49: Mary Bowles, LMFT Describes the Science Behind “Natural but Not Effective” Strategies in How Families Cope with the Additional Stress of Addiction
“You don’t think your way out of stress; you feel your way out of it.” –Mary Bowles
Sometimes, there are things that we’ve been doing off beam yet we’re never aware until our understanding of things get flipped to the reality of matters. Therefore, it’s good to know how things really work lest we end up hurting ourselves and others. Listen in as our guest, Mary Bowles, gives us an enlightening elucidation on how our neural framework really operates.
Mary Bowles developed her fascination in the medical field at an early age. She grew up acquainted with her mom’s nursing manuals and decided this is where she wants to be. At that, she pursued her passion in Applied Neuroscience. She has undergone numerous trainings from renowned experts. At present, she helps her clients as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and founder of the MindWise Institute.
Everybody wants genuine recovery rather than just an ephemeral relief. To accomplish that, we must not depend on perfunctory procedures. Rather, we must ascertain what’s really effective and applicable. Join in to today’s podcast and deepen your understanding about neuroscience and memory reconsolidation as a way of effective recovery strategy. As said, recuperation occurs not by thinking, rather by feeling your way out of stress. Let your brain do the work!
Highlights:
03:06 The Road to Neuropsychotherapy
07:07 How Neuroscience Helps Families Recover
11:54 Dopamine & The HPA Axis of Human Predictions
19:44 Letting the Brain Do the Work
26:25 Natural but Not Effective
31:56 What is Memory Reconsolidation?
42:44 Self-Treatment or Therapist?
47:54 Cutting-off Patterns
Did you know about the Science of gut feeling? Join our host, @TFRSolution as he interviews @MindWiseInst on #naturalbutnoteffectivestrategies #stress #experiences #MemoryReconsolidation#Neuroscience Share on X
Connect With Mary
Website: www.mindwiseinstitute.com/
Email: marybowles@mindwiseinstitute.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MindWiseInstitute/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MindWiseInst
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-bowles-lmft-rrt-miacn-14924b49/
Telephone: (970) 550-7555
Quotes:
08:48 “There’s triggers for an addict, but there’s triggers for family members too. And so we all respond normally to the context of our lives but we don’t always respond effectively.” –Mary Bowles
10:11 “Every person is different. So we find satisfaction from different things.” –Mary Bowles
13:27 “Belief systems from the past are always there and always operating. And out of that comes our thinking, our present thinking, and then we take actions based on that thinking.” –Jeff Jones
19:44 “I think the biggest thing is to know that you don’t think your way out of those situations, you have to feel your way out of them.” –Mary Bowles
35:34 “…neurons that fire together wire together” –Mary Bowles
47:53 “human beings are also herd animals. We require our connections around us, we have a lot of meanings attached to our experiences that really drive us to behave in a certain way that makes other people comfortable.” –Mary Bowles
48:18 “Knowing that addiction is also a family disorder, you have to create an environment where meanings can be changed, and responses can be changed.” –Mary Bowles
50:00 “There’s value even in discomfort. It causes us to avoid things that might not be very effective for us too.” –Mary Bowles
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
JEFF: So welcome to the party caste families navigating addiction and recovery. Today I am here with Mary Bowles. I am very excited to have this conversation. I met Mary and now maybe two or three months ago at a two day workshop in Denver around rapid resolution therapy. And so I was very inspired with what I learned there. And I met Mary. Mary is a therapist, she’s an LMFT. Her focus is understanding neuroscience and communicating to normal people about what neuroscience is. And so hopefully we will have the conversation where Mary can start to explain what happens in the brain in different environments and different conditions and when people have different reactions and responses, I. E like addiction in the family. So Mary, welcome.
MARY: Hello. Thank you for having me.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for planning time and being on here. So a good way to start here is if you could just introduce yourself. Anything that I didn’t say or you want to correct from what I said?
MARY: Oh, okay. Well, yeah, as you said, I’m an LMFT and my interest is in neuroscience. I was trained in clinical neuropsychotherapy by Peter Rosseau few years back. And around that time I gained an interest in memory. Reconsolidation I, when I was growing up, my mom was a nurse and she had nursing manuals around. So I always had an interest in, in the medical field. And when I, when I started learning about neuroscience and learned about memory reconsolidation, which is how you interact with an earlier memory to really change how your brain responds to it, I think is –
JEFF: –Hmm.
MARY: It’s kind of the easiest way to explain it. I around that same time again, I was attending an RRT training, a rapid resolution therapy training with John Connolly and really could see memory reconsolidation happening. And I realized that that was really the, the foundation for why rapid resolution therapy worth.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: And so, I just really liked it. And I’ve found, yeah in my research, rapid resolution therapy I think is one of the most rapid ways of, of treating trauma. And I prefer to look at trauma as being on the spectrum of stress. So you know, stress, you, you’ll have mildly bothered, right? And then you know to the, the opposite and you’ll have trauma or even complex trauma where you have multiple experiences of trauma highly enough on top of one another.
JEFF: Yeah, I really liked the way you frame that as the continuum of incremental, you know, more and more stress and then a trauma, whether it be like a single events situation or multiple. And you know from your description there, I mean one of the things that I’m thinking and when I saw John for two days down in Denver, one of the things that I started to get was that like you’re talking about neuroscience really described a lot of the underpinnings of John’s therapy.
MARY: Yeah, absolutely.
JEFF: And you had a presentation like a couple of weeks later that I could not attend.
MARY: Yeah. John allowed me to teach neuroscience of rapid resolution therapy, which is, yeah applied memory reconsolidation. And so I did a five hour training for him. That was, it was a hit.
JEFF: Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. Well so, you know what I wanted to do was to get into a little bit the conversation about how the information that you have about neuroscience, about the brain, about the incremental progression from stress to trauma to complex trauma. How that information can be most helpful for family members who have a loved one that they have been dealing with and trying to, you know, cope with and help them and all of the kinds of things that happen with addiction and the family.
MARY: –Hmm.
JEFF: So, –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -do you have a sense on how you would like to jump into this topic or do you want me to,
MARY: Well, I think what I like to do is really normalized behavior for every person in the family, including the person that’s struggling with addiction or recovery. Because addictive behavior is, is really driven by our dopamine system. It’s not what a substance does to our body, but how it drives our dopamine system to get more and more of that reward.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: And so if somebody is stressed and what our brain does is seeks out dopamine –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -and dopamine is really produced by the prediction that something is going to be satisfying.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so.
JEFF: I love the way you said that, the prediction that something is going to be satisfying because you know, family members, they’re in somewhat of the same situation. You know, –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -they’re using strategies, coping…defense mechanisms and you know, with the hope that what they do is there’s gonna be some resolution to the chaos and the family.
MARY: Yeah. And when I say satisfaction, I’m, I’m talking about satisfaction to approach something or satisfaction to avoid. And –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -so avoiding a memory that pops into your head or avoiding a triggers as we call them. And there’s, there’s triggers for an addict, but there’s triggers for family members too. And so we, we all respond normally to the context of our life, but we don’t always respond effectively. And…every human brain has about a hundred trillion synaptic connections, which is the space between neurons, where they connect and that space between those neurons, that synapse is really where our experiences are stored electrochemically.
There's triggers for an addict, but there's triggers for family members too. And so we all respond normally to the context of our lives but we don't always respond effectively.” –Mary Bowles #FamiliesNavigatingAddiction&RecoveryPodcast… Share on XJEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so if each person has a hundred trillion of those and there’s seven and a half billion people on the planet, the mathematical likelihood that any two people are going to be the same as zero, essentially zero. And, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -and so when we understand that human beings respond to their experiences and what’s wired into their brain already, all of those responses are normal. Our dopamine system says that’s the most satisfying direction to go. So go there. And it’s not intentional. It’s not even conscious.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: It’s what our body does without us even thinking about it to get what gives us the most satisfaction.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: Every person is different. So we find satisfaction from different things.
Every person is different. So we find satisfaction from different things.” –Mary Bowles #FamiliesNavigatingAddiction&RecoveryPodcast #JeffJones Share on XJEFF: Yeah, I mean, so one of like a, just a generic example that I think of for instance is if you know there’s a partnership, you know the man and the woman met, the man is in early recovery or something like that and the woman is concerned and he, he’s supposed to be home at five o’clock, it’s five thirty he’s not home. She texts him, you know, he doesn’t respond and she starts getting worried and, and coming up with stories as to where he might be and then he walks in, you know, at six o’clock or something like that and immediately she can assume like a worst case scenario thinking.
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: Kind of thing. And that’s a, I mean so that’s what I think of when I hear your explanation there about kind of…normal but not effective and, –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -and memories.
MARY: Yeah. And her behavior in that situation is making a prediction and we like to be correct. That drives dopamine right?
JEFF: –Oh God.
MARY: When we’re correct. Then we get that hit of dopamine, which our brains says, Yep, you were right five times and now you’re going to be right a sixth time.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: –Right?
JEFF: And –
MARY: –And –
JEFF: So people who may not understand what dopamine is. Can you say a little bit more about that?
MARY: Yeah. Dopamine mean is, is our brains reward system. And so just like the scenario you just gave, when she makes a prediction the first time that maybe he’s using and as correct, then she becomes more sure the next time that if he’s late he must be using. And when she finds out, that’s correct dopamine is produced again. And –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -so she made a prediction and it was validated. And so dopamine is produced. So that dopamine system tells us to move in that direction again to be correct because being correct is like food for the rat.
JEFF: –Right. Yeah. Yeah.
MARY: And sometimes it’s easier to think of it as a rat. If you feed a rat, you want to train a rat to push the lever every five minutes.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: You do that by rewarding the rat for pushing the lever. As long as he pushes the lever every five minutes. And rat doesn’t have the ability to tell time its reward system is saying push the lever right about now and it gets more and more precise.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah.
MARY: Brains, were the same way.
JEFF: So one of the things that I think of Mary when I hear you say that is like an I…use, you know, pretty simplistic kind of language, but that is like belief systems from the past are always there and always operating. And out of that comes our thinking, our presently –
Belief systems from the past are always there and always operating. And out of that comes our thinking, our present thinking, and then we take actions based on that thinking.” –Jeff Jones #FamiliesNavigatingAddiction&RecoveryPodcast #JeffJones Share on XMARY: –Yes.
JEFF: -thinking and then we take actions. Base on –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -thinking.
MARY: And it’s not conscious. And intentional as our –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -culture really has taught us to believe. Think about when you learned how to drive. I am, I’m not sure if you read my, my article in the Neuropsychotherapist, but one of the examples I use is, remember when you learned how to drive, how overwhelming it was to think about the pedals and the turn signals and then look left and look, right? That was a very conscious experience, right? That awareness, and not many people could you ask if they enjoyed that and they said: ” yes, I loved it”. Most of us are so overwhelmed by it when, when I bring it up, but that conscious experience ended up deriving an unconscious experience, which is now your drive from one town to another. You never think about the peddles, you never think –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -about the turn signal. So if you see a, a speed limit sign that says reduce your speed to 50 your foot just comes off the pedal. You don’t think about your foot coming off the pedal.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so that, that’s really your dopamine system having driven that foot coming off the pedal because you know that’s more satisfying than getting a ticket or, or wrecking or any of those things. That’s the reward system as well.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean how I would talk about that is, is when we’re learning new skills, we’re, it’s the semantic memory kind of creating new pathways and when we’re just kind of doing something like driving a car that we don’t have to think about at all. It’s like the procedural memory, like –
MARY: –Hmm.
JEFF: Two different memory systems. It’s kind of tech, it’s –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -You know, mumbo jumbo. So I would like to kind of like bring this back to, you know, an example of what happens in families with addiction.
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: For –
MARY: –So, –
JEFF: –chaos or this, this –
MARY: –Yes.
JEFF: Dress the trauma continuum that, that you mentioned.
MARY: Yeah. Well, yeah, again, looking at the brain, if I open up the door and let a bear in the room, your body immediately responds by fighting, fleeing, or freezing. And you don’t have to think about that. It happens immediately because adrenaline is produced, which gives you the energy, you know, activates your glucose, and you know that anything that gives you the energy to, to fight or flee, but it also adrenaline and cortisol work together. Cortisol is our stress hormone –
JEFF: –Hmm.
MARY: -and cortisol is what hubs. One of the things that does is helps redirect blood flow to our heart, –
JEFF: –Mm.
MARY: -our lungs, our muscles, and our survival brain, which is the back of our brain, the first part to develop after conception –
JEFF: –Hmm.
MARY: -and away from this thriving brain, the front of your brain, prefrontal cortex is what it’s called. That’s the problem solving, creative, effective responding part of the brain. And so for instance, this wife, the example that you gave, this wife is imagining that he must be using his early in recovery. He’s done this over and over and over again. And…just as a bear will activate that system, –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -human beings, because they have this creative brain, it also creates problems for itself. And so even, you know, let’s say he’s stuck in traffic, but she’s decided that he’s using.
JEFF: That he stopped off at the bar or something,
MARY: Right. Yeah. And so human beings create that adrenaline and cortisol system that it’s called the HPA axis. Hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal access based solely a thought.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so for instance, if a deer gets chased by a bear and it gets away from the bear, it just goes back to eating. If a human gets chased by a bear, it gets away from the bear. It will stress about having been chased by a bear, having been chased by a bear. And what do I do to prevent that from happening again? Which –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -those fats thoughts can still activate the HPA axis.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so she’s activating that HPA axis based solely on a thought. Instead of responding only to what is happening, like a deer. There’s the bear got to go and it gets away.
JEFF: –Yeah, Yeah.
MARY: Human beings try to make predictions. And so I think it was maybe John Connolly that said, if a hurricane is coming, are you going to replace the windows and the shingles before or after the hurricane?
JEFF: –Hmm.
MARY: Right? And so when she’s sitting there thinking he must have stopped at the bar. It’s like she started to replace the windows on the hurricane hasn’t even hit. He might come in and say: “Nope, I was just stuck in traffic. There was no service where I was stuck”, you know?
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And then she’s stuck in that, that –
JEFF: –Yeah. Got it.
MARY: -Core texts being closed off.
JEFF: So, you know, following up on that same example, are there from how you’re talking about this tips or suggestions that you could have for family members who…have a quick impulse and that like this natural thing happens, boom, without even conscious thought. Is there strategies that you’re aware of that you would like to share here? I mean, I know I have some I talk about, but I’d like to hear from you.
MARY: Sure. I think the biggest thing is to know that you don’t think your way out of those situations. You have to feel your way out of them.
I think the biggest thing is to know that you don't think your way out of those situations, you have to feel your way out of them.” –Mary Bowles #FamiliesNavigatingAddiction&RecoveryPodcast #JeffJones Share on XJEFF: –Mm.
MARY: And so a lot of times people are confused about what that means. So when I have clients come into my office, I really help them create one somatic awareness, which is that our feelings are physical. And so when, when you recall a memory, for instance, this why, if the example that you gave, just thinking he might’ve stopped off at the bar, might give her like a gut punch feeling –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -and most people aren’t even aware that that’s physical –
JEFF: –Hmm.
MARY: -and that’s physical because just like a bear being in a room, you, your stomach drops and it’s that adrenaline and cortisol physically pumping into your body and telling you to take an action against something. If it’s a bear that’s a useful fight or flight response, if it’s just a thought of him being at the bar and he’s not at the bar, that’s not a useful fight or flight response. And so I will help clients first be aware of that physical feeling because that’s the first signal that we have that okay, I’m going into a fight or flight response. And when you would draw your awareness there, it also draws your awareness away from what am I thinking that’s creating this fight or flight response.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: And, so one of the things that I might do from there is say, well here’s an example. I’ve had a lot of couples, you know, their, their firsts couple of sessions, they may get into arguments about what they’re going to talk about in, in therapy and a lot of therapists will pick that apart. Well tell me about it. What’s your opinion? What’s your opinion? And I don’t do that.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: I will say, you know, cause they can do that at home for free. They that’s repeating a cycle that already exists. Right?
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: And so I’ll say before we do that, let’s get your brains to a place where it’s using the most effective part where it’s using the prefrontal cortex, that creative problem solving, interested, curious brain. And I’ll say, let’s go back to a moment where you had the greatest, the happiest, most calming, comforting, safe, whatever, –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -funniest memory with this person. And I stay there until they, they get that and that by them doing it, –
JEFF: –There’s much [inaudible] to the cortex.
MARY: Yes, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -Absolutely. And so sometimes I may prompt them, you know, what about a vacation or, but I try not to do any more than that.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: Even if I’ve heard stories before that I really want their brain to do the work.
JEFF: Right.
MARY: Because when I give suggestions, they just got rescued from doing the work and, –
JEFF: –Sure.
MARY: -and creating the blood flow. But I don’t just stop there. Tell me about a memory. I’ll say, when you think of that memory, where do you feel that in your body? And it creates this whole chemistry change in the body and the prefrontal cortex is active and it’s gets us out of that fight, flight, freeze state. And I do that with both parties and then I’ll say, okay, now I want you to try to get mad right now at that person again.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And they can’t because this part of the brain doesn’t create those ridiculous ways of responding. That’s a fight, flight, freeze response.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And they end up arguing with somebody they like instead of somebody they don’t like. That –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: Brain has been –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -responding to as threatening.
JEFF: Yeah. I love that. I love that. I mean that’s so effective. I know that affective. And so you know, that’s a great example. That totally aligns with what I was talking about with, you know, a family member or in this case the wife getting activated worrying or something like that. But so, for do you have a sense of what someone could do, or like when someone knows this, can they like become aware through like mindfulness stuff? Can they become aware like, oh my God, here I go again. I need to do this breathing technique or this creative visualization or this thing that Mary showed me about this calm place of my vacation and Costa Rica or whatever, you know?
MARY: Yeah. The, do you mean are there things that can kind of trigger their brain to go in that direction? —
JEFF: To shift?
MARY: Yeah, it really, I think it’s the experience of how quickly you can redirect focus in your brain. Dan Siegel talks a lot about redirecting focus, intentional attention, and what just happened with that couple that I explained, you know, I asked them to redirect their focus to something that has a different feeling attached to it that activates that dopamine system. That becomes very rewarding.
JEFF: –Hmm Mm. Yeah.
MARY: And so the more you do that, the stronger that neural network gets. So things are wired less from the limbic system to the survival brain and more to the prefrontal cortex from the limbic system.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And which activates the hippocampus is, I like to say the part of the brain that tells the Amygdala, let us shut up the Amygdala is what tells you everything is threatening.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: That’s its job is to tell you that’s bad. That’s bad. That’s bad cause that’s how I ensure your survival. Everything’s bad.
JEFF: Right. It’s, it’s like always focusing on that little thing that isn’t quite right.
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: Opposed to seeing the larger perspective of you know, what all is going on and you know, that we can get through this or you know, being able to re-frame and see the glass half full as opposed to half empty.
MARY: Yeah. And really, I, you know, research has shown that, you know, just doing that even three times in the same session can really strengthen that new neural network. Because the more we use a network, the stronger it gets.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so when I have clients come into me and tell me all the gory details of their experiences or you know, their fights or their traumas or things like that, I actually really try to keep that to a minimum because I don’t want to strengthen those networks. I want to strengthen new ones.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so that’s why rapid resolution therapy is so different from talk therapy. It’s not, it’s not desensitization. It’s not
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: Prolonged exposure therapy, which can strengthen neural networks. There’s, there’s a major dropout rate in prolonged exposure therapy and, –
JEFF: –So can, can you say a little bit more about what that is?
MARY: Prolonged exposure therapy is the typical treatment for, uh, PTSD trauma. They –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -use a lot. It’s really recommended by the, the VA. But it’s using the same network that was created when that experience happened, which can strengthen it. You know, they call it desensitization, but with memory re-consolidation all you have to do to unlock that earlier memory is to ask about it. You know, I, that’s well I might say, when you think about that sexual assault for instance, and I, I use examples like that because those are things that do bring up.
JEFF: –Activation.
MARY: Yeah. Well, yeah, but it affects families. Post-traumatic stress is a family disorder.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: It’s not just an individual disorder. So those little triggers cause a person to respond in ways that may not be very effective and it strengthens that neural network. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: And so we want to create a different network that you can use that’s more rewarding, more dopamine producing and you redirect flood flow, you know, energy to your prefrontal cortex again.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. Which may be more in line with the term, um, post traumatic growth.
MARY: Yeah.
JEFF: Kind of thing. Yeah. So I, I love what you’re saying about just kind of talking about the Scientifics, the science underneath…reactions that are human that –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -a lot of times an impulse comes up and the way to discharge the impulse is to act out on it.
MARY: Yeah, –
JEFF: –And –
MARY: –absolutely.
JEFF: You know, –
MARY: –Do something to cope.
JEFF: Yeah. And like what you’re talking about. And what, I think can be a very solid message for families is just them seeing their situation through a new lens and understanding this process is natural kind of quote natural but not effective.
MARY: –Hmm.
JEFF: And you know when they start to create new pathways in their own brain, and I love the specific, the example that you used with, if they can do it three times in one session, then we’re starting to create new pathways. So in some ways I think you know, for people who really are wanting to do their best in their family with addiction, when they understand this larger picture, they’re going to be inspired to take care of themselves.
MARY: Yeah. And in a different way than we, we currently understand mental health. I prefer to look at any struggle that anybody has mentally, emotionally, whatever. I don’t like to look at that as illness because I think we correlate that with cancer. You know, the things that, something that’s a lot more treatable now than it used to be. But we still think death when we hear cancer. And I think when we hear mental illness, we hear it as a lifelong illness. That’s not treatable. But I think when we look at it as injuries, injuries can heal, –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -and we can treat mental injuries, emotional injuries very quickly with what we know about neuro science and memory reconsolidation and it’s a lot different than a lot of mental health experts really understand currently because it’s memory reconsolidation applied memory reconsolidation is very new.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: But it’s very effective.
JEFF: Like this is not cognitive behavioral therapy.
MARY: It is not.
JEFF: So yes. So can you say a little bit more just in Layman’s language what this memory re-consolidation is?
MARY: Sure. So remember I said Neuron? I think I said, I say it all the time. So I don’t know if I said it in the last hour. Neurons that fire together wire together. And actually I’ll give you an example of memory re-consolidation and my husband giggles that I tell this stories. This is my fastest memory re-consolidation treatment. So my husband has always had this thing against sandals and he’s been very particular about shoes, but sandals in particular. So we’re sitting in the car one day and he says to me, you see that woman over there? I said, yeah, he’s like, he said, I f*** and hate her not using that word, not f***.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And I said: “My Gosh, you don’t even know her”. And he said: “Look at her shoes”. And he said: “I think I probably should do something about this”. Because it really, I can’t express enough how much shoes interfered in his life. He, you know, he owns a business and he would hire people according to shoes that they wore, didn’t wear and just a gut wrenching effect on him. And I said: “Okay, you want to change this when you see those shoes, where do you feel that in your body”? And he said: “It is like a burning in my gut”. And so I said: “Pay attention to that feeling for a moment and scan back through your life and see what comes up for you”. And immediately, and he said: “Oh my gosh, I know immediately what that was”. And just by having that awareness in his body, it brought up a memory. He said: “When I was about four or five years old, I loved wearing cowboy boots all the time. And one day I was going to a petting zoo. And this day she made me wear sandals”.
JEFF: –Ah.
MARY: And so one he hated her, you know, he is four or five years old that, you know, hate is, –
JEFF: –A strong word.
MARY: -but it is an emotion.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: And he was really mad at her. And so one he had that hate feeling and then he got too close to the lady milk in the cow and the cow stepped on his foot in the Sandal. And so what his brain did in this situation is his brain generalized fear and hate to sandals.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: And it caused this repeated gut punch. You know, this burning in his gut feeling and it was stored there. He didn’t keep recalling the cognitive awareness of that story until he had the emotional awareness of what was driving that. And so his first statement after that was: “Oh my gosh”, that’s so stupid, right? And so he went immediately into, I feel stupid, which is also a fight, flight, freeze –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -response.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: And so I said: “No, no, no, no, no, don’t go there”. Think about that four year old little boy and how big a deal that was to him. So when you validate, you validate in context, –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -that was a big deal for a four year old. And he’s like: “Oh yeah, I guess it was”. And then I said: “But mom’s not here and the sandals, not a cow”. And so he kind of laughed about that. And then instead of, and this is classical conditioning, this is Pavlov here. Instead of interacting with that anymore, we fired other neurons because neurons that fire together wire together, this is Pavlov’s dog learned to salivate to a bell so quickly.
…neurons that fire together wire together” –Mary Bowles #FamiliesNavigatingAddiction&RecoveryPodcast #JeffJones Share on XJEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: So we were at Thanksgiving a few years back and I was being a dork like I can be in talking about yams and I said: “I am a Yam”. And it’s something that always makes them laugh. I don’t know why it’s ridiculous, but he laughed about it and I, I said, when you hear that, where do you feel that in your body? And he was like: “It’s just a lighter feeling”. I said: “Now make yourself have that burning in your gut”. And he said: “I can’t”.
JEFF: –Ah.
MARY: And we pointed out other’s shoes. And he said: “I can’t”. But we, so what it happened in that whole scenario is when he was little, he had this experience that wired the experience into his brain.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: Think of that, you know that, that space between neurons, –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -That simplifying it by using one neuron or two neurons instead of a whole network, but because it is a network, but to simplify it, think of two neurons together. The space between it stored that memory and what we did when I said, where do you feel that in, in your body? It unlocked it because astrocytes, glial cells, glial means glue.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: Astrocytes, five hours after that experience happened, astrocytes come and feed off the neural firing of that experience being formed and it glues it together.
JEFF: –Oh.
MARY: But when I say, where do you feel that in your body? Astrocytes go away. They don’t want to get burned up in this neural firing. So it’s unlocked.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: And then instead of connecting it to the same response, which is that feeling in your gut or validating? Yeah, your mom was ridiculous. Why would she put sandals on you instead of boots? And yeah, that was a big deal. You, it’s stupid, but it is what it is. Right. In any way that you keep that experience in agreement with what it was before. If you don’t change it, glial cells come back five hours later and, and –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -strengthen that connection. But when you interact with it differently, you laugh about it at the same time you experience it differently, then all of a sudden neurons that fire together wire together and because this is unlocked, this new connection forms where they earlier connection was and the feeling can no longer happen because the same electro chemical signal cannot get across there anymore.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: There’s a new connection connected to the, the other neuron now.
JEFF: Wow.
MARY: And it happens fast.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you very much for that detailed explanation and you know, really attempting to, to make it simple to understand, you know, –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -so like the example that I think of, say for instance, I grew up in a family with addiction, –
MARY: –Hmm.
JEFF: -so I can be triggered from what happened in my family when I was growing up with what happens today with what I –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -eat today. If there’s –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: a diction –
MARY: –Old networks there.
JEFF: -family, today, it’s, it’s like I have this, yeah, this old network, this impulse and the pathway has already been laid and so it’s gonna be automatic. It’s gonna happen.
MARY: –Hmm Mm. Well when you, when you understand children’s brains, a three year old has more neurons than at any point in their life.
JEFF: –Right
MARY: And that’s why a lot of mental injuries are created in childhood because they have more neurons –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -and they are, they are little sponges. They’re job is to learn colors, everything, meanings and facial –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -expressions. So those networks were created when, when you were a child and those triggers were created when you were a child. But when you interact with those triggers differently instead of the same, then you change those, that earlier experience or you know, our brain is really just a, a web of associations, you know, neuron connecting to neuron and you know, all of these networks. And –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: My belief is, my understanding is, is when you go back to the earliest experience, and this is really, I got this, this thinking from John Connolly, you go back as get as close to earlier than 10 I think is what he, what he had said, get as early as possible. And it’s really like cutting the roots of a tree where none of those associated responses. John Connolly talks about it like I’m meaning expands and so for my husband, sandals are bad. That was a meaning, but it expanded to anybody. Anybody that wears sandals, it doesn’t matter if it was the same look in Sandal, it just –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -expanded over time. And so we went to the earliest experience and cut the tree down. So he has zero triggers about shoes. I, I don’t even think he’s bought a pair of shoes since then and he’s had a lot of shoes. So and he actually made a joke. Maybe I should buy a pair of those sandals. I’m like, they’re not that cool.
JEFF: I was going to ask that question. Does he have a pair of sandals yet?
MARY: Oh no, he, he’s got his flip flops. But it’s only because I’ve been talking him out of it.
JEFF: Wow. So this is, this is really fascinating and I think, boy in this conversation we could go a couple different places. One –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -is from your perspective is, is this something that, you know, high functioning people who have addiction in their family and have been through crisis, can listen to and hear and there’s some things that they can do themselves to start to make change inside? Or is this more the thing where when someone recognizes all my gosh, that’s what I do, this would be like a sign to go, wow, I could reach out for help and get my own therapy. And specifically someone who, a therapist who has some understanding about memory consolidation, rapid resolution, and they have a way to change these pathways as opposed to just tell me the story over and over again.
MARY: Absolutely.
JEFF: And Yeah. So what are your, I asked too many questions.
MARY: No, that’s it. That’s okay. I think, I think the first thing that anybody can do that will get them into their problem solving brain. And then that’s where you’re gonna decide maybe it’s good to see a therapist or, or learn some more about memory reconsolidation or whatever will be useful for that person is to have something that really ammunition for when you recognize I’m going into a fight, flight, freeze response. And so one of the examples that I’ll give to a client when they’re in my office is I’ll say: “Think about this experience for just a second and get this feeling in your gut or your chest or wherever it is”. And then I’ll say: “Now stop there and let’s imagine going to the beach”. And I always asked you, do you like the beach? Cause some people don’t, it’s too much sand or whatever. And I’ll say: “Close your eyes for just a minute and think about being on the beach”. And this is neuroplasticity. This is enhancing neuroplasticity. Anything from Dan Siegel. He talks about enhancing plasticity where you’re activating all the senses in your brain. So I’ll say, imagine being on the beach and putting your feet in the sand and you can feel the cool sand underneath and the warm sand on top. And imagine your favorite drink, you know, some ice tea, something cool running down your throat or maybe the mist from the ocean brings some salt water across your, your tongue and you can taste the saltwater in the air and you can smell the salt water around you and you can feel the sun beating on your skin and maybe you can hear a seagull in the distance.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: And it’s not what I’m saying, it’s how it feels when that said. And so like I said, you don’t think your way out of stress. You feel your way out of it. And when you feel your way out of it and you’ve, you’ve created all of these other sensations, it turns off the fight, flight, freeze response. You can’t be in an approach state and an avoid state at the same time.
JEFF: –Ah. Wow.
MARY: So you get back into your prefrontal cortex first by activating different sensations that are pleasing. John Conolly does this release absorb thing. Also, he’ll say, if you were responding calmly and he doesn’t say it exactly like that, he’s more subtle than me. If you were responding calmly to a situation like this, what sound would represent that clear or that that clearness or that freedom from that response, what color light would represent that? And you’re using what’s already wired into their brain and those experiences, something that represents clear and calm –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -neurons that fire together wire together.
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: At the same time we’re talking about maybe husband stopped off at the bar.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing I think of here is like the person’s ability to recognize what’s going on and shift their attention.
MARY: –Yes.
JEFF: Shift their attention to that beach.
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: The feeling of the sand on their feet, the breeze on their face or whatever. But just that ability to shift their attention is –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -arched the process. And yeah, this has been, I mean, Gosh, from what I’m hearing, I think it’s been really, really helpful. I’m hoping that this is also helpful and understandable for families.
MARY: Yeah, absolutely.
JEFF: And so, you know, Mary, I feel like I could, um, talk and talk and talk and I –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -aware I’m, I’m kind of like starting to feel disappointed that I missed that day long, thing that you had.
MARY: Well, I will be offering another one. It’ll be more neuroscience and, and memory re-consolidation based. Not, I’ll use examples from rapid resolution therapy, but I’m gonna offer a, an applied memory re-consolidation training soon.
JEFF: –Oh, great, great.
MARY: Yeah.
JEFF: And so for this podcast, is there that you would like to say that you haven’t said before we bring this to a close?
MARY: No, I think the only thing that really also is pretty important to this is understanding that because human beings are also herd animals. We, –
JEFF: –Hmm Mm.
MARY: -we require our, our connections around us. We have a lot of meanings attached to our experiences that really drive us to behave in a certain way that makes other people comfortable. And so these meanings are useful for maintaining connections because when we make other people comfortable, they stay with stay in our herd with us, right? But in families it can be really hard to change those patterns. And that’s why I think knowing that addiction is also a family disorder, you have to create an environment where meanings can be changed and responses –
human beings are also herd animals. We require our connections around us, we have a lot of meanings attached to our experiences that really drive us to behave in a certain way that makes other people comfortable.” –Mary Bowles… Share on XJEFF: –Yeah
MARY: -can be changed. And a quick example from my own family, I grew up in a family that was mostly women and they all tended to be very sick, you know, whether it was addictive behaviors or depression or anxiety. But we are also a family of rescuers. And so I’m not gonna make any friends in my family for this one, but it’s a helpful example and I use it with my clients. I would get frustrated because I wouldn’t get, I love use when I would get off the phone with my mom or our be done texting. And one day is that I was leaving work early because I had a migraine and all of a sudden I get this text, oh my gosh, I’m so sorry let me know how you’re doing. I love you sweetie. And I was like, what? And I realize, holy crap, I have to be sick in order to get that. —
JEFF: Uh.
MARY: And so I tested it again a few weeks later and sure enough, I got that again and I realized one of the things that I had always done as a rescuer was in the, this pattern that existed in my family was I kept people sick in order for my mom to get love from me, she had to be sick because she would go to the hospital, I drop everything, I’d stay the night with her, get her home, talks to the doctor, and after that, after I made this recognition, I was like, I’m not doing that anymore. And the hard part was I didn’t want my mom to feel like I didn’t love her anymore.
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: Because that’s the meaning my brain at attached to it. If I don’t do that, it means I don’t love you. But my mom also hasn’t been in the hospital for four or five years since I had this recognition and stopped dropping everything and connecting with her when she was sick and I couldn’t figure out why I grew up and I wasn’t sick like that. I didn’t have depression, I didn’t have anxiety, addiction issues that I would define caused problems for me, but me and my grandma never got along. And one time I was about five years old and I had been really sick. I had an ear infection that was, and it made me throw up and I threw up in the entry way of our house and she was so mad at me and I never really liked her. And just, you know, the last couple of years I realized, holy cow, that’s why I didn’t get sick because my brain learned, I don’t get that kind of attention when I’m sick, so I don’t get sick.
JEFF: –Uh Huh.
MARY: And so there’s, there’s value even in discomfort –
JEFF: –Yeah.
MARY: -causes us to avoid things that might not be very effective for us too.
“There's value even in discomfort. It causes us to avoid things that might not be very effective for us too.” –Mary Bowles #FamiliesNavigatingAddiction&RecoveryPodcast #JeffJones Share on XJEFF: –Right, yes.
MARY: And so these, those patterns and those meanings exist in families. You had talked about it in the Caren with Caren in the Constellation Family Constellation episode I listened to. Those patterns exist and they, they really rely on meaning only. It’s not conscious meaning –
JEFF: –Right.
MARY: -It’s unconscious. And so getting the family to understand how to change those patterns is really important to treating patterns that have to be maintained for a certain reason. Yeah.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Mary, I, I mean I was saying, do you have anything else you want to say before we close this down? And then you said two things that just like open this all up again for me. And the one was the patterns. And you know what often times happens in families with addiction and without addiction, but that is in relationships, family relationships. People have to be a certain way in order to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be loved, to be, to be a part of the family to.
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: And so we…could have a conversation about that for an hour. And then –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -before that you mentioned, you know, humans being herd animals and you know, really the environment is so important for them to be able to interact well. And that, you know, reminds me of like what I am doing online with families is creating a space, a safe space that they can kind of regulate the continuum between anonymity and fully revealing themselves.
MARY: –Hmm Mm.
JEFF: And, you know, trying to create an environment for them to be empowered to incrementally share more and more of themselves and have more and more human connection with likeminded people and –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -you know, then, and that’s trust building and communication skills and setting boundaries, all things that ideally families would integrate into their own family so.
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: And then shame and stigma and families really being empowered to move past shame and stigma and, –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -like it’s the whole, you know, humans are herd animals and so there’s a natural part of humans that we want to have connection with people with other humans. But then with addiction and this chaos and a lot of the language that people, well that the whole addiction field uses, can shame families, –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -close them down and make it more difficult for them to, to seek help to read –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -before it’s like a life or death –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -situation or something. So, oh my gosh, I’m thinking to myself, you know, wow, we need to schedule another time to have another plan, –
MARY: –Sure.
JEFF: -but wow. Um, so before we stop, can you talk a little bit about how people can connect with you, learn more about you, learn more about some of the things that you talked about?
MARY: Sure. My website is, is mindwiseinstitute.com and I’m located in Newcastle, Colorado. So I do rapid resolution therapy. I’m, I’ve just started doing some stress life, family coaching, relationship coaching, which allows me to, to work with people in, in different states, so that’s, that’s really great.
JEFF: -Wow, beautiful.
MARY: -Yeah, and I’ll be doing memory re-consolidation applied memory, re-consolidation trainings. We’re in the process of checking out venues and things like that.
JEFF: Wow. Really, really –
MARY: –Yeah.
JEFF: -good. Well, I look forward to staying connected more congress
MARY: –Yeah, awesome.
JEFF: and thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and pass it on to someone else who will find it useful. You will find resources and options for your families. Best next steps and the show notes for this episode at www.thefamilyrecoverysolution.com.