I remember being a student at Notre Dame and reading some classic CS Lewis in those required theology classes; a quote of his always stuck with me. Somewhere along the way he was asked in a class he was teaching to define humility; he answered in a clever way that described what it isn’t. He said, “Let’s just say the humble man never tells you that he is humble, for in doing so violates the very thing he is proclaiming”.

This nuanced insight is quite profound and has always stuck with me working as a personal and executive coach for people seeking transformations and wanting that “hidden” nugget of truth and excellence not found in the myriad self-help exploitations on the market. Amid these stories, and the recent headlines of stars, politicians and businessmen “disappointing” us in some way, ethics has become an ever-increasing attribute on the list of what we desire in people.

Gone are the days when ethics was a concern when one approached a “bad” situation to decide between two options; rather, we have come to realize in the light of let-downs and scandals that we ache for people who can decide between what is good and what is essential in non-conflict-oriented times. Even in politics we are faced with such wild irrationalities that call for a higher level of influencing understanding and behavior change. Take, for example, a recent CNN headline that noted, “At least 62 people were killed in Syria on Thursday as diplomatic efforts continued.” What may make this goal trickier in actualizing than we originally thought may have everything to do with the brain’s irrational patterns and hidden illusions around situations when we self-proclaim a value that has some “social desirability” or merit to it.

Take a new study that was recently released by Harvard Business Review: “About one-third of drivers of Prius hybrids failed to yield to pedestrians in a series of experiments on crosswalks in the San Francisco Bay area, giving the brand one of the highest rankings for ‘unethical driving,’” say psychologist Paul Piff of the University of California, Berkeley, and a team of colleagues. Drivers of hybrids “who believe they’re saving the Earth may feel entitled to behave unethically in other ways,” says Piff.

What is most fascinating about the results of this study are the implications. Does this mean that those who most verbally espouse never cheating on their spouse may indeed be the ones that are most susceptible to doing so? Does this mean that the more “religious right” you are in your ideologies and potentially judgmental tones of others implies you are the one that reeks of those “sins”? Or is it implying that we could use our truly valid good natures on behaviors x-y-z to give us wiggle room on behaviors a-b-c? Though I believe much of these are self-protective patterns of the brain that are quite difficult to change, I do believe you can do more to accomplish your behavioral goals by doing the following rather than spending tons of dough on an expensive self-development seminar that assumes too much that you are a rational person:

• List your top 10 values you say you live your life by
• Write out evidence from behaviors you regularly show that these are well-lived by you
• Find the opposite word of each of these values and write those down
• Then ask yourself, “If I am at times between these two words in my life, what types of behaviors or decisions do I make that show some ambivalence?”
• Examine those times as ethical grey areas protected arguably by an espoused ethical orientation
• Add in additional behaviors that you feel you do because you follow other value-based areas in your life. This linking is powerful.

If you think this is hard to do, you are correct. For your brain is wired to be right, not ethical. But the good news is that some schools are doing something about it. My alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, and Deloitte have partnered to beef up the training and education of traditional ethics to include such wildly diverse areas of neuroscience and behavioral economics. Though it may be heretical to say, only when we do this can we understand why the filmmaker Dan Merchant, who made a great documentary about the hidden hypocrisies in religious living, entitled his documentary, Lord, Save Us From Your Followers.

But that may not be nuanced and “true” enough without adding—“by first saving us from our brains.”

When we hear this word predisposition, what do we think of first? The answer: genes. That is, talk of genetic predisposition fills the dialogue space around discovering the biological markers for why people develop an addictive disorder. And while there are definitely genetic predispositions, what I am going to shed light on here are fundamental brain predispositions that make one vulnerable to develop irrational behavior around a substance. To clarify, here is what I am not talking about when I allude to brain dispositions:

• Something fixable by cognitive behavioral therapy
• Psychopathology
• Mental/Mind-related constructs

What I am alluding to is a framework of wiring default patterns that structure thinking itself; we all have it in us and it affects our decision making. It turns out this is cutting-edge knowledge. Did you know that 80 percent of the knowledge about the brain discovered before 1995 has now been proven false? That’s how new of a frontier this information is, and with that newness comes the need to reeducate people about the brain from the ground floor up, so we can better discern addiction-based oddities of behavior from the neuro-irrationalities that are inherent in all of us.

Learning some characteristics of the normal irrational brain will better inform us all – addicts and non-addicts alike – about human behavior.

• The brain makes decisions through emotions not through rational thought. The notion that the perfect normal brain is rational is a myth. Sorry, Aristotle. Neuroscientist researcher Antonio Damasio proved this by taking people who lost the ability to have emotions and put them through regular, everyday decision-making tasks. They were not even able to initiate the task. Many people were left staring at a toothbrush with toothpaste on it forever. Emotions matter, and the trick is to harness them for a purposed direction.
• The brain does not multitask. You hear many traumatic brain injury patients get frustrated in their cognitive rehabilitation because they cannot quite “get back to normal.” In my coaching of these individuals, I have always found it hard to re-teach them what are recycled old beliefs that seemingly pull them toward a faulty vision of renewal, and what is the truth. Can’t blame them, for non-brain-injured people are deluded as well when it comes to the notion that we will all get more done in this productivity-centered world if we can figure out how to do more things at the same time. This is a myth. There is a larger hit to consciousness than we think when we attempt to do this; we perceptively miss a lot more than we realize.
• The brain is a pattern-maker, not a truth-maker. The brain seeks what is known and makes variants of that seem like innovative progress to us all. It is why so few of us proceed into some panacea of enlightenment in this world. The brain doesn’t want to take the trip with us, but it wants to tell you its interested and will, as soon as it can, find its airline ticket. But it never does. This is a key point in recovery, for being fully recovered may mean more to reduce one’s level of illusions and mental addictions by being more aware, not by being removed from them completely.

Together these three brain points are essential for addicts and their caregivers to keep in mind, so as to better benchmark reality and progress. It may be a relief to the addict to hear that the true goal is not to eradicate the addiction, but rather the meta-addiction underneath that is driving a purely rational life after recovery. Good luck. Non-addicts haven’t found that place either.

When the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recently came out with its report, “NIDA InfoFacts: Treatment Approaches for Drug Addiction,” it provided a helpful synopsis in a meta-analysis sort of way on the key principles of effective treatment. Being the neuroscience-oriented change agent I am, who has seen the practice of psychotherapy enhanced by understanding the secret world of the brain, I thought it would be helpful to view these classic research findings from the lens of your brain; to see if “it” sees things the same way we as outsiders believe behavior change works. Let’s take a look at a sample of these points:

1.    Addiction is a complex but treatable disease that affects brain function and behavior.

Brain’s Response: Neuroscience has shown a less-than-perfect linear, cause-and-effect relationship here; it has also shown that the brain is affecting the addictive response and manifestation. It’s a fine line between a true addictive disorder and the fundamental “wishing that reality was something else than it is” response that colors most of our everyday decision making.

2.    No single treatment approach is appropriate for everyone.

Brain’s Response: Because the brain is wired to “feel right” and not necessarily to be effective, we all have unique ways of reducing the anxiety and dissonance we feel of the “one approach” coming at us. What remains unclear is whether it is another approach being more effective or our defenses being less effective in rationalizing the benefits away.

3.   Treatment needs to be readily available.

Brain’s Response: Research on neuroplasticity and deliberate practice has shown us that it takes a lot more concerted effort and repetition to change behavior than we think. Being “readily available” allows the brain to practice counter behaviors at an exponentially higher level, so as to rewire neural networks.

4.    Effective treatment attends to multiple needs of the individual, not just his or her drug abuse.

Brain’s Response: Research on why the best cognitive rehabilitation strategies work on the brain after a certain traumatic event seems to convey the importance of a cross training effect on boosting rewiring potentials. That is, working all the lobes, not just where the supposed injury occurred. Such is potentially the case with why a multidisciplinary approach works with addiction; from a neuroplasticity angle, you increase the chances of success by enlisting the support on non-injured, healthy and addiction-busting neural networks.

5.    Remaining in treatment for an adequate period of time is critical.

Brain’s Response: Though time is indeed correlated to treatment success, I am curious what the exact correlation coefficient would be. Could it be a cognitive bias of ours that makes us think this is literally true, but in reality the data could be something else? Do we not have examples of people who show insight potential around behavior change across the whole spectrum, from one intervention to 10 times in rehab? The brain is an inadequate distinguisher between things that make sense and things that are literally true. My hunch on this one is that in actuality, the correlation is mediocre at best; that time in treatment is a powerful variable when supported by many moderating variables (family support, level of pain experienced per intervention, accountability factors and so on).

6.    Treatment does not need to be voluntary to be effective.

Brain’s response: Sure, on one level this is true. Behavioral compliance can come from both an involuntary or voluntary event. However, because the brain makes one-size-fits-all emotional responses, it gets tricky to discern from words used — and even behavioral evidence — the committed from the compliant individual. The brain is masterful on reading the environmental needs around it and assessing the patterns to learn what it needs to do to fit. So arguably, from a brain training side, this statement is correct. The brain can learn from the environment thrown on it or co-created. The problem comes when “what gets you here doesn’t get you there” and the tipping point of life kicks in and more is needed than just compliance.

As you can see, when we look at these common assertions of treatment efficacy with a more discerning light of neuroscience, we can’t help but question our thinking about our thinking. Is this troublesome? I think not. Ironically, perhaps it is this meta-cognitive stance that is most beneficial in building humility-based practitioners who use neuroscience as a knowledge-helper and not a rule-generator.

In this thought-provoking series, I will share the stuff of addiction that is in between the lines — the afterhours thoughts, if you will, the bubbles above our heads. Not that training, education and all sorts of counseling are not helpful. Of course they are. But in the understanding of addiction, we forget that for the fullest level of knowledge around anything, we must know what is and what is not. The latter is especially tricky to arrive at when the brain is involved, for it is a master of disguise, always rewiring itself to feel right, to be ineffective, to reduce dissonance and to avoid the truth. We should be most skeptical of our thinking especially — and ironically — when we choose to move beyond these illusions through conscious awareness or, in other words, when we choose treatment.

So how does one tackle this elusive, slippery slope of neuroscience mechanisms when we want to live a life of freedom and truth, and eradicate the chains of addiction? I would like to share some thinking guidelines that we should keep handy and use wisely while reviewing brain myths — untruths that sadly have been popularized by culture as being gospel. We have become a society intellectually dumbed down, one where correlations are confused for causality, and where things that make sense are called true. This is tricky enough in the absence of addiction. In my addictions’ coaching work, I tell clients who are working through their addictions that they have to step up their critical thinking immune systems even more so than others.

Therefore, in the spirit of Einstein, who said, “No problem can ever be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” the following are some guidelines that may help take those living with addiction to this other, higher level of thinking. These overarching natural laws of thinking should be at hand while digesting the brain myths I will bust.

• Pause, then pause again. And when you think you know what “it” is talking about, pause one more time. The brain is quick to fill in gaps of knowing, and without countering this with an extraordinary amount of intention, we are left not knowing really how we know something.
• Beware of spiritual narcissism. This comes from over-identifying incidences that prove that you are doing well or under-identifying incidences that are blind spots for you.
• Know the difference between transactional and transformational goals. The brain loves itself and has a tendency to seek ideals above and beyond reality — no matter how irrational these ideals might be. There are certain things in life that can not be broken down into a to-do list. The brain will tell you, “No way!” and put you on a nice, neat journey in that vein.
• Embrace dialectics. Just a fancy phrase for two opposites coming together to make a more meaningful whole. The ability to do this is key in digesting and working through building an addiction-free life that calls B.S. on the brain. Two examples of dialectics are:

Truths and wrongs that are opposite, yet together make for the only path of higher learning.

Pain gives life more meaning, and in that gives many people joy.

• Think about your thinking. Know your first-draft story about yourself, your life, your partner and your decisions in general. Chances are, it is wrought with half-truths that make sense to some part of your brain, but is like an MC Escher painting — if you look at it long enough, another image emerges, releasing you from what you thought was true.