On the Need to Believe

Yep. There is a need to believe but not in the way you might imagine. There is a neurotic need to believe that comes out of pain, more specifically hopelessness. And in that kind of belief there is nearly always an element of hope—the deity will watch over you, protect you, love you and not let any harm come to you. You can name the hope of our choice but what we are exploring is the process of dialectics; how one thing mutates into something else, usually its antagonist. Dialectics is basically the interpenetration of opposites: here, hopelessness becomes hope. Hopelessness drives hope, and the more fervent the belief the deeper and more powerful the hopelessness; and of course, vice versa.

We are discussing the motivation behind beliefs. The brain doesn’t give a hoot what’s in the belief, just so long as there is one; otherwise we would have no defense against the unutterable pain of hopelessness. Yes, beliefs can be defenses, especially those that grow out of pain. So some can believe in God, others in Brother Bubba, still others in the Hinduism; and they all may derive from the same feeling. The choice of belief depends on life circumstance. You can see how useless it is to spend hours in therapy analyzing the belief when it is not the content but the very existence of it that is important. I have seen time and time again a patient coming close to a very terrible pain and switching into some kind of belief; “You don’t understand. I know they don’t like me and want to harm me.” They switch into beliefs when the feeling tends to overwhelm the cognitive system. And the choice of belief emanates out of the feeling: something or someone(a feeling) wants to hurt me. We rarely allow an overwhelming feeling to come close to conscious/awareness. It usually means that a feeling/sensation is rising out of sequence and must be dealt with immediately.

It isn’t always just a feeling; it can come from the deep brainstem where so many excessive sensations lie: the sensation of being crushed, pushed, suffocated, drowned, etc. All of these sensations and associated traumas can be imprinted very early in our lives, even while we are being carried in the womb or during birth. The hopelessness can derive from so many sources: a carrying mother drinking and smoking where the baby cannot escape the input and is suffocating. Or a birth process where the mother is given anesthetics which are far too much for a five pound baby, and again there is suffocation with no escape—hopelessness and helplessness.

Ordinarily, the biologic system tries to deal with the onslaught with a biologic shift of weight or force to counterbalance the deep feeling. The system tries to balance it so that it does not get out of hand. But still, if the sensation/feeling is very strong and the imprint is already sealed in, then the various high levels of brain function will try to deal with it, as well. The highest level will pitch in and offer up a belief as a way of counterbalancing the imprint. That is worth repeating: the newfound belief is a measure of counterbalance, of equilibrium. So first there are purely biologic efforts, pitching in with gate-enhancers such as serotonin, and later on, as the brain evolves, bolstering it with beliefs; all part of the same process of defense, all linked together. So for example, let’s suppose that the baby’s blood pressure goes up, which is the most she can do at the time. But later that blood pressure, heart rate and many other physiologic effects become part of the defense system. They have to be addressed as an ensemble, not simply separately as discreet entities. And now the defense system is sealed in. The beliefs are not just something to be changed apart from the system but are part of the personality. What someone believes is a part of her and is not just some whimsy or caprice. In our therapy we never just deal with strange and bizarre beliefs; we always try to get beneath them and find the driving force.