happiness

Mind over Matter IV: Addictions

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, men's issues, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness

This is the fourth blog in the Mind over Matter series. Initially we discussed the theory of mind and brain, noting that the “mind” is a real entity but undefinable, along with the different functions of the mind and the brain. In Mind over Matter II we discussed how the brain creates anger, anxiety, and depression to provide safety for the person. In the last sessions, Mind over Matter III, we discussed means of practically using the mind to manage emotions. Now, in this discussion we want to briefly note how addictions are the result of the mind/brain interaction, and make some theoretical suggestions for people plague by addictions and people who try to help these folks.

A few words about addictions

  1. Addictions have a tremendous cost: loss of health and life, loss of relationships, loss of jobs, loss of money, and loss of productivity. Ultimately, all these losses cause immense damage not only to the individual but to our culture and the world.
  2. There are great disputes in psychology about the definition of addictions, the course of the addictive process, and the treatment of addictions.
  3. We are not addiction specialists, much less addictionologists (specialists in addictions). We do encounter many people with the full range of addictions in our office, and deal daily with the ramifications that addictions have on life.

The mind and the brain in review

  1. The mind, while undefined, uses the “machinery” of the brain to do various activities, from walking to talking and many other activities.
  2. The brain knows only safety (or the lack thereof) and pleasure (or the lack thereof)
  3. The mind knows everything else.
  4. Much of what the mind “knows” and what the brain does remains in what we must call the “unconscious.”
  5. A central feature of human existence is another undefined word: feelings. We discussed this largely in Mind over Matter III

Kinds of addictions

There has been great debate about what constitutes an “addiction” because the word was originally used largely with the abuse of alcohol and to some degree other chemicals, like opiates. Over the recent years in particular the term addiction has been given a wider view including what are generally called behavioral addictions. While the American Psychiatric Association has yet to accept behavioral addictions as a formal diagnosis, the International Diagnostic community has.

Roughly, we now have:

  • Chemical addictions: alcohol, opiates, stimulants, and hallucinogens
  • Behavioral addictions: something that one does “to a fault”, which ultimately adversely affects his or her life.

Behavioral addictions have become of much greater interest in the psychological community and include:

  • Gambling
  • Property acquisition (hoarding)
  • Eating (too much, too little, too restricted and limited)
  • Working
  • Sexual activities and expression
  • Video gaming and other electronic engagements, even texting.
  • Many others, all of which might be seen as some activity “to a fault,” and might even include playing, exercising, talking, refusing to talk, sleeping, or even joking

Definition of an addiction

Again, there is much dispute over the definition of an addiction, and hence whether something should even be considered to be an addiction. Just because someone drinks quite a bit does not make him/her necessarily addicted to alcohol. On the other hand, if someone doesn’t drink at all but craves alcohol to such an extent that s/he thinks about it 24/7, that might be a thought or cognitive addiction

The traditional definition of an addiction includes the following:

  • Excessive use of some chemical or behavior
  • Increased use of the chemical or behavior over time to give the same amount of pleasure or satisfaction
  • Many failed attempts to reduce the excessive use
  • Encroachment on other elements of life because of the use: relationships, work, money. Certainly on self-esteem.
  • Attempts to hide the addictive behavior

The course of an addiction is something like this:

  • Some behavior is found to be pleasurable or provides safety
  • This behavior becomes a habit. In other words, the person begins to do this pleasurable or safety-enhancing thing without thinking about it
  • This behavior subtly encroaches on other elements of life and becomes the “go to” thing when life seems unhappy or unsafe
  • Attempts to hide the addictive behavior

Mind over brain in overcoming addictions

We remind our readers that we are not addictionologists, who know a whole lot more than we do on this subject. Our approach to addictions is almost wholly psychological, meaning that we look first to understand the behavior that has become addictive more than “diagnosing” it as addictive. This places us in a fairly different position than most people who work with addicts, like alcoholics, to change their lies. We deeply respect the hard-working and committed individuals who do this addiction recovery work. We don’t do it.

Our focus being on causes and understanding leads us to see an addiction as a “brain over mind” matter, and we seek to help people restore the “mind over brain” operation in life. Recall that the brain (not the mind) knows only safety and pleasure, and hence is constantly looking out for our welfare by providing safety and seeking things that are pleasurable. Unfortunately, the brain “doesn’t know when to stop.” We might say something like, the brain sort of thinks “there can’t be too much of a good thing.” So when, for instance, a young man I saw not long ago spent 70 hours a week playing video games, his brain was simply calling him to do something that had been fun…even though his fun was less and less. So much so, in fact, that he said he “hated” playing games but “somehow” continued to do so. Why? Because his brain had been wired to previously find pleasure in gaming. This is the approach we take to all addictions and it can be seen as a progression from simple pleasure to habit to addiction without the mind knowing what the brain is doing. The brain is, as we said, thinking that there can’t be too much of a good thing. Remember that the brain doesn’t know time, money, relationships, work or anything else: it just knows safety and pleasure. In an addiction the brain is ruling the roost of the person, not the mind.

To get the mind back in control, you have to keep in mind what I have repeated in this blog series, that your brain is a wonderful machine that you can’t live without. Even so, your brain is not your mind, it is a part of you but it is not the whole of you. Your brain is the machine that keeps the whole of you going.  I often say that I can’t live without my computer and books. But my computer and books are not me; they are a reflection of me. You can teach your brain what to reflect of you. Getting the mind back in the driver’s seat is simple but extremely hard, and the only way to do it is to realize that you will be fighting your brain that will be screaming at you. You will notice that you don’t want to continue in this addictive behavior but you feel compelled to do so. The wanting to stop is the mind; the compulsion to continue is the brain. We recommend you read our blog on Wanting and Liking for more on this. So, first, recognize that your brain is in control. Don’t be mad at your brain; rather, simply appreciate that your brain is trying to protect you and find pleasure for you because that is what it does. That is all it does.

Now, take it a step further. Let your mind see the benefits of changing your addictive behavior. Let your mind see all the dangers and losses of the addiction. Don’t feel guilty or ashamed; that will do no good whatsoever. Just see what you would like to do and what you have lost for not having done it. Doing this, you will notice that you will feel sad. Why are your sad? Because you have lost something that you have loved. Now you’re on the right track. You are on the love track in your mind and life rather than the pleasure/safety track of your brain. You have to be honest about this sadness with addictions. You can’t make justifications or promises. Justifications will keep you mad and defensive. Promises will just fall though and bring you shame. You have to do the sad.

The third step beyond recognizing that your brain is in control and seeing all the things you love is to notice that every time you fall into addictive behavior, you feel sad. You feel sad because you have lost something. Now you are on the road to getting your mind in control of your brain.

Further Reading

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The positive power of sadness. Praeger Press.

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). “Mind Over Matter I, II, and III” blogs

Mind Over Matter III: Mind Over Brain

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, mindfulness, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

This is the third blog in the Mind over Matter series. Previously, we discussed the theory involved in understanding the different functions of the mind and the brain. We discussed in Mind over Matter II how the brain creates anger, anxiety, and depression in order to provide safety for people. In this discussion we want to suggest practical ways of fully using both mind and brain.

The brain is doing its job: maximizing safety and pleasure

The first thing we need to keep in mind is that the brain isn’t doing something wrong. The brain is always, and only, working to provide safety and pleasure as we previously discussed. When the brain creates depression, anger, and anxiety, it is doing what it is designed to do: create safety and maximize pleasure. It is easy to see how the brain creates safety with anxiety and anger, but it is a challenge to see how creating these things “maximizes pleasure” with depression.

Recall how we discussed that “anhedonia,” commonly thought of as lack of energy or interest, is the primary symptom of depression. The brain (not the mind) actually creates anhedonia, i.e. it decreases one’s energy, so that the person can do as little as possible. Why would the brain do that? The brain creates anhedonia because the mind has so many feelings, and so many thoughts that the brain isn’t able to get these thoughts and feelings resolved. Quite literally, because the mind is thinking and feeling so many things, the brain is overloaded with information and is not readily able to think through and feel through all this stuff. The brain does what it knows to do: it shuts down the person’s interest in doing anything so it can focus on this overload of thoughts and feelings. The brain does what it can do to create safety and pleasure: shut down activity by decreasing energy.

The brain protects us by creating anhedonia and other symptoms of depression, like sleep disturbance and appetite disturbance. Additionally, the brain operates on a “flight or fight” mode creating fear or anger as means of dealing with real or possible threats. The brain creates anger when the mind has experienced some harm or hurt and creates anxiety when the mind experiences some worry about possible loss in the future. Simply put, anger is about hurt in the past and anxiety is about hurt in the future. But the brain, remember, doesn’t know future or past, but only the present. So the brain creates anger and anxiety in order to deal with perceived danger in the present.

We will never be successful in overriding the brain’s natural functioning. We can’t just push through depression with some kind of will power. On the other hand, we don’t want to simply yield to it. So, what can we do to use the brain’s power more effectively without violating the brain’s interest in our safety and pleasure? We will not be successful in challenging the brain’s procedures for maintaining safety and maximizing pleasure. We have to find ways to use our minds to effectively manage our brains. Managing the brain is more effective than controlling the brain.

The centrality of your feelings

Your mind has three tools that you can use to manage the power of the brain’s desire for your safety and pleasure: feeling, thinking, and doing. The most basic and by far the most important tool is feeling. To be able to manage the brain, effectively use it…not control it…you have to know what you feel emotionally. The brain creates feelings in order to maximize pleasure and minimize danger in your life. (Consider reading Feelings I and Feelings II blogs where we discussed the four basic feelings: joy and sadness having to do with love, and anger and fear having to do with defense.) When you feel anger, for instance, you have been thinking about something that you lost in the past. When you feel fear (or anxiety), you are usually thinking about something that you might lose in the future. So, when you think about a former loss of some kind, your brain translates that former loss into the present and churns up anger to deal with your attacker. When you think about something that you might lose in the future, your brain churns up anxiety in order to deal with this threat of danger. In both cases the brain perceives the danger as in the present, not in the past or the future.

You can’t change your brain’s natural operation for protection. You can’t change your brain’s tendency to churn up anger and anxiety when you think of past hurts or potential future hurts. You can, however, more effectively use your mind power to more effectively use your brain power. The key is to more fully recognize all of your emotions, especially those that precede anger and anxiety. When you recognize what you really feel, you will be able to appreciate these feelings, all of them, and then be able to allow these feelings to run their natural course. When you recognize what you feel you are better able to allow all of your feelings to exist without having certain feelings, like fear and anxiety. You can’t think away your feelings; you can only notice them and recognize that they have been created by your brain. If you fail to recognize your feelings and appreciate them, you will speak or act out of your emotion, something that is almost always counterproductive for you.

Managing your feelings: recognizing that you have a “love problem”

Feelings are central. They are primary…always have been, always will be. The key to managing your feelings and hence fully utilizing your brain that creates these feelings begins with knowing what you feel. Keep in mind that you have these four basic emotions: joy, sadness, fear, and anger. Then consider the process of feelings: (1) you have something and love this something, so you feel some amount of joy; (2) eventually, you lose this something (could be property, person, place, or idea), and you feel sad; (3) then you often feel afraid of losing more and develop some amount of fear; (4) finally, you may become angry that you have lost this something. It may seem that anger comes before fear, but this is not the case. Fear always precedes anger. Keep in mind these four feelings and the fact that they all have to do with love:

  • I have something that I love: I feel joy
  • I lose something I love: I feel sadness
  • I think about losing something I love: I feel fear
  • I actually lose something I love: I feel anger.

So, not only are joy and sadness related to something I love, anger and fear are also about love It’s a bit easier to see that joy and sadness have to do with love, but you need to consider that anger about having lost something and fear (or anxiety) about potentially losing something are also feelings related to love. When you feel sad, you have what we have come to call a “love problem.” But also, when you are anxious or angry, you also have a love problem. Noting that anger and fear are “love problems” gives you the key to managing these feelings and ultimately overcoming anger and anxiety. You can also overcome depression by understanding and managing your feelings, but doing this requires much more effort and self-examination. We will limit our current discussion to overcoming anger and anxiety.

We have noted that feelings are central to human existence and ultimately lead to some kind of thinking and action. To take this understanding a step further, we remind you that all feelings are love based and erupt first with having something and then losing this something. It is easy to feel joy when we love something, but much harder to allow the feeling of sadness to erupt when we lose this something. Because we ultimately lose everything we love, it is paramount that we accept this common experience of sadness in life. So, first we feel some kind of joy because we have something and then eventually, a minute, a year, or 10 years later, we lose this something, and we feel sad. So, we propose that it is central that we learn to be sad and let it run its course. In our book, The Positive Power of Sadness we unpack sadness and its correlates and focus on the important business of finishing sadness. We talk about allowing sadness to finish because all sadness ends naturally if we allow it to do so. This is an important part of managing our feelings and an important part of “mind over brain.” You need to think about what you feel.

Thinking about feelings

Having recognized that you have a “love problem” when you feel sad can ultimately help you see that you have love problems when you feel anxious or angry. If you remember that sadness, anger, and fear are all about loving something, you will be able to get your head around this idea of managing your feelings and prevent your brain from running amok with anger and anxiety. But this is no easy task, and it is most certainly not thinking away your feelings. That is repression or denial. We suggest quite the opposite: recognizing your feelings and letting them run their course, particularly sadness. Try it: just notice what you have lost and you will feel sad; then after a moment or two, your sadness will start to diminish. It will eventually end depending on the depth of love you had for what you lost.

Managing anxiety and anger

If you can allow sadness to run its course, you are then ready to tackle anxiety and anger. Let’s start with anger because it is about the past, namely that you have lost in the past. Your brain, remember, only has a sense of present, not the past, has churned up anger in order to fight this loss and the attacker thinking that there is a lack of safety, and that you need anger to fight off this attacker. The “attacker,” by the way could be a person, an event, yourself (you having done something “stupid”) or God. Anger is a defense against any and all attacks. Now, having realized that anger is a love problem, you can focus on what you have lost and how you loved it. This thing you have lost might be an idea, a piece of property, a place, or a person. Whatever it was, you loved it. And you lost it. To manage your anger you need to think about what you loved, and then think about it more. Think about how you loved this thing. If you do this, you will begin to feel sad, and if you allow this to happen, you are nearing the end of anger. Anger doesn’t ever really end. But anger directed into sadness does. If you master this process of seeing that every time you are angry, you have lost something that you love, you will first be able to cure anger. Then as you mature, eventually be able to prevent anger. But this means that you will feel sadness more often, a sadness that will end. When sadness ends you will experience a subtle feeling of joy and will begin to realize that you are a person of love and that you have memory of having loved something.

This process of managing feelings like anger can also work for managing the feeling of fear (or anxiety). As we have noted, anxiety is the fear of losing something we love, so if we can get into the love part of anxiety, we will be able to cure it and eventually prevent it. Managing anger (curing it and preventing it) is finding a way to feel the sadness of loss that precipitated the brain’s reaction to anger. Managing anxiety is finding a way to feel the sadness of potential loss. We call this process anticipatory sadness. It is hard to learn how to get under anger to sadness and ultimately to love, but it is twice as hard to get under anxiety to find sadness and love. You will need lots of practice at this procedure, which is something like this: (1) note that you are anxious over potentially losing something and then (2) note that whatever you might lose is something you love.

Now comes the hard part: (3) consider what you would feel if you lost this thing that you love. You will note that you would feel sad. Allow yourself to feel sad even though you have not really lost this thing you love. This is hard, but you can get used to doing it. So every time you feel anxious about something, you can consider that you love something and that losing this thing would be sad. When you learn to do this (it takes months or years of practice), you will feel more sadness and more joy. And to be quite honest, anxiety, even more than anger, often requires a faithful guiding therapeutic hand, you will have used your mind to manage your brain. While not an easy process to learn, you can do it.

If you do this mind over brain process, you will value your emotions, whatever they are, eventually be able to think of what you love, and then remember what you love. And you can then “convince your brain that it is really okay to have these feelings. Now you are in a good place because you might find it possible to activate this love in some way. You might just enjoy the loving thoughts, memories, and hopes. You might tell someone about what you love. You might even get better at loving, which is our hope.

Further Reading

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The positive power of sadness. Praeger Press.

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). “Mind Over Matter I and II

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). “Feelings I-V” blogs

Watch for “Mind Over Matter IV: Addictions”

Mind Over Matter II: Practice

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness, social esteem

In our first blog on Mind Over Matter we discussed the theory of “mind over matter,” namely the idea of getting full use of both mind and brain. We discussed several things that distinguish the operations of the mind and the brain:

What is the brain?

  • The brain is a machine, a wonderful machine at that, but a machine nevertheless.
  • The brain knows only two things: safety (or the lack thereof) and pleasure (or the lack thereof). The brain’s priority is safety over pleasure…if it has to make a choice. You have to live before you can be happy.
  • There are times, however, when the brain actually chooses pleasure over safety when it concludes that the absence of pleasure is unsafe.
  • The brain only knows the present. The mind cannot conceive of the past and the future, but the brain cannot.

The brain does a myriad of things that the mind does not control, like blood flow and breathing. The mind doesn’t need to be conscious of these activities

What is the mind?

  • “Mind” is undefined although it exists, as we discussed in Mind over Matter I. We noted that time, space, and mass, the basic ingredients of the universe are also undefined but we understand these facets of the universe. We also noted that several elements of human existence and relationships are undefined but we know what they are, like love, wisdom, and feelings.
  • The mind knows all of these undefined elements like feelings, love, wisdom, and lots more. Simply put, the mind thinks and feels.
  • “Mind over matter” means using the mind to make full use of the brain’s wonderful mechanism (100 billion brain cells) to do the work of feeling, thinking, and doing. The mind couldn’t do any of these things without the brain.

We also learned that there are occasional dangers in the mind-brain interaction that has to do with the brain’s orientation towards safety and pleasure

  • The mind needs the brain to do anything and everything. It cannot operate on its own. It needs the machinery of the brain to think, feel, and do things.
  • If the mind thinks of distress in the past or the future, the brain immediately translates these things into the present.
  • When the mind conceives of something in the past that was distressful, the brain conceives of this distress as occurring in the present.
    • When distress about the past is on the mind, the brain “concludes” that the person is currently
    • When the brain receives these messages of distress of the past, it attempts to reduce this distress by secreting certain chemicals. These chemicals have the effect of increasing energy and preparing the body to fight. The result of this increase in energy is anger.
    • When the distress about the past is overwhelming, the brain secretes chemicals that have the effect of reducing energy in the body causing fatigue and reduced energy. The result of this reduction in energy is depression.
  • When the brain receives messages of distress in the future, it attempts to reduce this distress by secreting different chemicals:
    • When the distress about the future is on the mind, the brain concludes that the person is currently in danger.
    • These chemicals (cortisol) increase awareness and alertness. This often leads to what we call “hypervigilance.”
    • The result of hypervigilance is anxiety.
  • In summary, when anger, anxiety, and depression have occurred in a person, there has been a harmful cycle between the mind and the brain:
    • The mind remembers something bad that happened: the brain churns up anger.
    • The mind is remembers a series of bad things that happened in the past; the brain churns up depression.
    • The mind thinks of something bad that might happen; the brain churns up anxiety.

The brain is doing its job: maximizing safety and pleasure

The first thing we need to keep in mind is that the brain isn’t doing something wrong. The brain is always, and only, working to provide safety and pleasure as we previously discussed. When the brain creates depression, anger, and anxiety, it is doing what it is designed to do: create safety and maximize pleasure. It is easy to see how the brain creates safety with anxiety and anger, but it is a challenge to see how creating these things “maximizes pleasure” with depression.

Recall how we discussed that “anhedonia,” commonly thought of as lack of energy or interest, is the primary symptom of depression. The brain (not the mind) actually creates anhedonia, i.e. it decreased one’s energy, so that the person can do as little as possible. Why would the brain do that? The brain creates anhedonia because the mind has so many feelings, and so many thoughts that the brain isn’t able to get these thoughts and feelings resolved. Quite literally, because the mind is thinking and feeling so many things, the brain is overloaded with information and is not readily able to think through and feel through all this stuff. The brain does what it knows to do: it shuts down the person’s interest in doing anything so it can focus on this overload of thoughts and feelings. The brain does what it can do to create safety and pleasure: shut down activity by decreasing energy.

The brain protects us by creating anhedonia and other symptoms of depression, like sleep disturbance and appetite disturbance. Additionally, the brain operates on a “flight or fight” mode creating fear or anger as means of dealing with real or possible threats. The brain creates anger when the mind has experienced some harm or hurt, and creates anxiety when the mind experiences some worry about possible loss in the future. Simply put, anger is about hurt in the past and anxiety is about hurt in the future. But the brain, remember, doesn’t know future or past, but only the present. So the brain creates anger and anxiety in order to deal with perceived danger in the present.

We will never be successful in overriding the brain’s natural functioning. We can’t just push through depression with some kind of will power. On the other hand, we don’t want to simply yield to it. So, what can we do to use the brain’s power more effectively without violating the brain’s interest in our safety and pleasure? We have to find ways to use our minds to effectively use our brains. We have to find ways to overcome depression, anger and anxiety by using the brain, not challenging it. What can we do about this harmful mind-brain cycle that creates depression, anger, and anxiety? Simply stated, we need to get the mind in control of the brain. Stay tuned for Mind over Matter III: Mind over Brain

Further Reading

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2017). The positive power of sadness: the cure for anger, anxiety, and depression. Praeger Press.

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). “Mind over Matter I: Theory” blog

Johnson, R. and Brock, D. (2018). “Feelings I-V” blogs