Appealing to logic doesn’t work when dealing with compulsions or addictions
In order to understand people, we need to understand a little about the human brain. Otherwise, we may waste precious time and effort in our attempts to help others.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong. Did they think I was stupid? Of course I knew it was against the law. I knew I could get into serious trouble. I just couldn’t stop. But they never understood that. They kept ‘explaining’ that I was on dangerous ground and that I should stop.”
People often start their compulsive behaviors young. Their teenage brains prompt, maintain, and grow these behaviors as neural networks change through learning and chemical reactions. What seems to be free will at first becomes a no-choice circuit — the sufferer can’t free himself from the grip of his brain processes.
The brain is the most complex and mysterious organ. Let’s look at a basic model of one of its elementary structural components: functional organization. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll say that the top of the brain houses the cortex, the thinking brain. The middle houses the emotional centers, otherwise known as the limbic system, which includes the danger-scanning amygdala. The bottom is home to the “reptilian brain,” the part that governs our animal functions such as respiration, heartbeat, digestive processes, etc.
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