What Is The Mind?
Part 3: Living With An Unruly Mind

(Part two here.)

In Part 1, we discussed why the primal mind is uninterested in providing us with an endless stream of endorphins. It is more interested in keeping us alive than keeping us happy. In Part 2, we looked at the modular design of the mind and a few of the ways in which cryptic, nonverbal messages emanate from its deeper systems.

What useful conclusion can we draw from all this? Each mind has a mind of its own. It is unruly, pushy, and it can pitch a nasty fit if we don’t heed its warnings. Anxiety, compulsions, depression, isolation... these are the fruits of a frightened mind. Like an overbearing big brother, it can bring misery in its attempts to serve us.

In defense of the mind, keeping us safe is a monumental task. It is a dangerous world with plenty of attacks and accidents waiting to befall anyone caught stargazing for too long. Sometimes the mind is right to worry, and it pushes us in useful directions.

When the mind helps us we commend it with words like intuition, values, character, and conscience. We might even take pride in our good judgment, and we know we have done the right thing when the mind’s discomfort dissipates.

But sometimes the primal mind gets caught in a counterproductive loop. It harasses us with thoughts, feelings, and anxieties that only seem to fuel themselves to ever-increasing levels.

The Dog at the Back Fence

A nervous mind can be like a nervous dog in the back yard, barking frantically at every passing squirrel and wearing a path at the back fence. Over time, those dogs seem to get louder, more frantic, and more aggressive. As annoying and irrational as it may seem, their behavior makes sense from a certain point of view. Let’s look at it from the dog’s perspective.

That frantic, menacing behavior is the dog’s response to its perception of a threat – with “perception” being the key word. Eventually, each squirrel, who never really posed a threat in the first place, goes away.

Each time the dog engages in a hysterical response, there is a correlation between barking and the departure of the perceived threat. A reasonable dog could easily draw the conclusion that his barking caused the intruder to leave when in fact there was probably no relationship between the two events.

Dogs that are repeatedly allowed to become frantic in the presence of innocuous events seem to draw the conclusion that their barking is effective. Each time it becomes hysterical and the threat goes away, it learns that hysteria works. Not surprisingly, dogs that are allowed to engage in that behavior repeatedly tend to become increasingly anxious and aggressive.

At our house, we don’t let the dog’s hysteria rule the day. (Or at least we try not to.) When Hachi the Iron Dog becomes frantic at the sound of the doorbell or other harmless event, we thank her for being a good watchdog and assure her that we have the situation under control. 1 You can think of it as top-down management. Biology compels Hachi to guard the perimeter, but we relieve her of that duty by taking charge.

As a result, she is forced to practice containing herself. It ain’t easy. It involves excited whimpering and we must frequently return her to the sitting position. But because we teach her that she is not responsible for protecting the pack, she is a much more relaxed doggie than she would otherwise be. Hachi will never lose her motivation to protect her territory – that is hard-wired into dogs – but thanks to our firm hand and reassurance she need not act on her concern by working herself into a panicked frenzy at every harmless event.

If you’ll pardon the crass comparison, our primal minds can be dealt with in a similar fashion. They are built for worry but we can teach ourselves that we need not act on their every demand.

There is perhaps no more onerous mind than the obsessive-compulsive mind, and that gives us a good case-study for responding to the mind’s unruliness. You might think of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as the primal mind on overdrive: the intrusive thoughts, baseless fears, and inexplicable compulsions that are part of any mind become overwhelming and relentless. With OCD, the mind’s normal activity transcends annoyance and rises to the level of pain.

Top-Down Management

The symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are “recurrent obsessions or compulsions that are severe enough to be time consuming or cause marked distress or significant impairment” (APA, 2000). Some of you reading this need no explanation of the anguish this problem brings. The APA estimates that between 0.5 and 2.1 percent of people across cultures experience the symptoms at some point in their lives.

OCD is like a battle between a person and his mind.

Mind: Hello! I’m back! Time to wash hands again!
Person: Please don’t make me. I just did it. They’re getting cracked and red.
Mind: That counter you touched was dripping with germs. Time to wash up!
Person: This is completely irrational. I won’t do it.
Mind: I’m not going stop, and you know it. How about some anxiety to get you motivated. Do you like that tingly feeling? Do you like the palpitations? You want it to stop, don’t you. Just wash your hands and we can move on.
Person: No! This is crazy!
Mind: Your head is starting to hurt now, isn’t it. You can’t concentrate. You know how to make this stop. Just do it.

The mind has the power to administer punishment (like anxiety or painful thoughts) and the power to reward. In the case of OCD, the reward is a respite from anxiety. Ahhhh... that feels better. Until it starts again, that is.

Like any other mind, the mind with OCD wants to know that it is safe. But in this case, it has come to associate safety with ritualized thoughts and behaviors, which it demands repeatedly. The easiest way to quiet the mind is to give into its demands. That eases the pressure briefly, but just like the dog at the back fence, it doesn’t stay satisfied for long.

The obsessive-compulsive mind is really no different than any other mind, it just provides more anxiety and demands more action, like washing hands or checking locks, than most minds. Though its fundamental nature cannot be changed (all minds worry), the obsessive-compulsive mind can be trained. There’s hope for all of us in that.

Let’s take a brief look at some of the wiring behind OCD..

OCD involves several specific brain structures, including the caudate nuclei, which lie deep within each hemisphere. Brain imaging has revealed that these areas burn abnormally high amounts of energy (Linden, 2006) when they should be resting. Brain imaging also suggests that this little part of the primal mind can be reasoned with. Successful talk therapy reduces OCD symptoms while the caudate nuclei return to a more normal level of baseline activity. 2 Why?

Treatment for OCD involves denying the primal mind’s impulses and redirecting activity. It is a bit like refusing to allow a dog to engage in panic at the back fence. The dog (and the mind) will at first protest and experience increased anxiety, but can you blame them? They are only trying to avoid catastrophe.

By taking charge, offering reassurance, and redirecting the dog, it will eventually learn that things usually turn out OK without all the ruckus. Similarly, the primal mind can be taught that things will turn out OK without engaging in ritualized thoughts and behaviors that give the illusion of effectiveness. Washing one’s hands until they bleed does not solve problems, but to the primal mind it can certainly appear to work that way. Seeing past that illusion requires difficult exposure to the facts. Just as people can exert top-down control over dogs, we can use our higher minds to overrule the demands of our primal minds.

Sometimes.

Hello! I am your mind and I’m here to help.

Treatment of OCD is one piece of evidence that primal minds can be managed – up to a point. Here’s the rub: we cannot change the fact that the primal mind learns from experience and is built to worry about it. We can only choose how to respond to its unbidden messages and murky anxiety.

Sometimes we’re correct to believe that our primal minds are misfiring. Sometimes they are in fact irrational or depressed. Sometimes they are doing their jobs too well and causing pain the process. But more often than not, our minds are just fine. Our existence is proof that they are successful in their prime directive of keeping us safe.

The rest of this little user’s guide is devoted to deciphering and responding to messages from the primal mind. But before we go any further, I think we should first pay an homage to these worrying machines. If you haven’t done it before, now is as good a time as any to thank your mind. Repeat after me. Shout it out loud, if you like:

Thank you, mind, for keeping me alive. Thank you for protecting me from speeding buses, bad-guys, and angry bosses. Thank you for your paranoia, worry, and angst. Thank you for the time you saved me from [fill in your own harrowing experience], and thank you – thank you –for insisting that we break up with [fill in your own worst romantic experience]. I apologize for all the times I have cursed you or argued with you. I promise to be more respectful in the future.

What is the mind, and what can I do about it?

A mind is a worry machine with very old wiring and some fancy new evolutionary add-ons like language. It will never stop talking, and it will rarely speak plainly. It is unruly, intrusive, and sometimes downright painful to live with. It is also the first thing keeping you safe in a dangerous world.

Sometimes the mind can be trained, but its nature cannot be changed. Living peaceably with this cantankerous bundle of nerves requires the skill to decipher its messages, the fortitude to make choices it will protest, and the willingness to accept what cannot be changed.

It’s an audacious goal, but I hope that the rest of this makeshift collection of essays will offer some useful tips for living with a primal mind.

-IS

Footnotes
1. If you are curious, we “speak” to Hachi in language that dogs understand best: body language and pack hierarchy. For example, when the doorbell rings, she naturally gets frantic but is consistently reminded that her job is to sit behind the human while the human answers the door. Since she is invariably the first to respond to the doorbell, we offer light praise for responding then we assume the dominant position. At least that’s what we strive for. It doesn’t always go down like clockwork. back

2. According to the Linden, “A paradigm for the provocation of OCD symptoms during PET scanning... demonstrated increased regional cerebral blood flow in the right caudate, left anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex when patients were exposed to individually tailored provocative stimuli compared to neutral stimuli.… Increased activity in the right caudate was the common finding of symptom provocation studies in OCD across imaging modalities. Correspondingly, all studies of the effects of cognitive behavioural therapy in OCD on resting state glucose metabolism or blood flow so far reported a decrease in right caudate activity in treatment responders.” back

References
American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Association, 2000.

Linden, D.E.J. (2006). How psychotherapy changes the brain – the contribution of functional neuroimaging. Molecular Psychiatry, 11, 528-538.

Rachman, S.J. (1997). A cognitive theory of obsession. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 793-802.