Self-Awareness

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

 

 

 

Mind Over Matter

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

 

The most important thing I learned in physics is that the central ingredients of the universe are undefined. My high school physics teacher always had us write out definitions of various ingredients, like space, velocity, and weight. He also included three requests for definitions of time, distance, and mass. It took me some time to catch on to this very simple and very important fact: time, distance and mass are all undefined. We can define velocity as time over distance, like 55 kilometers per hour, meaning that you can go the distance of 55 km in one hour, but this equation uses two of the three basic ingredients of the universe, which are themselves undefinable. While I have regrettably forgotten most of the things I learned in physics, both in high school and college, I have retained this important fact: some basic things are undefinable.

Think about it. You certainly understand distance, like 50 meters or two inches. And you understand time, like two hours or two seconds. It doesn’t take a physicist to know what time it is. You just look at the clock. And for measuring distance, you just get out the tape measure, or you might just use the middle joint of your index finger to approximate one inch. You understand mass as something like weight (weight though, is actually mass times gravity.) Not only do we understand time, distance, and mass, we can measure these things using clocks, tape measures and the like. My point of this discussions is this: the really important, really central ingredients of the universe may be measurable, and generally understood they are undefinable.

So what does the undefinable nature of time, mass, and distance have to do with “mind over matter,” which is the topic for today? A lot. There are also some very important basic ingredients to human psychology and experience, and just like time, distance, and mass, we know what these things are, but they defy an exact definition. We have to be cautious in this discussion: definitions are very important because they give us some concrete understanding of how the world works and how we work psychologically. We need to know what time and distance are or we won’t do very well in life, even if we can’t really make some kind of exact definition. So we don’t want to do away with definitions. Rather, we want to look at some important elements of psychological functioning that we know but can’t really define. These undefinable elements are not easily measured, but we can understand them if we work at it.

Undefinable basic psychological elements

There many real and definable elements in psychology, but also a few that are real and undefinable. In previous blogs we have talked about “feelings.” We can understand emotions, like the four basic emotions of joy, sadness, fear, and anger. We can understand the physical reaction that one has to something that causes one of these emotions. We can even write a book about one of these feelings, like sadness. But when it comes to feelings we are not really able to define this word. The undefinable nature of feelings is exactly why I have written five blogs on feelings and yet feel I have done an inadequate job of describing this most basic phenomenon of psychological functioning. But “feelings” are not the only things that may be undefinable. I think love and wisdom might also be undefinable. For the moment I am more interested in the concept of mind, which I think is real and undefinable.

There is great debate in the field psychology of psychology about the mind. Roughly, there are two schools of thought, one that we might call materialistic and the other dualistic although those terms are themselves fraught with difficulty. Many (although by no means all) neuropsychologists allege that there is no such thing as the mind. Rather, they say, there is only the brain which does all that we attribute to the mind, like thinking, and feeling. Interestingly, most psychologists, apart from neuropsychologists, talk about the mind in a rather cavalier fashion, as if everyone just knows what the mind is. Most clinical psychologists and other therapists operate as if there is a mind even if they don’t use the term. We therapists tend to use terms like, “your mind say this” or “that is just your mind talking” without thinking about the fact that we don’t have a definition of the mind…if it even exists.

If it is not already obvious, I believe that the mind exists. I also believe that the mind can’t be defined, just like other important ingredients of life. So I am left with talking about something that is so important that it can’t be defined, but we know what it is, and we can understand it even though we can’t measure it. Going further in this discussion of the mind leads us to murky grounds, however, so I will remind you that we can understand time even though we can’t define it. When I talk about the mind, I am talking about an essence that most surely exists and has a huge influence on what I think, feel, and do. I just can’t define it. So how do we get further in this discussion without a definition of mind? We look at the effects of this thing we call the mind. We infer that the mind exists because there has to be something that directs life and adjusts to life apart from a simple neuroanatomical assessment of human functioning. I have come to think of the mind and the brain as intricately related but also different. The brain is definable; the mind is not.

The brain

I will not bore you with some kind of discussion of neurological functioning. Even though I do neuropsychological evaluations every week, I admit, as most neuropsychologists would, that we understand just a bit of brain functioning. Instead I will simply say this: the brain is a wonderful machine composed of 100 billion brain cells (neurons), each reacting with a potential of 1000 other neurons. Because we have trillions of interactions going on almost every moment of the day it is no wonder we don’t know much about the brain despite 100 years of intense brain study. It is my belief and understanding that the brain does two things, safety and pleasure. Nothing more. The brain engages in activities that create safety for you (mostly for your body…but there is more), and is aware of danger to that safety. The brain also engages in pleasure, or the lack of pleasure. When the brain is aware of pleasure or safety or the lack of either, it is doing its basic job. It does nothing else.

So if the brain just does things that keeps me safe and affords pleasure, what about all the other things that the brain seems to be doing? Like, love and wisdom that we mentioned above. The brain has no idea about these things. Nor does the brain have any idea of time, which means that the brain is always in the present, not the past (with, say, regret or nostalgia) or with the future (with, say, hope or anxiety). Just the present. This fact is very important for my premise in this blog: the brain (not the mind) knows safety and pleasure, nothing else. So what about this undefinable thing we call the mind?

The mind does everything else

This is my proposition: the brain is a machine that keeps us alive and keeps us happy (at least some of the time), but this wonderful 100 billion celled organ knows only safety and pleasure. The brain does not know love, joy (different from pleasure), wisdom, relationships, hope, and a whole bunch of other things that we experience every day, usually every hour. Remember, we can’t define the mind, so what is it? We can only see what it does. This is my conception: the mind uses the brain, this wonderful machine, to do everything else. If we didn’t have a brain, we couldn’t do these other things, like love or read. We know, of course, that people with some kind of brain malformation or injury, are not able to do many things, perhaps including love. The important thing is this discussion, is that we consider that it is the mind that is the core of who we are, our self, our soul, or our spirit, however we might to define this undefinable entity. How does the mind operate?

Mind over matter

The title of this treatise is “mind over matter” as noted, but what does this mean. Simply, it means that when the mind and the brain are working well together, the mind is the operator of the machinery of the brain. We do this all the time and quite effectively. We think (mind) that we might want to go shopping, we feel (mind) some joy at the thought, and then we take action (brain) in doing that activity. Or the mind might decide to do something different than shopping. This is the mind and brain at its best: mind directing the brain. Because the mind has no matter to it, it can’t do anything without the brain, and it can’t really think or feel. It needs the brain to do these things. One stream of thinking is that the mind is a form of energy although not matter per se, but we also know that matter and energy are interchangeable. This is a discussion best left to people who understand such things better than I do.

The brain does many wonderful things without any kind of feeling or thinking. It takes care of breathing and blood flow, for instance. We don’t think about breathing very much unless we are doing yoga or if you happen to be a client of my wife, who actually does quite a bit of work with breath and breathing. And the brain does the safety feature at any moment. This is wonderful if, for instance, you hear a loud noise as you are about the cross the street because the brain understands this loud noise as dangerous and directs you to step back out of the street onto the sidewalk and let the 18 wheeler go ahead. You don’t have to think about moving, and you certainly don’t feel much besides the fear associated with the noise of the truck. The brain did its job keeping you safe.

Your brain does its two jobs of safety and pleasure and nothing else. As a result of this rather singular focus, your brain does pleasure or safety when you have more important things to think about. When you are unhappy for some reason, the brain does what it can to make you happy, like secreting happy chemicals, like serotonin. Unfortunately, the brain also finds ways to get you to do something that will secrete serotonin without regard for anything else. This pleasure-only orientation the brain has to your being unhappy can lead to a host of difficulties, like addictions and obsessions, which originate in some experience that gave you pleasure, like eating, running, or drinking beer. So when you are unhappy, the brain (not the mind) gives the mind the idea of going to one of these things to find pleasure. When this happens, the brain is in control of the mind. And when that happens, the brain is in the driver’s seat.

Not only can the brain be in the driver’s seat with seeking pleasure, it can also drive you to what it thinks is safety in ways that are not good for you. If you consider the future in some way, like what might happen tomorrow that could be dangerous, the brain receives the message of danger and does another chemical reaction: it kicks in another hormone, cortisol. Cortisol causes you to be hyperaware, or hypervigilant. This is not so bad if you are about to step in front of a truck in the present, but it is not good when you think about stepping of the curb in the future. Because the brain has no idea of time, it does not distinguish the real truck and the potentially imaginary truck. It just secretes cortisol. I trust you can see the danger here, namely of the brain creating anxiety for something that might happen because the brain doesn’t understand might. It doesn’t understand future; it only understands the present.

Stay tuned for Mind over Matter II: Getting the Mind back on Control

Further Reading

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

We discuss this mind-brain thing quite a bit.

Damasio, A.R. Descartes’ error. NY: Putnam’s Publishing

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. NY: Simon and Schuster

Both Damasio and LeDoux are proponents of “brain only” thinking

Schiffer, F. (1998). Of two minds: the revolutionary science of dual-brain psychology. New York: The Free Press

Schwartz, J.M. and Begley, S. (2002). The mind and the brain: neuroplasticity and the power of mental force. New York: Harper

Siegel, D.J. (199). The developing mind: toward a neurobiology of interpersonal experience. New York: Guilford

Feelings V: Disappointment

Ron Johnson Connection, emotional maturity, Feelings, marital, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

This is the fifth in a series on feelings. We have previously noted that this whole matter of “feelings” is murky and prone to misunderstanding. We have looked at emotions (fear, anger, joy, and sadness) to start with and then have proceeded to discuss the whole difficult business of communicating feelings, which is fraught with challenge. The present discussion is an addendum to understanding feelings, particularly how one “feels” when one is disappointed. An important aspect of “feelings” is that the term is not truly definable. The best we can do is to say that it is important, universal among humans and very possibly among many animal species. Feelings are important because they comprise one of the three basic elements of human psychological function, the other two being thinking and doing. It is not so much in the field of thinking and doing that we get into trouble. It is in the area of feelings.

Feelings and words

Let’s review just a bit before we go on to deal with disappointment, which is our present topic. Feelings, however murky and undefinable, begin with emotions, and very possibly with some kind of visceral experience in our bodies. This is the “gut level feeling” you have, or perhaps more accurately the sense that something is happening to you that you can’t quite put a name to. So we call this something-is-happening a feeling, or sometimes in the plural, feelings. There is an emotional and possibly a physical substrate to feelings, but then our minds wonder about and we have some random thoughts about this feeling. We might come up with a few words, but more often we “just feel” something that seems important. One of the things we discussed previously in these Feelings Blogs is that there are no perfect words for feelings, and very few exact words. So we are left with a situation where we feel something, possibly important, but we don’t know exactly what the emotion is behind it nor the cause of the emotion. All we know is that we feel something and feel compelled to put this feeling into words. In Feelings II we discussed how difficult to put feelings into words, but simultaneously how important it seems to us to do so.

Let’s be reminded that there are many ways of expressing feelings that are not verbal, or not verbal in the sense of a conversation. Poets might be the best wordsmiths when it comes to feelings, and musicians may be the next best, particularly those who write musical lyrics. Other artists, like painters and sculptors, also express feelings nonverbally, as do architects and interior designers and basketball players.  One of my basketball buddies described a “go to the hoop layup” as a “thing of beauty.” Feelings come to us and we express them in our own manner, especially when the feelings are rich and pleasurable. But our focus right now is on the feeling of disappointment, something that is not easy to successfully communicate verbally.

Disappointment

This is a feeling word that I think is extremely important for us to (1) understand, (2) use with caution, and (3) hear with diligence. A couple weeks ago when we were “up north” at our cabin, Deb said she was disappointed in something I did or didn’t do. Now, two weeks past I cannot recall what I did or didn’t do. Interestingly, neither can she. But I do remember her saying she was disappointed. I remember we were on the paddle boat when she expressed her disappointment, but I can’t remember the content of this feeling.

Consider with me the whole array of thoughts, feelings, and actions associated with being disappointed: Doing: I did something or didn’t do something; Thinking: I probably thought what I did or didn’t do was the right thing to do; Feeling: Deb felt disappointed. Sound familiar? It should. It happens quite regularly in all of our lives. Because I am now in the enviable position of not remembering what she was disappointed about, nor is she, I can speak without particular emotion. But that surely wasn’t the case when she said she was disappointed in me. As soon as she said she expressed her feelings of disappointment (her feelings) I felt hurt.

Understanding Disappointment

Hurt people always hurt other people. You can remember that from previous blogs. This means that when people are hurt, they usually hurt someone else, very often the person who caused the offense. Deb was disappointed, and in her stating her feelings I in turn got hurt. I don’t know how or why I originally disappointed Deb, but I did disappoint her in what I did, and in so doing, I hurt her. Deb was hurt, got disappointed, spoke it, and then I got hurt. This is how it happens, most of the time. One person is hurt, usually unintentionally, and then in dealing with their hurt, hurts the person who hurt them. I know it sounds “crazy”, but this is the hardest thing to comprehend and accept. We discussed this hurt-people-hurt-people phenomenon in previous Feelings blogs so I won’t belabor the point here. I want to emphasize that disappointment comes first in the form of hurt. Quite importantly, I didn’t intend to hurt Deb, but to go further in understanding hurt and disappointment, I have to acknowledge that I hurt her in some way, actively (doing something) or passively (not doing something).

Speaking disappointment (Use with Caution)

Here is where most people get in trouble, but here also is where we could really come together in understanding each other. If you have read the previous blogs, you will remember that when I speak my “feelings” to someone, I am speaking about myself. Or I should be. Very often, sadly, this expression of feelings is about the other person. Recall (from a previous Feelings blog) the lady who said she “spoke her feelings quite clearly” when she told her husband that he was a jerk when he failed to turn on the car seat heater for her when he got in the car after turning the heater on for his seat. She thought she expressed her feelings. She didn’t. She expressed anger at her husband and railed at his character as I remember. But what had really happened: she had an expectation that he would be kind and think of her when he got in the car; she was disappointed when that didn’t happen; she was hurt; and then, sadly, she lashed out at him rather than saying how she truly felt. She was disappointed.

Whether the car seat heater, or another of a myriad of things that have caused hurt and disappointment, the real task is to speak disappointment first and foremost. Having said this, however, we are in swampy grounds because very few people know how to do speak their feelings, much less hear it from other people. To begin with you have to know that you are hurt and disappointed. Please review this matter of knowing that your hurt in Feelings 2 and Feelings 4  To be successful in this endeavor you will have to realize that your feelings are important, that you had an expectation that someone would do something (or perhaps that something would happen), and it didn’t happen. As a result you were hurt. Thus, despite it sounding and seeming narcissistic to say so, disappointment is all about you in this very important aspect of feelings. You feel hurt. You feel disappointed. You Feel. Important. Very important. Next, you have to say it. You need to learn to be brave in expressing your feelings and then learn how to speak them clearly. So say it, say it clearly, and say it without fear thoroughly remembering that you are talking about you, your feelings, your value system, your expectation, and your hurt. But remember, this is half the battle. It is not the end of the battle however. This half-battle could turn into a full-fledged war because when you say you are disappointed, your friend will have an important feeling: hurt. You have to be prepared for the resulting offence felt by the person you’re talking to.

There is no way getting around this phenomenon. It is not something to be avoided. It is something to be aware of. So if you’re going to express disappointment, it behooves you to make it clear that this is your feeling, your hurt, your expectation, and your disappointment. Most likely, however, it won’t matter how you take ownership of your feelings, your friend will also be hurt. You need to know that this is part of being human and being in a relationship with another human being. We all get hurt rather frequently and rather easily. The best thing we can do, and certainly the first, is to recognize that if I say I am disappointed in you, my statement will hurt you.

You must realize that in speaking your disappointment, the person who has disappointed you will mostly likely defend their action compared to a matured response of containing their hurt and just hearing you out. So, unless you are lucky enough to express your disappointment to an emotionally mature person, she or he will say something hurtful back to you, or at the very least make some defense at having done (or not done) what s/he did (or didn’t do). If you express your disappointment, you will have to wander in this swamp for a while until the two of you can come to a better understanding of one another. You can further the process of understanding by focusing on how you are “just talking about my feelings” and not really talking about them or their actions. If you stick with your feelings, your expectations, your hurt, and your disappointment, you will then avoid the focus being on what your friend did or didn’t do that disappointed you. Re-read Feelings II: expressing feelings for some recommendations.

If you stick with your feelings, your expectations, your hurt, and your disappointment, you will then avoid the focus being on what your friend did or didn’t do that disappointed you.

This is very hard as we discussed in Feelings II, but it is essential to learn how to do this. Or come to our office and we will help you learn to do it. First you recognize your hurt and all that goes with it like your value system and your expectations. Then you can say something about what actually happened (or didn’t happen), but spend a little time as possible on what s/he did. The rest is up to your friend.

Hearing disappointment (Hearing with Diligence)

Here I speak to the person hearing the disappointment. Disappointment is always hard to hear. It is no easy task. You will be hurt, which is most important to know and note. You will be sad, which is even more important. You will be hurt and sad because you love (to some degree) the person who is disappointed in you. Furthermore, you very well may not have done (or failed to do) what your friend expected of you. You probably did your best. Maybe you just forgot. Maybe you worked hard at doing this thing right. Maybe you really don’t care much about what you did. None of this matters in the long run. What matters is that if your friend says s/he is disappointed in you, you will be hurt, and you have to contend with that fact. Once you recognize the hurt factor, you can move forward. If you fail to recognize the hurt factor, you will defend and explain what and why you did what you did, which will only make matters worse. I like to think the best of people: you intended to do the right thing. Maybe you actually did the right thing and your friend has a different perspective. Maybe you thinks you did something that you actually didn’t do. This doesn’t matter at the time of disappointment and hurt. The facts don’t matter when it comes to feelings. It’s the feelings that matter. The particulars can be discussed later. What you need to discuss at this point is the hurt factor, first your friend’s hurt, and then speak your hurt, hopefully without defensiveness. Your hurt then would sound more like “I am so sorry to disappoint you. It saddens me. You are important to me. Again, I am sorry. I don’t want to hurt you.  And obviously, even though I didn’t intend to hurt you, I did.”

It is very hard to govern your reaction to someone being disappointed in you. It is hard primarily because you are hurt and secondarily because you intended to do the right thing. You can serve your friend, serve yourself, and serve your relationship by forestalling your explanation and defense and focus on what your friend feels. And then on what you feel.

 

Further Reading

Previous Blogs on Feelings (I, II, III, IV)

Damasio, A.R. Descartes’ error. NY: Putnam’s Publishing

Hillman, J. (1971). The feeling function. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications

LeDoux, J. (1996). The emotional brain. NY: Simon and Schuster

Powell, J. (1969). Why am I afraid to tell you who I am? Allen, TX: Tabor Publishing