INTERPERSONAL
NEUROBIOLOGY,
ATTACHMENT, AND GROUP
PSYCHOTHERAPY
FACT
ULTIMATELY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT…
Being with others and the potential to
change and transform through such a
medium
Wednesday, 11
NEUROBIOLOGY CONFIRMS
• The AA premise of ninety meetings in 90 days
• It appears that it takes about a month for the
neuron to get inspired and another two or three
months to get established
NEUROSCIENCES ARE AFFIRMING
THAT EFFECTIVE THERAPY REQUIRES
Three essential components
1. A novel experience
2. A significant amount of emotional arousal to prime the brain
3. Support
THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF ATTACHMENT
• Attachment is an inborn system in the brain that evolves in ways
that influence and organize motivational, emotional, and memory
processes vis a vis significant caregiving figures
• Motivates us to seek proximity to others increasing the potential for
meaningful communication (recovery is more often accomplished
in relationship with)
• At the level of mind, attachment is responsible for the possibility to
establish a therapeutic alliance that helps (the addicted self) use
group leaders/members to organize its own processes
THE NEUROPHYSIOLOGY OF
ATTACHMENT (CONT.).
• Modulation of mood through attachment attunement to verbal
and nonverbal signals create secure base from which
addicted self can soothe/adapt to negative states
• Repeated experience encode implicit memory toward
developing mental models or schema from which to internalize
and operationalize “being” “in” in the world
EMOTIONS ARE BASIC BRAIN
FUNCTIONS
• Not an epiphenomenon of psychodynamic conflicts
(according to attachment theory)
• A part of the flight fight response
• Emotional responses also directly impact memory of
experience(s) and become important organizers of mental
activity that shape priorities, beliefs, and convictions in life
• Have far reaching socialization impacts
TWO TYPES OF MEMORY
• Explicit memory - small percentage of memory, is the conscious,
intentional recollection of previous experiences and information
(can be autobiographical, also can be what educate ourselves
about)
• Implicit - divorced from comprehension and thought, muscle
memory, its relational, (emotionally loaded, can be immediate,
earliest of memory before development of language) hardwired
for emotions and tied to limbic system mediates attachment
Let’s have some fun…
FOR A MOMENT OR TWO
EMOTIONAL IDENTIFICATION
EXERCISE - ROUND 1
EMOTIONAL IDENTIFICATION
EXERCISE - ROUND 2
ANSWERS!
EMOTIONAL IDENTIFICATION
EXERCISE - ROUND 3
ANSWERS!
MEMORY IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE
• The rules that determine how I will behave in relation to you are
not readily available to explicit memory
• Behavior then is self-perpetuated if it is not brought to awareness
• Experiences, behaviors, that remain under the influence of
powerful emotions that govern implicit memory lead to a heighten
distortion of “now” (especially when triggered in group)
• More often than not - rules from the past become rules by which I
then act on in group
VISUALIZATION AND
REGRESSION EXERCISE
•
IWM
•
What was your internal working model?
•
How did it get set up?
•
What were the rules?
•
If you didn’t follow the rules... what would happen?
•
What became predictable?
•
How would you seek attention, love, how would you stay
safe?
SELF-CARE AND SUPPORT
• The brain has the capacity for the gene expression for caring, it’s
expression or inhibition depends on whether the social
environment promotes its expression
• Caring behavior is tied to biological motivations other than mere
survival or reproduction.
• When care seeking behavior [empathy and attunement] is met
by the caregiver, a sense of relief and satisfaction is experienced
by both parties.
• This satisfaction reflects the need all developmentally mature
adults have – the need to give and receive in relationships.
CARING, DOPAMINE, OXYTOCIN
• Caring does good things for the brain, whether the person is receiving
or providing it
• Persistent positive social bonding or attachment experiences
increases levels of oxytocin (mediates affect regulation, bonding,
social family connections
• Since supportive social attachments tend to increase oxytocin levels
and decreased levels of stress hormones such as cortisol, it is a no
brainer that group psychotherapy is a chosen choice of treatment for
addicts
• Release of Oxytocin also appears to moderate drug craving
PROLONGED SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND
OTHER COMPULSIVE ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOR
• Motivational systems become comprised, resulting in denial and a lost
capacity for awareness or “that this is happened”...
• Lying is different than denial, whereas denial is more specific to
motivational systems in the brain that have been hijacked and much of
an addicts behavior is not under their volitional control or choice
• We are speaking about a disease in the sense of pathophysiological
drug induced change at the molecular level
• Addiction from this perspective then, has to do with conditioned
responses due to powerful, emotional reward experiences and deficits
and cognitive and emotional functioning
Wednesday, 11
CONCLUSIONS
•
If abstinence and recovery are to be achieved and maintained, the addicted
individual must develop the capacity to establish healthy emotionally
regulatory relationships
•
Group therapy is the ideal vehicle for accomplishing this end
•
Individuals do not recover, groups recover, helps explain why addiction
treatment cannot be successfully accomplished unless the addicted
individual makes a commitment to be in a relationship with someone or
something other than his her drug of choice
•
Simply stated, from a neurobiological perspective addiction is a disease that
was designed to interfere with attachment