Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change

In 2019, I was invited to do some teaching on addiction in the United Kingdom. To be most helpful in addressing this topic in that context, I knew I needed to be more aware of the differences between the US and UK when it comes to counselling (notice I spelled it correctly!).

In the US, our understanding of therapy has been shaped largely by Sigmund Freud. That is why those of us in the US tend to focus on “talk therapy.” The UK was shaped by empirical science and medicine. As a result, there is some skepticism for “talk therapy” or counselling in the UK. Instead, they send people to a “clinician.” Often, that means a doctor who can prescribe medication. While that may be an oversimplification and while that is changing, it does represent a significant difference. Because of this, I thought it wise for me to strengthen my understanding of the physiological nature of addiction.

I started doing some research on the topic of addiction with an emphasis on the brain and body. What is the nature of addiction from a physiological point of view? That is where the following book, Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change, was so helpful.

If you have little or no training in human physiology you will be greatly helped and encouraged with what you find in the first section of the book. If you are a pastor, youth group leader or family member of someone who struggles with addiction, you would benefit greatly from this book. There are 4 major sections in the book that are directed to the loved one who is living with someone who struggles with addiction.

I. What To Know
II. How To Cope
III. How To Help
IV. Live Your Life

Here are some helpful portions taken from Part I: What To Know

I. What to Know: This section of the book provides one of the most helpful and accessible understanding of the nature of addiction and how it impacts the brain. This section is tremendously helpful because it explains the grip a substance or behavior can have on a person when the Nucleus accumbens (the reward center of the brain) gets high-jacked by an over influx of dopamine. Here is how the book describes what is happening in the addiction cycle:

1. What Is Addiction

Dopamine balance in the brain is not the only thing that gets disrupted by repeated use of a substance. It also affects key structures in the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex and limbic system. The prefrontal cortex is where we assess risks, weigh consequences, and make plans--in other words, make considered decisions. It manages input from the other parts of the brain like the limbic system and bodily regions and has been dubbed the braking system of the brain because it makes possible the judgments and decisions that go along with saying no to an impulse. When flooded with a substance, this part of the brain basically shuts down. (Teenagers have a distinct disadvantage here, as their young cerebral cortexes aren't even fully developed.)

The limbic system, in contrast, is where our sense of drive and urgency come from, generated through emotion, motivation, and in some ways the formation of memories. In the context of substance use or compulsive behaviors, this part of the brain gets excited into overdrive. So a brain that finds its limbic system acutely activated and anticipating the reward of using, and its judgment and decision-making pre-frontal cortex more or less disabled, is a brain that’s likely to go forward with the impulse and desire to use—no stop and all go. A brain in this state will register the smell of marijuana being smoked, the desire to smoke it, and anticipate the feeling that comes along with smoking, while the reasons not to smoke disappear.

The Notion of Permanent Brain Damage

We now know that our brains are constantly evolving, even as adults. According to the old model of brain function, there were our formative years in early childhood and adolescence, after which, sometime in our twenties, we coasted and declined. Now we know that our brains continue to hone old pathways and activity and forge new ones long into adulthood. This is good news for everybody—old dogs not only can learn new tricks, they should, if they want to optimize their brain functioning—and it is especially good news for people affected by substance problems.

The Brain and a Broken Leg

Think of the brain like a broken leg. A bone breaks, and with help—a cast and crutches to prevent reinjury while the person returns to a normal routine, physical therapy to regain strength and flexibility, and family and friends to help and to keep up morale—the bone heals and the person can work, play, run, and jump again. The leg may be more vulnerable to breaking after all that, and the person will need to take care to protect it, but the person can adapt and, for the most part, the body heals. The brain is no exception. (p 31-32)

As you can see, the book is always hopeful, even in the face of an often brutal struggle. The rest of Section 1 focuses on 2. Motivation: Why Do People Change, and 3. Change: How Do People Change.

While addiction is a whole person struggle, knowing more about the brain/body component can be immensely helpful as you seek to help others. If you are a loved one who wants guidance with how to help someone who is struggling with addiction, or if you work with youth or are a pastor, I highly recommend this book.

Emotions and Growth in Grace

Step 3, Part 2: Understanding and Managing Emotions

What is the role of emotions in the Christian life? What are you to make of your emotional world? Is the Christian life a life of emotions or should we avoid them? Before we answer these very important questions, we must start with a more basic question; "What are Emotions?"

In his groundbreaking book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More than IQ (1995), Daniel Goleman defines emotions this way:

All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion (p.6)

A word about what I refer to under the rubric emotion, a term whose precise meaning psychologists and philosophers have quibbled over for more than a century. In its most literal sense, The Oxford English Dictionary defines emotion as “any agitation or disturbance of mind, feeling, passion: any vehement or excited mental state.” I take emotion to refer to a feeling and its distinctive thoughts, psychological and biological states, and range of propensities to act. There are hundreds of emotions, along with their blends, variations, mutations, and nuances. Indeed, there are many more subtleties of emotion than we have words for (p.289).

In other words, emotions are what propel us into action. They are a vital part of what it means to be human. Without emotion, we would cease to act. While Goleman says that the nuances of emotions are endless, there are a variety of "families" of emotions that we are able to identify. Here are 10:

1. Anger: fury, outrage, resentment, wrath, exasperation, indignation, vexation, acrimony, animosity, annoyance, irritability, hostility, and, perhaps at the extreme, pathological hatred and violence.

2. Sadness: grief, sorrow, cheerlessness, gloom, melancholy, self-pity, loneliness, dejection, despair, and, when pathological, severe depression.

3. Fear: anxiety, apprehension, nervousness, concern, consternation, misgiving, wariness, qualm, edginess, dread, fright, terror (phobia and panic).

4. Enjoyment: happiness, joy, relief, contentment, bliss, delight, amusement, pride, sensual pleasure, thrill, rapture, gratification, satisfaction, euphoria, whimsy, ecstasy (mania).

5. Love: acceptance, friendliness, trust, kindness, affinity, devotion, adoration, infatuation, agape.

6. Surprise: shock, astonishment, amazement, wonder.

7. Disgust: contempt, disdain, scorn, abhorrence, aversion, distaste, revulsion.

8. Shame: guilt, embarrassment, chagrin, remorse, humiliation, regret, mortification, and contrition.

9. Inadequacy: helpless, inferior, powerless, incompetent, useless, inept, mediocre.

10. Confusion: distracted, rattled, baffled, bewildered, mystified, flustered, perplexed, jarred, puzzled, jolted.

According to research, you have to be able to identify and name emotions when you experience them. As you do this, you are more able to manage your emotions and empathize with others.

Emotions and Your Brain

Emotions are formed in the limbic region of the brain. This is the mid-region. Decision-making happens in the neocortex. The goal is to regulate one’s emotions so that the limbic region can work in tandem with the neocortex. When this happens, one is exercising what is often referred to as “wise mind.”

The challenge for anyone is the fact that you are feeling before you are thinking. Because of that, we are very susceptible to an “emotional high-jacking.” If you don’t know what that is, just take a moment to remember the last time you did or said something and later asked, “Why did I do that?” The goal, therefore, is to slow down and become more mindful of your emotions so that you can manage them well.

Scripture is a book that is very much at home with emotions. The Psalms are the most obvious place to look for them. You will see most if not all of the 10 listed above. All of them can be expressed in helpful and wise ways or unhelpful and unwise ways. They can be expressed in such a way that builds others up or tears someone down. The challenge is managing them wisely. Notice how the Psalmist expresses a negative emotion like sadness and loneliness in Psalm 88:18,

You have taken from me friend and neighbor—-darkness is my closest friend.

Immediately after that Psalm ends, Psalm 89:1 begins with a positive emotion of joy,

I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations.

What a profound shift from negative to positive and both are expressed in wise, helpful and godly ways. The Christian life is not a life of rational stoicism nor is it one where we are simply led by our emotions. God has made us with a brain that does both. And we see this in our very human Savior, Jesus. He was acquainted with deep anguish and grief throughout his short life. He was also one to celebrate and enjoy a party as is seen at the wedding in Cana (John 2).

How are you doing with identifying emotions in your life? Perhaps you could be more mindful of them as you go throughout your day. As you do, take moments to record your emotions and identify them as carefully as possible. This is a very important aspect of growing in wisdom and grace.

For more on the role of emotions in the Christian life, purchase the 5 session video workshop as an online course by following this link: ONLINE COURSES

Emotional Intelligence and the Brain

In the previous post, we saw how important it is to answer the question, "What are emotions?" before we could answer the question, "What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?" The next thing we need is a brief overview of how the brain works. Using the triune brain theory helps to simplify something that could get very complex! This perspective is just one of many since the brain involves much more complexity than we will be discussing here.

As you can see in the photo, three layers control different aspects of human functioning. The two regions we are most interested in when it comes to EQ are the limbic region (where our emotions live) and the neocortex region (where our high-order thinking operates). The goal in EQ is to have these two regions work in tandem with one another. The challenge is that the limbic region can easily hi-jack the neocortex region because it is processing data before if reaches the neocortex. In his book, Emotional Intelligence, Dan Goleman puts it this way:

These two minds, the emotional and the rational, operate in tight harmony for the most part, intertwining their very different ways of knowing to guide us through the world. Ordinarily there is a balance between emotional and rational minds, with emotion feeding into and informing the operations of the rational mind, and the rational mind refining and sometimes vetoing the inputs of the emotions. Still, the emotional and rational minds are semi-independent faculties, each reflecting the operation of distinct, but interconnected, circuitry in the brain (p.9)

The skills that are taught in EQ are precisely aimed at helping us to slow down, so that we don't experience an "emotional hijacking." I am reminded of James' simple exhortation in James 1:19:

"My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires."

Notice how James has to get our attention by first saying, "take note of this." It is as if he knows that we need a lot of help slowing down, so he asks us to slow down before he tells us to slow down! Jesus does something similar when he utters one simple word: "Behold!" You see it over and over again in Jesus' teachings. It is another way of getting our attention before he gets our attention.

It appears that long before the advent of modern research and neuroscience, keen observers of human behavior saw this tendency. Unfortunately, some concluded that emotions were less than human and tended to view them as inferior to thought. God is the creator of our physical bodies, and he created us with emotions. They are intrinsically good. It is what we do with them that matters. They are to be managed, but emotions can play a significant role in wise decision-making.

Goleman addresses this:

While the world often confronts us with an unwieldy array of choices (How should you invest your retirement savings? Whom should you marry?), the emotional learning that life has given us (such as the memory of a disastrous investment or a painful breakup) sends signals that streamline the decision by eliminating some options and highlighting others at the outset. In this way, Dr. Damasio argues, the emotional brain is as involved in reasoning as is the thinking brain.....The emotions, then, matter for rationality.

In essence, what Goleman is stating is that IQ and EQ, when working together create the best decision. In light of this, it is important that we do not fall into the trap of minimizing emotions or even viewing them in a negative light. When we do that, we will not grow in wisdom.

When the Apostle Paul calls us to be "transformed by the renewing of our mind," he has in view the whole person. The word that is used for "mind" is not just speaking about one's cognition but one's affections. In order to be transformed, we need the Holy Spirit to aid us in linking the thinking and feeling brains together.

In our next post, we will begin to more clearly define EQ.

Copyright © 2018 Timothy S. Lane