Understanding helps us heal from our painful experiences. Understanding also helps us avoid repeating those experiences. What is understanding? Understanding is knowledge gained by our higher-verbal brain that helps it to manage our lower non-verbal brain. Understanding is, therefore, a path to our own impulse control. In the next few weeks, I am going to present a series on the science of motivation. I hope that a new understanding of motivation will help you in your quest for healing.
Where does motivation come from?
The first thing to understand about motivation is that it does not originate in our higher verbal brain (the cerebral cortex). It originates in our non-verbal, lower brain or limbic system. This part of the brain performs the functions of what Freud called the unconscious mind.
The unconscious mind is very much like wind. It is unseen yet very powerful. We know it exists because we see its effects and we can feel it. Yet, we do not know exactly where its force is coming from. Just as an experienced sailor uses his understanding of the wind to travel, one who understands motivation can use its energy to go far.
Motivation starts with the anticipation of pleasure
Motivation research began with the discovery of the fact that rats will press a bar to obtain various rewards. This discovery allowed scientists to study motivation in mathematical terms. For the first time, we had a measure of desire and therefore motivation. If a rat pressed a bar many times, he showed a strong desire for a particular reward. With these measures we discovered that motivation starts with the anticipation of pleasure. Something about pleasure is rewarding in that pleasure causes behaviors to be repeated.
We soon discovered that all the things that act as rewards and that increase motivated behavior are sources of pleasure. These things are food/water, sex, entertainment, possessions, affection, social dominance and substances of abuse. When a behavior causes us to get these things, we repeat that behavior. Thus, by some brain process, an association is made between an action and its outcome—getting a source of pleasure. All rewards influence motivation by affecting the same brain process.
Pleasure is necessary for learning an association between action and obtaining reward. This association, once made, causes behaviors to be repeated. Repeated behaviors are motivated behaviors. Pleasure, therefore, is the beginning of motivation. The things that give us pleasure are necessary for survival and we physically need them. We want and crave these things and we like them because they are sources of pleasure.
Needing, wanting and liking
There is an interesting interplay between needing, wanting and liking. For example, when a person is starving, food is much needed, and thus very pleasurable. Food becomes less needed, and thus less pleasant, for someone who has already eaten. The motivation for a particular type of reward is not constant but waxes and wanes, as does the pleasure from that reward. One piece of chocolate, for instance, can be quite tasty and rewarding. But even a chocolate connoisseur will probably only experience disgust if he or she is forced to eat two pounds of chocolate at once!
Recently, scientists trying to understand addiction have discovered something truly remarkable. That is, although pleasure is required to establish a behavior pattern, pleasure is not required to maintain that behavior pattern. Wanting related behaviors can occur in the absence of pleasure and are called compulsions. The bottom line is that wanting to do something and liking to do that something are not the same.
Cues from the environment become associated with pleasure in the early stages of establishing a motivated behavior. Later, these cues trigger wanting to do the behavior even in the absence of pleasure obtained by that behavior. Addiction is the best model for understanding this aspect of motivated behavior. Long after the addict has stopped feeling pleasure from the addictive substance, things that remind him of using trigger drug cravings and the compulsion to use. The brain pathways that are active in craving, wanting and pursuing addictive drugs are the same ones involved in all motivated behavior. This is why addiction affects all motivated behavior.
Motivation and healing from a relationship with a sociopath
Where am I going with all this psychology? I am trying to convince you that your compulsion to be with a sociopath can continue even after the relationship has stopped giving you pleasure. The sociopath knows instinctively that all he/she has to do is hook you in the initial pleasure phase, and you will continue to feel a compulsion to be with him/her. Sociopaths typically change in their relationships once they sense the other person is hooked or attached.
Just as cues trigger craving in addicts, reminders of the sociopath can trigger a longing for that initial relationship. Furthermore, just as complete abstinence is the only hope for recovery from addiction, staying away from the sociopath is the beginning of recovery.
Even though the maintenance of addiction and attachment to an undesirable person are the same, I do not believe that attachment to a sociopath is a sign there is something wrong with you. The sociopath and the substances of abuse hijack a brain pathway meant to serve survival. Once hijacked, the survival system becomes a path to destruction.
If a sociopath has hijacked your attachment pathway, start to break the compulsion today. Use your conscious mind and stay away from the person, don’t answer emails or phone calls. Remove from your life as much as possible reminders of the relationship. Distract yourself with other pleasures. Lastly, do not isolate yourself from other people. Since the sociopath has hijacked your attachment pathway, if you are “starved” for affection, your craving for him/her will only increase if you are lonely.
Next week we will discuss the brain pathways and hormones involved in the love bond.
One of the things I think we all need to keep in mind in dealing with not only each other, but people in general is that when you are in “difficulty”—pain, emotional or physical, from any source it makes us scared and scared people, just like my story of the little injured dog on the road, strike out.
At my facility we had so many people on staff who were verbally attacked by patients and families, mostly families, that I developed a program to teach them how to deal with this. Most of the non professional staff, who took the brunt of this were PERSONALLY INSULTED by the patients and families, and took it personally when it really wasn’t “personal.”
I called this program “Dealing with difficult families and families in difficulty” I talked to the staff about how the family was in crisis because of a sick family member, how their usual functioning was out the window, and that in their anger and frustration they would strike out at the nearest staff member. One big thing was that the family would ring for the nurse or attendant and the nurse or attendant would come promptly but not promptly enough for the family member who was angry at ANY wait. The family member would then attack staff with “I”ve been ringing for 30 minutes” (the staff member would know it was less than 5 minutes) so the staff member would start to defend themselves, pointing out that it was only 5 minutes, of course the family member would then become irate at “being called a liar” and the fight was on.
I suggested to staff that thy IGNORE THE OUTBURST which was NOT true, and say instead, “I’m sorry I took so long to get here, what can I do for you now that I am here?”
Most of the time this would completely defuse the situation that could have gone all the way to the top administration. Also, it took the “personality” out of it for the staff.
I told staff if the first “what can Ii do for you now that I am here?” didn’t defuse it they should repeat it one time, then if that didn’t do it, they were to say “I can see you are really upset Mrs. Smith, let me get the charge nurse for you”
Then, guess what the charge nurse would say? Yep, you got it right “I can see you are upset Mrs. Smith, what can I do for you now that I am here”
And, then if the charge nurse couldn’t solve it she was to get ME.
I have used this kind of thing in many different situations, not just in hospitals, but in business with an unhappy customer, etc.
Unfortunately, sometimes in emotionally charged situations where we feel personally attacked it is difficult to keep in mind where the person who is attacking us is coming from. If they are coming from a position of pain, anxiety and fear, I generally give them some leeway and don’t take it personally.
When they are coming from a general bullying position, I go the other direction and stand my ground, sometimes throwing in a little sarcasm like I did with the “Used aircraft broker” when he tried to bully me—okaaaay, a LOT of sarcasm, you guys know me too well! LOL So how I react to someone going off on me depends on where I think there intent lies, if it is from a position of pain I try to give them a lot of slack and “not take it personally.” If it’s what I perceive as overt bullying, I am not so “understanding” with them.
Oxy,
You know what… that was so perfect for me today. I have had a few draining days for various reasons. My Dad just lost the vision in one of his eyes due to a “mini stroke.” Bad day at the Group Home. Bad Day at the Children’s shelter. Bad day or two in LoveFraud Land… (LFL) :o)
This is off the subject but I don’t think anyone is paying attention to us anymore anyway… so I had a long horrible day working with a “child” that is almost 18. Myself and another counselor were assigned to this child and we spent the entire day redirecting her behavior, following her all over the place while being verbally abused and threatened. She is like that puppy in the street righ tnow. She can’t recognize when people are trying to help her.
I am totally emotionally drained and exausted from this day. It is difficult for me to take the abuse all day.. though you are right, it really isn’t personal… and now, I get paid for it! Perhaps this is a nudge from the universe to remind me what it was like with the Bad Man.
I feel really beat up right now. I have a lot of worries and a lot of sadness…. worried about Dad. Worried about some of the kids that I work with. Worried for my own safety… I don’t want to be assulted by this girl. She has assaulted other staff in the past and you know what.. it was really stressful seeing the looks on people’s faces as she was roaming the shelter. They know her and they know what she is capable of.
It’s funny but I feel like I am having a conversation with you out by the trash heap where we got dumped earlier.
I better go to bed so I will be prepared incase I have another day as super counselot. OOPS! That is funny! That was a typo… How about this… I am Aloha Counselot! I love it.
I feel like I am alone now out here hanging onto the end of this old Blog.
Good Night.
I went to a music festival for a few days (on my own) and came back to find Free’s farewell post. No oooo. That saddened me, I am really gonna miss Free and I hope Free decides to come back. We all have our special connections with people here and many of us have stayed open minded, even posting with self confessed Ss – Mr. Green and Secret Monster!.
This is not the first time, that posters have clashed and I am sure it wont be the last. But for the more established posters here, I think each person has a different style of posting and having a sense of confidence in the poster, that however staunchley they say something, we KNOW its coming from a loving heart – like tough love, which is more easily done, when you have built up a rapport with people. For some of the new posters they may be fresh in their situation and feeling more volatile, but as someone here said, upholding respect is paramont. Its amazing how words can be so powerful but I find I get to ‘know’ a poster by their style of writing, whether they are the nervous type, the philosophical type, the calming type, the volatile type etc. I can always tell Oxy’s posts by the depth of thought and amount of words in CAPITAL LETTERS that she uses!! LOL.
Dear Aloha,
Please do keep on writing your wonderful articles! I look forward to them. You have a unique and delicious style of writing, well worth cultivating and refining.
Incidentally, and I meant to mention this a few weeks back, I am also an Aries Rooster (who also doesn’t believe in astrology!), as well as matching perfectly all the more serious criteria presented by Liane recently (adventurousness, truthfulness, and compassion, if I remember correctly). Unfortunately (from my point of view) I am the twelve years older than you kind of rooster!
And I thought you’d like this little tale from “Love Fraud Land” too…
A few weeks back I wrote to Donna to ask her to pass on my e-mail address to “xxx” (not her real pseudonym), a Love Fraud contributor who appeared to be in considerable distress at the time, as we only live about 130kms apart (about 80 miles to all you Americans) here in south-eastern Australia.
Well eventually she e-mailed me – and I e-mailed her back – , and she happened to say amongst other things that she’d ring me when she had her phones reconnected (casualties of big bills incurred ringing her psychopath, a familiar tale).
A few more weeks passed. I was exiting the express lane with my daughter at the supermarket in my local town. And lo and behold it’s MY psychopath not three feet in front of me. I had not caught sight of him or his vehicle in the street for at least six months. He exits by one door (I had to resort finally in the end to a restraining order a few months ago). We exit by another, my heart thumping. Again he crosses the footpath in front of us. We hang back before proceeding out of the building. We cross to where my car is parked. Just at that moment my phone rings. I see a strange number on the display, and in the illogicality of the moment, my heart palpitating at an even greater rate, I think, oh no, it’s some kind of trap, it must be him! Instead an unfamiliar female voice says “It’s xxx from LoveFraud”.
Hi Beverly: I wrote you several times … but we probably were on this site at different times … and as other people write, our messages get kicked onto the rest of cyber space blog.
I hope all is well with you.
Let’s all pray that Free finds peace and comes back. She was fun to chat with. Yes, I agree, we’re all at different levels of handling this. Have to find patience with those that are at the beginning of this horrific saga and gracefully let them flower to be the best that they can be again.
Peace.
Hiya Wini, I was not on site for a few days and with all the threads it is easy to miss personal messages. I am ok thank you. Free is such a gentle soul and had an unwarranted attack launched by someone else and she bounced back, and I hope she recovers and comes back, like she did before, because she knows she has support here. I think it can be easy to misconstrue the kinds of information that people are putting across. A person who doesnt write very much, may come across as shallow and these are all assumptions which lead some people into building up a wrong profile of someone. Of course, with some of the older posters, we have a taste of their ‘essence’ and we know that they mean no harm and only good.
Peace and love to you Wini
My apologies to you Wini, I will look back and try to find your postings. I always enjoy reading your posts.
Dear Aloha,
One of the reasons I retired when I did (about 6 months after my husband was killed) was that my job was sooooooo stressful after the plane crash and the resulting PTSD of being the first on the scene, taking care of my son’s burns, trying to take care of my step-dad who was dying with cancer at the time, etc etc. My job was so stressful because our manager had left for another job, the new temporary manager was trying to get me to take the managers’ job, which I did NOT want to do, and staff shortage along with increased patient census.
I think though it financially impacted me greatly to have no salary coming in that I made a wise decision. We have to look, I think, at the TOTAL stress load in our lives and figure out what we can get rid of in the way of responsibilities or tasks. I have studied the effects of stress on humans for decades. I finally started applying it to ME–I finally realized that it can overcome even ME. I am HUMAN! DUH!!!
I saw my short term memory fly out the window, I saw my judgment fly out the window, I saw my cranky, angry mood fly IN the window, I saw lots of things and I did not feel I was competent in that context to continue to work at a very demanding job that was highly stressful, AND do a good job of taking the responsibility for others lives in my stressed hands. So, I retired.
I can definitely relate to your job where you work. I worked in an adolescent psych unit for a yr and a half and quit that job and went to a much less dangerous, violent and angry job, because the stres sof dealing with violence and anger from patients was too much after a while. Plus, physical safety was definitely not assured at the facility I was working at. Good decision.
I’m recovering now, but I know I still dont’ have the RESERVE strengths to cope with continual stress so I work very hard at decreasing stress in my life. I have been doing that by several methods, one was SETTING BOUNDARIES with others. Since good boundary setting was not “natural” with me, it actually created short term stress for me in “working up” to doing it. But, once it was done and the stress that had caused me to need to set boundaries was there, the NET effect was a decrease in stress.
Things like your dad’s health isn’t anything you can get the stress out of your life, it just IS what it IS, and the timing can’t be changed. Things like your job might be something you might look at and see if you can find another job that is not quite so stressful. Job changing in itself is a stress, but at the same time, if you can get one that isn’t quite so violent etc. maybe the NET effect would be a decrease in stress.
“Burn out” in stressful jobs like you have is not unusual, and so it is something for you to think about.
Cutting out your second job might be an option, though I know you need the extra income to work on your debts etc. but look at ALL the aspects of your life where there is stress and see what you can do to cut down on the stress.
My psych counselor kept pushing me to “get out more” and to “go places” and I coudln’t get him to see that A) that is stressful to me, not de-stressing, and B) I don’t have the extra money to be buying gas to run up and down the road to see my friends all the time (most live at a distance of 30-60 minutes driviing time) C) I LIKE being here on the farm D) I know what stresses me, I’m aware of things that make me more stressed. While HIS idea of destressing might be to visit someone, that would stress ME
Before all this hub-bub of last year I realized that I needed to cut my stress. I had not taken care of MY business interests and had actually lost tens of thousands of dollars in the decline in value of items that I needed to sell. I tried to put limits on the amount of time I spent entertaining my mother. I.e. SETTING BOUNDARIES with her—of course, she resented the heck out of that as she had come to expect that I would put everything on the back burner to take care of her wants, no matter what it cost ME to do so.
I enforced those boundaries, much to my eventual regret when she let the Trojan Horse P move in with her and be her caregiver/companion who was at her beck and call 24/7, and seemingly enjoyed doing it. Of course it was only about a month before he started getting money for her for this or that, plus the salary she was paying him. Plus, I have no doubt that it wasn’t long after he moved in that he started drugging her which made her more feeble mentally as well as physically, and of course made her sleep a good deal of the time which allowed him to rifle her financial papers etc. Then shortly after that he started the affair with my DIL which gave him even more information and power. Before all this my mom, like me, had never fully trusted our DIL, and in fact, not trusting her was one of the main reasons that we had the trust drawn up anyway, because we were afraid that after her dependent son died, she would take off and we didn’t want her to take off with any of my son C’s assets if he had inherited anything before she left. Up until that time we really didn’t know what was going on, and by March (he moved in about Thanksgiving) they already had her convinced I was out to control her and her money and my power of attorney had been revoked (unknown to me) and money transferred to the control of DIL, along with a POA to son C AND DIL. So they were in control by the first of March of not only mother but her money as well. I didn’t find out until May, and by that time mother was so drugged she could hardly stutter out a coherent sentence and could barely walk with a walker.
Of course from DEcember to May it was STRESS CENTRAL around here, and when I found out in early May that TH-P was a sex offender I got a Private Investigator to get me the dope on him which was AWFUL. Of course Mom wouldn’t believe any of these “lies” I had “made up” or even the picture rap sheet that I had “Fabricated on my computer” (since I am the MOST computer illiterate person you could know this was ridiculous) no one would look at my evidence.
KNowing by that time that my P-son was involved with all of this and that he was the master-mind behind it, and knowing the “loop hole” in the trust, that if I died first before mom, he couldn’t be cut out of all family assets, I realized that my LIFE WAS IN DANGER. Thank God at that point I did listen to my GUT and realize I couldn’t be safe in my home with the TH-P living at my mother’s so fled. Which actually added more STRESS to my life, leaving my home, the financial outlay for the RV to live in etc. but the safety of being away did give me some lower stress time. By that time I needed it desperately.
IN August, the TH-P and the DIL were arrested for trying to kill son C who had discovered their affair (but had told no one else) some of the stress was relieved.
It was only by December I felt safe enough to come home. It is only now that I am home, and feeling some better after my tick fever last summer, that I am really feeling like I am healing. NC with mother is the only way to go on that too, as she is not willing to acknowledge her part in all of this, or her enabling, etc. I no longer try to please her or let “what would mother think was right” influence what I do, or how I think.
Stress is a cumulative weigh on our backs, the bigger the stress and the longer we carry it the longer it takes to regain our strength.
I liken it to physical weight. A person can carry a 100 pound sack of potatoes maybe to the next town if it isn’t too far away, but carrying a 5 pound sack of potatoes to the nearest ocean may be an impossible task. Long distance runners that carry a pack cut the handle off their tooth brushes to decrease the weight of their packs by even a half ounce as carrying it a LONG distance makes it very heavy.
Since I have had a TREMENDOUS weight of stress on my back for so LONG I realize it will take me a long while to completely recover my emotional strength and reserves.
REtiring, and thus losing my greatest income was a stress, but the net of that stress reducing move was not so much money, but peace from that stress, so it was I think a good trade off.
NC with my P-son was a stress for sure, but the NET was decreased stress eventually. Ditto with my NC with Mom. The DIL is OUT OF OUR LIVES, and that is a BIG stress reduction. My son moving away was a stress, but our improved relationship is a big positive, so the net there is a big decrease in stress. The TH-P going to prison was a decrease in stress, him maybe getting out was an increase in stress, but I worked with the parole board and he is in til his sentence is done, so that is a big stress reduction.
Being home is a big stress reduction, taking care of my own business needs is a big stress reduction, though I am working harder than ever before in many ways. I can see progress and that helps to keep me motivated to keep on working.
Prices keep going up up up and my income isn’t so that is a stress, but I don’t have any problem cutting out the entertainment part of our budget to make up for that. I provide most of my entertainment here for myself any way. I’m frugal and don’t mind shopping for work clothes at the resale shops or the Goodwill store, who’s gonna laugh at my second hand tee shirt, the donkeys?
I barter for some things I could not do without and that helps too. I now have an expert mechanic who will do things that my son D isn’t expert enough to handle and I can pay in beef which I have a surplus of. I’m happy and the mechanic and his family are happy. I no longer have to repair fences on the farm or cut the weeds, because the people who rent the pasture do that, and they also feed my cattle and donkeys with hay they bale here on the farm, so I have no expense for my livestock which saves a considerable amount of money and work for me.
I have other friends who trade things with me, or trade out labor and barter with us. This helps keep both the financial aspect lower, but also strengthens bonds with people. There are just so many things I can think of that help to decrease the stress load on me, and the easiest one is to say “NO” when I feel no and don’t worry about it. I’m feeling peaceful here again in my sanctuary. Safe again. MY own little domain where I don’t have to dance to any tune but my own, and I am the fiddler.
I encourage all of you to look at your life and see where you are feeling stress from and see if there isn’t some way some how that you can decrease the stresses in your life. It may mean cutting out some friendship that is stressful, or going NC with a particularly stressful person, but it pays big dividends in the end and allows you to restore some of your emotional reserves. Tired isn’t just physical it is emotional too. Like Blondie said about talking to X-P she is TIRED of working on the relationship. Feeling tired emotionally is just like tired physically, you need a REST from it all.
I guess I have rambled on another “novel” —today is the anniversary of my husband’s death, 4 years ago. I had a couple of weepy days, especially when the young man who was 16 at the time and his mother came by to visit. His scars from the burns are so terrible, but thank God his face was spared, and he is doing so well, so it was a bittersweet visit.
Take care all, and keep on the road to healing, it does get better, and decreasing stress is one of the things you can do to yourself and for yourself to make it easier. (((all))))
Hi Beverly: I guess when we all don’t log in at the same time, we have to have conversations with ourselves (LOL). Hey, I’m used to it now … it’s been over 2 years since my EX moved out. Now it’s just me and my furry children (aka Pets). Speaking of pets. I tried to rescue this little baby bird that fell out of the tree. I don’t know how long he was baking on the sidewalk and when it happened. I feed him with an eye dropper baby food for birds (I have birds) mixed with water. Everything was fine … he ate it all up … I think he was paralyzed due to the fall. I had him on this nice cushion inside a plastic box. He was sleeping … then sadly, he was gone. So I just got in from burying him in my garden. So, I’m not doing good at this writing.
Peace.
Beverly, there is a parable I wrote to Henry chatting with him a few nights back. He was down in the dumps and this parable just popped into my mind. The one about the turtle and the scorpion.
You just never know what people pull out of your brains on these blogs. Something they write or a conversation that you are having … the urekka, out pops a memory they’ve stirred up… so I wrote it back to him.
I also remembered seeing these movies (again) after my EX left and realized he took most of his m.o. from these movies. Clip, clip here, clip, clip there … and that become his lifestyle … along with what I did for him. Sad. It makes me so sad inside knowing that they are ALL so screwed up inside. It just breaks my heart that they live year after year like this … in their BIG EGOS … without realizing God give us everything we need. If we want more, God provides those requests too. Very simple. Yet them living in their egos makes everything so difficult, not only for them, but everyone else they run into on their journey through life. I’m telling you, the courts have got to change things around and not assuming they are all has beens … Tolle explains how the ego works from God’s perspective, not what the egos and their assumptions are. It should be mandatory that Tolle’s book and the Bible are must reads for anyone doing time. Their release should be supervised by those in halfway houses ensuring Tolle’s theories are repeated and encouraging them step by step to go out in the world being humble and reading the word of God instead of living by what they’re egos dictate.
Peace.