Understanding the Brain and Relapse Prevention

"Living with a Brain"

The following pages can help people get a better understanding of their brain. I've set out to give some insight into how the brain works, why you think and feel the things you do and what you can do about it. If you read the pages in this chapter you'll get some clear ideas for getting started on a self determined path. Keep in mind (1) this is just a beginning - a place to start (2) I continue to write about this on the addiction help blog. You can help others by joining the forum and sharing your discoveries.

This subject, of dealing with our brains, is one of the three most important things we can do to live happy, healthy, addiction free lives.

"Getting Started...Brains, Thought and Meditation...

You've heard the quote from Descartes that says, I think therefore I am. I have one of my own, it goes like this: I am therefore I am. How about: My brain is doing something therefore it is. The point is, that it (the brain) isn't me. The only way I have ever been able to make any sense of the "I am" idea is to get my brain out of the equation. If the equation were: a bunch of variables that equal "I have" then I can put the brain back in there, and suffer no confusion. The chief cause of confusion and the identity problem stems from our associating our Is-ness with the brain.

The brain has information concerning importance, life purpose, creation, spirituality, who we are and what we're doing here. All it's information comes from other brains. It's not really knowledge, it's just information. None of it is necessarily accurate. It's, at best, a collection of observations and speculations. At it's worst it's a collection of imaginings and contrived delusion.

If I, the thing I am without three dimensional input, want to know peace: I must understand my relationship with my brain. I must understand that my brain is just my brain. It is doing things that I call thinking. I call it thinking because I was told that's what it was. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is. It is just what I was told. More accurately it's what the brain was told. It thinks it's thinking. For example I am looking at a situation where I have to meet some one tomorrow to discuss storing my RV. All the information the brain has on leaving things in peoples care, theft, dishonesty, trust, human relations, communication and so on is channeled to the conscious level, where I can see it. Is this thought? If the brain combines this information into a "life like scenario" we call it thinking. Is it? We say we're thinking about what might go wrong. Or we're thinking about how something good always seems to happen, just when we need it most. Whatever the combination of information looks like, we call it thought. If those combination's, or recollections ( recollecting ) contain past scary events: my body experiences it, as trepidation. I feel afraid of what "might" take place tomorrow. My brain is the source of this fear. Not that it is intentionally trying to scare me. Not that it is even capable of intention. In fact if the brain was capable of intention, or reason, we would rarely experience any fear. The brain would withhold any information that might result in our being afraid. It would do this - for it's own good. That "good" would be done from the understanding that fear is not healthy. So if the brain was actually thinking it would always work in our best interest, knowing that certain information is not beneficial. Doesn't it stand to reason that the brain is not thinking? Does this mean that the brain is faulty? That would depend on our evaluation, our understanding, of what the brain is. I said that fear comes from the brain. This just means that if we are afraid, and we trace back to the source of that fear, we will find that a thought or idea has frightened us. The scary ideas come from the information stored in the brain. It can't come from tomorrow. There is no information in the brain about tomorrow. Not in reality. What information the brain has stems from the past. From memories. The brain is the memory warehouse. The memory library.

Getting a glimpse of this reality is a good start towards "the self determined path". A path we choose because we look clearly at all the possibility's and decide what to do. In truth, I am not afraid of anything and neither are you. My brain produces chemicals that "feel" like fear. I do, right now, feel fear. I know that it isn't me. I could, far more accurately say, "I" am aware of my body experiencing the fear state. My brain is doing something and the result is the feeling, the chemical concoction, we call fear. I no longer say, "I'm afraid", I say, "My brain is doing something". It's always doing something. If I can get it to do what I decide is best, then I won't have to put up with the negative effect of it's non-supportive activities.

Paying Attention

Meditation is an activity. It is something you do. It could be said that its just paying attention to a chosen thing. The thing of choice for us, at this stage ( Beginners like me ), is the breath. That's it. If to much is said then that's just more to think about and that gets in the way.

If you've never tried it before or if it didn't work for you but you'd like it to work: just count. Count the breaths you pay attention to. When I started I wanted to count twenty breaths without getting involved in whatever my brain was doing. I probably got to two before my attention went off to its habitual focus. This was very frustrating to me. I was unable to pay attention and I knew that it was some serious flaw and I should figure out what the problem was and do better. You can see that I was just, once more, lost in thought. The solution wasn't in figuring anything out and as it turned out it was just the opposite. As always the solution was in doing it. Not doing it better, or figuring out what I was doing wrong or beating myself up for being inadequate but simply continuing on with what I had chosen.

As a result of continuing on for a few years I am more relaxed and less hard on myself. For me that's a big deal. So that's the way to get started. The only advice I would offer is have fun with it.

I know I don't say as much about meditation as some would like. I really think there is too much written and said about it. It's not that complicated. If you were on a desert island you could start meditating with no outside help whatsoever. I didn't know any more, than what I've mentioned here, when I started to practice meditation. My goal is to see that you start. To start, you just start. Everything builds on that action. Without that action, nothing builds. That said, I have provided some audio that explains the idea and science of meditation in more detail. In some ways, where meditation is concerned, there is the possibility that more information is just more to think about and can interfere with the experience. You can go to the audio page now where I've put the instructional resources, guided meditations and Bi-Naural beat recordings. You can click here and get started. My advice to anyone interested in getting started is to open a topic in the forum and see if you can get others to follow you. This way you will be able to share your experiences. You can be useful to others who are going through the same thing as you, at the same time as you. Where ever you place yourself, with the intention of doing something for yourself and others, that's where the energies of your intentions will concentrate themselves. Your intentions will solidify into form. We just see what form they take. It's really a lot of fun. It's the great experiment of life: finding out how it works and how to operate within it. Below I placed a few excerpts from authorities in the field of meditation and hypnosis.

TALKING TO OURSELVES

Shambhala Mountain Center, 8.19.03

Ze Minkey And the helpful hint is when you're feeling uncomfortable, first of all, you can guarantee there's shenpa involved, and you could contemplate the truth or untruth of whether or not it's because you're bubble of security has just been popped. But the real core instruction is, whenever you're feeling uncomfortable, don't believe what you're saying to yourself. Right then is the time to not believe what you're saying to yourself.

And what we're saying to ourselves at those times are really old habits. We're reinforcing really old habits. That's what we do when we're uncomfortable. We don't leave it with just hooked or triggered. We seek to get the bubble back together, or whatever language you want to use, by talking to ourselves, in a way that really strengthens old habits. And they're usually very self-destructive habits.


Student: What is the way to stop that cycle?

Pema: This whole week is about that.

However, you've got to use it. You've probably already heard everything you need to know in the other dharma teachings you've received, but the point is, you have to use it.

And that's why you'll hear a lot this week. It's good to just distill it down to something that really resonates with you. Otherwise, your life is falling apart because a mosquito has bitten you, someone has cut in front of you, or because someone you love very dearly has just left forever. And you're thinking, "What did they say? What did they say?" And it doesn't seem like much of a branch to hold on to.

So you really have to find what really helps. Know that whatever it is... it is also just a stage. It's not some final thing, it's just a stage. But we need something that really works for us.

What happens is that by finding these branches and knowing that they're just temporary, we begin to be able to have more and more confidence in our own innate wisdom and intelligence. The Dharma, or the teachings, and our own experience begin to mix more and more. It becomes like good food or the air we breathe. It's like a way that you work with things.

I'm just going to make a blanket statement, and then it will probably be a subject of a lot of conversation: There's no way to stay stuck in misery without talking to yourself about it. And that includes knowing that you're going to die next week, or knowing that you're loved one is going to die next week.

It isn't the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it's what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. That's where the suffering comes from.

Listen to Pema Chodron Meditation Audio

Why Hypnosis Works

I have benefited from looking into hypnosis. I understand that the picture that pops into the people picture viewer is the mesmerizer with the pocket watch. If we want to know anything we really have to do a lot of investigation. I have studied hypnosis by downloading torrents and viewing scads of hypnosis sites and watching and listening to what they are saying and doing. We all have to deal with our brains. That is our main focus when we strive to get started on a self determined path. We will want to know everything we can about how the brain works. If we don't we'll be subject to it. Subject to it in the way that people are subjects of a king. We need to take brain from being a ruler and back to its rightful place as a tool. We want it serving us not visa verse.

So we will want to find out what hypnosis says about the brain. We will want to know how the brain learns. If we don't understand how the brain learns we can't teach it intentionally. It will continue to learn by default and we will continue to have whatever it learns running through our view screens. We don't have to let the brain run wild. We don't have to let it carry on imaginary conversations with possible people in possible future situations. We don't have to set and listen to it go on about the past. Dredging up memories and delivering their emotional baggage to our door each day. We really will benefit by becoming convinced that anything learned can be unlearned. Not convinced through some type of trickery but by investigating the facts available to us. The fact is that hypnosis is a great learning tool. A great unlearning tool.

The Conscious And Subconscious Mind:

Influence, Persuasion & Change For Healing With Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy.

Though we have one mind, there are usually considered to be two sections of it: the conscious and the subconscious. The subconscious was termed by Freud the unconscious. He only saw it as a negative, a swamp of primitive drives and aggressive impulses. (Perhaps his was). Hypnotists, au contraire, regard it as the source of creativity, inventiveness and strength, avaluable resource that can be utilized, not only as this negative primitive area. Nowadays some hypnotists use the term, "other than conscious," mind, to define it as everything not in conscious awareness in the present moment. A metaphor that is used to illustrate the conscious and subconscious parts of the mind uses a comparison to an iceberg. The visible portion above the surface of the water is the conscious mind, guestimated (I can't imagine how), to be approximately 10% of our thinking ability. The subconscious mind, consisting of that portion of the iceberg beneath the water, being the other nine tenths. I have also seen information that the conscious mind processes a few hundred impressions a minute, to the thousands of impressions the subconscious mind processes in the same time, (I can't imagine how this was arrived at either), but the general consensus is how much larger and more powerful this mostly hidden "other than conscious mind" can be.

Another useful analogy is to the computer. It seems to fit so well. After all, where would we intuit the design of a complex information processing system, other than our own minds? Many new processes such as "fuzzy logic" are in fact actual conscious attempts to reproduce our own mental processes, as far as they can be ascertained. In this comparison, the conscious mind is the equivalent of the computer screen, consisting of that which is available to our conscious thinking process. It is the analytical, linear, logical, rational, "two plus two equals four" mind. Plus our conscious emotions, those surface emotions that we are aware of. Here we move information around, computing how to minimize pain/negatives and maximize pleasure/positives, the two fundamental desires of any organism, however they may be conceived of in any particular being or life path. Here we use the mind to analyze our environment to obtain the necessary control for achieving these ends. So this mind operates primarily in the here and now, though it usually calls on the past as a computational factor. This means many of its functions operate within the framework of and/or via the perspectives and "lenses" (beliefs and perceptual grids), supplied by the subconscious mind.

I have found a major function of the conscious mind is to "bend" information to fit these hidden perspectives... Read more

In order to learn about hypnosis I had to suspend judgment until I had gathered all the data. I had to suspend judgment of personalities. I had to tolerate people. The way they said things. The way they act. The sales pitches that accompany a lot of the information. I really benefited from doing this. I can ignore a lot now. The one person I learned the most from watching is Richard Bandler. I have to ignore around 20% of Richard. He is one of those guys that I want to grab and say, "You're acting really goofy, Stop...". But I listened, and I watched...for hours. I learned stuff that has helped me immensely. I have listened to hypnosis recordings with subliminal messages. I have some that I can view the subliminal script. There is much to be gained by looking at this. I can't listen to people saying the same thing over and over so I don't use guided meditations that much. I start to anticipate the script and it isn't really productive. I do have a CD by Candice Pert that I'll make available, in part. I don't know what the rules are for letting people listen to Cd's and read books. I don't want to give anyone the chance to complicate things. You may have noticed that some people just love to complicate life.

How to Meditate: A Talk for Young People

by: Chogyam Trungpa

Has anybody talked to you about meditation? The basic idea of the sitting practice of meditation is that it is what the Buddha did, and because of that, he attained enlightenment. That's the basic point. And we have been told how to practice that way too, so that in turn, we can attain enlightenment.

One of the basic ideas is that generally, when we are about in the world, we want a lot of things and we can't get them. And sometimes we get angry with other people. Then we want to destroy them. Sometimes we have so much desire to get something to hold on to. All those things are called obstacles to meditation. They are the problems that we face.

Because of these things we suffer quite a lot, and nobody is basically comfortable with themselves because they are filled with all these feelings of anger, passion, and all the rest of it. Sometimes people say they are happy but, at the same time, they are restless all the time and in the depths of themselves they are suffering quite a lot. Such pain and suffering come from having too many thoughts and the confusion of passion, aggression, and ignorance - which is called ego. You know about that: ego? Right.

The idea of meditation is not necessarily to just get rid of these thoughts and feelings right away, but simply to work with them. As you sit, first you begin to feel some sense of yourself. Then as you sit more, you begin to find lots of thoughts coming out. Just look at them and don't necessarily push them aside or cultivate them, but come back to your breath.

Holding the meditation posture is doing what the Buddha did. The idea is that if you make this gesture of good posture, that straightens your sense of discipline and presence. And then, experiencing that, you feel your breath and go along with the breath. The basic idea is that you don't have to push the thoughts away, but you can almost get underneath thoughts. Out of that you could develop some sense of calmness, but sometimes it goes away. It's like trying to catch a fish in the water with your naked hand. It slips away.

The idea is to remain with the discipline and to slowly overcome, first of all, the thought process, and then after that, to slowly overcome passion, aggression, and ignorance until, at some point, they begin to become meaningless - until they no longer are a big deal.

Then your ego begins to diminish a little bit, become less, become less of an ego. You begin to have a glimpse of what is called ego-lessness, which is the first step toward enlightenment. In order to do that, you also have to work with your everyday life situations. Sometimes when you're not sitting, you might suddenly develop mindfulness. When that happens, look at yourself and try to be calm with some sense of not holding on to anything; just be steady, still. That doesn't necessarily mean to say that you physically have to hold steady, but psychologically you do.

If you're about to have a fight, just flash, and then hold steady. The idea of wanting to have a fight begins to dissolve, and, in turn, because of that, one begins to develop what is known as compassion. You begin to have more trust in yourself, less destructiveness in yourself, and less pain. And because you have less pain, therefore you're able to communicate that to other people. Working with oneself that way, in turn, you begin to work with others. That seems to be the basic point of why you have to practice meditation...read more

By: Linda Laffey, MFT

An observation of EMDR therapy

Discovered by Francine Shapiro in 1987, EMDR is a form of therapy which has since developed into an extraordinarily effective method for many clients for whom talk therapy by itself was not enough. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) initially used the pairing of a set protocol (specific questions and the client's answers) with a series of bi-lateral eye movements which were led and guided by the therapist. The latest evidence has indicated that other forms of bi-lateral stimulation are equally or more effective for some clients, including auditory and tactile methods.

Empirical and clinical evidence indicate that EMDR has been dramatically helpful in dealing with issues involving single-incident traumas (post-traumatic stress disorder), a history of ongoing, pervasive trauma (complex post-traumatic stress disorder), especially for adults who were abused or neglected as children, as well as test anxiety, performance anxiety, chronic pain, and opening up and pushing through areas where a client has felt stuck or blocked.

EMDR is not for everyone, and it is not a magical cure. It is, however, a very powerful tool that a highly trained clinician can use to help the appropriate client achieve significant results quickly, and it appears to be effective in 80 to 90 percent of cases. EMDR targets memories of trauma stored in a part of the brain--the limbic system--which does not respond readily to talk therapy. It can access processing and reasoning within the client which before seemed non-existent.

EMDR typically reduces total length of therapy time by approximately 50 percent. Many clients have described their experience as if they had been carrying around 1000 pounds of pain and that EMDR helped them to drop out 800 to 900 pounds of that pain, consequently opening up a whole new world to them. Each client's experience is unique, and no two clients will respond in exactly the same way. The EMDR therapist can work as a primary or secondary therapist, so if the client already has a therapist who is not trained in EMDR, the two therapists can work collaboratively with the same client.

This is a very complex subject to cover in a few paragraphs. This material is provided for informational and educational purposes only. If you are interested in learning more about this treatment, I would be happy to discuss it with you and answer all of your questions.

About Linda Laffey, MFT...

Linda Laffey is a therapist based in Encino, CA. Laffey's approach to psychotherapy is based on the belief that each client is the best authority on himself or herself. Her primary goals as a therapist are to work collaboratively with clients to determine treatment objectives, develop a treatment plan designed to help them achieve those objectives as quickly and effectively as possible, and empower them to know and trust their own inner strengths.

I was searching for anything on understanding the brain and there was really nothing there. That's not accurate - there was a ton of stuff but not much in the way of, "give it to me fast and give me something to do...today". Plus I don't have any money to go into therapy or attend your schools and seminars. This was the main reason for putting this site together. To give people who are having trouble, in any area of life an understanding of what's going on, and something to do about it, today. To get started now making progress towards the actuality of a happier existence. Any thing else is a waste of time. So I have tried to fit into this page a starting point. A discipline to put into practice today. One thing to remember is that we are dealing with our brains 24/7 all our lives. There is hardly anything more important for us to understand than what our brains are up to and how to attain control over them. How to make them work to our advantage. To demonstrate the importance of getting a handle on the brain, consider what the brain can get us to do. It can make you feel like someone is mad at you when they aren't aware you're alive, something bad is about to befall you, you'll never amount to anything or that god is talking to you. All of these tendencies we deal with for a truly ridiculous reason...we don't know that we don't have to. Or we think we're powerless over our own thoughts. So what could be of greater importance than taking control of the primary cause of all our suffering. Starting right now.