What A Feeling!

Humans are such complicated creatures! We are walking, talking bundles of feeling and emotion. How many times do our feelings and emotions win over our reasoning at the end of the day? Last time, we discussed what Buddhists call the five aggregates. One of these, the feelings aggregate, is given special attention. To recall from last time, feelings are categorised by the Buddha into three types; pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Here, we do not use the word "feeling" in the sense of higher order emotions such as love, but just the tonal quality of those thoughts and emotions. I will use the word feeling in the Buddhist context from now on.

We saw that neuroscientists have discovered that there is a part of the brain called the R complex at the core which governs raw emotions like pleasure, pain and fear. When we have a gut feeling of fear or an intense pleasurable sensation, these do not come from the cerebral cortex, but deep down in the subconscious from the core structures. This is why we find it hard to directly control feelings because another part of the brain, independent of consciousness, is in command of them. Buddhists say that the key to unlocking ourselves from the prison of Dukkha is to let go of these learned reactions to feelings, which are produced by the core of the brain.

It is interesting to note that one of the current theories for why we have OCD is that structures in the R complex such as the caudate nucleus are in chemical imbalance. When OCD rears its head, our feelings become intensely unpleasant. Our learned reaction patterns are to perform compulsions or ruminations until we get a neutral or pleasant feeling instead. It is not just when OCD comes calling, our whole lives are governed by our reactions to our feelings. Our brains seem to be programmed to move towards those things which give us pleasure and to move away from those things which cause us displeasure. We do it automatically and without thinking. Where did this programming originally come from?

These reaction patterns are part of our inherent survival instincts from when we were babies. When we were newborn or even when we were in our mother's womb, the overriding concern in our lives was the principle of pain and pleasure. Our higher brain structures were still very undeveloped, while our R complex had the important task of keeping us alive. When we felt hungry, the unpleasant feeling in our stomachs was immediately acted upon and we start wailing for our parents to feed us. When we were given warmth or attention, the pleasant feeling caused us to display our pleasure by giving the baby noises which our parents sought. The neural circuits responsible for our reactions to pleasant and unpleasant feelings were etched into our brains before we could even walk.

For sufferers of OCD like us, these automatic reaction patterns have their work cut out for them. When OCD hits us, the unpleasant feelings are so strong that our brain circuits deep down work overtime to move us away from the situation causing the OCD. The compulsions which we perform to alleviate the unpleasant feelings often have very weak or no connections to the obsession. We might have an obsession about something which happened years ago and by washing our hands now, the pain of the obsession goes away as if by magic. In the same way, a baby moving its arms and legs and crying out produces the result of a full stomach and the feeling of hunger goes away as if by magic. The baby doesn't have to think about the whys and wherefores of how this happens, it just knows that it works. What is common in both cases is the automatic reaction pattern to move away from unpleasant feelings by doing whatever is necessary.

What I have found useful is that during an OCD attack, try to focus on the feelings and sensations in your body. Move your conscious attention from inside your head to outside onto your body. How does OCD feel to your body? Where are the unpleasant feelings located? I sometimes feel it as a tightness in the chest area. Once you have identified which area of the body the feeling of unpleasantness is coming from, try to relax that part of the body as well as you can. Keep focusing on that part of the body and stay out of your head! After a little while, the feeling will start to pass away from your body and when you come back to inside your head, you will hopefully find that your obsession is much reduced.

Most people do not realise why they sometimes act the way they do. They do not know that they are compelled from behaviours deep inside their minds, conditioned a long time ago. The Buddha said that our conditions can be overcome by following his advice. He said that we could strive to gain deliverance from suffering in this very life, which is tantamount to us rewiring our brain at the deepest level. This seems like an impossible task, but the Buddha and his followers, both past and present, all over the world achieved this goal. The way they did it has been documented in the Buddhist teachings which we have been making our way through on our journey. Next time, we will see how all this relates to the second of the Four Noble Truths.

Metta,
John

Our automatic reaction patterns to pleasant and unpleasant feelings were conditioned into our young minds in our infancy. As adults, if we have not developed enough mindfulness, these reaction patterns still hold sway over our daily lives uncontested. A Buddhist Master may gently tease us by asking how many of us in adulthood still operate as if from a cradle.