Two Minds: The Cause of All Disease, Part 2
Last month, I offered up the idea that you are a composite of two minds. In your day to day experience, you only really notice one of the two, but the truth is that there is a second one. I also made the claim that it is the relationship between these two minds that is key to both creating AND healing disease.
This month I would like to teach you some of the unusual qualities of the first of these two minds. This first half of ourselves is the one that we are most familiar with. It is generally seated in the left hemisphere of our brain and gives us our ego sense. I.e., it’s the part of us that is aware; aware of who we are, what our name is, and how we are different from everyone else.
Importantly for our discussion, this “ego brain” creates meaning in the world around us. It decides what kinds of things are good and bad It creates our sense of morality.
Surprisingly, this part of our brain also tends to make things up. More accurately, in the absence of concrete evidence, your brain will make something up that sounds good; that fits with your already preconceived sense of the world.
The way that we see the world- the feelings we have about other people’s actions, the morality we feel about our own actions, and the causes and effects of all the interactions in our environment- is created by a generalizing brain. In other words, your brain (or at least the “aware” half of it) fills in the gaps of misunderstanding and doubt with its own best approximations.
For example, it is well documented that once someone has an opinion on something, he will instinctively ignore evidence that contradicts that opinion, while using available confirmatory evidence to strengthen his opinion. (How many liberals watch Fox News?)
In experiments with split-brain patients, it has been shown that when the left brain doesn’t know why the left hand grabbed an object, the right brain (that is aware and responsible for speaking) completely makes something up. Amazingly, the person doesn’t even know that he is making it up.
There is also newer research in psychology that talks about how fallible our memories are. The idea that your brain can create a false reality is called confabulation, and it was thought to be mostly present in disease states. For example, seriously ill alcoholics confabulate when they are so low in B-vitamins that they lose memories.
Instead of acting confused, a good confabulator will create something that sounds good, regardless of its truthfulness.
Here’s the thing, though, and it’s really important: the confabulator doesn’t know that he or she is making stuff up. To someone in this state, the obviously false memory is totally real, and nothing can change his or her mind about it.
However, we are now realizing that it is not just mentally ill people who create false memories or perceptions. In fact, we all fall in this category. Mentally ill individuals simply do it in a more obvious way.
Recent research has shown that human memories are often faulty, and are highly susceptible to the influence of authority figures. A recent article on wired.com (http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/falsememory.html) made the case that “to some extent we’re all susceptible to succumbing to false memories…”
Evidence for the fallibility of memory also comes from the number of death row criminals exonerated by DNA evidence. Many of these criminals were convicted on the strength of eyewitness testimony that was later proved to be false.
This brain tendency to create a reality that makes sense, even at the expense of truth, has been well documented in terms of everyday perception as well. For example, the world that you see, hear, and feel is also subject to interpretation.
There are many cases in which it was thought that a particular symptom (ringing in the ears, for example) was due to bad information being sent to the brain. But upon further investigation, it turned out the the brain, in the absence of sound input (because of a damaged nerve), creates its own best approximation of a sound it thinks it should be hearing.
It’s as if the temporal lobe of the brain is so determined to hear something, because after all, that’s what it is there for, that it will, in a word, confabulate.
This situation is common in chronic pain. In fact, you may know someone who has had a nerve surgically “deadened” out of desperation for relief only to find that the pain didn’t go away.
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Now, you might be wondering, what does all of this have to do with me? I’m not mentally ill, right?
Right. You are (probably 
) not mentally ill. However, it is important to note the the mentally ill brain does not always create new behaviors. It exaggerates ones that are normally present. For example, a man with Parkinson’s may have a visible resting tremor that is an exaggeration of the minute tremors that are present in those of us that are “normal.”
In other words, some of the brain functions that you perform every day would be hallmarks of disease if they were exaggerated.
Let’s go back to confabulation. Your sense is that you don’t make things up, right? Well, there is plenty of research that shows that we all do, especially when we feel like we are not in control.
A short article in the recent issue of Scientific American Mind explores the capacity of all of our brains to find patterns where none exist. This is especially true when feeling overwhelmed and out of control.
This aspect of our brains is fundamental to our survival in the world. In order to keep ourselves safe and nourished, we need to understand patterns in the world around us. The less safe we feel, the more we grasp for patterns. It’s easy to see how this behavior could be helpful when there are actually patterns to identify (ex, when it is safe to forage for food, what time of the year is best for planting, or when to leave work to not get stuck in rush hour traffic.)
There is a darker side to this behavior, though, and it is key to understanding the cause of disease. Our brain’s attempt to find patterns in the world is especially active when we are children. This behavior was essential to our being able to navigate our families, our schools, and the rest of our environments.
One key part of this search for patterns involves our struggle to define ourselves. As kids, we wonder who we are and where we fit in. We make observations and then come to conclusions. Unfortunately, some of these conclusions aren’t very kind, and we come away with negative self-beliefs: “I am bad,” “I am slow,” “I am weak,” “I am ugly,” etc.
While they feel terrible, these beliefs are simply your brain’s attempt to make sense of your world. However, as I have tried to explain in this article, these beliefs also may not be true. In fact, I believe they are never true, and that these brain misperceptions are the engine that is driving chronic disease.
That concludes this brief tour of the ego in your brain’s left hemisphere. It dominates much of your everyday experience, but it may not be as infallible as you think it is. Next month, I will introduce you to the other half of you: the half that contains a huge amount of wisdom that is doing its best to help you heal.
In the meantime, please call me when you are ready for a no-charge first consult. I would be happy to help you understand how this article relates to your unique symptoms.
503-206-7773