BASIC INSTINCT
“You are not suffering from a disease or disorder and I’m going to tell you why,” I say.
Mostly — people laugh at me. And hardly anyone believes me if they’re polite enough to not laugh in my face.
They humour me instead.
This is the common reaction when I try to share my perspective on mental health and addiction, even though there’s more than enough information to support my perspective and I’m walking proof my approach works.
I believe this happens because not many other people have taken the time to find out more about how the psychiatric industry decides what a disorder is and how it should be decided whether a person has one or not.
Nobody seems to question this at all, except a few people who’ve been misdiagnosed and have taken the time to find out more about how this could have happened to them when doctors were supposed to have known better.
Currently, many doctors and psychologists are telling people they have some kind of mental disorder that is incurable and requires medication for life as standard practice.
Currently, the general public have come to accept mental health challenges as mental “illnesses” or “disorders”, because that is what doctors and psychologists have been calling these things for some years now.
I’ve disagreed with this perspective on mental health and addiction being a disease or disorder for some time now and I share my opinion freely and often. I also share it with clients, who are struggling with addiction and mental health, who come to me for guidance.
“You are not suffering from a disease or disorder and I’m going to tell you why,” I say.
And they also generally react in the exact same way, while I sit and observe their responses silently, wondering...
how they expect to get well if they don’t even believe this is possible themselves.
Until recently, I also struggled to believe this was possible myself.
I’m not referring to a variety of mental health reactions or addiction being curable, but that “truth” can be so mutable and impermanent. That truth can even change entirely, depending on understanding and perspective.
These days, I’ve come to accept that people believe what is “safest” for them to believe, despite evidence and facts being presented to them that may contradict a belief. In fact, this need to feel safe pretty much governs every aspect of every decision we make.
Is this safe or is this dangerous?
Left or right? “Like” or keep scrolling?
We humans like to separate ourselves from animals. We tell ourselves animals are just instinctual beasts, while we’re able to intellectualize, rationalize, make decisions, adapt our surroundings to suit us and invent things to progress our societies and civilisations.
But what if we kept it simple and thought of ourselves as animals as well? With the same main motivation any other animal has...
to survive.
American physician and neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean suggested a model of the evolution of the vertebrate forebrain, and behaviour associated with it, and called it “The triune brain”.
Like any scientific model, this has been subject to criticism and has even been called “one of the most successful and widespread errors in all of science.” 1
Dr MacLean’s model expands the triune brain to be made up of: the reptilian complex (or lizard brain), the paleomammalian complex (limbic system), and the neomammalian complex (neocortex).
Have I lost you yet?
Because it just becomes more complicated from here.
Each of these three areas also have subsections and, following those, we get into neurochemicals and more.
It’s a lot.
So what if we just keep it simple?
If I’m suggesting we’re like any other animal, with our main motivation and underlying drive being survival, we need only focus on two areas of the brain for this conversation.
Before we do that I want to clarify I’m keeping things so simple, that I’m saying EVERY choice we make has just ONE primary core MOTIVATION.
To SURVIVE at all costs.
For this conversation then, we only need to consider the areas of the brain that are now believed to be associated with survival.
And these same areas of the brain are directly linked to cognitive function and behaviour and, as it turns out...
they’re directly related to mental health and addiction as well.
When someone experiences a stressful event the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing, sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus.
Harvard Health Publishing says it simply and concisely:
“The hypothalamus is a bit like a command center.
This area of the brain communicates with the rest of the body through the autonomic nervous system, which controls such involuntary body functions as breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, and the dilation or constriction of key blood vessels and small airways in the lungs called bronchioles.” 2
Image from Harvard Health Publishing | Harvard Medical School
In other words, the autonomic nervous system controls the body’s response to a perceived threat and regulates the body’s responses after the threat has passed.
The autonomic nervous system has two components, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system functions like a gas pedal in a car.
It triggers the fight-or-flight response, providing the body with a burst of energy so that it can respond to perceived dangers.
The parasympathetic nervous system acts like a brake.
It promotes the “rest and digest” response that calms the body down after the
danger has passed. 3
All of these changes happen so quickly that people aren’t aware of them.
In fact, the wiring is so efficient that the amygdala and hypothalamus start this cascade even before the brain’s visual (audio, olfactory)added by me centers have had a chance to fully process what is happening.
That’s why people are able to jump out of the path of an oncoming car even before they think about what they are doing.” 4
The Nervous System
Image by Medium69, Jmarchn - File:Nervous system diagram.png, CC BY-SA edited by me to highlight the Vagus Nerve
When we see a diagram of the nervous system it’s clear the mind and body are, literally, connected.
Our understanding and translation of the world around us, (the mind/perception) is created by past experience and our external circumstances, and environment, at any given time. The brain’s reactions, and the various chemicals released at specific times, are a response to our mind/perception of our external circumstances and environment.
And our bodies are wired to respond appropriately to commands from the brain, to keep us safe.
And alive.
All of these are linked and work in unison with this same motivation.
Survival.
Yet, in Western society, we’ve come to imagine and treat the mind, brain and body as separate entities.
We have different specialists and even completely different types of professionals (GP’s, psychologists and psychiatrists for example), focusing on different areas of interest, with little to no consideration for the other parts of the whole organism...
or even external circumstances at times.
But in this short explanation, which is only a tiny oversimplification of how the brain and nervous system work together, we already see that a variety of the body’s physical responses are controlled by only one perception of the mind (danger/safety) and a subsequent reaction in the brain/nervous system.
So it would appear to follow that if the mind impacts the brain’s reactions and the brain impacts the body’s reactions, one could reverse this and impact the mind via the body in turn.
This is how health concerns are more commonly approached and treated in other parts of the world, by the way.
A holistic questioning, and resultant understanding, of why someone has reactions like anxiety, depression and addiction is one of the approaches that could be used to get people well in full.
But in the West we’ve been led to believe that this type of approach is unscientific.
The general perspective is that holistic treatment is not real medicine.
And, even though there are Western doctors who’ve begun to look at the bigger picture by considering the “whys?” of certain conditions, the broad consensus is that the mind, brain and body generally function, and should be treated, independently.
Still.
Despite them being directly linked together via our nervous system.
Which is science.
Even knowing about the physical mind/body connection many people still think what I am trying to share to be implausible, simply because we’ve never taken the time to have a look at these things more logically.
Or have thought to ask more questions about how mental health and addiction may work for ourselves.
I should add here that I’ve repeatedly argued about mainstream perspectives on mental illness with a dear friend who achieved a hard won clinical psychology qualification. Yet he's never thought to question why people have mental disorders either.
In fact, he couldn’t understand how someone could have anxiety at all.
Or even what it is or how it feels.
This is because he hasn’t had any personal experience with any of the mental disorders so regularly given as diagnoses to people suffering.
He’s never suffered from anxiety. Nor has anyone close to him, in order for him to be exposed to the reaction long enough for any kind of deeper understanding of it to be imparted. It has never been a part of his own experiential learning.
His education thus far has only been textbook notes.
And this is the same for the vast majority of professionals, who are trying to help people with mental health and addiction challenges.
As a result when he talks to people he is immediately looking for a diagnosis, as per his education by this particular book, from the very beginning of the conversation.
This book is used to diagnose people with mental health challenges in our society, you see. It’s so widely used in fact, it’s also known as the “Bible of psychiatry and psychology”. Every student who enters a modern classroom to study psychology or psychiatry, in almost all Western countries, is given one as standard text.
And when they’re practicing as qualified professionals in many countries worldwide, they buy the latest version as this book is updated, to stay current with the new mental disorders and categorisation of them that the book contains in the latest edition.
And which ones have been removed.
Yes. Removed at times.
The formal and full title of this book is “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”.
Commonly known as the DSM.
But we’ll talk a bit more about that in the next chapter.
What I’m suggesting you consider, in this chapter, is that it’s possible to control the brain and the mind via the body.
One can take prescription medication to dull down the brain’s reactions, or one can use physical action and tools directly with and on the body to simply regulate the nervous system instead.
To understand more how this might work we need only focus on one particular nerve, because this nerve interfaces with the parasympathetic nervous system and can control the responses of the heart, lungs, and digestive tract.
While the amygdala and hypothalamus, the two areas of the brain we referred to as the “Command Center” earlier, set the sympathetic nervous system into Fight/Flight (the stress response) at a perceived threat...
The Vagus Nerve manages the parasympathetic (safe and regulated) control of the heart, lungs and digestive tract to ease the body into rest again when a perceived threat has passed.
By directly stimulating the Vagus Nerve, based on Dr Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, one can calm the stress response simply, quickly and effectively.
Action based tools and therapies that work directly on regulating the nervous system through physical movement, postures, controlled breathing, use of temperature and sound / vibration work very effectively indeed.
DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) uses similar methods, and combinations of these, in its approach. It also includes additional CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) based thinking and tools, which are often too difficult to put into action during a severe anxiety attack because a person’s mind is either racing or zoned out during these moments.
It’s often not possible to use your rational brain, and cognitive tools, while your “lizard brain” is running the show. Physical intervention, directly on the nervous system, is fast and easy to use during times of major stress and anxiety/depression.
This is not, as we have been led to believe, all “mental”.
I didn’t invent these rational connections or write some new theory on mental health. These methods have all been around and freely available for some time.
These are simply not popular topics in psychiatry and psychology classrooms.
There are a great many well qualified and highly acclaimed professionals who are outspoken in their concerns about mainstream thinking, and treatment for mental health, and the reasons it has drifted away from what used to be far more effective standard practice over the years.
And why.
I didn’t invent all of this and this is not my work.
I’m sharing this with you because finding this information is what led me to permanent health and others shared their learning with me, to help me get to where I am today.
Yet almost no doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists or addiction specialists (who I personally asked) had heard of either of the two main sources of information I found during my endless searching. And both of these sources resulted in me finding treatments that have far better and even lasting results for recovery.
Some of the practices I use and share with clients, that work directly on the nervous system itself, are still considered “esoteric” or plain quackery. Yet, there are many other people who’ve also managed to find healing that is more permanent with these approaches.
I speak of trauma informed approaches to mental health and addiction, instead of the current medical approach that these are disorders or diseases of course.
I think it might be helpful to expand a bit on what trauma actually is, since many people aren’t even aware they have trauma.
But before we get to that point, I’d like to clarify how one can find mental and emotional stability during a stressful event or after being “triggered” by working directly with the nervous system.
Specifically the parasympathetic nervous system.
Self controlled physical intervention, by using simple tools and movement directly on the nervous system, is fast and easy to use during times of major stress and anxiety/depression/mental and/or emotional dysregulation.
Remember this sentence from the beginning of this chapter:
When someone experiences a stressful event the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing, sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus.”
If we’re working from the body back to the mind, instead of trying to medicate the mind to just dull down its reactions...
and we regulate the nervous system (using physical tools and actions) and calm the hypothalamus...
the amygdala (which contributes to emotional processing), calms down... And a person becomes “emotionally regulated” again mentally.
This works!
Anyone can focus, specifically, on their nervous system responses and maintaining physical, and hence emotional, regulation to manage stress, triggers or episodes by managing the nervous system alone.
Over time one gets to know exactly what triggers a stress response in an individual and the primary causes of the triggers can be found and dealt with directly, to alleviate the stress reactions permanently.
Many people try to do this in therapy as “shadow work” which is invaluable and a real way to lasting health and peace. But this kind of personal growth can also take a really long time due to the nature of the mind and its unwillingness to sit with pain.
Its natural response is to avoid pain (danger) to survive, according to this simple explanation of how all of this may work.
The mind will avoid painful situations, past or present, at all costs in its attempts to protect the individual. This is the “denial” that both therapists and their clients find it hard to break through, in order to make real and lasting changes.
But while the mind can be extremely slippery for reasons that are quite beautifully logical and instinctively rational (survival) ...
the nervous system can not "lie".
This also may explain why, even on the anxiety meds, some people still have panic attacks.
This is a part of the approach I use to map out primary traumas and how addictions are linked to them with my clients.
There’s little chance a person can be self aware, conscious and vigilant enough about observing their own reactions, to make any deep connections at all if they are using alcohol or narcotics regularly, however.
Total sobriety is the first step towards proper recovery for mental health challenges.
And this includes, when the person is stable and ready to come off them, prescription and plant medicines as well.
If a person is using any kind of substance (or addictive behaviour) to regulate their triggers, the root causes (primary traumas) will be much more difficult (if not impossible) to find and address.
While I believe prescription and plant medicines can be very helpful to stabilize and guide a person in the early stages of therapy and recovery, over time they slow down or halt the healing process in full.
*Please do not come off any prescription medication without support and guidance from a trained professional
When I asked out of interest, a highly qualified psychologist answered that a proper diagnosis should take up to six months. A proper diagnosis by the standards of the general psychiatric community utilizing their common methodology.
Yet standard practice in South Africa right now, and I suspect in most Western countries, is an immediate diagnosis and often a prescription for psychiatric medication in the first 45 minute session.
45 minutes. In the first session.
One first 45 minute session isn’t enough time to gain insight beyond an individual’s own denial and defenses to even know what their reactions to the current life situation may fully be.
One 45 minute session is not enough time to do a proper background history, or find out if there are any physical or environmental reasons for a person’s distress.
One 45 minute session, which is generally the standard amount of time allocated for individual therapy sessions, is not even enough time to uncover the truth about how an individual is really doing in a relatively uncomplicated situation.
Not even close.
I work with sessions of between one and a half to two hours at a time with my clients intentionally.
It’s only close to an hour and a half into a session that a person becomes “tired” enough to start letting things “slip” accidentally. And to start reacting to questions more authentically because of it.
People can breeze through a 45 minute session and never let on what any of the real underlying issues are that really need to be addressed.
Or even if they’ve had a bad day.
Perhaps this is why psychotherapy has been assumed to not work as effectively as psychiatric medications, when (again, in my experience) it works far better and has far more lasting results. It only takes longer. And medical aids don’t pay for those kinds of hours or that kind of time for treatment.
It’s quicker to alleviate the symptoms using drugs instead.
I’ve heard of repeated mis-diagnoses and prescription of chronic medication with harmful and unbearable side effects by a great many people. Some who have lived with extreme discomfort and lost years of their lives because of this, when they really only needed trauma recovery.
In addition, validation of a person’s experience is a key (if not the most important) factor in successful recovery from trauma. It goes to follow that telling a traumatized person they are mentally disordered or diseased as part of “treatment” is simply barbaric on every level.
This only re-traumatizes the person suffering and further embeds the trauma, making it even more difficult for them to ever fully recover.
Standard practice.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with you, or your children, since you may not think there is any trauma to address to possibly find relief.
It’s really helpful to understand trauma and the fight/flight response properly for all of this to begin to make more logical sense.
In fact, it shouldn’t even be called a response, so for this conversation I’m going to refer to it as a reaction instead.
If it were a response, we would have time to consider what behaviour might be most constructive and take that course of action.
But that is not how the Fight-Flight reaction works.
When this reaction is kicked into gear, the “reptile/lizard” brain has taken over and we are acting on “animal impulse”.
The fight-or-flight-or-freeze or the fight-flight reaction (also called hyperarousal or the acute stress reaction) is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. 5
The version of the Fight/Flight reaction I use is:
Different people will have different reactions when they feel threatened.
Usually we use all of these depending on the situation, but most of us will revert to one or two of these that are our primary reactions, when our “reptile brain” takes over to protect us.
So what would you think if I suggested that a variety of so-called mental disorders are, possibly, simply the above fight/flight reactions?
And what if I suggested that addictions are entirely learned behaviours, used as an attempt to find safety when a person has been triggered into these fight/flight reactions?
Most people would laugh at me, politely nod and smile inwardly or ignore such suggestions in full.
Anxiety and addiction are mental disorders, right? And addiction is a disease, or a behavioural disorder if you’re more that way inclined.
Doctors diagnose these disorders/diseases.
And a doctor must know... well... what they know.
So what do doctors know after their intense medical schooling?
They know what they are taught by the institutions teaching them
In the West, the majority of our mental health and addiction specialists know of a variety of mental disorders listed in “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”.
Mental disorders are listed in the DSM, to help doctors and psychologists diagnose people... and medicate them when necessary.
No. A psychologist is not a doctor.
But I’m sure most of you know that already.
So who gets to decide when it’s necessary to medicate people?
This may be a good time to give you some history on the DSM, some more information on how professionals diagnose mental disorders and what a diagnosis is supposed to be.
And, more interestingly... how disorders are created.
Download the free PDF version of the book here
Free to share and distribute
With thanks to the community on Hive for your courage and open-mindedness and to Internet Archive for your service.
This project would never have been completed without your resources and support.
Chapter One kindly edited, pro bono, by the talented Alan Asnen due to his interest in this content. Thank you for your generosity of spirit, Alan.
[1] Barrett, Lisa Feldman (2020). "You Have One Brain(Not Three)". Seven and a half lessons about the brain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 13–28.
[2], [3], [4] Harvard Health Publishing | Harvard Medical School. “Understanding the stress response” July 6, 2020
[5] Cannon, Walter (1932). Wisdom of the Body. United States: W.W. Norton & Company
I do not endorse the information shared in K.I.S.S - Keep it Simple Sweetheart Perfect to be used in place of professional medical advice, support groups or specific therapies.
Please do not come off any prescribed medication without the guidance and support of a trained professional.
Please do not step away from any programs of treatment or support groups without the guidance and support of a trained professional.
Featured montage created with Photo by Mathew Schwartz on Unsplash and GIMP
