Can Increasing Necessity Benefit Your Brain?

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.