It is all about SITUATIONS. It turns out that we think quite differ-ently in different SITUATIONS. How surprising. After all, it is the same brain doing the thinking for you this morning as it is thinking for you last night. It is the same brain running you when you talk to Dan or Sandy as it is when you talk to John or Mary. Yet you express such different parts of yourself and such different messages to these people. Thank goodness, you may say, there is no way you want Dan or Sandy to hear what you said to John or Mary, and vice versa.
But why are we doing such different thinking in different situations?
It turns out that we have mental functions which actually think about our thinking for us, and actually select the thinking we will do in par-ticular situations—tell us what sort of thinking to do when. This func-tion is a cognitive control funcfunc-tion, an executive sort of command center function of the brain-mind.
SITUATIONS, SITUATIONS, SITUATIONS
What is emerging as central here is that we are slaves to not only our coding to form, preserve and feed pattern addictions, but to our brain’s decisions regarding what to do in various situations. Cognitive control (our brain’s own executive and overall organizing behavior) involves processes essential to our survival, including our ability to act and react in a situation-specific manner. Situation-specific reac-tions are reacreac-tions not general to all situareac-tions, but rather to specific situations. A large shark behind glass at the aquarium may evoke
interest, yet the same large shark swimming near you at the beach may evoke alarm, fear, desire to get away quickly, perhaps the desire to hide. This indicates great flexibility in our cognitive control. We have great cognitive flexibility which allows us to make key decisions in complex and changing contexts or situations. This same cognitive flexibility allows us to direct our attention to what we find important, and to remember what we learned about what we found important.
Cognitive control allows us to respond to specific situations rather than oversimplify and over-generalize, and also to recall how we have responded so that we know, when a new situation arises, how much of the situation is similar and how much is different.
EXECUTIVE CONTROL
We can experience disruptions in our cognitive control functions:
when this disruption occurs it is described as dys executive behavior.
In fact, this dysexecutive behavior is a key element of an addictive dis-order. Persons who are problem addicted are frequently unable to engage in situation-appropriate responses to stimuli or events. (I have discussed two of our major cognitive control functions, atten-tional bias or attenatten-tional control, and decision making, and how these can run awry, in the two previous chapters.) Cognitive control mal-functions inhibit our general functioning as well as our functioning with the goal of survival in mind, always in mind. (I have realized that, in working with persons who are addicted to problem patterns, I am seeing a vying for control of the SELF, a struggle for control in which the problem pattern seeks to fool the SELF into thinking the problem pattern is the self. Keep in mind here that we are talking about survival of the SELF rather than of the problem pattern that fools the SELF into calling this problem pattern the SELF.)
As noted in the previous two chapters, clinical evidence indicates that both attentional abnormalities and decision-making deficiences are present among people who exhibit substance use disorders. Note again that generally speaking, persons who are addicted do show a greater immediate reward bias; that is, they are more likely than non-addicted persons to choose a smaller immediate reward over a larger reward for which they would need to wait. This tendency holds true for various types of rewards, including for the addict’s drug of choice and for monetary rewards. Laboratory-controlled gambling tasks have also linked abnormal decision making with addictive disorders. All
related cognitive processes (decision making, attentional control, and various forms of enforcement- and association-driven learning) are processes that fall under the general umbrella of executive function and are associated with frontal circuits within the brain.
ACTION SELECTION DECISIONS RESPOND TO SITUATIONS
Decisions can be made regarding minor and major mental and behavioral choices. In that any decision involves some action, even if only a minor or a biochemical action, virtually every decision is an action selection. It follows that every decision is an action selecting event, even when there is nothing done, as a decision to do nothing, to take no action, is a form of decision. Decisions to respond to par-ticular situations may require us to work or to call upon behaviors we have not already recorded. Numerous findings suggest that the brains of substance abusers are generally working harder to recruit the usual brain areas needed to perform tasks, that there may be some degree of neural inefficiency interfering with action (and thus also non-action) selection. Where the selection is nonaction, or not to engage in the problem addiction’s behavior (such as to take another drink), the nonaction is inhibition. In that there appears to be a neural inefficiency in problem addicted persons, there may be a problem with inhibiting behavior in certain situations, especially where addiction to even the triggers for reentry into the addictive cycle is so powerful.
In the case of more complex decision making, beyond the already so complex TO DO OR NOT TO DO decision, it is becoming clear that some persons’ neural frameworks have greater abilities to make decisions based on future outcomes than do others’. We detect an actual inability to consider future outcomes when choosing whether to continue drug use (or other addictive activity) despite con-tinued negative consequences. Given the lowered resistance to trig-gers, and derailed decision-making functions, when inhibition functions are weak, problem addiction is a rather natural problem.
Addicted persons tend to be more unable to make situation-appropriate decisions-responses to stimuli, events, SITUA-TIONS. As is the premise of this book, we are all addicted persons. Therefore we are all faced with the potential of sharing, at some time in some way, the inability to make
situation-appropriate decisions-responses to SITUATIONS. How many times have we made situation-inappropriate decisions? Why?
So very critical is our ability to cope with situations in situation appropriate ways, that I have seen the importance of working with the perception of the situation itself in helping persons who are prob-lem addicted overcome their probprob-lem patterns. This is what has inspired me to design the Situational Transcendence conceptualiza-tion and program I discuss in Part Two of this book.