MEETING THE TRUE NEEDS OF ADDICTION
by Terri Kirwan
Today, every time we turn around there is another book, article or feature story telling us what we should and should not do to take care of our physical and emotional health. By now, we all know we should eat fruits, vegetables and whole foods; exercise regularly; balance work and play, and communicate effectively with our partners, children and colleagues. And, we know we shouldn’t overeat; eat processed, sugar-laden, high-fat food; smoke; drink, spend or work too much. We know we shouldn’t yell at our children, control our partners or act co-dependent. Of course, it doesn’t take a cover story for us to know what we should and should not do. We know that we ultimately feel better when we do or don’t do certain behaviors. Yet, we often fail to make the lasting change that we know would benefit us. Failure, of course, is a relative term because most Americans have had success on diets, debt reduction or smoking cessation programs. We have perhaps seen a therapist and changed some relational patterns. Yet, if we determine success not by how much change we make, but by how much change we maintain - Americans fail miserably. Most of us have had the experience of short-term success only to find that we have gained the weight back, stopped going to the gym or gone back into debt. Or we have replaced one excess with another. We have quit smoking or drinking but gained weight. We’ve lost weight but run up our credit card debt. And on and on it goes, with us buying another book to gain more insight or motivation, making a new plan, or paying for another supplement or gym membership.
So why is it that so many of us fail to change, or maintain change, when we have both the knowledge and desire to do so? The answer lies in the fact that knowledge, insight, decision-making, and planning are all products of the neocortex, or thinking center of the brain. While our drive for pleasure, comes from the limbic system, or emotional center, of our brain. Most programs and intentions for change ultimately fail because they try to create change through insight, knowledge and planning - or the thinking brain - rather than targeting the emotional brain where our drive to go to excess is centered.
The Solution Program developed at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine 25 years ago found that when they actually addressed and retrained the feeling brain, they were able to produce lasting, long-term results in not only childhood and adult obesity but in a host of other adult excesses, including “softer” excesses like people pleasing, rescuing others, distancing or thinking too much. On top of this, they found there were a host of other benefits. Longitudinal studies showed a decrease in not only weight & blood pressure, but in depression. There was an increase in exercise as well as workplace & relationship satisfaction. Most importantly, participants experienced an abundance of inner rewards such as balance, vibrancy, intimacy and spirituality.
After 25 years, research has shown that the key to turning off the drive to go to excess has to do with achieving emotional balance in the limbic system of our brain. Think of a line in the middle of a sheet of paper as the line of emotional regulation. When we are above the line, we are in emotional balance and the feeling and thinking parts of our brain can work in harmony. We can use our limbic system to tell us how we feel and what we need and our cortex to make good decisions about those needs. So we can say, “I feel hungry. I need food.” and our thinking brain can decide, “I’ll make a salmon dinner because that will support my long-term health and weight loss goals.” Or “I feel sad. I need some emotional support.” and “I think I’ll call a good friend to express my feelings.” Now, imagine going below the line. In this state we are emotionally out of balance and the feeling brain not only gets confused about what it feels and needs but actually hijacks the thinking brain and renders it powerless in the decision making process. Daniel Goldman explains this in his book, Emotional Intelligence, as the process that makes a normally socially adjusted person murder someone in rage.
While thankfully most of us have not experienced such an extreme form of “emotional hijacking”, we all experience it on a much smaller scale on a regular basis. And, it explains why we struggle with maintaining the changes that we really want to make. Because, when it is 5:00 PM and I am tired and hungry and really angry that I just got dumped with 2 hours worth of a colleagues work, it doesn’t matter that I know that caffeine and sugar are not good for my blood sugar and don’t support my long-term health and weight loss goals. I am below the line and I need something to help me feel some semblance of emotional balance again! So, I am going for the sugar and the caffeine - because it works- temporarily.
In this emotionally depriving, high-stress culture with external solutions just a drive through, remote or mouse click away, it is not hard to see why we are a culture using more and more external solutions. Most of the excesses that we struggle with, whether behavioral or relational, do increase the feel-good neurotransmitters in our brain. So we do feel better in the short term. In this sense, addictions are simply “external solutions” to internal distress. The problem is that over time our external solutions start creating bigger problems than the internal distress we are trying to solve with them. And, we develop a stockpile of emotional trash and unmet needs that push us further out of balance, creating a greater need for our external solutions.
Now, we may logically decide that certain behaviors no longer work for us and create a determined plan to change. However, the first time an external solution “worked”, it created a neuropathway in the feeling brain that got stronger each time we used it. After years of repeated behavior, these neuropathways are like super highways with no exits. Many of us are literally programmed to reach for an external solution to nurture ourselves when we are far enough below the line. Trying to will ourselves not to do this when we are emotionally out of balance doesn’t work. We don’t have strong enough neural networks supporting ways to nurture ourselves from within. Therefore, the answer is to muscle up on our internal skills, or to create an “internal solution” to our external distress.
This internal solution is way to get back into emotional balance when we are out of balance and most susceptible to our “emotional appetites”. The main tool used is called a cycle. To do this, you can start with a reflection of feelings. Simply start with anger and state everything that you are angry about until there is no more anger. Then do the same for all of the core emotions that cause stress; sadness, fear and guilt. This accesses and soothes the limbic brain. Once this is done, the thinking and feeling brains can work together to create emotional balance and right action. Emotional balance starts by connecting deeply to a nurturing inner voice and creating reasonable expectations for one’s self, others or the situation at hand. Then, it is important to feel the essential pain of the situation and the reward of these new reasonable expectations. At this point, emotional balance is often restored and you can logically determine what you really need and whether you need support.
This process creates a new way of responding to internal distress and therefore a new neuropathway. At first, this new pathway may feel like a country road compared to the old superhighway of external solutions, bumpy and unpaved. But each time it is used the road gets a little smoother and wider, eventually becoming as strong as the old, familiar pathways. Once an internal solution becomes the stronger neural network, maintaining healthy behavioral changes is as effortless as reaching for a cigarette or a cookie once was. The internal rewards of meetings one’s true need for emotional balance from within are so satisfying that the need for external solutions fade away. By addressing the emotional needs behind our excesses, we can make change lasting for a nation struggling with what it knows it should do - but simply can’t.
To join a local Solution Group or for individual coaching in this method, Call 720-732-4050.
For more information about The Solution, visit www.thepathway.org.
