I have a number of friends who are clinical psychologists. Any number of them tell me that for the most part, their clients don’t change until the pain of continuing to live their lives in the manner they have been, becomes greater than the pain of risking change.
From a neurobiological perspective this makes perfect sense. Few of the pains that life brings us are constant. For example, I suffer many of the stereotypical pains of aging – achy joints, dry and wrinkly skin, bad teeth, bad hair, declining vision and hearing. Many of my conditions are undeniably associated with poor eating habits. But the pleasure I get from a short stack of butterfinger cookiedough cheesecake bars or a plate of blueberry streusel bars with lemon creme filling far outweighs any suffering that will unquestionably ensue. One of the vulnerabilities of my neurobiology is that it “future discounts.” Giving much more weight to feeling good now and worrying about the future later is currently a limitation of my brain. But not just mine. This functional limitation is a major contributor to morbidity and mortality the whole world over. Because I am consistently able to find recurring, intermittent, immediate small pleasures, life keeps on being worth living. Even though I know it’s not optimal in the long run. The piper must be paid. Or, as Buddha might say, “Because of this, that.”
Stop the Music; Time to Get Off
Piper payment seems to be upon me; the merry-go-round music appears to be stopping. To date I have now had hives for nearly four months. Their itchiness is interrupting my sleep and making it difficult to interact with people without constantly scratching my belly, my back and my butt. I am sure that, at least in part, it’s diet-related. It’s also stress-related, which is also diet-related. And vice versa. Pleasurable foods are a great nervous system regulator for me. They make me feel good, rather than anxious. In the short term; there’s that pesky future discounting again.
But a great remedy for what ails me can be found in an old Sufi Tale called, The Increasing of Necessity. Essentially, the protagonist agrees to fulfill a commitment with the penalty for failing being forfeiture of his own life. The good news is that we can arrange things in our lives so that our necessity is increased, but not necessarily to the point of our life ending. A recent example might serve to illustrate.
Weight, Weight, Don’t Weigh Me
Last year I agreed to reprise a course I offered in The Neurobiology of Weight Loss at our local medical school. In advance of the first course I managed to get my weight down to 212 pounds. For this second offering, it would be hypotcritical and make me a less-than-credible exemplar if I was to show up for the course (in my own mind, at least) weighing more than I did for the first offering. With my necessity sufficiently increased, I mindfully engaged in the activities and behaviors I needed to in order to be true to the claims I was making in the course. On the day of the course I managed to show up for the class weighing 206 pounds (As you might guess, a year later I’ve backslid somewhat, but I’ve now recruited a small army to help me return to “playing weight”). The central message of the course is: 1. Struggling with weight management is not a moral issue- it’s a neurobiological vulnerability; and 2. Successfully managing weight for many of us is an enormously complex, Wicked Problem. I am also an exemplar for those perspectives.
Increasing Necessity in Small Amounts
So, the good news is we don’t have to increase the pain or necessity to the point of sacrificing our life. We can do it in small, but effective ways. For example, we can enlist one or more “accountability partners” to hold us responsible for any growth and changes we want to make in our lives (this is sort of like the role Bakhtiar’s wife played in the Sufi story). We can make solemn promises to people who trust us. We can learn about many of the ways the structural vulnerabilities of our own brain work and come up with creative ways to turn them into “Antifragility Drivers.” Cognitive Biases (like “future discounting” already mentioned, and “confirmation bias” are a few of those structural neural vulnerabilities. Here’s a codex that shows more than 200 of them! Click several times to enlarge it). Realize none of us are at fault; we’re all doing the best we can.
Finally, we can embark upon a life course intended to make us increasingly open to the possibility of seeing and hearing and understanding the story of the story of the story of the Unseen World. That world might be found in this creative compilation I’ve put together.
There are so many articles and probably scientific research showing that diets don’t work. Yes, changing habits and allowing the cells of the body to have unlimited access to REAL FOOD – mostly fruits and veggies – has been shown to absolutely help the body, not just with weight, but with overall health.
One such study showed amazing reduction of inflammation in heart patients after just 1 month of eating abundant fruits and veggies. Many will scoff – and they may whine that they can’t have their favorite dessert… and then they will complain about medical bills as they take numerous meds that probably cancel each other out.
We can’t have our cake and eat it too…. unless we want to die sooner than we plan or settle for less quality of life.
And then there’s the whole need to learn to read labels… and understand how much of what is on grocery shelves has very little food and lots of chemicals…(read= inflammation-creating-checmicals). There are simple solutions that are not difficult, but, guess what, they might require shifting some of the “grocery” money that goes to all the stuff that is not really food and causing inflammation, and spending that money elsewhere. And then there is the whole supplement industry with little or no valid research on PEOPLE behind it, and no regulation on labeling at all.
–fin (of the rant) and thank you for the opportunity!
Nothing like a good rant to put my threat-detection circuitry on Yellow Alert, Pam. But a nice big slice of peanut butter pie calms me right down … https://www.theyummylife.com/peanut_butter_pie
[image: Inline image 1] XOXOX Mark
On Sun, Feb 18, 2018 at 5:16 AM, The Flowering Brain wrote:
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I love the Sufi tale, they are always so good! and take me to a beautiful still place of reflecting.
From this, what do I take? Increasing necessity does indeed oft result in action – i see this in my own life. And I reflect also on the ways in which I help someone else to not increase necessity and therefore it seems that little action is taken. I am reminded of my DA teacher who would say that if only I realised how important (how necessary) meditation was… that I would simply do it. I think we can say this about a lot of things that we don’t take action on that it would be helpful to do (or not do). We become cut off from ourselves and therefore our connection to why something is necessary to attend to. And take harmful action instead! OMG what is up with that.
So – how do we become attuned to self – how do we value self enough to take loving and supportive actions that lead to greater overall wellbeing. It seems to be a true lifes work huh.
Hilary
Lots of good stuff, as usual, Mark, thank you. I’ve been scribbling together a chart of cognitive biases for years and Voila! there it is all laid out for us! Hope you are feeling better too.
Seeing all those cognitive biases/brain vulnerabilities laid out on the codex like that, Michael, can we have any other response than compassion for humans near and far? XOXOX Mark
On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 8:12 AM, The Flowering Brain wrote:
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Love this post. Thanks. I could do a rant just like Pam. But she’s already done it. I wouldn’t do it however, because I have discovered it’s not that good for my Enneatype 1 personality to indulge my impulse to ‘reform’ the world too much. As I read the post, I thought about how much these issues are mediated by personality as I am understanding it as a student of the enneagram. For me, as a 1 type, finding discipline for self-improvement is pretty easy. If there is anything I wish I had deeply understood much earlier it is this; people are different from each other. Hyper-palatable food-like substances are the creation of an industry that really knows how to highjack our brains. They put the best food science minds on this stuff. We are really no match for it, as the nations statistics on health reveal. So, yes to empathy and mercy about people’s health challenges. It’s just such a natural basic human impulse to move towards comfort and away from pain, by whatever means we resonate with. I guess that’s why therapists are often in the business of helping people connect to their pain, so they might feel it enough to address the causes and create change. I recently heard Paul Hawkins speak about his project ‘Drawdown’ to find solutions to climate change. He said a very striking thing about the failure of the way climate change is reported as a dire, terrifying future threat. He made the point that people who can respond to future threats aren’t in the gene pool anymore. We are all the offspring of those who responded effectively to current threats. It’s about where we can maintain our attention. He believed that climate change reporting should attempt to appeal more to our wiring for affiliation and desire to motivate us to take steps that feel good now. Kind of similar to our weight/health issues huh?
I’ve been a fan of “Communities of Practice,” Carolyn, ever since I first heard the term, about 40 years ago. Part of what makes Weight Watchers (and Enneagram) so successful is the “we’re all in this together” connection (and now we have Oprah with us! 😉 ) Every demonstration, march or cause I’ve ever found myself engaged with turned into a party primarily because of the way affiliative connections made my brain and body feel. Where my personal challenge currently lies is in not needing a “them” to organize and affiliate in reaction to – I can just gather with others for the positive purpose of simply doing / being together what we love doing / being together. . . Communities of Practice. 😉 XOXOX Mark
On Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 6:47 AM, The Flowering Brain wrote:
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