Avoiding The "Amygdala Hijack"
No one ever told you that simply breathing could change your life..
Have you ever relapsed only to reflect and see that, for some reason, you almost had no control at all? It just kinda.. happened? Have you wondered what happened there? It seemed you were very clear on your priorities before all the sudden they changed.. Right?
We get told all the time to “just breathe”. Deep breath, count your breaths. Everything will be okay. It’s almost insulting, right? As if breathing could change anything about my miserable existence. In the midst of depression, shame, vulnerability, pain, and withdrawal the best they can come up with is “breathe”? Jesus Christ, I’m trying to fix my life here, not get better at doing something I knew how to do when I was born.
Again, recovery isn’t communicated optimally…
No one ever told me why breathing could change my life. Of course, if they had some knowledge on the subject, they would tell me the following:
Decreases stress increases calm - deep breathing increases endorphin release. When stressed or anxious, cortisol is released. By taking deep breaths, your heart rate slows, more oxygen enters blood stream ultimately telling the brain to chill out.
Relieves pain - endorphins create good feelings, but also can combat pain.
Stimulates lymphatic system- breathing releases carbon monoxide. Breathing is in charge of releasing 3/4 of body’s toxins. Not breathing fully leads to body working overtime to expel these toxins
Improves immunity - fully oxygenated blood carries and absorbs nutrients and vitamins more efficiently. The cleaner the blood, the harder for illness to stick around.
Increases energy - more oxygen in the blood, the better the body functions and stamina improves.
Lowers blood pressure - once muscles relax the blood vessels dilate, which improves circulation effectively lowering blood pressure.
In my experience in treatment centers, clients are lucky to get this info. Often, employees are just discussing breathing as a solution when they don’t have any other answer. Rarely do they understand the above benefits AND effectively communicate it to their clients. Let’s not forget, many clients have old ways of decreasing stress, and relieving pain: we cannot allow addicts and alcoholics to make subconscious comparisons between breathing and heroin, meth, and alcohol. Addicts and alcoholics have a flaw in thinking when presented with a new solution to their problems. Almost automatically, this new “solution” is unconsciously compared to their former “solution.”
Here’s an example: I once had a client who was really struggling emotionally, shocker right? He was an alcoholic, he had made it through withdrawal, but was really struggling with the day to day stuff in treatment. His emotions were high, and he was looking for a new solution other than alcohol. His therapist suggested breathing exercises during moments of high stress. This is something I suggest to clients as well. Unfortunately, clearly, breathing wasn’t “fixing” his stress. He came to me with some questions and was honestly upset at the advice of “breathing” in the face of his emotional turmoil:
“Dylan, what’s with this breathing shit? Everyone keeps telling me to breathe and how it will help my stress. It doesn’t fucking work. Honestly, I just get more pissed off when I do it.”
“I see man, and believe me, I get it. What do you expect to happen when you focus on your breath?”
“I don’t know, you guys are the experts, I do what you tell me to - but I do it in the hopes that it will work and this just…doesn’t”
“What did you do in the past when you were stressed out? Drink?”
“Well, yeah..”
“And how did that work for your stress?
“Well, I mean, if I drank my stress disappeared, at least for the moment. Breathing just doesn’t do it for me.”
“Wait a minute.. the way you just said that made it sound like you are expecting breathing to do what drinking did for you - does that sound right? Do you think breathing without any expectation may not put so much pressure on breathing “fixing” any problems? No one said breathing was going to do what alcohol did.”
My client sat still, thinking…
“I don’t know man. I still don’t see how breathing is going to fix my problems. But I do see how I was somewhat comparing it to drinking - I didn’t even realize”
“Careful man, remember, I didn’t say breathing was going to fix your problems, certainly not directly. I said it would change your life. Nothing you do, no solution, is going to make you feel like alcohol made you feel. What it will prepare you to do is keep your prefrontal cortex online, and that will change your life.”
“Huh?”
There is a lack of brain science education in treatment centers. There, I said it. I don’t mean to say that we don’t talk about the brain, or pass out worksheets on the brain - we definitely do. However, we also definitely suck at communicating the science of the human brain in a way that addicts and alcoholics can understand and apply it to their life. In this instance, we will only talk about two parts of the brain and their relationship to our success or demise in recovery.
The Amygdala
The amygdala is part of our limbic system, which is involved with emotions and other reactions to stimuli. Often unconscious, the amygdala is wired to respond quickly and seize control over you in times of “danger”. This process came to be after millions of years of evolution. During this period, it was incredibly beneficial for humans to react quickly to everything, especially danger, as danger lurked around most corners for early humans.
Unfortunately, while our amygdala still serves us in many instances, it’s especially dangerous for alcoholics and addicts. We’ve lived a life that essentially has conditioned our amygdala to think everything is dangerous. This is for a couple reasons. First, our life drinking and using probably was more dangerous than it needed to be. We kept ourselves around people who would steal, lie, cheat, and manipulate. Hell, we stole, lied, cheated, and manipulated. Why? Because if we didn’t get our drugs or alcohol - we were in danger. Therefore, anything that keeps us from drinking and using, or anything that may keep us from drinking or using in the future - is a threat today.
This is why we act so emotional if our dopeman doesn’t pick up the phone the first call. We begin imagining he’ll never pick up, maybe he got busted? This ramps up our amygdala and forces us to act as if we don’t know where our next fix is coming from. If you’re anything like me.. your amygdala may take you straight to your dealers house at 3 a.m. to knock on his window.
This is why you may treat your new loyal girlfriend as some cheating whore just cause she takes her phone into the bathroom to take a shit. Your amygdala ramps up and forces you to act like she’s the same woman who was texting your best friend behind your back eight years ago.
This is why for some reason, you can keep it chill during an argument for a little bit of time before you inevitably explode and say some shit you don’t actually mean at all.
And this is why Socrates put forth what many called the truest wisdom:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Socrates was reminding us how to combat the amygdala’s stories by keeping the prefrontal cortex online over two thousand years ago!
The amygdala turns on fight or flight. And for addicts and alcoholics, its not flight or fight, it’s disappear, drink, and get high only to return to treatment ____ time later saying: “I dont know what happened, I just said fuck it.”
That’s even better. The amygdala engages fight or flight for the normal person. For the addict, the amygdala doesn’t fight or run. The amygdala says “fuck it” giving us it’s permission to go back to old patterns of behavior.
The Prefrontal Cortex
The prefrontal cortex is the cerebral cortex covering the front of the frontal lobe. The prefrontal cortex, henceforth known as PFC, is the part of your brain that decided to go to treatment. The PFC is the part of your brain that just flushed all the coke. The PFC keeps you from throwing a punch when the rest of you is yelling, “swing”. The PFC is the part of your brain that already knows what you should do. Simply put, the PFC is the part of our brain that keeps us from drinking and using when we really want to drink and use.
Wait, back up, if you thought the knock at your door was cops, your amygdala might have been the one who flushed the blow.
In any event, the PFC is involved in the following:
Focusing one’s attention
Predicting consequences of actions
Anticipating events in the environment
Planning, and more..
For lack of a better term, your PFC is what keeps you going in the direction you ACTUALLY want to go in, despite the way you feel or the misery you’re engulfed in.
So, who cares?
To bring this whole thing full circle, we’re back at breathing. Consciously choosing to breathe and focus on your breath activates your PFC. If you know what neuroplasticity is, then you know the common term: neurons that fire together wire together. For the laymen, the way you think/act becomes easier the more you do it. Choosing to breathe in moments of emotional distress robs the amygdala of it’s power. Choosing to breathe in moments where you’d normally double down on your emotions strengthens your PFC. Consciously focusing on your breath, instead of your fears, deposits energy into the future instead of the past.
The reason we talk about meditation, planning for the future, breathing, exercise, gratitude, and being of service is because all of these things are proven to exercise our PFC, effectively making it stronger for the future.
For some reason, addicts and alcoholics want a pay off quickly for their investments. Actually, it’s not for some reason, it’s all we’ve ever done: invest energy -> drink/get high. The fact is, if you are ever going to live a life you’re proud of it’s going to be because your PFC got the necessary exercise. Once your PFC has grown substantially, going back to a life of drinking and using just doesn’t make sense. Because it doesn’t make sense, we have less desire to go towards it. Early on, with our PFC partially offline due to our behavior and substance use, the desire to use is strong. We have to give ourselves time. This growth does not occur overnight and it certainly does not occur without deliberate conscious choice.
If you’re interested in exercising your pre-frontal cortex, try doing what people suggest. There’s a reason they suggest it. If not, check out this article on ten exercises for your pre-frontal cortex.
Great minds think alike…
I always say you know all the answers to your problems. For some reason, some addicts think they’re just different though. I suppose this is due to the excuses that the thought tends to provides them. Meaning, they don’t believe these solutions will work. Or, at the very least, they don’t act as if they believe these solutions work. This is due to a lot of reasons, the most obvious being each of our differences. Every single one of us trying to rebuild our life and not fall back into substance use has spent a great deal of time living a life that is far from optimal for our brain health. Some of us drank and used for thirty years, while people like me barely made it five. I thank god every single day I wasn’t able to keep my shit together when I was using. Basically, we are all at different starting points. Therefore, it takes longer from some of us to get back to a healthy brain which is able to plan, analyze, realistically envision consequences, and act according to the life we want to live. This is where non-judgment comes in and understanding that expecting changes leads us to looking externally to see proof we’ve changed. Unfortunately, especially early in recovery, growth occurs internally far before it manifests itself externally.
In any event, breathing will help you make it through the difficult process of growth. While twelve step programs don’t necessarily suggest you breathe, they do shove “acceptance” down your throat religiously. Acceptance is a conscious decision to see things as they are, rather than as we want them to be. Sounds like a PFC exercise to me.
PG. 417 Alcoholics Anonymous
Philosophers have been saying the same stuff for hundreds of years. While they may not have preached “acceptance” as the twelve step founders did, philosophers like Nietzsche suggested Amor Fati, or Love thy Fate. Nietzsche seemed to realize that many of our issues in life occur because we decide what we like and dislike then change behavior to get what we like, and avoid what we don’t like at all costs. Clearly, this sort of behavior causes problems. Everyone does it to some degree, but it’s basically the only behavior alcoholics and addicts engage in.
Imagine for a second that you really tried to love whatever happened in life. It sounds crazy, but if you know anything about the brain you understand that it changes according to the way we think and act. Once I decide to love what happens, I cease meddling in the affairs of others. The moment I decide to love what happens, I am accepting what happens and am then more able to operate in reality. All of the sudden, the likelihood I will actually solve problems, instead of make them worse increases substantially.
You don’t get to decide what happens to you, but you do get to decide what that means to you.
