Love, Sex and Mental Health

Love, Sex &

Mental Health

Love, Sex &

Mental Health

How the triune brain concept works in love, sex, relationships and mental health (including depression, anxiety, suicide and addiction)

Gilbert Bates

Love, Sex & Mental Health

Gilbert Bates © 2013

www.primaltherapy.net.au

First published by eText Press Publishing

This electronic edition 2015

Cover design by Ros MacLennan

Cover image Open Your Mind by Slaven Devic

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781311646392

Gilbert Bates has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act1988 and any and all other applicable international copyright laws to be identified as the sole author of this original work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade, transmission or otherwise be redistributed, sold or hired, without the publisher’s prior written consent. Further, this book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by the applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

To my parents,

who gave me life but not love.

To my children Karen and Greg,

who I did not love enough.

To my grandchildren Indah, Sofiana, Nathan and Ruth,

who taught me how to accept unconditional love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gilbert Bates was born into a dysfunctional family and subsequently suffered a serious mental breakdown at the age of 46. His prolonged journey back to good mental health included him undertaking Primal Therapy at the Janovian Primal Centre in Los Angeles. This is his story woven in amongst how the triune brain works in LOVE, SEX and MENTAL HEALTH.

FOREWORD

I have been a psychologist for more than twenty years. During this time, I have never encountered a form of intervention more effective than the approach Gilbert Bates describes in this book

Depression is striking our population in epidemic proportions.

Anxiety disorders (such as panic attacks) remain largely unexplained and are usually ineffectively treated.

Increasing numbers of our children are being diagnosed with attention deficit and hyper-active disorders.

And yet, if we ask our mental health experts why this is, and why these disorders are so tenacious despite a raft of ‘treatments’ being available, the answer will almost always be a vague explanation that ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain or ‘wrong thinking’ is behind the problem.

It is important to accept that what we believe causes a problem, largely determines how we attempt to fix it. In the examples above, this leads to treatments based on chemical and/or cognitive interventions. The suggestion is that, if we can get the blend of chemicals right, the dosage right, and maintain vigilant control of our thinking, we will be able to manage our disorder. The end result is usually an ever-increasing use of stimulant and depressant medications (often coupled with repeated cycles of cognitive therapy). At best, symptom relief is possible. Any dialogue with your mental health professional will be about managing and controlling your disorder, the word cure is not usually part of the conversation. Oh, and stop the medication (or stop applying the therapy) and the cycle of symptoms will almost certainly return!

In this book, Bates presents an alternative view; a view that offers a different interpretation of the cause of mental illness. It also offers a different approach to treatment. He says ‘chemical imbalances’ and ‘wrong thinking’ are just symptoms of a disorder driven by deeper underlying forces. Bates is not the first to argue this case of course. But he is unique in his use of the three-story house analogy to explain the concept of how the brain works.

Bates has a powerful message: When we connect to our deepest pain, we can do better than just manage our symptoms, we can address the causes and heal our lives.

Bates presents his case using simple analogy, backed up with uncomplicated explanations of our brain physiology and supported with raw examples from his personal experiences. His therapy process takes him on an amazing journey of personal discovery that gradually allows him to discover what a mentally healthy human really feels like.

Bates encourages us to re-interpret almost all our beliefs, in particular our connection to others and to do this as more than just an intellectual exercise but, rather, from a ‘felt’ perspective. It is this recognition of our feelings and the key role they play in our mental health that separates this book from others. Without a connection to another, life is meaningless. But such connections are not something that we can role-play. They come from the ability to access our own deep emotional levels without the fear of being overwhelmed by our past pains. Psychological defences are how we manage/hide past pain and Bates not only explains our need for emotional defences but highlights the terrible consequences of remaining ‘defended’ and the journey we must make to begin living without them.

In this book, Gilbert Bates delivers a message that is truly life-changing. If your life seems to be a series of dysfunctional patterns; if no amount of effort to change makes any difference; if you are tired of managing your emotional world... or simply just tired of life, then the message in this book is for you.

Steve (Peter) Tandy,

Psychologist, B. App Sc (Psych)

Post Graduate Dip (Psych)

and M. HR &ER

AUTHOR’S NOTES

The Primal Theory and Therapy I write about in this book is my own interpretation of what I learnt and experienced at the Janov Primal Centre in Los Angeles between 2004 and 2009. Arthur Janov has written many books on Primal Theory and Therapy, but some people complain that the concepts are hard to understand and the language a bit too academic.

I tried to write this book in a more simple and personal style. To this end I also introduced new analogies, as well as a Global Area of Love (GAL) score.

Although this book is not designed to be a truly academic approach, in the sense I have to back all my statements with peer reviewed research, I also understand I have a responsibility and duty of care, especially as I talk about things like depression and suicide.

I quote research when I feel it necessary to do so, and I also quote people outside of the Primal understanding to help support my case for Primal Theory.

The internet, especially Wikipedia, is a good source of information, although academics would say the information is not reliable enough. Where I have used the internet as an information source in writing this book, I am confident that the information is ‘common knowledge’ or I have read similar information from academic books and peer reviewed journals.

Quite often I say ‘research shows’. I use this approach when it is obvious to me that the research is common knowledge in literature and within the psyche profession. I have been reading and studying issues around mental health for nearly twenty years, so I understand that some people may not regard some research as common knowledge. However, I was determined not to write a book that ended in fifteen pages of bibliography.

First and foremost this is a book about the feeling brain, not the cognitive brain. The psyche industry is only just coming to realise that humans have an ‘emotional’ brain that may have importance in understanding human thought and actions. Therefore research on the emotional brain is relatively scarce. In fact the present literature does not seem to understand that we actually have three parts to our brains, the sensations, the feelings and the cognitive brain. Emotions are the result of the activity of the sensations and feelings.

When I started writing this book I used the words Psychologists and Psychiatrists when referring to their approach to mental health. This quickly became cumbersome so I shortened the phrase to ‘the psyches’. I have left the shortened version in this book, as I became attached to it during the course of writing, but have widened its meaning to include other counsellors and the researchers who deal in mental health issues.

Another group of people are also interested in mental health, and I refer to them as the ‘souls’. These are the Natural Therapists, Faith Healers, Body Workers etc, in fact all the people who work outside the mainstream medical approach. I could have called them ‘spiritualists’ but I reserved that term for the underlying spirituality of every human on this planet. At the level of ‘Spirit’ we are all the same.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I think of the effort I put into writing this book, one of my first thoughts is that I had to do it all alone. In some respects this was true because the journey from suicidal depression, to leaving my family and friends, and eventually undergoing Primal Therapy in Los Angeles was not a well-trodden path. There were no textbooks that laid out the steps I needed to take to get the answers I was asking of life.

Consequently every step of the way seemed like a lonely foray into the unknown. However I could never have achieved what I managed to achieve without the help and support of many people along the way.

I would like to thank my immediate and extended family for their love, support and concern.

Also thanks to my old friends on Kangaroo Island, and my newer ones at Stones Corner in Queensland and Santa Monica in Los Angeles. You all believed in me when I had so much trouble believing in myself.

Special thanks go to the Glasson and Whitham families. Your continuing support was invaluable. Stephen Davidson is a long- time friend and confidant – every man needs at least one in his life. Stephen also read an early draft of the manuscript. My sister Bronwyn helped with the typing and gave some feedback.

Steve Tandy came into my life only recently, and it is great to have a friend who understands Primal Theory and Therapy. He also read the manuscript and gave me confidence that I was on the right path in delivering my messages.

Finally to my editors, John Harman and Peter Ramshaw who pulled the manuscript into shape without changing the basic way I wanted to express my experiences.

Gilbert Bates

February 2014

www.primaltherapy.net.au

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE NEW PARADIGM

SECTION ONE

THE BRAIN

AN INTRODUCTION

THE BRAIN STEM

Early memories

THE THALAMUS

THE LIMBIC SYSTEM

THE CORTEX

EMOTION vs FEELING

SECTION TWO

SETTING THE SCENE

THE BRAIN AS THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN

Basement

Living rooms

Penthouse

HOME INSPECTION

MY CREDENTIALS FOR WRITING THIS BOOK

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THINKING AND FEELING

GLOBAL AREA OF LOVE (GAL) SCORES

DETERMINING A GAL SCORE

THE PRIMAL PROCESS

IMPRINTING OF PRIMAL PAIN

STARTING THE JOURNEY

THE NATURE OF A FEELING ROOM PRIMAL

THE NATURE OF A BASEMENT PRIMAL

A CLASSICAL PRIMAL

SECTION THREE

PRIMAL THEORY vs THE CURRENT PARADIGM

GENETICS

A CLOSER LOOK AT HISTORY

BEHAVIOURISM

PSYCHOTHERAPIES

MEDICATION

Hurdles for medication to overcome

Actions at the synapse

Why drugs have off-label effects

SPIRITUALITY

Spiritual presence

Creating another existence

SECTION FOUR

PRIMAL THEORY AND SOME COMMON PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

ANXIETY

My own journey through terror

Symptoms explained

ANGER – A PRIMAL VIEW OF VIOLENCE

DEPRESSION

The Primal Theory viewpoint

My own journey with depression

Depression cure

Relationship between anxiety and depression

Research on Psilocybin

ADDICTIONS

Co-morbidity

My addictions

An ice cream addiction

Related issues

Addictions, drugs and feelings

SUICIDE

Not wanting to live like this

My own battle with suicidal ideation

LONELINESS

CRYING

My first big cry

The healing that followed

Sunday March 11, 2011

The bonus of the week

Crying deeply

The crying child

SECTION FIVE

DEFENCE SYSTEMS IN THE HUMAN BRAIN

Biological defences

Psychological defences

Examples of defence systems and associated behaviours

RATIONALITY AND SANITY

Arthur Freeman

Anders Breivik

A lost soul

WHY RELATIONSHIPS FAIL

GAL score and relationships

THE BARRIER TO LIFE:

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAIN AND PLEASURE

Self-help books

A further note on self-help books

SECTION SIX

A JOURNEY INTO FEELING

My sexual journey

Being a man

Ultimate orgasm as part of good mental and physical health

The ultimate orgasm

Further discussion

What is so special about orgasm?

REVISITING THE CONCEPT OF NIRVANA AND/OR THE INNER GURU

BHAKTI: All powerful, all attractive supreme person

THE INNER GURU: A subtle principle that resides in all of us

NIRVANA: A blessed state in which the individual transcends desire and suffering

ZEN: A type of peace and calm and living fully in each moment

BUDDHISM: Samadhi, which is peace tranquillity, ecstasy and oneness with God or nature

SPIRITUALITY: Accessing a state of truth, enlightenment, power and peace

THE HUMAN MORAL CODE

SECTION SEVEN

RAISING CHILDREN

RAISING CHILDREN PART 1

Relationship is key

In parenting, always remember the words ‘firm but kind’

See misbehaviour as a problem you are going to solve

Learn to distinguish between a child’s natural exuberance for life and attention seeking behaviour

Be a good listener

Children learn about relationships from watching how their parents relate to each other

Be careful of the nicknames and phrases you use to describe your children

Do not yell at, hit or berate an ADD child

Give a child choices

RAISING CHILDREN PART 2

How to be with your child

RAISING CHILDREN PART 3

The loved brain grows

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I – GLOBAL AREA OF LOVE (GAL) SCORES

APPENDIX II – MY BREAKDOWN AT AGE 46

The aftermath

APPENDIX III – PRIMAL THERAPY TODAY

INTRODUCTION

When I was forty-six, I had what I will call an ‘emotional breakdown’. Although my existence until then was not as good as I would have liked, for the most part it was reasonable. I was proud that I had a strong mind, but when the breakdown occurred, my mind started acting in ways over which I had no control.

I had lost the strength of mind that had got me through life thus far. Obviously my brain, or parts of it, was doing its own thing. This was making my life difficult and, above all, very confusing. Nevertheless, I took each day as it came and tried to deal with it as best I could.

Initially I sought professional help from a GP, who referred me to a psychiatrist. Later, I was drawn to explore alternative therapies.

Both the mainstream and alternative methodologies helped me to some degree but I was still left with my central problems: severe depression and suicidal thoughts.

It turned out that I was also suffering from anxiety, which quite often accompanies depression. But I had lived with anxiety all my life and so regarded this as quite normal, wrongly believing ‘everybody is like this’. Nevertheless, I was reading everything I could about the brain and also lots of self-help books. But these had limited value because I still could not understand how my brain worked. I became obsessed with cracking the nut of understanding.

An interesting thing about obsession is that it often occurs in people who have experienced early childhood trauma. That was true of me. An obsessive compulsive disorder is most often comprised of a group of neurotic symptoms that act as a defence against the Primal pain generated by childhood trauma. (See the chapter on Defence Systems).

Another negative aspect of my life was a difficult relationship with my wife. I could not understand why I was not getting the level of love and affection I desired. This placed a great strain on our relationship. My study of so many self-help books did help me to understand that my parents’ lack of love for me was partly the cause. However, that understanding did virtually nothing to alleviate my symptoms. My need to understand more about what was going on drove me to have many discussions with my wife about what love is... and what it is not. Eventually, however, I left both the relationship and my life’s work.

On the first day of my new life in Brisbane, I stood on the steps of my flat and asked myself, ‘Well what now? What do I want from life?’

The answer was ‘love’.

I am not a religious man but that morning I turned my eyes skyward and said, with an all-important intensity, ‘Show me what love is.’ Religion would say that action was a ‘prayer’. Spirituality would say it was a ‘positive affirmation’. Psychology would say it was ‘positive intent’… or possibly even ‘delusional’ (as it could be argued, I guess, that I was talking to a non-existent entity).

In any event, I now had two obsessions: How did the brain work and what was love? As part of my constant search for answers to these two questions, I frequented many second-hand bookstores (buying new self-help books was expensive) and yet even the cheaper second-hand versions did not advance my understanding in either area.

One day, as I was walking from my flat in Woolloongabba down to Southbank on the Brisbane River, I passed one of these bookshops. I had been in it before but I suddenly felt a very strong compulsion to go in again.

Inside I found The Primal Scream, by Arthur Janov. After reading the back cover, I opened it at random and started to read. I was astounded. The words immediately made sense! I tried some other pages with the same result. Each paragraph was filled with exciting information which was making sense to me. I purchased the book. By the time I finished reading it, I knew that, one way or the other, I was going to far-away Los Angeles to try Janov’s therapy.

So, this book is about how the brain works, what love is, and how Primal Therapy is a tool that opens the door to understanding both.

THE NEW PARADIGM

Primal Theory offers a whole new paradigm for the understanding and treatment of mental health. We are social animals and we have survived millions of years of evolution by relying on each other for our safety and our needs. This is especially so for the human infant who is totally reliant on others for its survival. A baby has physical and emotional needs; both essential for survival. When these needs are not met, the baby sends out signals that include crying, body movements and facial expressions. Should these needs continue to be unmet, there comes a point where the stress becomes so great that the baby’s system is in danger of overloading and so it shuts down its stress response. This is the time when the sensing / feeling component, ‘I am not getting what I need, therefore I am at risk of dying’, is too much to handle and is therefore repressed away. This repression leads to neurotic behaviour that will, from then on, be the child’s modus operandi – his or her way of operating in this world.

Primal Theory calls this process ‘imprinting’. Imprinting is a normal part of brain activity, and it works on both good and bad inputs. Primal Therapy is a way of accessing that old, stored Primal pain and releasing it in manageable instalments. Once the pain has been released, the person is able to let go of neurotic behaviour and so be more fully human; a human who is free of abnormal psychology and who can relate to others in a meaningful way –the way we were designed to integrate. Our very survival as a species depended on it – and probably still does.

So, reader, you may be asking: ‘Well, where is the new paradigm?’ After all, everything I have written above is fairly common knowledge. And there are many therapies dealing with the symptoms of trauma that appear to work. There are also psychotherapies that target emotions and feelings.

But Primal Therapy is different. Primal Therapy targets the original imprints and is predicated on the belief that releasing the emotional (Primal) pain attached to those original imprints will lead to a cure. For this to occur, the patient needs to be ‘in’ the feeling –that is, to regress so far back that he or she feels and acts like a baby or child.

Many psychotherapies can get a patient to cry ‘about’ their feelings, which may bring a temporary relief, but never a cure.

Insight therapies may tell patients why they are sick, which enables them to understand their problems. But it is still not a cure –the patients still have their problems.

There is a very large gap in being able to cry ‘about’ as opposed to crying ‘in’ a feeling. Crying ‘about’ does not require a person to over-ride his or her formidable defence system. Crying ‘in’ does. But it takes a skilled therapist to help a patient slowly dismantle his or her defences so that this can happen.

Remember, a strong defence system is put in place to avoid the overwhelming Primal pain from coming to consciousness. That defence system also shuts down the human ability to feel. Love is a feeling: so the defence system that reduces our ability to feel pain also reduces our ability to feel love.

Section One

THE BRAIN

INTRODUCTION

The brain is a very complex organ, and neuroscientists are still hard at work trying to unravel its mysteries. Originally, what I will call ‘psyche people’ (psychologists, psychiatrists and others that deal in mainstream mental health issues) could only see the brain as one big blob of an organ and so research was undertaken with that understanding. For example: information (an independent variable) was given to a patient, usually in a controlled environment while their brain output (the dependent variable) was recorded. Much psyche research involved controlled input measured against output with no understanding of what was happening inside the brain.

That understanding is shifting, mainly due to neuroscientists now having the means to understand some of what does happen within the brain. They can see what areas of the brain are active during given actions or thoughts. This has led to the discovery of an ‘emotional’ brain that is separate from the cognitive or ‘thinking’ brain.

This emotional brain is called the ‘limbic system’ and includes the parts of the brain known as the amygdala and the hippocampus. (Most scientific literature also includes the brainstem as part of the limbic system, but, as we shall see, the stem is a separate area that performs different functions).

During the middle of the twentieth century, Paul McLean developed a triune (three part) model of the human brain. This model was based on the brain‘s evolutionary stages of development.

These three stages are:

The brainstem – sometimes referred to as the ‘reptilian’ brain

The limbic system –or ‘emotional’ brain

The cortex–the intellectual, thinking, planning brain.

McLean’s theory was not widely accepted because other neuroscientists argued that his approach was too simplistic. They argued that the pathways within the brain went up, down and sideways, making boundaries hard to define. Whatever the physical structure of the brain turns out to be, there are certainly three different regions as far as Primal Theory is concerned. And these three regions correspond to the McLean triune brain theory. I will now enlarge on them to cover Primal Theory.

The cortex: or more specifically the pre-frontal cortex - the thinking, planning, cognitive brain. Primal Therapy starts in this area and involves ‘talking about an experience’.

The limbic system: the feeling centre of the brain. The amygdala shows high activity during feeling states. This is the second stage of therapy – when a person goes from thinking / talking about a situation to the underlying feeling. This is usually referred to as ‘dropping down’ – going from one level to another. Dropping from talking into feeling is the most difficult stage of Primal Therapy. Lots of very deep and painful crying happens in this space during treatment.

The brainstem: senses our biological state and makes changes as necessary; for example, our heart rate and breathing are increased when the brainstem senses that oxygen levels are low. Paul McLean separated the brainstem from the limbic system on biological grounds; yet the brainstem also senses our psychological life. As babies we ‘sense’ our lives and communication is enacted through the senses of touch, sight, sound, taste and smell.

In Primal Therapy a person will drop from the feeling state and into a state of sensation. This is the place we need to go to ‘sense’ the original trauma – the lack of love. It is the place we deal with the original imprint.

The brainstem is the place where the body does its own thing during therapy. It forces the body to twist, stretch, strain and groan – whatever it needs to do to release the Primal pain. This is where the brain meets the body: the mind/ body connection. In this ‘sensing’ state there is no talking and not much feeling – a person disengages from his or her thinking, feeling brain.

These states are not theories; they actually exist. They can be experienced the same way by everyone who undergoes Primal Therapy. Individual, early-life environments will change what each person’s experience is in each area of the brain, but it will always be: THINK – FEEL – SENSE. These three different states are totally diverse ways of being and, for us to be truly human; we need to be able to access all three levels when appropriate and necessary. One of the main purposes of this book is to show that we humans are losing access to our feelings and sensations, while over-indulging in our thinking, intellectual brain.

This disconnection is the cause of many human problems; especially in regard to our relationships with each other. The following sections will discuss each of these three brain areas in more detail.

THE BRAINSTEM

In evolutionary terms, the brainstem is the oldest part of the brain. It is also referred to as the ‘reptilian’ brain, as it appeared in reptiles around 300 million years ago. That part of the human brain is still much the same as the modern day reptilian brain. For example, though the crocodile has not evolved much over millions of years, in evolutionary terms it is very successful.

The reptilian brain senses its environment. But it has no feelings or emotions and definitely no cortex to think with. Reptiles do not nurture their young: the babies have to fend for themselves from day one. In fact, reptilian young can be a food source for their parents if they happen to get in the way. So the reptilian brain evolved in a way that maintained the body’s biological systems such as circulation, breathing, reproduction, digestion, fear response and territorial behaviour.

The brainstem is best known for these biological functions, though it also has other systems that imprint early environmental situations. In the human brain these environmental imprints largely revolve around the early relationships we have with other humans, especially our parents. It is difficult to find any research that deals with understanding the brainstem in terms of a person’s psychological make-up. The brainstem is therefore better known for its biology than its psychology. For example the locus coeruleus, a nucleus on the floor of the forth ventricle within the brainstem, is known to be active in the fear response. Yet, can it register love as well? If so, where and how are the imprints held? Neuroscience does not yet fully understand the ‘imprint’, but, to a Primal patient, they are real and they are a powerful force.

Now to a very important understanding that has consequences in how the brainstem affects human behaviour. The reptilian brain has developed a number of very inflexible behaviours, both biological and psychological. Various authors have tried to describe them, and they are something like this. Reptilian brain behaviours are automatic; they have a ritualistic quality and are highly resistant to change. They are rigid, obsessive, compulsive and paranoid. Last, but not least, the reptilian brain keeps repeating the same behaviours over and over again, never learning from past mistakes. These behaviours are great from a physical survival point of view, and also if one had good imprints implanted early in life. However, if the imprints in the human brain are of fear(of near death experiences in the birth canal, of alienation and a lack of touch and of many other traumatic happenings) then the rigid,