Brain Chemistry Chronicles: My Theory

Saturday, November 17, 2012

My Theory

I've been thinking lately about hardware and software with respect to the brain and the mind. The hardware (your brain) is what you're stuck with, but the software (your mind, your interpretive apparatus) you can re-program. People who use drugs and other chemicals are trying to fix the hardware without changing the programming, believing that fixing the hardware is enough. Whether it really fixes the hardware is still being researched, but I believe that the behavior that has resulted from the faulty hardware also needs to be fixed because it will continue despite the chemical patches applied to the brain.

It's important to re-program the mind, whether or not you try to patch the brain, because it is the programming and your response to the programming that are making your life miserable, not the brain. The brain is doing its thing, but your response to what your brain is doing is causing the problems.

Here are the main tenets of my theory:

1. Hyperalert people have a certain inconvenient brain chemistry.

2. The hyperalert brain delivers a message of danger, evoking fear.

3. The mind tries to contextualize the fear.

4. The mind causes the organism to respond with fight or flight.

5. The action causes the organism to feel better (until the next time).

In order to be more convincing with my argument, though, I need more back up from science. So I'm going to buy a textbook about this subject and read it and then study this topic until I have support for my theory.

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About this blog . . .

I created this blog as a place to write about my day to day struggles with what I call bad brain chemistry. In discussing those struggles, I also share my theories about bad brain chemistry and how its effects can be mitigated.

I started this project about 20 years ago, when depression and other bad moods were making my life miserable. A man I met during that time (now my husband) convinced me that I had to change; a therapist who offered medication scared me into finding a way to change. The result was my theory of brain chemistry, which goes beyond merely labeling mood disorders as physical phenomena and finding medication to fix them. I seek to explain bad brain chemistry in a way that shows the disorder to be rational and naturally human, and dealing with it something that a human can do through rational thought.

As I go along with this blog, I'll talk more about this theory and how I think people who have this condition tend to deal with it.

You're welcome to join me!

My Theory of Bad Brain Chemistry, Part I

My theories are based on how my mind works, but I think that I'm not alone, that other people share this problem with brain chemistry that doesn't work well in the modern world. My idea is that the way my brain works was advantageous at some point in the history of humanity. People like me, hyperalert people, were useful to human society because they were extremely aware of their environment.

In a situation where people are in constant danger of being devoured by predators, or attacked by human enemies, those who are hyperalert make good scouts, good watchers, good guards. Also useful to people who must hunt for food every day in order to eat are those who are good at seeing animal prey, noticing and remembering their patterns, their behavior, their defenses, their smell. And those who know how to find edible plants or other important items such as reeds or flints or underground sources of water will also be valued by their group.

Unfortunately, in modern society (especially middle class Western society), there's less need for hyperalert people because there's less danger from predators. And there's very little need to hunt down food or water or tools in one's surroundings--we can simply go to a store to get all those things, or even better, have them brought to us.

In this situation, being hyperalert is not only no longer an advantage; it seems instead a disadvantage. In fact, it's often thought of as a disability instead of a highly valued ability. I have only to cite the disruptive effect of hyperalertness on the modern elementary classroom to make my point. What has been termed ADD--attention deficit disorder--is to me hyperalertness, a condition of the brain that is not so much an inability to pay attention, as it is an inability to stop paying attention.

And it is this condition of hyperalertness, I believe, that can lead to depression, anger and other moods that make life quite difficult for many people, including me. What was once good brain chemistry is now deemed bad and in need of fixing.