Remember the bit of advice from the 1960s -- if it feels good, do it?
Well, we might know a teenager who just got pregnant because sex “felt good” but who will have to deal with the consequences of tending to an actual needy and noisy infant.
Or an alcoholic or drug addict who said that first drink or drug felt good but now the eighth drink and ninth drug spiraled to compulsive and out of control behavior.
Or — maybe you have a story like this, one that you just can't explain, no matter how much you try to wrap your brain around it.
The truth is:
We need to value both feelings AND thoughts. One is not more important than the other.
The truth is:
Logic is important and good. It is a gift.
But experience is necessary. It is a gift.
The understanding of the complexity of our brains is the main reason that I have been attracted to experiential psychotherapy and immense value of experience in our lives and how it fits with logic and intellect. It is the reason that talk therapy, as valuable as it is, has its limits.
A (very) short lesson in brain science:
We have a complicated brain with a number of parts that have specific jobs. And our brain has two hemispheres, the right brain and the left brain.
The left brain is the logical side of the self. Logic examines general forms that arguments may take, which forms are valid, and which are fallacies. It is one kind of critical thinking. It is the part of the brain that puts words together, allowing me to speak and you to listen and make sense of what I am saying.
The right brain is focused on emotions, intuition and sensory experience. Your right brain loves colors and textures and pink, purple and red – with sparkles and fringe, even if it doesn’t match! Your right brain loves the picture on this blog page more than the words. This side of the brain is the storehouse of feelings, and feelings are not logical, they just are. And if you think that you can explain your feelings through logic, then you might be rationalizing and denying – or just making stuff up!
The logic and intuition of our brains is meant to swing back and forth so that we are able to constantly switch between these two valuable ways of being in the world.
Here’s another interesting tidbit:
We also know that experiences change our brain. In trauma studies, for instance, scientists have actually been able to monitor how there are cellular changes within the brain when the person experiences a trauma such as abuse, combat or another horrifying event.
However, there’s other good news:
People who are survivors of trauma can heal when their brains change. This means that extremely painful or scary experiences can change the brain for the worse and that positive experiences can change the brain for the better. This is called healing.
