The second goal of feedback training
is developing new habits, and this is not so much an intervention as
it is a natural human ability. We are creatures of habit and live most
of our lives on autopilot. Most of what we call "free will" is little
more than a collection of learned behaviors.6
Autopilot is the artificial brain that allows the smart car to take care of itself. Autopilot is good when it works and leaves us with less to do, and with more room to think. Humans subconsciously develop and refine their autopilot functions, but they can only succeed to the extent that they're sensitive and able to adjust. The first part of feedback training serves to make a person more sensitive and flexible, the second part of feedback training relies on each person's subconscious ability to turn new responses into habit.
Addiction
"In a time of peace the warlike
person attacks himself." 7
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Addiction is autopilot gone awry, and
since we are all creatures of habit, we all have the potential for
addictive
behavior. In truth we're already addicted to our habits, and none
of our autopilot functions work perfectly. The autopilot functions in
many "healthy people" actually work pretty badly, but we've learned
to cope and what dysfunctions remain we label as disease. It's only
when our dysfunctions become socially disruptive and take on specific
characters that we assign the label of addiction. We all lie somewhere
on the addiction spectrum.
Addiction becomes a problem when it
appears
to fail as a behavior strategy. I say "appears" because internal
forces continue to support it. Without their support it would stop.
The negative view of addiction assumes that by removing the addiction
a better person can emerge. The truth of this depends on a balance of
forces. Removing the addiction without resolving its cause is only to
suppress it and a troubled person will emerge: unstable, neurotic, or
depressed.
Addiction is not a behavior of the
intentional
sort, it's a response to forces unrecognized and unmanaged. Addiction
persists because it plays an important role in the life of the person
who has chosen to be addicted.
The importance of an addiction can be measured by the damage that it causes. The addicted person is choosing the enemy that they know, rather than the enemy that they don't. This choice is not wholly conscious, and replacing it must involve processes that are not wholly conscious. Changing behavior involves subconscious processes.
Neurofeedback
"The only permanent solution to
your problems is to go inside and to let go of the part of you that
seems to have so many problems with reality."8
-- Michael A. Singer
Neurofeedback is being used as a therapy
for a wide range and growing number of clinical conditions.9
It has the simple goal of making one more sensitive and flexible in
developing one's aptitudes and expressing one's inner personalities.
Neurofeedback works because the mind is self-healing when it is not obstructed. Once one becomes deeply familiar and relaxed with alternative mental states, most of which are not conscious states, then other mental states can begin to replace dysfunctional states. How this happens remains a mystery, but by providing feedback to the brain we can facilitate its occurrence.
Mental States
The notion of "mental states" is
not well defined and their origin is not well understood. But you don't
need a theoretical understanding of mental states if you appreciate
their effects on health, and have a means to direct them. The same is
true with the body's natural healing abilities: you don't need to
know how they work in order to facilitate them.
If you do not understand how mental
states
work in the healing process, then you should only facilitate and not
intervene. This assumption of a facilitating role, of listening and
helping rather than judging and controlling, is a critical distinction
between the homeostatic approach of neurofeedback and allopathic Western
approach.
The following description of
neurofeedback
illustrates that "hands off" is the most sensible approach. This
aims to remove your need to understand and your desire to interfere
that place obstacles in the way of the healing process.
We change our mental state frequently,
and we usually consider our mental state a consequence of outside
influences,
everything from our automobiles to the planets in the zodiac. The degree
to which we don't take responsibility for our state of mind is odd
considering how much we extol our fee will. Part of the explanation
for this is that we habitually interpret change within us as the
perception
of things outside of us, but another part of it is that we just don't
know how to regulate ourselves. This is where neurofeedback comes in.
Many of the states that we explore through neurofeedback are the same states we encounter in daily life. In addition neurofeedback invokes subconscious and intermediate states. Let's explore what this means.
Filters
We use our mental states as filters to
interpret the world, much as an eye chooses to seek and focus on an
image. We have an experience that sets our mood or state, but it is
more accurate to say that we call up a mood or state in order to
interact
with our environment in the manner that has become our habit.
