Genesis Process
SIMPLIFIED ADDICTIVE BRAIN OVERVIEW
The limbic (addictive) part of the brain basically controls these areas; emotion, experiential learning and memory, dreaming, attention, pleasure, reward and arousal. It also controls the way we perceive emotional, motivational, sexual, and social behavior, including the formation of loving attachments. The limbic system not only controls the capacity to experience love and sorrow, but it governs and monitors our basic needs. This includes hunger and thirst, cravings for pleasure-inducing experiences such as drugs, food, sex and other real or imagined needs. Anything that has to do with survival (our ability to cope) can become an addiction.
The three main areas the survival part of our brain (the limbic system) is in control of and can become addicted to by creating cravings are; food, sex, and safety.
Which of these areas do you struggle with? ______________________
In our formative years, abuse, neglect, accidents, poverty or any condition of chronic inescapable stress or fear can cause limbic problems and reactions. The three limbic responses to real or imagined survival (fear) are: fight (aggression) flight (running away) and freeze (going numb).
Which do you tend to respond with? ________________________
The Limbic System is what the Bible calls the heart
If you want to change destructive behaviors and emotions you must change your Heart.
The Limbic System (the heart) is negatively programmed through painful experiences with people we trusted, especially in our formative years. Not trusting or being able to bond with others leads to fear, anxiety, loneliness, isolation and self gratification. Since the heart is negatively programmed through hurtful experiences with others, it must be healed through opposite experiences. When we can’t get our needs met from others we have to learn to self gratify. Addiction is self-gratification. This is why recovery that heals what drives self-destructive behaviors is a process of learning to trust again. The process of trust that heals our heart usually begins with God and then people.
Reward without work is neurochemically destructive.
When we solve problems with chemicals we don’t learn anything.
Our brain can become conditioned to be hyper-vigilant (super focused) on anything that can create a real or imagined feeling of well being or safety (freedom from stress and fear). The bottom line is that addicts don’t chronically use to get high, they use to feel normal. Addition is about feeling normal and being able to cope. When this survival part of the brain is damaged the ability to concentrate, handle stress, and experience reward and pleasure is diminished. People with limbic problems are at high risk to become addicted to anything that can help them to function, feel safe, normal or a sense of pleasure. So anything that makes us feel safe and reduces stress, raises coping neurochemicals in the Limbic System, causing the brain to associate it with survival, or feeling normal. The limbic system can equate painful or fearful emotions with death (the ability to cope and survive) and create a focused attention (craving) for what we did in the past to feel ok again. Cravings can become difficult or impossible to say no to. This whole process is mostly subconscious which is why we can’t control addictive behaviors. The more the survival behavior is repeated, the more ingrained it becomes, resulting in a loss of control, thus an addiction. This is why we do the very thing we don’t want to do. Read Romans 7.
The Limbic System has a memory system that records experiences that have to do with pleasure and reward and fear and pain. It sets up systems of thoughts, emotions and reactions to avoid what caused fear and pain in the past. It also sets up systems to repeat what reduced fear and pain and produce a feeling of pleasure. Fear and pain avoid it; pleasure and reward do it again. This is the cycle of the addictive brain.
One way this translates to treatment is that our Survival Brain will resist making changes associated with real or imagined fears, unless there is a measure of safety. Facing fears (conscious or unconscious) alone is not safe. This is why so many clients get stuck in treatment. It is very difficult to take risks, which is usually involved with change when we’re alone. Being isolated from God and people is characteristic of most clients with compulsive addictive behaviors. Clients must feel safe, supported and encouraged to be able to face the issues and fears that are driving their destructive coping behaviors. Trying to control self destructive behavior without dealing with the underlying issues (pain / fear) can be an exercise in futility and relapse. They have to just find a new way to cope, trading one addiction for another.
The Bottom Line
An effective New Testament model recovery program is one that understands and targets Heart Change
The Limbic System (the heart) is negatively programmed through painful experiences with people we trusted, especially in our formative years. Not trusting and bonding with others leads to fear, anxiety, loneliness, isolation and self gratification which are what drives addictive behavior. Since it is programmed through hurtful relationships it must be healed through safe healing relationships.
It takes two things to make a person, church or rehab safe and healing for hurting people; Grace and Competency. Grace is having a relationship with a person’s heart rather than their behavior, Romans 7and Romans 8. Of course Jesus is our model for the effectiveness of Grace. He didn’t judge anyone except religious people, the Pharisees. Being able to be a person of grace is what challenges us as Christian workers to be in recovery for our wounding judgments, self-righteousness and religiosity. Sometimes know as the “log in our eye”.
Competency is having the skills, knowledge, educations and experience to give the client confidence that if they trust you; you know what you are doing. In other words do they see others who have trusted you being successful in recovery and also a person who they would like to be like?
Most of the Christian rehabs I visit are running Old Testament programs which are based on control, rules and punishment. New Testament programs are based on choices and opportunities.
It is upon these Grace based principals and skills that the Genesis Process is based . We use every negative behavior, including relapse as an opportunity for change and healing.
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From Michael Dye, CADC, NCACII www.genesisprocess.org
