Lecture 2- Our Troublesome Brains

Question 1

What are some of the insights into the workings of the mind that we get from Mindfulness practice?
(2 points, 2 elaborations)

Answer 1

• We relate to all experience as either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral
• We habitually try to hold onto the pleasant, push away the unpleasant and we loose interest in the neutral
• This causes inordinate amount of stress when paired with our negativity bias because we evolved to both expect unpleasant experiences & to constantly work to try to avoid them.
• Having these tendencies co-exist sets up a continuous tension for many of us that we experience as feeling stressed much of the time

Question 2

Identify 3 more insights into the workings of the mind that we get from mindfulness practice.

Answer 2

• We see that trying to grasp (hold onto) changing phenomena causes suffering.
• We see that our thoughts aren’t reality -in fact they constantly change with our changing feeling states
• We see that all that actually exists is the present moment despite that we are hardwired to be constantly seeking pleasure and avoiding pain (which means living in memories of the past and future)

Question 3

Talking about mindfulness isn’t the same as practicing it.

Elaborate…

Answer 3

• In fact it is very hard to understand what these practices are like unless you try them.
• It is really important to practice regularly
• Different sources of practice have different effects

Question 4

Elaborate on challenges our mind has in meditation…

Answer 4

The challenges our mind has in meditation are usually the same challenges it encounters in daily life & in fact when they occur in meditation it gives us insights into how the mind creates trouble.
-They (our thoughts in meditation) reflect the fact that our brains evolved to seek out opportunity and avoid threat

Question 5

Most of us have two common states:
Name and
(elaborate on a 3rd)

Answer 5

1- Anxious, goal-seeking activity (trying to get/acquire something) or we’re avoiding threats
2- Spacing out or slipping into sleep

Mindfulness practice trains the brain for a 3rd possibility:

3- Awake, alert, relaxed attention

Question 6

Name two common difficulties the mind is prone to (and that we often confront head on in meditation)

Answer 6

1- RESTLESS MIND- Modern world living is like having bees inside your head. Constant activity. Sometimes they sting us. In the Buddhist tradition this is called Monkey Mind.
DEFAULT MODE NETWORK- This is what happens when we are not involved in goal oriented activity. There’s a self-referential system that’s constantly involved in reviewing who we are and what we’re doing.
We see restless mind mostly in the experience of boredom. What makes one situation boring and not another? Many of us are happy to go off and watch a sunset where not such is happening & think of it as a rich & fulfilling opportunity & yet sometimes we can just be following the breath & say “this is boring, I need something more”. So it becomes very interesting to examine -What’s making the difference for us?

2- SLEEPINESS When we’re not frantically pursuing some kind of pleasure or avoiding some kind of pain often we just FALL ASLEEP. The typical instruction in mindfulness practice is ‘Whatever happens you can simply bring your attention to that, but it’s tricky when what is happening is sleep because when we enter REM -where dreams start happening- it’s as though the volitional entity is gone. There’s nobody running the show, we’re simply being carried down the stream of dreams unfolding.
Traditional remedies: -You are actually tired, keep your eyes open while meditating
-Meditate on the edge of a deep well or a cliff

Question 7

Discuss Anxiety related to meditation….

at least 4 points

Answer 7

Anxiety is one of the hardest states to just be with. We feel compelled to take action, medicate it, move or do something. This probably developed because it was so important evolutionarily to take action in response to danger.

• ANXIETY IS A DANGER RESPONSE
• In post suicide enquiries it turns out that many people when they attempt to take their life it’s not because they feel sad or even depressed, it’s because they felt so anxious & they just wanted it to stop.
• Neurobiologically what is happening is it’s the activation of the Amygdala & our whole flight/flight system, resulting in adrenaline flying through the system.
• The SOLUTION while we’re doing mindfulness practice is to simply attend to the component parts and observe them in detail - the tightness of the body, the heart racing, the urge to get up and distract ourselves. We simply allow these things to be the objects of our meditative attention.

Question 8

Discuss Unwanted Feelings and Physical Discomfort related to meditation

Answer 8

-As in lifelong Psychoanalyses, with Mindfulness Practice EVERYTHING COMES UP EVENTUALLY (ie: everything you’ve ever wanted to NOT think or feel)
In the long run that’s going to allow us to integrate these contents.
PHYSICAL DISCOMFORT- The desire to scratch or adjust posture is common. Here we simply bring our full attention to the physical sensations when they occur

Question 9

Mindfulness practices were developed in response to our evolutionary predicaments. Elaborate on what these practices are.
(5 or 6 points)

Answer 9

• They are a systematic method for gaining insight into how the mind instinctively creates suffering
• Mindfulness practices include techniques to interrupt these natural processes of the mind
• Mindfulness practices aren’t the only tools we humans have developed to deal with our hardwired tendencies towards psychological distress
• Studies have shown that all these approaches (Positive thinking, conventional psychotherapy, religious faith) can enhance our sense of well being.
• Mindfulness practices are simply another set of tools
• They may be particularly far reaching in their effect because they address two challenges simultaneously

Question 10

Two challenges that the practice of Mindfulness can address simultaneously:

Answer 10

• They can provide profound insight into the patterns of mind that create suffering. That can radically change our views of ourselves and others
• They can retrain the brain to not automatically respond in it’s instinctual patterns

Question 11

Many of the things we do to pursue positive/good feelings are like…..
(elaborate, or add 3 extensions of thought here..)

Answer 11

Many of the things we do to pursue positive/good feelings are like shopping. They are subject to the HEDONIC TREADMILL (we need more & more to keep the same level of well being.) (Hedonism: having to do with pleasure)
-There are also the pursuits that feel good in the short run but leave us feeling really badly in the long run ie: eating too many donuts or steaks
Of course we evolved to be drawn to sweets and fats but it wreaks havoc on our modern lives in which (in the developed world at least) there are sufficient calories readily available.
-WITH ALL OF THESE EVOLUTIONARILY HARD WIRED SYSTEMS OF OPERATING, NO WONDER SO OFTEN WE FIND LIFE TO BE DIFFICULT (see the next set of cards for Lecture 2)

Question 12

Discuss visits to the doctor in the developed world:

Answer 12

Up to 80% of visits to doctors in the developed world are for stress related disorders.
STRESS RELATED DISORDERS:
-Chronic Back & Neck pain
-Gastrointestinal distress
-Headaches
-Insomnia
-Problems with sexual functioning
MEDICAL PROBLEMS as a RESULT OF HABIT DISORDERS:
-Eating/Drinking too much
-Eating unhealthful foods

Many people also seek help for ANXIETY and DEPRESSION

How did this possibly come about?
Understanding what science is revealing about why they plague us is important for being able to use the practices effectively.
If we pay close attention, we can see that hardwired, evolutionarily determined tendencies that cause our stress are active even during the best of times.

Question 13

Give an example of how our evolutionarily determined tendencies that cause us stress are active even during the best of times:

(an example and a comment on our minds)

Answer 13

Example- On a Caribbean Beach
- the mind can still create trouble. It can spot a dark cloud on the horizon and imagine rain, worry about the kids are home, start thinking “this won’t last long, we’ll be leaving soon”, “one day I’ll be too old and infirm to enjoy the beach”..etc…

-Most of us have minds and brains that are predisposed in this way to making ourselves unhappy & these predispositions set us up for all sorts of psychological & physical disorders.

Question 14

JACK KORNFIELD QUOTE:

Answer 14

If you can sit quietly after difficult news. If in a financial downturn you can remain calm. If you can see your neighbours travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy, if you can happily eat whatever is on your plate, and fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill, if you can always find contentment just where you are, you are probably a dog.

Question 15

What has research shown in regards to Universality?

And what’s the good news? (2 pieces)

Answer 15

Research has shown that our propensity towards psychological distress is quite Universal. That’s good news. It means it’s not our own fault or failure.
-The good news is that we humans have developed Mindfulness practices to counteract our predispositions to distress

Question 16

Why do we have to pursue Happiness?

Answer 16

For Centuries, the world’s Philosophic and Religious traditions have sought answers to this question. Only recently has science suggested an answer: We didn’t evolve to be happy.

Question 17

Elaborate on the example of how humans didn’t evolve to be happy…

(extra focus on last two/three points at the end)

Answer 17

Imagine Lucy (Australopithecus) 3.2 Million years ago. Scientists think either she or a hominid somewhat like her was likely our common ancestor. Imagine what it was like for her on the African Savannah competing with the other wildlife. How did our ancestors survive?

• Opposable thumbs, exquisite fingers. Our hands are so sensitive & have so much physical dexterity. No other animal has this ability to manipulate objects.
• AND we had an unusually sophisticated brain.
• 2 million years ago hominid ancestor Homo Habilis started making stone tools.
• 200 000 years ago Homo Sapiens (the clever ape)
• Over the course of evolution our cortex grew three times larger. It grew to deal with pretty much the same environment that Lucy faced. The situation hadn’t changed much until humans started building cities much later. So this bigger cortex had a great value for survival. It also set us up for an awful lot of psychological suffering.
• The cortex mostly evolved to analyse the past and imagine the future, and to remember past moments of pain & figure out how to maximize future pleasure and avoid future pain.
• So as the cortex thinks, it doesn’t just think any thoughts , it thinks thoughts tailored to the demands of our environment.

Question 18

Describe the environment our ancestors lived in…

remember the final piece of insight

Answer 18

• They lived in small bands, uncommon and dangerous to meet unknown people
• starvation, parasites, illness, injury & the hazards of childbirth were all commonplace. No pain killers, no police departments.
• The world was the womb of the human brain and it was a rough place.

Question 19

What two possible mistakes could our ancestors make?

Answer 19

Lucy looking at some bushes & she spied a beige shape behind the bushes
MISTAKE #1- “Ah, I think it’s a lion” when it’s actually a rock
MISTAKE #2- “Ah, it’s probably a rock” when it was really a lion.
-The cost of the 1st mistake: needless anxiety
-The cost of the 2nd mistake: Death
-SO we evolved to make the first mistake a thousand times to avoid making the 2nd mistake even once.
-Our ancestors were the ones who spent each day remembering every bad thing that had happened & spent much of their lives anticipating more trouble. And this is the mind they bequeathed to us.

Question 20

Cognitive Scientists say we developed what is called a….

Answer 20

NEGATIVITY BIAS
Ex- Bill Clinton (immediately 80% of people think Monica Lewinsky or blue dress). The negativity bias is why it’s so easy to ruin a reputation
RICK HANSON wrote Buddha’s Brain:
“Our minds evolved to be velcro for bad experiences & teflon for good” Bad ones stick and Good ones slide off.
ex- You got 20 things done today and made one mistake. Which do you think about before bed?
-you get a positive review from your boss with one area for improvement. What sticks in your mind? From a survival point of view the ‘sticks’ have much more urgency and impact.

Question 21

Discuss The Amygdala

Answer 21

An almond shaped little area of the brain.

• It is designed to evaluate our environmental circumstances & decide whether something is a threat or not. It turns out the Amygdala reacts far more rapidly and more thoroughly to negative than to positive stimuli.
• In relationships trust is easy to loose & hard to regain. The negative contaminates the positive more easily than the other way around. This is why we remember Monica Lewinsky & negative ads dominate political campaigns.

Question 22

• John and Julie Gottman.

- Rats

Answer 22

(researchers of couples)
-It basically takes 5 positive interactions between members of a couple to undo the effects of only one fight.
-Rats have a negativity bias. Run them through a maze with electric shock at the end, one trial learning will work. They wont go down the path again.
With food at the end they need several different trials before they actually learn it.
But rats are much less likely when not confronted by danger or pursuing food to be thinking about the electric shocks or about the cheese. I’m afraid we can’t say the same about us humans.

Question 23

Further discuss the evolution of our negativity bias.

Answer 23

The negativity bias emerged in harsh settings very different from our own but it continues to operate today.

• In most of our day to day situations we have our negativity bias operating.
• Even in relatively safe situations we react as though they are life or death challenges & very often we expect the worse
• On top of our hardwiring, learning also changes the brain. so the negative expectations & outlooks actually start to deepen the more we experience them.
• The brain is like a muscle. While ultimately it weakens throughout our life, if we use parts of our brain they become stronger, if we don’t use them they become weaker. Scientists call this EXPERIENCE DEPENDENT NEUROPLASTICITY & it’s like a riverbed that deepens over time.

Question 24

(list two other tendencies that we’ve already discussed that predispose us to unhappiness)
-List what all of that (plus the negativity bias and Amygdala) interact with regularly

Answer 24

• Difficulties accepting change: The fact that everything we enjoy or love eventually leaves or changes
• Preoccupation with self (& self esteem): Which is so difficult given our changing fortunes & poor prognosis.
• All of this interacts regularly with another important survival skill system that we share with many other animals. Our Emergency Response or FIGHT FLIGHT FREEZE System.
• It is the arousal (which can feel like desperation) that we experience when we’re threatened. This Emergency arousal system is activated by every one of our negative thoughts!!
• Our bodies evolved to be able to handle these Emergency Responses from time to time, but they don’t do very well when the system is activated all day long.
• It is this constant activation that sets us up for so many of the ailments mentioned earlier.

Question 25

And as if this weren’t enough (the constant activation of FIGHT FLIGHT FREEZE System). There is another survival system that occupies a lot of our attention….

Answer 25

While we evolved to expect the worst, we also evolved to be hardwired to pursue pleasure & try to avoid pain.
-This makes sense evolutionarily since pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain motivates us to do things that help to perpetuate our DNA (Generally, activities that perpetuate our DNA are experienced as pleasurable)
ACTIVITIES THAT PERPETUATE DNA-
-Returning to homeostasis
-Having sex
-Eating when hungry
-Sleeping when tired
-Alleviating pain
-Enhancing social rank

ALL of these help in getting our DNA propagated. So we get hooked on these things.

AND when we don’t have the conditions that help us to perpetuate these things that perpetuate our DNA (or feel we’ll loose them), we become distressed. Our fear response is activated not only by threat but by fear that we won’t get what we evolved to want.

Question 26

Talk about the motivational systems of desiring to seek pleasure and fear threats.

Answer 26

These Motivational systems (the desire to seek pleasure and fear threats) are continuously interacting with our propensity to recall the past and imagine the future. And they drive us to do all sorts of things in the pursuit of Happiness that don’t actually sustain our feelings of well being for very long.
EXAMPLE- Buying a car or shopping for a new dress
HEDONIC TREADMILL:
-Thinking
-Seeing
-Using
-Acquiring
-Owning
-Habituating
-(Thinking)
It’s different for different people but it doesn’t take that long to get used to the new car/outfit. Instead of it being the new source of joy/pleasure it starts to become a means or transportation or old news. (The cycle continues)
-MANY of the things we do to pursue positive/good feelings are subject to the Hedonic treadmill (Hedonism-having to do with pleasure). We need more and more to keep the same level of well being.