn. Whereas psychologists, behavioral scientists, and others once debated whether heredity or environment was primarily responsible for our behaviors, new investigations and findings have shifted the focus of much research to the chemical basis of emotion.
The Bottom Line on Chemistry
The most basic, baseline information we need to remember is this: every time we fire a thought in our brain, we make chemicals, which produce feelings and other reactions in the body. Our body grows accustomed to the level of chemicals coursing through our bloodstream, surrounding our cells, and bathing our brain. Any interruption in the regular, consistent, and comfortable level of our body’s chemical makeup will result in discomfort. We will do nearly everything we can, both consciously and subconsciously, based on how we feel, to restore our familiar chemical balance.
Just as we did when we initiated the acute flight-or-fight response, we do a similar thing every time we fire a thought—we respond by producing various chemicals. The three means by which we communicate chemically are neurotransmitters, peptides, and hormones.
Thus, whenever we have a thought, neurotransmitters are at work in the synaptic space, firing the neural nets connected to that particular concept or memory.
Any memory has an emotional component attached to it, which the peptides reproduce chemically. As we have learned, the part of the midbrain called the hypothalamus manufactures a host of different peptides. It has a laboratory of recipes that take each thought we fire in our brain and each emotion we experience and use peptides to produce a corresponding chemical signature. This is why so many references to the limbic brain or the midbrain describe it as the emotional brain. It makes our sexual juices flow, our creative juices turn on, and our competitive juices motivate us. This emotional brain is responsible for making the chemicals that initiate our emotional reactions and thoughts.
When a chemical “thought” is in the bloodstream, it turns on the body, much like ACTH does with adrenal glands and the production of glucocorticoids (cortisol). Once the body is turned on, it communicates through a negative feedback loop to manage the appropriate levels of chemicals in the brain and in the cells of the body.
Let’s illustrate how this negative feedback loop operates. Because the hypothalamus is the most vascular part of the brain (it has the richest blood supply), it monitors circulating amounts of each peptide with every chemical response in the body. To use our example, when there are high levels of ACTH there will be low levels of cortisol, and when the hypothalamus detects high levels of cortisol, it responds by decreasing the levels of ACTH. Specific chemical levels are based on each person’s individual internal chemistry. Every man or woman has their own unique homeostatic balance that is, as we have said, directly affected by their genetic program, their response to environmental circumstances, and by their very own subvocalized thoughts.
Figure 9.1hows how the brain and the body work together to regulate chemical communication. High levels of circulating peptides signal different glands and organs of the body to release hormones and secretions. When the brain registers high levels of hormones or secretions and low levels of circulating peptides, it functions like a thermostat and stops making hormones. As the circulating hormone levels fall in the body, the brain, through the hypothalamus, senses these lower levels and begins to manufacture more peptides, out of which more hormones can be made.
Figure 9.1
The negative feedback loop between the brain and the body.
Emotions, Chemistry, and You
Scientists used to think that we demonstrate four basic primitive emotions, based on how we are wired in a particular part of the midbrain called the amygdala. In initial testing, researchers electrically stimulated the amygdala and observed the feelings or actions of different species. The basic reactions were always anger, sadness, fear, and joy. In a more primitive sense they are aggression; submission; fright or surprise; and acceptance, bonding, or happiness. Presently, due to much work in neuroscience, the model has evolved to add three more to the original four: surprise, contempt, and disgust. It is pretty easy to see that surprise is related to the reaction of fear, and that contempt or disgust can be easily connected to anger and aggression.3
Many sources say that the subjective experiences that are unique to humans involve some combination or blend of each of these primary emotions. Secondary emotions or social emotions are then created from the primary ones, comparable to mixing paints. These secondary emotions include embarrassment, jealousy, guilt, envy, pride, trust, shame, and many others.
I think of how we create feelings like this: The neocortex reacts, feels, or thinks. The midbrain then supplies neurochemical factors to the brain and body, which then endorse or activate various compartments and neural nets to specifically create both our unique and our commonly shared feelings.
Our feelings, you’ll recall, are the result of comparable experiences we have all had, due to similar environmental or social conditions (how we become wired from learning and experiencing; that is, nurture); short-term genetic traits we inherited from our parents (their hardwired emotional experiences; that is, nature), and our overall, long-term genetic traits (human brains are structured the same; therefore, we have the same universal propensities; also nature).
This software and hardware then make all within our species perceive and behave with relatively the same emotions. Incidentally, I do not want to split hairs between emotions, feelings, drives, and sensory reactions; let’s simply agree that they are chemically driven states of mind, and that emotions are just the end product of both our common and unique experiences.
Let’s return to the fighting couple from the beginning of this chapter to illustrate how this works. Partner A comes home and asks whether there were any messages. Partner B’s neural nets fire off the complex pattern and sequences that are involved in this concept of taking messages. Among the bits of information stored there is the associative memory of the failure to deliver a key message six months ago. The neurotransmitters in her brain fire in the synaptic space, sending a signal from the neocortex to the midbrain. This signal contains both information about phone messages, as well as the past emotion that Partner B has associated with the memory—shame. Essentially, Partner B is now producing the mind of shame based on how her brain is turning on neural patterns. Her midbrain passes the message on to the body to produce the chemicals associated with the feeling of shame.
The point is, shame isn’t the only feeling that Partner B has. Shame actually produces another emotion—in this case, anger. If we like, we can think of the emotion that Partner B is feeling as “shanger.” I’m not calling it this to be funny; instead, I want to illustrate the point that our emotional states are often a combination of feelings. The peptides that produce the chemical equivalents of these blended emotions are like spices that, once combined, produce a rich and multi-layered flavor. The chemical recipe—the ingredients and the proportion of their use—is designed to reproduce the original emotion associated with the experience stored in the neural net.
In other people, this memory of a failure might produce sadness or feelings of helplessness or regret. Regardless of the emotion, once that signal is sent to the pituitary gland, the body comes alive, just as it did in the flight-or-fight response. Instead of fear or survival, the motivating emotion that is a product of the memory stored in Partner B’s brain is shame/anger.
At this point, the pituitary gland puts its spin on the message, and now the pituitary gland, along with the hypothalamus, cook up a batch of peptides corresponding to shame and anger. Those peptides are released in the bloodstream and make their way to various places in Partner B’s body. The receptor sites in the body’s cells and glandular systems are scanning for a match for this emotion, and they attract those chemicals of shame and anger to them. Partner B has manufactured these emotions for years, so the cells may have developed an astounding number of receptor sites for shame and anger. The more we experience a particular emotion, one probable scenario is that we will develop more receptor sites for that emotion on our cells. Figure 9.2 depicts how thoughts/feelings of anger and shame become chemical signals to activate bodily reactions on a cellular level.
Originally, Partner B was not angry in that moment when she was asked, six months later, whether there were any messages. She became angry because she has been living in and responding to something from the past. In her case, it’s likely that she has a highly developed neural net and hardwired pathway for shame. She may have inherited that from one of her parents or through experience; in any case, she has developed an incredible sensitivity. She hates to be wrong. And she hates to be reminded of wrong things she has done. Maybe her parents were particularly hard on her and had high expectations for her. She may, in turn, have developed and refined these expectations to such a high degree of perfectionism and standard-setting that she has hardwired a hair-trigger anger response, which activates whenever her competence or abilities are questioned. The shame she feels that so easily gets converted to anger is most likely anger at herself for having failed. If she has spent her lifetime feeling shame and inner-directed anger, with those memories of all her failures imprinted in her neural nets, she has also lived a life with those chemicals of shame and anger coursing through her system. As a result, her cells have developed thousands of receptor sites to which the chemicals of shame and anger can dock.
Figure 9.2
The biochemical expression of anger/shame and the chemical/neurological self-monitoring system between the brain and the body.
Our body reproduces different kinds of cells on a regular basis. Some cells are reproduced in hours, others in a day, others in a week, some within months, and some cells even take years to reproduce. If high peptide levels of shame and anger are maintained on a daily basis for years on end, then when each cell divides to make daughter cells, it will respond to this high demand and alter the receptors on the cell membrane. This is a natural regulation process that takes place in all cells.
Imagine you are at an international airport, and everyone is waiting in line at immigration or customs. There are four gates open out of a possible 20 gates, and 400 people are waiting. As you stand there, you know that this airport would be more efficient if it just opened more gates to meet the overflow. That’s the wisdom in how our cells work. If we are sensitizing the cell with enormous amounts of peptides, then when the cell divides, its natural intelligence upgrades the next generation to meet the demands coming from the brain. In this case, the cell “up-regulates” by making more receptors.
Over time, if enough of this up regulation occurs, the body will start to do the thinking for us, and it will become the mind. It will crave the same message it has been receiving, to keep the cells turned on. The body as a huge cellular organism will need a constant fix at the cellular level to keep things in chemical continuity. Does this start to sound like addiction?
In some cells, which are too overly sensitized, the receptors become indifferent to the peptides and just shut down. In this case, they regulate in the other direction. The cells make fewer receptor sites because the overabundance is too much to handle. Some cells may even malfunction because they cannot process the crowd of chemicals that are assaulting the cell. Remember, a peptide’s job is to turn on the inner workings of each cell so that it can make proteins or change the cell’s energy. When overly high amounts of peptides repeatedly bombard the outside of a cell, it receives too many instructions for one cell to process. The cell cannot handle all the orders at the same time, so it closes down the doors. The movie theater is full and there are no more seats.
Figure 9.3 illustrates up and down regulation. In up regulation, the cells respond to the demands of the brain and create additional receptor sites. In down regulation, certain receptor sites shut off from overstimulation and become less active.
Figure 9.3
The regulation of receptor sites due to high levels of peptides traveling to cells.
In the case of down regulation, imagine being in a relationship with someone who always nags you and makes you out to be the bad person. Over time, you become less responsive and you just stop reacting to his or her accusations. Cells, especially nerve cells, usually become chemically desensitized (they become more resistant to the stimulus) and therefore, over time, they need more chemicals to reach the threshold of action on a cellular level. In other words, we have to react more, worry more, fret more, or feel more aggravated. It takes more of the same feelings to turn on the brain, because the receptors have been overstimulated and desensitized.
This is the basis of addiction to a drug like cocaine. When someone takes cocaine, it causes an enormous release of dopamine, which gives the person that incredible sense of pleasure. However, the next time, he or she has to take larger quantities to produce the same response. And the cycle goes on in much the same way with our emotional states.
Here is another way to look at this phenomenon. Receptor sites are made of proteins, and the number of receptors in a target cell usually will not remain constant day to day, or even minute to minute.4 They are as plastic as neurons. Each time the peptide docks at the receptor site, it alters the shape of the protein. When the protein’s shape is changed, its function changes and it becomes more active. As the cell repeatedly performs the same function at the same receptor site, the protein receptors become worn out, and the peptide is no longer recognized. The binding of peptides to protein receptor sites causes the number of receptors to decrease, either because of the inactivation of some receptor molecules, or because the cell cannot produce enough protein molecules to make receptors in time. As a result, the protein receptor will no longer function properly. The key essentially will no longer fit into the lock. When the overtaxed cell divides and reproduces to make a carbon copy of itself, to pass on its wisdom, it makes fewer receptor sites, to maintain a balance in the body. When this type of desensitizing occurs, it seems the body just can never get enough peptides to maintain the chemical state to which it is accustomed. We are never satisfied.
When the body has taken control of the mind and we feel the way we are thinking (because of the chemical cocktail that our pituitary mixed to match the original emotion), we will now think the way we are feeling. This is because our cells, which are all connected by nervous tissue, will communicate to the brain via the spinal cord when they notice that there are no signals from the brain.
Our cells also communicate with the body through the brain’s chemical feedback loop (its internal thermostat). As the chemicals that were produced are used up, the body does what it normally does. It wants to preserve that chemical state we are used to. The body enjoys this rush of anger/shame chemicals, because it makes us feel more alive, and in a heightened state of awareness and energy. And because the feelings are so familiar, we can recreate the affirmation of ourselves as a person who feels a certain way. If we’ve been experiencing shame and anger for most of our life, those chemicals have been present in our body for most of our life. Because one of the primary biological functions is the maintenance of balance through homeostasis, we will do nearly anything possible to maintain that chemical continuity, based on the needs of the cells on the most simple biological level. The body now houses the mind.
Issues in the Tissues
We know that peptides are small proteins that are chemical messengers made in the hypothalamus and released by the pituitary. When they are released into the bloodstream, they find their way to different organs and tissues of the body. When they arrive at the surface of a cell, they interact with the receptor sites, large proteins that float on the surface of every cell so that the cell can selectively choose what can enter its internal environment and influence its inner workings. Once a peptide fits into a receptor site, it changes the structure of the receptor and sends a signal to the cell’s DNA.
All cells are protein-producing machines. Muscle cells make muscle proteins called actin and myosin. Skin cells make skin proteins called elastin and collagen. Stomach cells make stomach proteins, enzymes, and so on. The DNA of every cell is what produces a cell’s proteins. Proteins are made from the building blocks of smaller molecules called amino acids. Once a peptide docks to a receptor site, it carries a message to unzip the cell’s DNA to begin to make various related proteins. Figure 9.4 simply displays how cells make proteins.
Figure 9.4
A demonstration of various cells being signaled to make different proteins.
We express about 1.5 percent of our DNA (our genes), and the remaining 98.5 percent has been called junk DNA. When a cell makes different proteins, it expresses those genes. (An example is the gene expression for proteins that make eye color.) Our DNA is like a library of potentials that the cell uses for its protein expression. If that 98.5 percent of our DNA isn’t really junk, it may be latent, waiting to be activated by the right type of chemical signals. Scientists are now discovering that the storehouse of excess DNA has important functions. We just might have a lot of latent genes to express for future evolution.
Out of the 1.5 percent of the DNA that we express by making proteins, we share over 96 percent of the same DNA as chimpanzees. The totality of our genetic expression is what we physically look like, how we biologically function, and how we are wired neurologically: dad’s short temper, mom’s self-pity; dad’s broad shoulders, mom’s small nose; dad’s poor eyesight, mom’s diabetes. Our body produces different proteins through the expression of our genes, and this makes us who we are.
As the peptides “instruct” a cell, they activate the DNA to make proteins equal to the orders from our neural networks. If the orders are the same frightful attitudes or similar aggressive states of anger that we have been sending as signals to the cell over and over again for days or years, over time, the cell’s DNA begins to malfunction. In other words, we have had no new experiences with a new chemical signature (in the form of different peptides) that can signal the cell to activate new genes in order to make new proteins. If the cells are getting the same chemical orders from the same emotional states, our genes will start to wear out—just like driving a car in the same gear.5 If the DNA begins to become overused, the cells begin to make “cheaper” proteins from their DNA.
If we think about it, all aging is the result of improper protein production. What happens when we age? Our skin sags. Skin is made of proteins. What happens to our hair? It thins. Hair is protein. What happens to our joints? They get stiff. Synovial fluid is made of proteins. What happen to our digestion? It gets compromised. Enzymes are proteins. What happens to our bones? They get brittle. Bone is made of proteins. When we make cheaper proteins, the body begins to express itself in a weakened state.
The expression of life is the expression of proteins. If we continuously give the cells the same orders from the same repetitive attitudes based on the same feelings, we make the same chemical peptides. As a result, we do not send any new signals to the cell to activate any new gene expression. We are repeating the same thoughts that are either genetically wired or connected to some familiar emotional attitude from experiences gone by. If we are living by the same feelings every day, rest assured that those chemicals will overuse the cell’s DNA and begin to make altered proteins. The cell’s DNA will begin to malfunction.
So, when we become angry, frustrated, or saddened by anyone or anything, whom is it really affecting? All our emotional attitudes—ones we may believe are caused by something outside of us—are not only the result of how we perceive reality based on how we are wired, but also of how much we are addicted to how we want to feel. Studies at the University of Pennsylvania have shown that people who are depressed see the world equal to how they think and feel. If we show two different pictures rapid-fire to depressed people and to a control group of normal people—one a scene of people feasting at a table and one a funeral scene—and ask them which they remember, the depressives will remember the coffin scene at percentages greater than chance. They seem to perceive their environment in a way that continuously reinforces how they feel.6
In addition, the chemical continuity of any emotional state that we maintain over years of feeling the same feelings on a daily basis yields destructive thoughts turned on ourselves. What we think and how we react ultimately affects us. Now we understand the deeper meaning of the saying, When we judge another, we are really judging ourselves.
As adults, if we no longer learn anything new or have any new experiences that will change the brain and mind, we will be using the same neural machinery as our parents did, thus activating the same physical and mental genetic conditions. When we can activate only the genetics equal to what we have inherited, invariably we will manifest the same inherent physical and psychological conditions of disease and cellular breakdown. When we express degraded proteins, we are now manifesting a different expression of life.
The expression of proteins is the expression of life and therefore, the expression of health. Who, then, gives the orders to make the chemicals that determine our health? We do. It is our attitude, either conscious or unconscious, that fires our neural nets, which initiate the chemicals in our hypothalamus to send a signal to the cell in the form of a peptide, which turns on the DNA to express our genes in order to make the same or different proteins. To change the proteins that we express on a cellular level and that affect our health, we must change our attitude, so that a new signal can arrive at the cell.7
Since the expression of proteins is equal to the health of the body, our attitude and how we manage our thoughts are directly related to our health. Figure 9.5 demonstrates how our thoughts and attitudes correlate to the health of the body.8
When we rise out of survival, fire new thoughts (which make new chemicals), change our mind (which alters the chemical message to our body), and modify our behavior (to create a whole new experience, thus bringing new chemistry that affects our cells), now we are on the path of evolution.
Figure 9.5
The effects of thoughts on the physical body.
The Role of Memory in the Chemical Mix
When we leave a situation in our life that has caused emotions such as shame and anger, or we leave behind the people, places, things, time, and events associated with those feelings, we stop thinking and feeling with the same mind. Now that we are out of the circumstances that initiated those thoughts and reactions that defined us, why do we still feel the same way? We have stopped getting the constant stimulation that was producing the chemicals our cells have come to crave. When our cells are no longer getting their daily chemical “bath,” the cells utilize the potential of our memory. Remember, we can make thought more real than anything else.
Our cells send a signal back up to the brain, notifying it that they need those chemicals. In order to get the body to produce the desired chemicals, the brain turns on its associated circuits—those neural nets that contain the past memory of an experience that produced anger/shame. In our example, then, Partner B’s angry response to Partner A’s question has more to do with Partner B’s chemical needs than the question Partner A asked, or how it was stated.
Later on, long after this particular argument has ended, Partner B can now use this more recent argument, or the original one six months ago, to produce the chemistry of anger she needs to maintain her state of being.
Another way to think of the memories and experiences we can recall is that they are the “voice” we hear in our head all the time. RSE teaches its students that the voice we hear in our mind is just memories of the past, and that when we are in the midst of change, this voice is the loudest. Few people ever say aloud all the things they think or feel. But the voice we hear in our head is how the body tells the brain to think the way it is feeling.
We also carry on an inner monologue that more accurately reflects how we are feeling than what we say aloud. For example, let’s go back to our battling couple. After they’ve calmed down a bit, they sit in the same room watching television. Here’s what transpires.
Partner A: “Do you mind if I watch the game?”
Partner B: “Doesn’t matter.” (Do I mind? What the hell kind of question is that? Him and his stupid baseball games. Sitting there like this is some kind of life-and-death matter. Why the hell do I bother? He’s never going to change. Picks on every little thing I do wrong. But do I ever say anything about him? Do I ever go off when he screws something up? Just like my dad. Exactly like him. Sit on your butt and criticize. He does the same thing with the players. If he is so damn good at the game, why isn’t he out there playing instead of sitting here watching?)
Imagine the chemicals the brain is making to feed this body its dependent emotions.
Partner A: “Thanks.” (Doesn’t matter? Yeah, right. What, do you think I’m stupid? Roll your eyes. Okay. You say it doesn’t matter, so I’m just going to sit here and enjoy this. See if I care.) Now he is in the chemical loop, too, with his fix in motion.
Although this isn’t the most mature exchange, it is typical, and it illustrates briefly how our internal chatter serves to keep our chemicals at their usual levels. If you notice, Partner B reconnected with her father and her memories of his behavior. We commonly choose a mate who will reproduce the wounds of the past, and therefore, allow us to maintain the chemical state of being we’ve “enjoyed” and become conditioned to for the previous 20 or 30 years.
Even if the two of them were to split up, Partner B would still have memories of these experiences to give her the chemical hit she craves. The entire process of splitting up would reinforce her feelings of inadequacy and shame for falling short of an internal standard. The voice in her head would tell her, “You can’t do anything right. You can’t even find somebody and stick with him. How hard can that be? What am I going to tell my parents? How am I going to be able to look my father in the eye? Damn it. Damn it. Damn it.” And she will take another spin on the shame and anger loop.
The real questions for this couple, if they are interested in change, are, “Are you aware that the two of you are addicts partying together? Can you stop your automatic thoughts, actions, and reactions in midstream? Can you become self-aware, take conscious control of your thoughts, and modify your behaviors without making anyone else responsible for how you are presently being? Is love holding this relationship together, or is it an emotional cocktail of chemicals so overpowering that you are unconsciously living in past memories and their emotional monologues? Can you become aware that you are using each other for your own selfish chemical needs?” If the answers are all no, this couple will continue its pattern for a long time.
Chemistry and Behavior
Chemicals and chemical reactions on the smallest level are fundamentally important in shaping how we act, think, and feel. Flight or fight is most illustrative of the way in which we can become addicted to our emotions. And emotional addiction is one of the most profound and revelatory concepts to which we can be exposed.
Now we can see that the brain is both neurologically hardwired to, and chemically dependent upon, our emotions. When our current life circumstances don’t produce in us the particular chemicals we need to maintain our customary state of being, we will do whatever we must to ensure that those chemicals are present in our body. If we aren’t faced with any kind of external threat or stressor, we will seek one out. If we can’t find one, we will create one—physically or mentally. I’m sure that you know a drama king or queen, someone who turns the most innocuous of situations into a stressful, emotion-laden scene. I’m certain also that at one point or another, you’ve probably said of someone (perhaps even of yourself) that, “She loves to suffer.”
Because of the biological imperatives that drive the body—the urgent mission that it undertakes to maintain the status quo, restore equilibrium, seek comfort, avoid pain, and respond to stressors both perceived and real—we become addicted to the chemistry of our own emotional entropy. Given this biological imperative, doesn’t it make sense to say that we can’t help but become addicted in this way?
It’s true. We can’t help but become addicted, but we can also do an enormous amount to break that addictive pattern or cycle. Before we examine that process, however, we need to explore the ways in which our biochemical propensities play out in our life.
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Here’s an example of addiction: people return to the same relationship after they know intellectually that they do not work well together. Why is breaking up (for good) so hard to do? Throughout a relationship, even a bad one, both people synaptically fire neural nets that make chemical neurotransmitters and peptides, causing their experiences to feel a certain way, and those feelings reaffirm each party’s personality. They become so habituated to the relationship that although they decide to leave it, they cannot break the neurological wiring and the chemical bonds tying them to it. After the breakup, each person’s memories of their experiences remind their body that it’s being deprived of its accustomed chemical stimulation. He or she (or better said, his or her body) feels a sense of loss. The heartache of relationship breakups may be due to the disruption of a neurochemical habit. Considering the chemistry of emotional addiction, is it surprising that so many couples break up, then come back together, then repeat this cycle?
It is interesting to point out that when all the aspects of our life stay pretty much the same, they come to define how we are wired. Accordingly, most people pick relationships based on what they have in common with someone else—by how they are both wired synaptically. In the “dating game,” we’re talking about neural net matching. But when the circumstances of a relationship change, most people, having done little to change from the inside, look for the same neural order in the next person, thus repeating the same types of relationships over and over. We may break up with a person, but we remained chemically addicted to the feelings that relationship engendered. In the vacuum created by the absence of the former mate, we usher in another candidate whom we know (on an unconscious level) will produce that rush of chemistry we crave and have grown accustomed to.
Even if we break the neural order that is reflected in our life’s situations, the change will produce the recognition of a loss of familiar feelings. The loss of those feelings may be interpreted as discomfort, independent of the polarity of “good” or “bad.” Our life change is causing us to rethink and react, rather than allowing us to be proactive—to think and act in a way that creates a new reality for ourselves. Rethinking and reacting is no more than firing old neural circuits that we can recognize as familiar. This whole process creates the same neural nets, which fire over and over again, resulting in the same thoughts and reactions that we experience daily, independent of whether we see our situation as positive or negative, successful or a failure, happy or sad.
All these feelings associated with our external world define our “self” as a “somebody” who feels a certain way, and those feelings then give rise to the way we demonstrate actions, behaviors, opinions, prejudices, beliefs, and even perceptions. Our feelings drive our thoughts.
Anxiety and the Feedback Loop
For years, we’ve been hearing and reading about the prevalence of clinical depression in America. We’ve also heard the debate about the efficacy and potential dangers of many antidepressants. Recently, however, a new disorder has entered the scene: five associated conditions that we can simply group under the name of anxiety disorders. According to a 2006 report by the National Institute of Mental Health, the five anxiety disorders—generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and phobias (social anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, and the like)—afflict approximately 40 million Americans age 18 and older.9 This comprises 18.1 percent of the population. Depression, still the number-one cause of disability among Americans, affects over 14.8 million American adults. Anxiety disorders are more prevalent than depression, but no single form of anxiety disorders approaches the numbers of depressed patients. The NIMH also reports that many people who suffer from one of the anxiety disorders also suffer from others, and that the concurrence of depression and anxiety disorders is also high.
What is going on? Are we simply better at labeling and categorizing these conditions? In the past, would we have dismissed people who claimed to be anxious as suffering from a “touch of the nerves” and left it at that? No matter the numbers, anxiety and its relationship to stress, and the chemical addictions of the body, need to be examined.
In many ways, anxiety is a healthy response to external stimuli. We should be in a heightened state when we have to deliver a speech, give a presentation or performance, or encounter a potential threat. But when our anxiety spills over into our everyday life and becomes chronic, it becomes very problematic.
An anxiety disorder forms when, for no apparent reason, a person begins to feel his or her heart race and experiences difficulty breathing, immense fear and emotion, loss of control, chest pain, excessive sweating, and difficulty in thinking clearly. Given what we are learning, we can begin to see that when panic attacks occur, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is now in control.
Anxiety attacks are created when someone has thoroughly trained their body to become vigilant and prepared in anticipation of the next stressful experience. Panic attacks that occur automatically and repeatedly in some people are the result of either their rigorous mental practice of worry and anxiety or overexposure to the same stressful environmental conditions.
It is my experience that if we could trace anxiety back to the beginning, for most people it starts off with some major difficulty that caused intense emotional pressure. After the event, the memory of that experience causes the person to think about that episode, over and over, in anticipation of a similar event occurring again. As they mentally review their past, the brain starts to make the appropriate chemistry, and those thoughts signal the sympathetic (SNS) impulses to begin. They become anxious and afraid about their future moments and what potentially might happen. Their attitude (cluster of thoughts) now is making the chemicals for anxiety and worry. Their thoughts about a particular stressor, not the stressor itself, are creating the stress response.
If we worry every day about what may happen in the following moment, we will fire a series of thoughts that will create a mindset of uneasiness. In the recesses of the neocortex, a series of particular hardwired neural networks will fire, supporting continuous thought processes related to various worrisome memories. When these thoughts activate specific patterns of synaptic connections, the body will then create those chemicals related to those unsettling thoughts. Now that those chemicals of vigilance are loose in the body, the body feels unsettled. Once the neocortex assesses how the body is feeling, we will probably say, “I feel worried.” When we feel apprehensive, we are aware of our body’s internal state. If a panic attack then ensues, we will feel a genuine loss of control, a very fright-inducing situation. Now we have more to worry about, because we certainly do not want to have another one of those. That worry and anticipation will neurochemically draw the next experience nearer.
Once the self is aware that the body is experiencing anxiety, the neural network associated with anxiety is now activated. We feel exactly the way we are thinking, and we think exactly the way we are feeling. In order for the brain to recognize the feelings of worry, it will use the existing neural network of worry to evaluate what it is sensing. As a result, we will then think the thoughts related to our concerns, because that neural net is turned on. We will then make more brain chemicals to reinforce how our body is feeling, because our immediate assessment of the body causes us to feel how we were thinking. Whew!
Now our initial thoughts have become real. If we can feel it, it is genuine, right? We are on the way to training the body to have another panic attack. Our fearfulness then breeds more worry, which then makes us more anxious, which then causes us to feel more worried. The reason for this is simple. Once our state of anxiety was created, our state of being created a continuous feedback loop from the body back to the brain, to activate the same neural network of worry, which then made the body more anxious, and on and on it goes.
We now know that when we respond to the feelings of the body by thinking the way the body feels, the brain will manufacture more of the same chemicals, feeding the body the same chemical signals for it to experience. This is how we maintain a “state of being.” Any repetitive feeling, whatever that feeling is, creates a state of being—be it happy, sad, confused, lonely, unworthy, insecure, joyful, or even depressed. A state of being means that the feedback loop between the brain and the body is complete. When the feedback loop is cycling over and over again by chemically endorsing the brain and the body, we are in a completely fulfilled chemical state of being.
Over time, we will maintain this neurochemical state, based on how we continuously activate the same patterns of neural synaptic firing from our prior memories. This chemical continuity of the body, based on how we fire our own unique patterns of neural feelings from our individual personal identity, is different for every person. But the mechanics of the loop are the same. Anxiety feeds anxiety. Imagine what might happen if we felt joy, gratitude, or calm instead? Is it possible that the same feedback loop could serve us instead of enslaving us?
Why Change Is Difficult
Every person, place, thing, time, or event that is consistent in our life will define us more lastingly as a personality by its repetitive exposure. We associate every one of these elements, and the effect is that they become part of our neural processes and reaffirm who we are. For every known element in our life, we have an existing neural representation in the form of people, things, times, places, and events, and each neural representation connects every person, place, thing, time and event to a specific feeling. We can begin to see why change is so difficult. Changing a person, place, thing, time, or event in our life means that we are breaking the neurochemical circuit that we have kept intact by continuous stimulation.10
If I ask you to start using a new order of action while brushing your teeth or drying yourself off after your shower, you may not be able to do it, you may do it but feel a great deal of discomfort, or you may do it but quickly abandon the effort. You will most certainly tend to return to the easier, more familiar way. That tendency is the habit you need to break if you want to change your mind and no longer remain stuck in the familiar.
Imagine, then, what kind of effort it would take if I were to ask you to end a relationship with someone who repeatedly deals blows to your self-esteem and has done so for the last 15 years. If we have grown accustomed to feeling unworthy, we want to continue to feel that way because we are in the neurochemical habit of being unworthy. It is the routine, familiar, natural, easy way that we have been thinking and feeling about ourselves. Those thoughts are based on memories that we have of our interaction with that person. Those memories have feelings associated with them, and those feelings are neurochemically based.
More important, if we decide to alter the dynamics of our relationship with a particular person in our life who has been close to us, the change that is represented by heartache and suffering is likely just the chemical feeling that we are missing from ceasing to fire the same synaptic neural networks.11 The lack of stimuli from the environment (not seeing, touching, smelling, feeling, and hearing that person) will no longer fire the neural nets associated with that person. That stoppage prevents the release of specific chemicals from the brain that feed the body to make a feeling. Regardless of whether a feeling is positive or negative, it results from the release of certain chemicals. Love (or what we think is love), then, may indeed be all about chemistry.
Addicts and Withdrawal
So what happens when we decide that we’ve had enough and want to stop thinking a certain way? What happens when we finally make the choice to stop thinking and feeling shame, anger, or hatred for a single day? This decision is really no different than what happens when we decide to go on a diet, to cut out a particular food, or try to stop a habit like smoking or drinking. Deciding to stop feeling shame takes as much intention and will as it does to stop doing any of these other actions. Once our will is engaged in overcoming our thoughts, it’s as if we wake the body from its slumber and it hasn’t had its morning cup of coffee—in this case, its fix of shame, for instance. As a result, the body starts to voice its displeasure to the brain. “What do you mean, you aren’t getting your shame chemicals? Whose smart idea was this?”
What starts out as subtle urges and cravings from the body in the form of an impulsive thought usually—when not carried out—turns into a louder and louder internal monologue that pleads for an immediate action. The body goes into chaos, as a result of this chemical deprivation and its inability to return to its homeostatic state. It does not want to recalibrate itself, because it has grown accustomed to the over change of receptor sites dedicated to shame. The body has been calling the shots for quite a while, and now it feels out of control. At this point, we will be bombarded with all kinds of urges. The chatter in our head will be clamoring to be heard, to make us feel shame.
We know that “voice” that we unconsciously respond to every day. We listen to it and act as if it is the gospel of our own inner guidance. Many times, it can talk us out of anything, even our greatness. When we are in the midst of change, it nags and whines the loudest. It says things like, “You can start tomorrow!” “Go ahead, this is a great reason to break your promise with yourself.” “Any other time but this one!” And my favorite, “This just doesn’t feel right!” Then we say, “I have to trust my feelings because I’m so in tune with them,” and of course, we rationalize ourselves back to the starting point. The voice that we are listening to is our body telling us to restore internal order and stop the suffering and discomfort it was feeling.
We can surely identify with this, because most of us have tried to break a habit or to fast from a particular type of food like chocolate, for example. We start our resolutions with good intentions, but in a matter of hours, we begin to remember all our past experiences when we ate chocolate. We begin to think about mom’s famous double-dark, devil’s food cake. Out of nowhere, we recall the time we ate chocolate-covered strawberries on our honeymoon and how delicious they were. In a moment, we are remembering the time we were laid over in the airport in Brussels for four hours and we had three desserts, all made of Belgian chocolate.
While we are thus being coerced into this kind of mindset by what appears to be some demon, what if, in the next second, life presents us with the opportunity for a bit of mother’s chocolate cake? The second we set our eyes on the cake, our body responds immediately (maybe even salivates). Next, we begin to hear those subvocalizations that I just mentioned, egging us on to forget about what we intellectually decided earlier in the day, and to consume the whole cake. We’re not consciously thinking those thoughts; they come from our body telling us what to think and do. As soon as our body becomes chemically stimulated by the sight of the dessert, it causes us to think about what it wants.
When we are willfully changing an emotional state, we will react the same way to loud and adamant messages from our body. Perhaps one day you intellectually decide to no longer be a victim. You start your day with great intentions, but by the middle of the day, while driving to do an errand for your job, you begin to think about how your husband hurt your feelings the day before. You think of all the other times, in the last 30 years, he hurt you by his unconscious actions. You are now starting to feel bad. You catch yourself, but an inner voice starts telling you to forget about what you originally committed to, because, “You’ll never change, you’re just not strong enough, and besides, your mother was abusive to you as a child, so that’s why you are the way you are. You can’t stop, those scars are just too deep.”
What are you going to do? If you respond to these thoughts, you are headed for a release of a lot of chemicals that will reinforce who you have always been. If you stop your automatic thoughts, you will feel very uncomfortable with not being your normal, habitually thinking self. To top it off, what if this day, all the reasons to be a victim start falling from the heavens? You fall off your porch in the morning. Someone at work decides to claim the week that you wanted for your vacation time. When you walk out of the supermarket, someone has hit your car door and dented it. Now you have even more reasons to feel like a victim. The body is egging you on to take the first step, so you can reaffirm your neurochemical self. If you decide to respond to the internal chatter and act on it, you will restore yourself to a state that seems more comfortable. There is a greater level of familiar comfort in being a victim than the discomfort of being a victim … and the discomfort of not being one as well.
Running the Loop
When all this is cascading through our brain and our body, here is what is happening. Once the homeostatic continuity of our body is altered because we no longer think the same way or react to the same set of circumstances, the cells of the body get together and gang up. They send a message to that particular neural net to fire a certain level of mind, so that we can make the right kind of chemicals to keep the body in balance, controlled, and moderated. If the receptor sites are not getting the regular peptides of familiar emotions and those cells sense a change in normal balance, they will send a message through the peripheral nerves to the spinal cord to the brain. They will be calling to say, “Hey, what’s going on up there? It’s been a little too long for you to not feel like a victim. Can you start firing those thoughts that will make the chemicals so that everything returns to normal?” Equally, the self-monitoring feedback loop between the limbic brain and the body, which is filtering volumes of blood through the hypothalamus, notices that levels are dropping and tries to readjust the body’s internal chemistry back to our normal victimized self by making the right type of peptides. All of this occurs in a matter of a few unconscious moments, and the next thing we know, we’re thinking the way we’re feeling. You can review Figure 9.2 to see how the cells signal the brain both neurologically and chemically.
And if we are feeling really bad (which, due to its dependency, may actually be interpreted as really good by the body), it seems that as we fall prey to those urges, voices, or cravings, we can’t stop the process of emoting. It is as though we can’t just eat one bite of the chocolate cake, we eat the whole cake. Have you ever noticed that when you were in an emotional storm and you felt frustrated, you felt angry? And when you were angry, you hated. When you hated, you were judgmental, and when you were judgmental, you were jealous. When you were jealous, you became envious, and when you were envious, you became insecure. As you felt insecure, you became unworthy, and when you were unworthy, you felt badly. When you felt badly, you felt guilty.
That’s eating the whole cake, because like an addict, you could not stop until you totally stimulated the body to a chemically higher level for a greater rush. As the chemical brain turned on all its emotional peptides and altered your internal chemistry, you activated those related neural networks that house associated memories. You created all the levels of mind that matched each chemical thought with a feeling. The body became an unbridled horse running out of control.
This is where our will and self-discipline have to kick in. We need to achieve mastery over ourselves, but can we? Do we cave in and let in the flood of long-term memories that define us and reaffirm our old self? Or do we stand fast in our commitment to avoid thoughts and feelings of victimization? Do we settle for immediate relief, or can we willfully hold onto a greater vision of the self in spite of what we are feeling? In any case, the conscious mind is now trying to establish its authority over the body. The tables just may be turning.
As another example, by seeing a certain movie character that reminds us of a person we used to know, the show is activating an associated neural network that is tied to former experiences, and that network has a certain feeling in the form of chemicals. When the chemicals are released from the appropriate neural net, we become aware that we are missing that person in our reality, and we now feel worse. In essence, the whole neural network fires, which makes us think about what we do not have in our reality. As a result, all that thinking is just creating more of the feeling and awareness of what we do not have. That hurts.
Consider also the person who has the problem of always, somehow, attracting the wrong type of men into her life. She has the hardest time figuring out how she manages to fall for guys who wind up being as wrong for her as the previous ones. Whether they turn out to be married, on the rebound, emotionally unavailable, too needy, domineering, passive-aggressive, or whatever other ills they suffer from, she manages to find them. No matter that the haystacks have thousands of good choices, she always manages to find the one guy who is the needle to prick her bubble of happiness.
Significantly, she can’t ever blame anyone else for her feelings, because if one of those men leaves her, she will still remain wired the same way. In other words, she will attract the same type of person because like attracts like. She will continuously make the same choices because of how she is wired. She can’t even blame her last lover for it ending so poorly. If she were really self-reflective and honest, she would have to agree that regardless of what her last boyfriend did, she remains the same person with the same neural net and the same memorized feelings that will draw the same people to her.
The solution is simple: she has to change who she is fundamentally, because she is hardwired and neurochemically dependent on having a person in her life who will help produce the state of being a victim. Other persons didn’t make her feel sad, rejected, misunderstood, or unappreciated. She already felt that way. That is her state of mind. She simply brought those other people into her life, so they could behave in ways that would produce the chemical response of victimization to which she was already addicted, and for which she had a comfortable, routine, familiar set of hardwired neural nets to determine her actions and choices.
The end result of this phenomenon is that, in time, we crave the familiar, the routine, and the predictable because we are wired to the familiar through our environment. Continuous exposure to our routine reality only wires us to be more habitual and predictable. We begin to live in the habit of past memories. We have caged ourselves in a box of our own repetitive thinking, rethinking, acting, and reacting. Our limited thinking is literally our limited frame of mind. We become the product of our own environmental responses, which make us become more rigid in our own “neuro-habitual” ways, and less free. Unless we can break the habit of “self,” we are destined to endlessly repeat these cycles. Our uniquely different personality becomes predictable because we have consistently memorized the state of our “self.”
POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
For some 1.9 million Americans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), recalling an emotionally scarring situation from our past, such as rape, devastating events in war, or severe accidents, can elicit the same panic responses as the event itself. With PTSD, these past instances produce strong and lasting effects in our nervous system. It seems the greater the trauma, the more readily a memory of the event chemically triggers the victim to think, act, speak, and behave within the frame of mind of that past incident.12
How does PTSD develop? When we experience a trauma or highly stressful scenario, the event triggers the hypothalamus along with the amygdala to release stress hormones, which enhance memory formation in the brain. The chemicals released by this primitive nervous system serve a crucial function, helping us survive life-threatening situations by heightening sensory perception. Our sharpened state of mind brands the event as a memory in our brain, so that it will be easy for us to remember anything remotely associated with the sights, smells, and sounds related to the distressing experience. Because those chemicals also drive memory formation, we can learn from the experience.
Memories of the trauma are first stored in the hippocampus. The chemicals manufactured by the hypothalamus and the amygdala activate the hippocampus to turn on different synapses to store the memory. This chemical reaction then encodes the memories into a distribution of neural networks in the cerebral cortex, cementing long-term memory storage as a particular level of mind.
When a person recollects a trauma or a highly charged emotional experience, the memory transfers back to the hippocampus, where it can trigger the release of more stress hormones in the hypothalamus and amygdala. Once this occurs, recall of the ordeal produces the same blend of chemical signals, causing the body to reexperience the past event as if it were happening at that moment. As a result, the fight-or-flight nervous system initiates a host of physiological responses. Many times, the body changes abruptly in response to an impulsive thought about a past trauma, because the body is disrupted from homeostatic balance. As a result, blood pressure increases, breathing patterns alter, and the body may shake uncontrollably. Without warning and for no apparent reason, a state of panic is created or the body becomes depressed.
With this understanding of PTSD, it becomes obvious that the body can be turned on automatically by a mere thought. In essence, we condition (in the Pavlovian sense) the neocortex to turn on the autonomic nervous system by repeatedly thinking about a stressful memory and then experiencing the associated familiar feelings that turn on the body. In this process, we chemically link the mind to the body. As the person with PTSD continuously relives the past event, the chemicals created by that recall ultimately produce in the body a state of homeostatic imbalance. That imbalance can now be more readily tipped by just a few lone thoughts.
Is it possible that we do the same when we remember past events that are linked to any emotion? If so, think of what our body receives as daily messages from our mind. How do we want to train our body to feel?
Change Is Uncomfortable
In all my studies, travels, and lectures on change, my personal experiences, as well as the study of spontaneous remissions, the most common insight I have noticed in people who are in the midst of change is that it does not feel good and it is uncomfortable. If you remember one thing about change, remember that it causes the “self” and the body to go into complete chaos, because the self no longer has any feelings to relate to in order to define itself. If we stop having the same thoughts, feelings, or reactions, we stop making the same chemicals, which sends the body into a state of homeostatic imbalance.
Biologically, the internal chemical values of homeostasis are initially regulated and controlled by what we genetically inherited to be “normal” for us. Our thoughts and reactions further keep our chemistry in check, so that we essentially stay the same person, both physically and cognitively. Therefore, when internal order is altered by our change in thinking, we do not “feel” like the same person.
As a result, our identity wants to return to the feelings of the familiar, and our body is trying to influence our brain to return to a recognizable state of being, so that the body can recalibrate itself with past feelings. Our body wants to identify with known associations. Once the “mind” of the body talks a person into making that choice to return to the known, we will inevitably return to the situation as it was before we tried to change, and we will feel relieved. We will say of the circumstances we tried to change, “It just did not feel right.” In other words, our identity, which had been comfortable with the feedback loop between the brain and the body, got chemically distressed and, for a few moments, we became really uncomfortable. We did not like the way that felt; we like the way we usually feel, so we returned to the familiar set of conditions in our life, and now it all feels better and right.
Imagine that you live in a valley at the base of a tall mountain. You’ve lived there your entire life, and you’ve never climbed above the treeline, which sits 2,000 feet below the peak. You live every day of your life in the valley, surrounded by the same few people. You’ve gotten to the point where you can predict with considerable accuracy what everyone will be doing each day—from the exact time your nearest neighbor will walk out into the pasture with his dogs to when you will see a curl of smoke rising from the chimney of the man who lives at the head of the road. Nothing new ever seems to happen.
Late one afternoon, you see someone traversing his way down from the woods behind your house. He is using a walking stick and carrying a knapsack. As he gets closer, you notice that he is heavily bearded, but that beard belies his age. You step out of your house and greet him. It’s obvious that he has been traveling for a while. You invite him in, and over dinner, he tells you all about his journey. You learn that the peak right behind your house offers an expansive view of the territory around you—yet you’ve never set foot outside the walls of the valley. From the top of the mountain, he says, not only can you see great distances, but you can also gain easy access to other towns and villages, and meet people who speak other languages and embrace customs that sound exotic and inviting.
The next morning, when your new friend leaves, you vow that you will climb your backyard mountain. You prepare for a few days before you set off. You’re determined to experience new things, and you see this as your one great chance in life to climb out of the shadows and into the light. As you make your way across the field of grass that borders your home, you look back at the familiar surroundings—the decaying barn that seems to be bending in prayer, and the meandering fence you and your father have mended your whole life, whose every post stands sentinel as a reminder of the passage of time.
When you experience change, it is like leaving your familiar surroundings and memories. Once you leave that grassy field that borders your home and begin the climb up, you face a number of obstacles—an overgrown path, dense thickets of trees, falling temperatures, predators, and as you climb higher, snow-slick stones. You understand on an intellectual level that you are making progress toward a new set of experiences. You started out firmly convinced that this is what you want.
Halfway into the climb, though, you’re not sure you made the wisest choice. You recognize the dangers, feel cold and wet, and understand that you are now very much alone. Where you came from was secure, familiar, and comfortable. At this moment, most people turn around and rush back to their comfort zones. They settle for that feeling they can remember and bring up at any moment. They compare the memory of the past with their present feeling of discomfort. When the feelings of the past are in constant competition with our idea of a new future, the past has a stronger grip on us because we cannot compare the future to any feeling from the past.
The future has no feelings because we haven’t yet experienced it. Remember that all our episodic memories are stored ultimately as emotions. The past has that emotional component, but the future does not. The future has only the sense of adventure we initially started with, but that easily gets lost in the feelings of our body and the memories of the past. The neuro-synaptic self gets homesick, and when this happens, it wants what it can predict and depend on in the next moment. Dreams of a different future usually get smothered by the feelings connected to the feedback loop of the body. When our identity (which is made of past memories) and the feedback loop of the body reign, we can easily rationalize returning to the known. We think that we’re making the right choice only because it “feels” like the right choice to make in the moment. This is how we resist change.
All the associations that are connected to change have now insulted the chemical continuity of how our personal identity feels, and the “somebody” who is connected to past memories is absolutely challenged. The old identity that has defined “the self” just wants to return to familiar, routine circumstances, the normal feelings that define it. If we give in to these urges, we are making choices only with our body, never with our mind, and we will never change. Our life is a mirror of how we feel and how we are wired neurologically. In order to create any new experiences, we must leave behind the thoughts, memories, and associations of the emotional past.
Recovery: Life After Addiction
I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with choosing from feelings. What we need to assess is a matter of what type of feelings we customarily have and how often we repeat the same emotions. I also want to state that emotions are not bad. They are the end product of all experiences, good and bad, known and unknown. But if we are having the same feelings every day, this means we’re not having any new experiences. There must be experiences we have yet to embrace that could produce new emotions.
How often, if ever, have you had emotions based not in the familiar feelings of survival, but rather, those somewhat elusive feelings, such as inspiration and the joy of creation. Those heightened moments of gratitude, self-love, bliss, freedom, and awe are within us. They are just too short-lived. And if we can create a cascade of chemicals that cause us to spiral downward into more contagious emotional states and influence the next series of thoughts and feelings, we can also willfully spiral upward, and allow other chemicals to drive other emotional states that provoke thoughts related to those feelings.
In fact, did you ever notice that when you were truly joyful you were in love? And when you were in love you were inspired, and that inspiration led you to be allowing and unconditional with everyone? When you felt truly unconditional, you loved yourself. When you loved yourself, you gained a rich sense of gratitude and a freedom of self-expression without self-judgment. This flood of thoughts and feelings created a wave of more virtuous thoughts and actions, and it seemed so enriching that you did not want it to end.
The physiology of emotions can work both ways. Surely, our limbic system and the alchemical laboratory of our hypothalamus have produced those upward spiraling chemical emotions for us at rarefied moments in our lives. I am also sure we can whip up a few new recipes for a few new emotions that will sit as potentials in our human evolutionary destiny. Is it possible that we could live the majority of our lives in a more evolved state when we retire from survival?
To change our brain, then, is to change the future. Theoretically, the different peptides from more evolved thoughts and experiences should be able to find their way to the cells of the body and send a new signal to the library of genetic potentials in our DNA, so it can trigger a few new genes to make a new expression of self. There seems to be quite a bit of latent machinery resting in our genetic code for future evolution.
If we have been expressing only a short list of predictable thoughts and emotions and habitual chemical states on a daily basis, we only influence our cells to turn on the same genes that our parents and grandparents have already expressed. When we stop learning, growing, changing our habitual behavior, and dreaming of greater outcomes, we are left with the same fabric of synaptic connections we inherited, and we can only feed our body the same chemical information. We are now headed for the same biological destiny. Without learning and experiencing, we never upgrade our neural architecture.
Being in survival is not evolving our brain. It is only activating a more primitive neurological/chemical part of our gray matter that then drives our conscious neocortex to a state of unconscious behaviors, mapped within the brain, so that we react with the body in mind … and the mind in the body.
In the chapters that follow, we will take a closer look at how we can break out of the cycle of repetitive feeling. Take heart: by learning all of this new information, we are taking the first step toward emerging from a life of the routine, and the familiar. We have in our possession, ready at our disposal, an island of calm in a sea of turbulence. It is evolution’s greatest gift to us.