Biological Theory of the Human Personality
Practical Application of the Theory: Part 1
Introductory Remarks:
***Summary of the Theory: Humans are very literally the combination of their interpretations, predictions, and decisions, period. These activities define the essence of who we are and what we do every moment of every day. Consequently, human beings have life or death attachment to their interpretations of information, their predictions about what to do with their interpretations, and their resulting decisions. We do not choose this attachment; it is hard wired into our biology for our survival. The only action behaviors that stands between us and death is our ability to interpret, predict, and decide reliably and predictably. The integrity and health of the human personality, also known as mental health, depends upon one single dynamic. Mental health depends upon the human's ability to trust implicitly and comfortably at every moment his abilities to interpret, predict, and decide. If a human is constantly required to interpret information in his environment in ways that make sense from perspectives other than his own, he will be forced to adapt in order to avoid the terrible discomfort this perspective confusion causes to his nervous system. Mental illnesses are ADAPTATIONS to avoid interpretation, prediction, and decision making confusion. Threats to how we interpret, predict, and decide are the sole cause of anxiety to our nervous system, and the root cause of all adaptations we now call mental illness. (Since the only thing we actively do is interpret, predict, and decide, it is the only place to look when trying to solve mental health problems. We do not possess an underlying psychology that influences our decisions. We possess a nervous system that helps us interpret, predict, and decide.) Chemical imbalances are a myth perpetuated by drug companies hoping to ply us with "brain balancing chemicals." Because interpreting, predicting, and deciding are the only action behaviors we actively perform as humans, everything we need to know about ourselves resides in our understanding of how we can most reliably engage in these activities. When we as humans stop interpreting the interpretations of other people in terms of how they affect our nervous systems, and vice versa, we will come to know what our personal perspectives really are, and we will stop modeling our current dysfunctional orientation to perspective to our children. My hypothesis is when perspective confusion stops, mental health starts.
***Practical Application of the Theory as it Relates to Government Shutdown and Political Deadlock:
What does a wailing, inconsolable 5 year old who was just denied a candy bar at Rite Aid have in common with a Tea Party Senator who is denied his way in a Congressional vote?
I was so pleased with my "clever" analogy here and was ready to really discuss how childish the far right Congress people are being by grabbing the government, lying down on the Senate floor, and wailing with angry, pouty voices, "I want this government to do what I want it to do, right now, and I'm not budging til I get my way! I don't care if the majority ruled the other way. I want what I want, NOW!"
Then I remembered my theory and my new way of analyzing self and other and realized, dang, I can't say those things any more. And childish is a term I should never use, even referring to children. It is belittling and it perpetuates inequality and bullying.
Let's start with the 5 year old. Is he being unreasonable, spoiled, difficult, self centered, and/or manipulative while screaming on the Rite Aid floor for candy? From my perspective as the mom who has 3 hungry older kids waiting in the car after soccer, baseball, and gymnastics practice respectively, 2 of whom have science fair projects to summarize and paste attractively onto poster boards after dinner that will not get cooked until at least 8pm, YES THE 5 YEAR OLD IS ALL THOSE THINGS!!!
When I understand my 5 year old solely via how he affects my existence, I will respond to him in terms of how he is affecting my nervous system and trying my patience when I don't have the time or the energy to be tried. In relation to my existence, he is acting spoiled, difficult, manipulative, unreasonable, and self centered.
But he does not exist in relation to my existence and my nervous system and my needs. He is a biological entity unto himself who is interacting in his environment in ways that make sense to his nervous system, not mine. If I speak to him in terms of how he is affecting me and my pre-conceived notions for how children SHOULD behave, he will be well on his way to a life of perspective confusion and mental health problems.
Let's look at my 5 year old from HIS perspective.
**Addendum***
***Looking at people from their perspective as best we can is the main strategy for the practical application of my theory.
***Most of us think we do this already.
***Why don't I think any of us are capable of doing this effectively and consistently , currently?
***We were never given the opportunity to understand ourselves from our personal perspectives. We learned to understand our personal perspective in terms of how our interpretations affected the nervous systems of the people who raised us and who had authority over us. We were never allowed to have a direct relationship to and with our interpretive mechanisms, our predictions, or our decisions. We ALWAYS had to make sense to other people and/or to world views placed upon us. As adults, if we don't agree with the world view of our family of origin, we usually need to replace it with something else because we don't know that we can interpret information in ways that make sense to us because we are human not because we have the best possible world view. Humans never did, never do, and never will need a pre-packaged world view to be adequate humans any more than dogs do, or horses do, or dolphins do.
***People raised in a Fundamentalist culture had very tight constraints for how they were allowed to interpret information and their desires in their environments. Their nervous systems were under siege even more than the rest of ours were as children.
********************
Back to the 5 year old. His desire for the candy has zero to do with my tight schedule or my neat and tidy intellectual theories of what a spoiled child is and isn't. As soon as I communicate to him about how HIS desire is affecting me personally, I start teaching him how to treat people his whole life in terms of how they are affecting him personally. We were all taught how to do this. (This practice lays the foundation for bullying and abuse later in life, but that is another chapter.)
What if I take my 5 year old at face value and validate his existence for what it means for him. His desire for candy is just that. He WANTS the candy. And he is only 5. This is neither good or bad, it just is. Most humans love sugary treats and even the most disciplined adults have trouble not wanting candy. Plus, the 5 year old is not yet at the developmental level that can allow him the cognitive flexibility to mentally hold in his head his desires in relationship to how his desires are affecting his mother and the socially appropriate rules for Rite Aid. He only has room in his brain at the developmental age of 5 to think about one concept at a time. Right now that concept is, I WANT CANDY. Furthermore, he is not born with a fully formed concept of the definition for spoiled and how awful parents feel if other people think their kids are spoiled. He is just a 5 year old who really wants candy.
Analyzing further, what are the 5 year old's option to achieving his huge desire for the candy. There is only a single solution he can intellectually come up with to solve his problem of wanting candy after seeing it, and that is to eat it. If that solution is denied him, he will go to the greatest lengths he can in order to try and get that candy. Again, he doesn't have the cognitive capacity or flexibility to rationally sort through alternative options at age 5, and he hasn't had enough experience with disappointment to develop strategies that can help him deal with disappointment rationally.
He also has only one single shot at getting the candy at his age. He doesn't have a credit card or an all hours candy dispenser in his play kitchen. His only hope is to do everything in his power to convince his parent to buy it with everything he can muster.
How do we communicate with the 5 year old so he knows his interactions in his environment are under his jurisdiction, and that he is responsible for interpreting his desires, predicting how to fulfill his desires, and deciding how to fulfill them in ways that can make sense for his nervous system? How do we handle this candy episode so our 5 year old can eventually make comfortable and reliable decisions about his more complex desires as a teen and an adult? Most importantly, how can we communicate with our 5 year old so he doesn't grow up thinking his relationship to his desires doesn't belong to him, but rather to his accurate interpretations of how his desires will affect other people?
How can I talk to my 5 year old so he can maintain his perspective integrity? Here is my recipe for perspective integrity:
***Listen, Consider, Validate, Seek Clarification***
***Side Note***
I only recently became the sole owner of my own personal perspective. It is so easy to be a human this way. Once I started engaging my own interpretations, predictions, and decisions in ways that make sense just to me because I realized those actions are literally who I am, I stopped expecting other people to interpret, predict, and decide in ways that made sense to me. Once I began to have a direct relationship with myself and my interpretations, I was for the first time able to disengage my reactivity to how other people interpret. I stopped expecting my husband to make sense to me. And believe you me, he typically makes no sense to me. But I still love him and always have. Our perspectives were so entangled because of our perspective confusion about ourselves, our marriage felt like a hair shirt. Now it is effortless.
So, back to the 5 year old:
Old school communication:
In a loud, sharp, angry tone with an angry face and stern body language I say: "Joey, get up off the floor and put that candy bar back, right now. I do not have time for another one of your temper tantrums. Your sister and brother have 3 hours of homework to do tonight and I am in no mood for this. Only spoiled children cry in the middle of the store when they can't get their way. Stop it right now or you will not earn your Sesame Street before bed time."
Result of old school communication:
Joey keeps screaming, despite my directives. I get madder and madder because Joey is effecting my interpretations of how children should behave, particularly my children, and when my interpretations are affected, my nervous system has a reaction 100% of the time. The madder I look, the louder Joey gets. The whole store is eyeing us.
Joey feels like I caused his disappointment because I made his desire for candy about how it was affecting me personally. Joey never gets to connect the dots between his desires and what they mean for him, so he has trouble regulating his desires as a teen and an adult.
New Kind of Communication with the 5 year old using biological principles and the perspective maintenance recipe:
..listen, consider, validate, seek clarification:
I walk up to Joey who is on the floor screaming. I say, Joey, what do you want? He says, "This candy bar." I pause to consider his desire and what it means for him so I can validate him, even though I know I won't get if for him. Joey, I can see why you want this candy bar. You are very hungry because we haven't eaten dinner yet, and you love that kind of candy. I am so sorry I can't get it for you because we have to eat dinner before sweets and I didn't bring enough money to buy the candy. (These reasons may not make logical sense to him, but some day they will, and I validate him by taking his desire seriously when I give him reasons for why I am not helping him fulfill his desire.) We have your favorite dessert waiting at home after dinner.
Result: Joey screams louder and louder. He is very hungry and tired and beyond being able to self regulate. It's not his fault he got dragged to 3 practices on a cold night and after not eating for 3 hours was plunked smack in front of his favorite candy bar. Disappointment is awful for all of us. As adults, we complain all the time when we are disappointed, but we hate the 5 year old version of complaining which is usually crying and whining, and we expect way more self regulation from our children than we do from ourselves.
With a neutral voice and a neutral body, which I am able to maintain since I disengaged my nervous system from reacting to the interpretations of other people, including my own children, I repeat, "Joey, we can't get the candy." I make my purchases and walk out of the store without the dramatic lecture about how irritated and tired I am, how disappointed I am with his behavior, etc....
Joey is left to grapple with his disappointment because I let him own his disappointment by not making his desires and his disappointment about how they affect me. I left him sad and angry, but I did not harm the structure or function of how he interprets, predicts, and decides. In fact, I gave him a great opportunity to experience and practice dealing with disappointment. This is never easy, no matter how old we are. The more practice we have with disappointment without shame or perspective confusion, the more self regulating strategies we can develop that make sense for us.
Preserving the integrity of a human being's abilities to interpret, predict, and decide does not mean he gets to do what he wants whenever he wants to. It means we teach the rules of our family and community through example and through non-judgmental and non-reactive application of the rules. The rules aren't the valuable entity in this equation, our children are.
So, what is new about my example. We've all read parent books. I don't offer anything we all haven't read before. Well, here's what's new for me. I could not predictably use any method for when my children were upset. I was so reactive to them, and my ability to "use my words" calmly and reasonably was intermittent. I wanted to stay calm, but didn't know how.
With a new and an easy to use definition of who I am, and a little bit of practice, it is a piece of cake. Realizing all I am are my interpretations and decisions allows me to know what throws me off balance. If somebody were to read this page and tell me it is a bunch of nonsense, I would feel bad. It would throw me off balance a little, but nothing like it use to. Until two May's ago, I was literally plugged into the world and everybody in it. Other people's interpretations and decisions caused me to have reactions as if their interpretations and decisions emanated out of my nervous system.
I put the plug from my nervous system back into me so I am a closed circuit. For the first time I see people also as closed circuits. It's absurd to me now that I would react so vehemently to my children's interactions with their environment. I could not detach because I didn't know how because I did not know what my perspective was in a concrete, obvious sort of way.
So, cut to the Tea Party people who are demanding to have their needs met. I don't really know what they want because nobody has ever thought to ask them in a non-judgemental, non condescending, non-threatening way. We only get their sound bites, because we go off the rails with anger and condescension before they even finish their sound bite. If we could remain non reactive by understanding where our perspective ends and theirs begins, and see them as a closed circuit incapable of throwing us off balance with their interpretations, we could maintain the presence of mind to actually ask them what their concerns are, what their fears are, what their desires are. We could validate them and make them feel respected and less disenfranchised. We could also push them to give us concrete answers about what they desire.
If we only understand diverse political perspectives in terms of how they affect our nervous systems, we will never come to know the deeper reasons behind the interpretations of those with the most different perspective from ours. Collaboration and consensus require pretty thorough exploration of all interpretations of all parties. Dismissing ideas outright because we assume idiocy from a dramatically different perspective is to imagine the whole world should live in our head, by our rules.
Until I understood who I was biologically, I could not understand anybody else either. I would not have given a tea partier the time of day because I was very dismissive of them. I was dismissing their ideas due to how their ideas made sense to me, which was no-sense. When I started looking at them as real people, with real fears, and real desires that make total sense from their perspective, I realized they have as much right to be listened to, considered, and validated as I do. All I have to do is ask them clarifying questions. I don't have to acquiesce to their demands in order to validate them, and vice versa.
Equal rights under the law sound good when it sits on the page inside the sentence. To afford every person equal rights, we first have to know what a "person" is. We have never been able to move beyond ideological abstractions in either party because we have been missing this very key foundational concept. When we make the definition of person concrete, we can start applying our wonderful ideologies in a concrete way.
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