Many of us learned in high school biology class that genetic traits are passed down to us from our parents. We were taught that we have brown, blue, or green eyes because a parent did, we’re thin or fat because a parent was, and so on. Recent research expands this idea in a way that would have seemed inconceivable a few decades ago. We know the traits we pass down to our children can not only change based on our life experience. But we also know we can continue to alter our children’s pattern of genetic activity after they’re born. This area of genetics research is called epigenetics. It’s the study of alterations in gene function caused by changes in gene expression rather than in the genetic code.

This could all seem a bit disheartening to those of us dealing with anxiety, depression, anger issues, or other mental health concerns. If we’re depressed because of our parents’ experiences or how they treated us when we were babies, what hope is there for us? But if we couple epigenetics with research into cognitive behavioral therapy and neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to form new neurons and glial cells and forge new connections), we have reason to be hopeful.

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In 2010, scientists at the University of Copenhagen fed male rats a diet high in fat and then watched as their offspring gained more weight than the babies of rats fed a regular diet. If traditional theories about genetics had been true, the diet of a rat’s parent shouldn’t have affected the weight of their offspring. The old thinking about genetics—that either you’re born with a gene that predisposes you to obesity or you’re not, and nothing you do in your life changes what gene you pass onto your children—is, according to studies like the Copenhagen one, incorrect.

To discover how gene alteration in rats occurs, scientists studied their sperm. “The genes in sperm cells are regulated by swarms of molecules, so-called epigenetic factors. These molecules can respond to environmental influences by silencing some genes and activating others as needed” (Zimmer, 2015). The research suggests the male rats were handing down epigenetic factors to their offspring.

A 2011 study at the University of Wisconsin showed that “when parents are under emotional, financial, or other forms of stress, it can alter their children’s patterns of genetic activity at least through adolescence and perhaps longer. And since some of the altered genes shape brain development, the effects of parental stress might permanently wire themselves into children’s brains” (Begley, 2011).

It was an earlier 2004 study that showed us how parents can alter a baby’s genes by their behavior toward them. Another rat study, this time at McGill University, revealed that when a mother rat licks and grooms her offspring, “it activates a gene that makes a receptor for stress hormones in the baby rats’ brains, which causes more receptors to be produced, which causes fewer stress hormones.” Thus, the offspring are more “well-adjusted, curious, and mellow” as adults (Begley, 2011).

So, the question becomes: If our parent’ lives before we’re born and their treatment of us when we’re children can have a huge effect on our mental and physical health as adults, what can we do about it if we, as adults, are suffering the consequences? Whether we’re dealing with childhood trauma, anxiety, or another mental health issue, believing so much of our personality is baked-in can be, well, depressing.

Learning more about epigenetics and neuroplasticity gives us a reason to strive to be healthier and happier people.

This brings us to another fascinating area of research: neuroplasticity and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). According to a study published in Translational Psychiatry in 2016, “patients with anxiety disorders exhibit excessive neural reactivity in the amygdala” and there is “compelling evidence that CBT for a common anxiety disorder simultaneously changes the physical structure and neurofunctional response of the amygdala” (Månsson, 2016).

This is good news for those of us who just got discouraged reading about epigenetics. CBT is the most widely used evidence-based psychological treatment. It focuses on patterns in cognition, coping strategies, and emotional regulation. CBT subjects learn extensively about the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behavior, and they practice identifying maladaptive thoughts such as catastrophizing—jumping to worst-case scenarios.

In CBT, one learns to separate faulty thoughts and beliefs from one’s emotional responses and, consequently, one’s unhealthy behaviors. For example, when the thought “everything will turn out horribly” leads to the feeling “I might as well give up now,” you are likely to give up and thus prove to yourself that you were right all along. After weeks or months of successful CBT treatment, a person should learn to recognize when they catastrophize and change the thought from “everything will turn out horribly” to “I can’t predict the future; things may work out and surprise me,” changing the emotional response and thus the behavior.

Learning more about epigenetics and neuroplasticity gives us a reason to strive to be healthier and happier people. One, because they tell us that we can break negative thought patterns that keep us trapped in unhealthy behaviors. And two, because our actions impact our children—both before we decide to have them and after we bring them into the world.

If you struggle with negative thoughts and related behaviors, contact a therapist.

References:

1. Begley, S. (2011, September 12). Parents’ depression and stress leaves lasting mark on children’s DNA. Daily Beast. Retrieved from https://www.thedailybeast.com/parents-depression-and-stress-leaves-lasting-mark-on-childrens-dna
2. Essex, M. J., Boyce, W. T., Hertzman, C., Lam, L. L., Armstrong, J. M., Neumann, S. M. A., & Kobor, M. S. (2011, September 2). Epigenetic vestiges of early developmental adversity: Childhood stress exposure and DNA methylation in adolescence. Child Development. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01641.x
3. Kays, J. L., Hurley, R. A., & Taber, K. H. (2012, April 1). The dynamic brain: Neuroplasticity and mental health. Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 24(2). Retrieved from https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.12050109
4. MÃ¥nsson, K. N. T., Salami, A., Frick, A., Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., Furmark, T., & Boraxbekk, C.-J. (2016). Neuroplasticity in response to cognitive behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder. Translational Psychiatry, 6(2). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4872422
5. Weaver, I. C., Cervoni, N., Champagne, F. A., D’Alessio, A. C., Sharma, S., Seckl, J. R., … & Meaney, M. J. (2004). Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior. Nature Neuroscience, 7(8). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15220929
6. Weinhold, B. (2006). Epigenetics: The science of change. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(3). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1392256
7. Zimmer, C. (2015, December 3). Fathers may pass down more than just genes, study suggests. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/science/parents-may-pass-down-more-than-just-genes-study-suggests.html

“I know I shouldn’t think this, but …”

“This is going to sound completely crazy, but …”

“I hate myself for feeling this way, but …”

Wouldn’t it be great if we had only thoughts and feelings that we liked and wanted and could simply eliminate the rest? I would just love it if every thought or feeling that entered my mind fell within my definition of rational, normal, and good. What a victory that would be—the psychological perfection I have always longed for.

I don’t think I’m alone in wishing my mind was like a placid temple garden, a place where only soothing, constructive, politically correct, and sensible thoughts showed up. Many people come to my therapy office with presenting problems like, “I don’t want to think about _______ anymore,” or, “I want to stop having these ________ thoughts.” These apparently reasonable goals can sometimes hide a secret goal of self-perfection: “I want to purify my mind of the things I judge as irrational, bad, or sick.” We want our wild thoughts out and our “sane,” civilized, “good” thoughts to rule. And there is nothing wrong with wishing for that.

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When we chase this ideal and try to make it a reality, though, we chase an impossible fantasy of unattainably perfect control; we forget that though we appear to be highly civilized animals, we are still animals, with automatic, uncontrollable aspects to our brains and nervous systems. We forget that though we are now physically adults, we were once children, and we carry a legacy of childlike thoughts, feelings, and experiences that we can never fully outgrow or forget.

Sadly, sometimes we task ourselves with the impossible: gain total control of a brain that relies almost entirely on non-conscious, automatic, non-controlled processing. When we take up this task, and when we ask our therapists to join us in this task, what can happen to us and our therapy? Can we learn to live with a mind that can produce both rational and “wild” thoughts? Do we have a choice?

Understanding Omnipotent Control

When we hold the expectation that we can or should perfectly control our thoughts through sheer effort and self-policing, we are striving toward what psychodynamic therapists have called “omnipotent control” (see, for example, Kernberg, 1975). We use the term omnipotent, meaning all-powerful, to suggest that in omnipotent control we strive for a degree of control that is beyond the realm of human powers and abilities. When striving for omnipotent control, we deny our human limitations and pressure ourselves (or others) to control the uncontrollable, in this case our wild thoughts. We try to use effort, often in the form of self-shaming, to purify ourselves of any “out-of-control” parts, something that no amount of effort can achieve.

In therapy, omnipotent control tactics can manifest in ways like these:

“How do I stop caring about my ex?” (Here, the person in therapy tries to engage the therapist in the task of achieving omnipotent control over feelings. Another way to read this is, “How can I transform the reality of what I do feel into my fantasy of what I think I should feel?”)

“There I go again attacking myself! I should know better by now!” (Translation: “I should be perfectly in control of my mind by now! I’m mad at myself for not having achieved my fantasy of omnipotent control.”)

“I couldn’t handle that our relationship was over, so I lashed out at him.” (Translation: “I’m having trouble accepting that some pain in life is out of my control, so I take omnipotent control of the pain by becoming the one who gives it.”)

As you can see in these examples, for some reason, some of us, maybe even all of us, sometimes, will ask ourselves to do the impossible, and we will burden our therapy with an impossible task: “Give me omnipotent control! I want to control what no one controls!”

Suffering Under Impossible Demands

Naturally, it can be tempting to burden ourselves with this desire for omnipotent control—it does sound pleasant to always be in control of our minds—but the results of this pressure can be depressing because when we give ourselves an impossible task, we always fail.

For those of us who haven’t accepted that omnipotent control is impossible, we may get depressed when our wild thoughts or uncontrolled feelings visit us—we may feel like failures rather than appreciate yet another reminder that we are humans, with human limitations. Paradoxically, we preconceive that perfect control over our minds will help us feel better, but when we show up as human instead of perfect, we learn that pressuring ourselves toward superhumanness can only make us feel worse.

When we impose the demand for perfect control of our thoughts and feelings upon ourselves, we inevitably will hurt ourselves because we will always be asking ourselves to do the impossible. However, knowing this does not always stop us from trying. So why is omnipotent control such a compelling fantasy?

Reality Bites Sometimes

Let’s face it: human reality is distinctly lacking in control. Whereas other species are born with the ability to motor around and do some things from the first moment of life, human babies are helpless; we have almost no control and authority until relatively late in our development. If we’re lucky in our development, we have experiences where we feel in control, even though for the most part those experiences are created for us by caregivers. Those of us who are lucky are slowly disillusioned and come to understand our limited capacity for control over time. Others suffer an abrupt, early, and often traumatic lesson—“You’re not in control of very much at all.”

When we try to reject our wild thoughts and feelings rather than accept them, we miss out on an opportunity to understand their meaning. In this way, rejecting our wild thoughts and feelings limits the effectiveness of therapy—whatever we try to get rid of by omnipotent control, we will not learn from.

Regardless of our upbringing, as we grow up we are required to face and learn about all the things we don’t control. We learn we can’t control how others think or act; we can’t control when we will die or whether we will get sick; we can’t control when the people we love will die; we can’t control the historical, political, or economic climate we are born into. With so much out of our control, no wonder we want to at least be able to control our minds!

The bad news is our minds are yet another thing we have an unfortunately small amount of control over. Sigmund Freud got a bad reputation for asserting as much—that our mind is “just like an iceberg, with 1/7 of its bulk above water,” meaning we can only see and control a small part of our minds. Although many of us do not want to believe Freud’s dictum, contemporary cognitive and affective neuroscience supports this claim with empirical evidence (e.g., Ledoux, 1996).

If you think this aspect of reality bites, I am with you. It is not fair. We did not ask to be born into this set of rules and limitations. But alas, here we are, and so it is understandable that sometimes we will pressure ourselves toward omnipotent control as an attempt to create a sense of stability and power, even if it’s only an illusion.

So I Can’t Control My Thoughts at All?

It may sound like I am encouraging hopelessness about gaining control of our wild, unwanted thoughts and feelings. Some may even wonder, “Are you saying therapy is hopeless?” In a certain way, I am. I am saying that if our therapy goal is perfect, total, omnipotent control over our minds, then yes, the therapy is hopeless—for this is a goal that, as far as I know, no human can hope to achieve. I am writing this to encourage realistic hopelessness about this realistically impossible goal.

That does not mean, however, that gaining some control over our minds is impossible. We all have mental processes that we control. However, we have to accept that we will never have total control, and that there is no magic, instantaneous technique for achieving control. That is simply not possible for the human mind. So what can we hope to gain control of? What can we get out of therapy if we give up on the goal of perfect, omnipotent control?

Can I Accept What I Cannot Control?

Ultimately, we can control what we can control, and we can’t control what we can’t control. That will always be the case. The challenge of therapy (and life), then, is can we accept that? Can we accept our inner paradoxes: we have some control and some lack of control; some rational thoughts and some incomprehensible, wild ones; some love and some hate inside; some goodness and some badness? Can we accept the thoughts and feelings that show up—the ones we didn’t ask for, the ones we didn’t expect, that we did not initiate?

When we strive for omnipotent control over our wild thoughts, we are unintentionally trying to reject and eject our humanity, our complexity, our mysteriousness, the paradoxical elements of human nature. Though we are attempting a kind of therapy on ourselves—“Get rid of the bad stuff”—we are also repeatedly harming ourselves, trying to cut off built-in parts of us that are most likely there for a reason. When we try to reject our wild thoughts and feelings rather than accept them, we miss out on an opportunity to understand their meaning. In this way, rejecting our wild thoughts and feelings limits the effectiveness of therapy—whatever we try to get rid of by omnipotent control, we will not learn from.

We all have a right to go on trying to control what we can’t control, what no one controls. Some of us may need to keep at that strategy for a long time before we’re ready to try anything different. That’s okay. When we’re ready, though, we can pick up the challenge: “Can I accept these wild thoughts?” From there, we can begin the immense journey of letting go of our fantasies of perfection and control, and begin to embrace ourselves as we are, wild thoughts and all.

References:

1. Kernberg, O. F. (1975). Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. New York, NY: Aronson.
2. LeDoux, J. E. (1996). The emotional brain. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

What, exactly, is an emotion?

This question has long been debated. Nonetheless, this complex state can be said to involve cognitive appraisals, physiological changes, and behavioral responses. Take, for instance, fear—one of the most researched emotions. An event or situation that triggers fear results in a cognitive appraisal, a thought that evaluates the situation. This, in turn, brings about a physiological change in the body, such as an increased heart rate, increased temperature, or tense muscles. A behavioral response, such as screaming or running away, often follows.

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Researchers Alan S. Cowen and Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley have identified 27 categories of emotions, all of which serve a purpose. Without them, we would not know when to feel alarmed (anxiety), let down (disappointment), or safe (relaxation), for example. Emotions also inform others about our inner state, which in turn evokes their own emotions and promotes various social interactions.

Emotions become an issue when they are overwhelming, inappropriate for the situation, or we experience negative ones too often. Many of our difficulties with emotions come from the way we think about the world, things around us, things that happened to us, and so forth. Intense emotions can be distressing and may interfere with our ability to carry out day-to-day activities and the way we interact with others. Therefore, it is important to know how to manage intense emotions.

Cognitive behavioral therapy encourages individuals to do the following:

1. Label Your Emotions

The first step to help manage emotional discomfort is to label the emotions we are experiencing. It is important to become familiar with the different types of emotions, including those that are more complex (such as contempt, love, and remorse), so we can correctly label our experience of them.

2. Identify Thoughts Behind Your Emotions

The thoughts that precede our emotions also provide additional insights into our difficulties. The thought “I’m not as smart as other people at this meeting” can result in great distress and limit our verbal exchanges. However, we can change the way we think by asking ourselves if what we are thinking is true, helpful, or kind. If the answer is no, we have a way to modify our thinking (e.g., “People at this meeting are probably not worried about my intelligence”). This is known as cognitive reappraisal.

3. Carefully Examine Any Other Emotions

Believe it or not, many of us do not correctly identify emotions. We may say we are sad when what we are really experiencing is frustration or shame. Therefore, it is important to go back and reexamine what we are experiencing. Our thoughts should match our feelings. It is also important to realize we may be experiencing more than one emotion. This step enhances our understanding of what we are experiencing.

4. Rate Your Emotions

For experiences that seem too hard to manage or intolerable, it is helpful to rate the degree of emotion we are experiencing. This can be done using a scale of 0-10 or by giving a percentage of how much an emotion is being felt at a given moment. Ratings not only help us determine which emotions we are struggling with the most, they give us an idea of how we perceive the difficulty. A bonus is that ratings can be a great tool for monitoring improvements in the way we are feeling.

5. Practice Acceptance

There are times when cognitive reappraisal is difficult, especially if a professional is not there to help. More recent literature has evolved suggesting it is helpful, however, to notice the full experience of emotions with openness and curiosity. This practice involves recognizing patterns of thinking (e.g., “I’m often panicked”), physiological sensations (e.g., muscle tension), and maladaptive behavior (e.g., avoiding communication of personal needs) without changing them. This allows you to create “space” for these less pleasant emotions.

6. Increase Positive Emotions

Give attention to positive events, things that interest you, and practice gratitude. We can proactively modify our feelings not only by changing the way we think or creating space, but by attending to more pleasant experiences.

Conclusion

To successfully implement these strategies, you will need to practice, practice, and practice again. Change takes time and patience. Do not overemphasize reduction of negative emotions; remember, emotions are there for a reason. It is best to focus on personal growth and improvement. And if you are not experiencing the desired improvements, it may be time to seek professional help.

References:

1. Aldao, A. (2008). Coping and emotion regulation. In S. Hayes & S. Hoffman (Eds.) Processed Based CBT: The Science and Core Competencies of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (pp. 261-272). Oakland, CA: Context Press.
2. Beck, J. S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.
3. Hockenbury, D. H., & Hockenbury, S. E. (2007). Discovering psychology. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.
4. Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
5. Papa, A., & Epstein, E. (2008). Emotions and emotion regulation. In S. Hayes & S. Hoffman (Eds.) Processed-Based CBT: The Science and Core Competencies of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (pp. 137-152). Oakland, CA: Context Press.