So our emotional issues make perfect, coherent, even rational sense given our real experience
with the world around us.
So this issue is very close to me because often I hear people talking as if they are
broken or weak or just being difficult or crazy...and that upsets me because I truly
believe that our brain is doing what it is doing for good reason.
Now there's some scientific explanation for that, which we will go into.
But also that just makes logical sense.
Like, why would our brain be trying to mess with us?
So even our behaviors that we think of as more irrational or self-defeating, on some
level our brain really does believe that those choices will end up best for us, or for our
group, through some experience (something it learned in the past).
What we think of as our 'patterns'--at some point they were necessary adaptations for
us.
Or at least are built on assumptions about how the world works, that while they might
seem irrational are actually from real experience with the world.
So in the last video we talked about what our emotional reactions are based on.
So I'll just say the same thing again, just try to say it in a slightly different way
this time.
So think of it like this.
If every experience you had with life, especially as you are a child, which is when you're learning
how to be alive...that all those experiences are like data points coming at you.
Now, your brain is having to constantly make sense of those data points by finding some
pattern.
I think of it like when you see a sheet with data and you have to do statistical analysis
to actually draw the pattern, to figure out the pattern from what otherwise would look
chaos.
Well, that's actually what the brain does, through a process called statistical learning.
Actually the brain is constantly doing unconscious statistical analyses to see what is associated
with what.
What is probabilistically likely to happen together.
The reason it does that is so that it can make predictions from the input about what
is about to happen, and also predictions about how do I need to respond.
So those predictions, those unconscious sort of statistical comparing in terms of what's
happening now and comparing it to what we experienced in the past, and the patterns
we develop to understand the world and respond to it, that's going on all the time and is
the base of our emotional reactions, and honestly most of
our behavior.
So if a certain smell is associated with dad being drunk then in the future our brain will
remember that such that when we smell that smell we will predict that means danger.
Because statistically speaking that smell is associated with danger.
Now rationally we may know that that smell does not mean that dad is in the room or present,
but that's not how the brain works.
The brain just knows statistically speaking that smell is associated with danger and also
statistically speaking this response, like running to my room to get away, is associated
with more protection for myself.
So that's constantly going on, running in the background in what we would call the unconscious.
So it's unconsciously always preparing our body and perceiving reality through the lens
of how what's happening now is likely to be understood.
What is the likeliest explanation based on my previous experiences.
But to continue with this metaphor, if now as an adult you are struggling, it is not
because your brain has done a bad job taking it's experiences and all those data points
and finding the patterns and making meaning, it is simply that those experiences you had,
those data points are a skewed sample.
That's it!
In other words, the world you started out in, which is most powerfully your family of
origin.
When your brain is learning these patterns and figuring out what to expect and how to
respond to life, that world differs in important ways from the world at large.
Or perhaps that original world, those original data points, simply differ from your life
now as a single adult, or the family that you've created.
Or simply the reality and family that you want to create, because the truth is the world
you learned and adapted to is not the world or reality that you're trying to create for
yourself, most likely.
So that's a big problem for the brain.
When the ways that you were conditioned, basically to survive your family of origin, that set
of imperatives may vastly differ from the set of imperatives of building a beautiful
life.
That really important to understand because sometimes we're so frustrated by what we may
think of as our own resistance or irrationality or why can't we just do what we rationally
know would be a good idea.
But underneath that our deeper imperatives, that at one time were really, truly what you
needed to do to survive the world.
You may be wondering, if my brain is so great at adapting why doesn't it just continue to
adapt?
Continue to learn and make new assumptions and make new behavioral patterns that actually
fit what's in front of me now?
Well here's the rub, our brain if left to it's own devices doesn't necessarily that
actively update it's view of reality.
If that view is already so learned it's like it just know that to be true.
Once the brain feels that it knows something, either through a million repetitions of experience
or one big powerful experience which we would call a trauma, it doesn't necessarily just
always stay open for continued input.
Actually it would be pretty cumbersome to live in a world where we were always that open
to learning.
If we walked out in this childlike state of open mindedness and naivete of what were going
to find and how we might try to respond, the world would just eat us alive.
I mean it would be overwhelming, the sensory input and how to make sense of it if we can't
rest on some basic assumptions.
So there's good reason that our brain doesn't always just shift with every new moment and
try to learn life anew every day.
It does help us move through the world.
Plus if you think about it, for most of our evolution the world we were born into
was pretty much the one we were going to stay in.
You know it wasn't like today where maybe you have an abusive family but then you go
off and make another healthier family.
Or you move from one side of the world to the other side of the world.
You know evolutionarily we would have had our little tribe of thirty people and pretty
much whatever we learned in childhood was going to be adaptive during adulthood.
So this personal growth mission it's a little bit of a new thing for the brain.
It's a little bit tricky for the brain to change deeply in that way.
It doesn't mean it can't do it, there are actually very clear steps to unlock the brain
to learn again, which of course we'll be talking about in a later video.
Another important point I want to make if you're thinking: so I understand that my early
learning may not be adaptive in my adult life, but it didn't seem adaptive even in my childhood.
How is it adaptive for me to check out at school or start using drugs when I was twelve,
or never assert myself with my dad, or beat up my sister?
That's a really great question.
That brings us to a really important point and that is: while some of these early adaptations
don't seem good or maybe they really are not that healthy, they were to the perspective
of the brain statistically speaking, they really seemed to be the lesser of two evils.
So let's say your brain learned: I need to rage any time somebody criticizes me.
So that response, raging is going to have huge costs and yet if you as a child were
in a family system so steeped in shame and perhaps maybe you were particularly attacked
and criticized, your system might have learned as a way to protect itself that I need to
push that back and go to rage instead.
Otherwise, the greater evil which is my whole sense of self being crippled and my capacity
to engage in this world disabled through the shame.
That would be a greater evil.
So therefore I must rage instead.
Or perhaps in the moments of shame if the child freezes and disengages and isn't showing
up productively and the family shames them even more, punishes that child for not functioning
well.
So in order to function well they have to not feel shame so they will feel rage instead.
Just to drive this point home a little more lets say that same child, when in the face
of shame and he would freeze, maybe he learned: if I let myself freeze and go to a non-functional
state I can't protect my younger brother from dad's rage.
So I've got to keep myself pulled up and strong and steeled up just for the sake of protecting
my younger brother.
For me, the tragedy of this is partly the fact that it happens so unconsciously.
While the child will experience: "hey I'm wanting to rage a lot more" and as they grow
into an adult it might be really easy for the explanation to be: "I must just be an
angry person" or even worse a bad person or a person who doesn't care about others.
when the whole reason the rage as a behavior got set up is because he did care about his
younger brother and was needing to protect him!
Or maybe it was just to protect his own sanity or his own body, but that's also completely
valid.
So this is why earlier I said that it's so upsetting when I hear people judge themselves without
really exploring deeper to see what is truly driving that behavior?
What experience has really taught my brain that it is imperative for me to do that thing or
avoid doing this other thing.
So in my work with clients it's just never been the case that we were exploring underneath
to see what's driving the behavior and at the bottom we just came to: "oh the deal is,
you're just a terrible person."
That's never the explanation.
Of course it isn't, it's never the explanation that that person is just bad or weak or stupid.
There's always a coherent understandable set of imperatives and learnings that came in
emotionally.
That really can help us both understand and then therefore not judge what we think of
as our emotional issues.
So in the next video we'll go over this in a bit more detail, connecting it to attachment
theory and giving more examples.
But the final message that I'd like to give in this video is if you're suffering it isn't
because anything is wrong with you or even how your brain is working.
Your brain has done it's job, its adapted.
Its just that your early childhood experiences required you to adapt in ways that have some
huge costs.
Now those costs like the lack of capacity for joy or peace or closeness, those costs
might have been worth it when you were younger, but there's a chance that they are no longer
worth it anymore.
So allowing the brain to realize that and perhaps make some new adaptations as an adult
is what healing is all about.