ASM045 EMDR, The Cosmic Christ, and Psychopathic Pastors

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emdr the cosmic christ and psychopathic pastors all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i've got a few emails from folks looking for my events in 2016. those do exist and i'll add them to the website i'm my own personal assistant so there's no one to do it for me but that'll get done hopefully by the time this episode comes out and we'll try to book some more too but for now let's get it started [Music] my man science mike thanks for your show i appreciate it my question to you is about emdr i've been going to therapy recently and they've started to do that process on me apparently supposed to unlock some crazy memories or wounds uh using eye movement or something so i'd love to know what you know about that thanks well in the last few weeks i've gotten a lot of questions about emdr i think every q and i have done live lately someone's mentioned emdr people have met me just in airports or what have you and asked me about emdr even some of my friends asked me about emdr and i all told them the same thing i don't know what emdr is and they all told me it's this crazy thing where you move your eyes during therapy and it ends up helping you feel better sounded really suspect to me so i took a little time to do some research look at some studies and here's what i found emdr stands for eye movement dissensitation and reprocessing and it was created by a psychologist named francine sharpio in 1987. now she discovered or created emdr by accident she'd been facing some traumatic events in her own life went for a walk and noticed that in the process of scanning around the woods where she was walking with her eyes she had some breakthroughs and started to develop that into a technique now emdr evolved from there became more developed and she had success in her practice so she started teaching the technique to others and since then it's become something that you can become licensed in you can go through training and become an emdr specialist emdr is typically used to treat anxiety or ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder and for those uses anxiety and ptsd emdr has actually been shown to be clinically effective it's more effective than placebo certainly but it's even more effective than talking to a supportive friend or supportive listener which is therapeutically valuable in fact in trials emdr is roughly as effective as cognitive behavior therapy or what we would call imaginal exposure that's a way that you visualize events in your past in a safe environment and frankly emdr if you take away the eye movement component is very similar to cognitive behavior therapy or to imaginal exposure and here's why the desensitation portion comes from recalling traumatic events in a safe environment which is something you do in imaginal exposure and even something you can do in cognitive behavior therapy the reprocessing comes from replacing negative thoughts and negative images with more positive thoughts and images which is a core component of cognitive behavior therapy so this is all based on how memories work in the brain when you've had a traumatic event in your life when you've suffered abuse when you've been on a battlefield when you've had some real trauma your brain stores that memory using the hippocampus but that memory becomes associated with the activation of your amygdala because your brain is trying to make you be very alert and very prone to a fight or flight response if you face any stimulus that's similar to that which traumatized you this is a survival feature of human brains it's a good thing that we respond and recognize things that can hurt us but this can run afoul when it interferes with our ability to live our everyday lives and the great thing about human memory is that it's really unreliable human memory is just terrible every time we recall memories we change them a little bit the memory gets recolored with our present circumstances anytime we recall it so when you talk about traumatic situations in a safe environment like therapy what happens you desensitize slightly you you reduce the association of amygdala activation with this memory because the memory becomes associated a little bit with a safe environment and in the same way interrupting negative language and replacing it with more positive language has to do with what we understand with neurocognition in how language the language we use to describe ourselves and our circumstances affects our sense of identity our personal sense of worth and our outlook on life so by taking the best pieces of cognitive behavior therapy and imaginal exposure emdr becomes an effective form of therapy now what about this very critical part of emdr eye movement which people associate with rem sleep and other brain states well whatever role eye movement plays in emdr is not well understood today in science and if in fact whether it plays any role at all is disputed in the sciences uh studies that have tried to link the significance of eye movement in emdr haven't done especially well in peer review and there's significant controversy among legitimate scientists on both sides in the role ive movement may play in emdr now either way the eye movement component is not a detriment and i would imagine this is purely speculation this is not research based i'm about to say but um in other forms of meditation or focus activities some motor cortex can help deepen the experience and help people focus and perhaps perhaps the little bit of concentration required to track eye movements is enough to aid some of the therapeutic process but again that's not established in the research yet studies don't back that up i'm i'm just sort of vaguely informed speculation there but here's what i'll say emdr is clinically effective if you're working with a licensed credentialed therapist who wants to use emdr i don't see any problem with it especially if you suffer from anxiety or post traumatic stress disorder either of those have been shown in trials to be effectively treated by emdr [Music] our next question comes from the email inbox and it reads hey mike over the last few years as i've been deconstructing and moving from fundamentalism towards a more open progressive way of thinking and being i keep hearing about panentheism and the cosmic christ i seem to remember hearing you mention on the show before as well this isn't really a science question as much as it is a question about spirituality but i would love to hear you break down what these terms mean and how or if their ideas could benefit a spiritual seeker when i first began researching pan and theism i was very apprehensive about what i read at the time it was far too radical a departure from traditional christianity for me and while i've recently become curious about it once again i find the teachings on the subject too abstract and esoteric i thought if anyone could break it down it would be you look forward to hearing your take on it thanks mike amy well amy um you're definitely not hitting my uh strongest muscles here with questions about mystic theology now i will say these are ideas i have explored at length as i tried to come back to some understanding of god after my experience being an atheist and then having an encounter with god pantheism and panatheism were two of the first things i went to to try to find language for how i understood god and for folks that might not be familiar with these ideas they're pretty easy to explain pantheism simply asserts that the universe is god and god is the universe that's all pantheism is and pantheism is funny that way because it's very difficult to be an atheist in contrast to pantheism you can't say god doesn't exist if god is the universe your only retort at that point is to say it's silly to call the universe god now there are claims in pantheism that atheists could refute for example some pantheists believe the universe itself is conscious uh while others believe that god and therefore the universe is only conscious because parts of god i.e human beings are conscious that's not the clearest explanation in the world but it's a it's a pretty wild concept effectively god is unknowing god simply animates everything because god is the universe but god comes to know god through human beings because they're conscious you see what i'm saying it's kind of a word game if you meditate on it it can become profound but then if you think about it too much rhetorically it becomes a word game again so goes human brains now the other thing to say about pantheism is in pantheism we are all part of god and god is a part of all of us because we're part of the universe and the universe is god now panentheism is distinct from pantheism it's not a form of pantheism the words are just very similar and in panontheism god is the universe plus beyond the universe spatially and timelessly beyond the creation the universe we exist in but god's not absent from the universe do you see what i mean so everything in the universe is part of god the universe is part of god but god is beyond the universe god is almost the soul of the universe and panentheism and that is an idea that has some theologically theological grounding within the christian church today uh there are theologians christian theologians who are you know members in good standing with uh say the catholic church or mainline denominations who would hold pananthistic ideas about god i don't know if i do honestly if i'm one of the two i'm probably closer to a pantheist than a panon theists uh simply because i don't know how i can speak to things that are beyond the universe i have enough trouble speaking to the universe itself or speaking about it intelligently now the cosmic christ i think is much better grounded within christian orthodoxy than either of these things uh i first heard about the cosmic christ from my pastor betsy she is a huge cosmic christ advocate uh and her that language seemed interesting to me but also it seemed a little uh i don't know hate ashbury san francisco in the 60s and 70s for me but i was misunderstanding what that meant as betsy elaborated further she turned me on to the work of richard rohr and a little while later i found myself in a room with rob bell and richard rohr discussing the cosmic christ and what i found out there fascinated me and that richard rohr who's a francescan monk in the catholic church believes that christians spend too much time emphasizing the jesus part of what we call jesus christ that there's jesus of nazareth and jesus of nazareth is a man and he was the incarnation of christ the cosmic christ but the cosmic christ as part of the trinity predates the man jesus of nazareth so what is the cosmic christ well it is the part of the trinity which is god's love expressed okay so it is the reconciling force the the way that god is constantly drawing creation back toward god if you're kind of more of a biblical literalist than i am or even if you just uh hold on to biblic the bible is being not literal but certainly inspired by god in all scripture there are multiple passages in the bible that speak to this timeless nature of christ this first born of all creation aspect of christ and that's talking about the cosmic christ the the christ that is in everything and in every person and that responds to the drawing of god as a result i think that's a beautiful idea uh now i grew up in a type of theological teaching called total depravity meaning that human beings were totally unable to redeem themselves in any way without god because they were so fundamentally broken by sin and other forms of christian doctrine hold to an idea called partial depravity that some echo of god's good creation exists in every person and that echo of goodness responds to god that sounds a bit like the cosmic christ to me these are more free ways of thinking more open ways of thinking about salvation of thinking of the role of jesus in creation and in salvation compared to a more traditional or recently traditional idea like a penal substitution atonement theory where you know christ died so god wouldn't kill us you know god sent himself to die to protect us from himself as chris chris higgins critiques our faith and i certainly find the cosmic christ to be a beautiful idea now it's not grounded in any empirical understanding of the cosmos directly now there is an interesting idea the role that resurrection plays in the cosmos but uh this answer is already getting too long so i've talked about that on the liturgist podcast before and i think even on this show as well so you can check that out in the back catalog uh but there you go panentheism god is the universe but also beyond the universe so the universe is part of god and the cosmic christ is simply the idea that as part of the trinity christ has always been around and would always draw humanity and creation towards god now there is even an idea based on the teaching of the cosmic christ that i find truly beautiful that god would have come as a man whether or not sin ever entered the world because through the love of christ god loves humanity so much that god would be unable to avoid being with people and i think that's a beautiful image even though my idea of sin is pretty different which you know if you've heard the liturgist podcast episode on sand which i will link in the show notes on this episode at asksciencemike.com [Music] hi science mike today i have a question about the concept of the intuition versus the ego i feel as if i've always been a deeply intuitive person and can read others emotions and situations easily for example in situations i can just have a feeling that something is off and i feel weird and i don't know why i can also manifest in symptoms in my body like nausea and feelings that something isn't right and on the other side i can also feel a deep peace about things and not have reasoning as to why but i just feel as if things are good which i feel is the presence of god for example in decision making i've been in a situation where before i made a decision i had uneasy feeling about it that it wasn't the right path for me but i didn't know why and after i made that decision i found out why it wasn't right for me but i rationalized myself out of it which some people can think to be the ego part of your brain so my question is for you how does this relate to science as well as faith and how does the intuition and the ego in your opinion interact with how god speaks to us thank you at the innermost parts of your brain closest to your brain stem is something called the basal ganglia and that part of your brain is remarkably similar to a crocodile's brain as you move out a little further you get into your limbic system that has your thalamus it has your amygdala and it has parts of the brain that are responsible for very strong feelings fear and anger for example but also the ability to experience positive feelings in a powerful and moving way if you move further out you get to the cingulate cortex which is more sophisticated it offers mammalian feelings and experiences like the ability to experience compassion or empathy and if you move out further still you get to the neocortex the most recent and advanced part of the human brain where most of our neurons are gives you 3d spatial perception it gives you the ability to discern language music art most of your really advanced visual processing happens here also gives you analytical reasoning the most human part of the brain is in the neocortex here's the thing the neocortex is really expensive to use in terms of oxygen intake in terms of caloric consumption in terms of neurotransmitter usage anytime you're using your neocortex rational thinking analytical thinking you are using the most expensive energy inefficient parts of the brain because of that we have shortcuts evolution held on to older brain structures like the limbic system and that is where intuition lives intuition does a marvelous job an absolutely fantastic job measuring the potential motives and actions of other people of dealing with social circumstances it even does a reasonable job of keeping you safe when you look at potentially dangerous circumstances you don't have to rationally analyze why that dark alley looks like a bad idea your intuition just says i don't walk down there and it's doing that with shortcuts with evolutionary shaped time-honed conditioned responses that's what happens in the limbic system so when you have a gut feeling you're dealing with your intuition you're dealing with your limbic system now here's the other thing your limbic system actually works faster its neurons fire faster than their neurons in the neocortex it's a really fast efficient form of thinking emotions are a shortcut the brain uses to make decisions more quickly while using less energy isn't that remarkable and this is not all bad for example empathy lives in the limbic system in the anterior cingulate cortex of your brain as does compassion so when we feel like we just know things when we have a gut feeling when our feelings guide us when we have knowledge that seems to come somewhere other than our normal analytical conscious mind that's because it does it comes from deep within our brains now spiritual intuition is something a little different the anthropologist tanya lerman cites some neurological research as well as some of her own research to say that effectively when people identify as god as guiding them their brain's reality sensing mechanism has learned to has been conditioned through different prayer exercises through different routines to treat some activity of the brain as appearing to come from beyond the brain that it's a it's a way that we train ourselves to experience god now some people hear that and are discouraged that undermines their belief that god speaks we could just be looking at the mechanism by which god speaks so don't don't let this bomb out your your your faith by hearing that idea but effectively there's biases we have some people are biased towards intuitive thinking towards emotional thinking some people are biased towards analytical thinking i'm biased towards analytical thinking i question my intuition all the time but here's the deal neither uh one of these ways of thinking is innately superior to the other and relying exclusively on one or the other is a bad idea you want to check your intuitive actions with some rational analysis you want to get out pen and paper you want to use the spreadsheet sometimes you don't want to let your intuition plan your retirement for example but neither do you want to always make exclusively rational decisions especially about other people there might be times when i could rationally decide that the best course of action would be to never to talk to a friend or family member again but it might be better to let my intuition guide me to let compassion shape my actions and to try one more time to forgive and to reconcile so ultimately i think a path towards peace a path towards a better spiritual understanding of the world is to balance these two parts of the brain against each other and in fact i think the christian faith a lot of what happens is the teachings of jesus pull us towards the neocortex and towards the anterior cingulate cortex and less towards the basal ganglia and less towards the amygdala but either way there's also ideas about trust and faith and less purely analytical ideas in the teachings of jesus christ i think a healthy faith is found by letting the different parts of the brain be in balance to whichever way you're are biased to intentionally sort of stretch out toward the other if you're if you're naturally very intuitive try to be a little more analytical if you're naturally very analytical try to be a little more intuitive and look at the world through those different frames uh with intent meditation is great for this by the way prayer meditations are great ways to balance out activity in the brain and focus it towards a relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex that's been demonstrated with research to be effective either way there's nothing wrong with being an intuitive thinker like you're saying this often works very well my wife is very intuitive and her intuition about people is remarkably more effective at understanding people's behaviors and motivations than my analytical way of viewing the world people blindside me all the time had no idea x was coming even though my wife told me five times it was and as i say that i'm not speaking in gender specific terms it's not like clinically women are always intuitive or even more likely to be intuitive analytical that's just my wife and i's personal situation your mileage may vary there are plenty of analytical women and plenty of intuitive males in the world but most people tend to have a little bit of a bias one way or the other [Music] our last question comes from the email inbox and it reads hello mike i've been reading a lot on the neuroscience of psychopathy over the past couple of years i find it fascinating and horrifying that there are people among us who have a clinical lack of conscious or ability to feel empathy for others more troubling i've also read that psychopaths are more highly represented among spiritual leaders and the clergy when compared to most other professions i'd like to get your take on the science of psychopathy and whether you have any personal experience with psychopathic behavior in your church experience what should a person do to recognize and protect themselves from psychopathic people both in the church and out on a personal note i really appreciate your perspective and willingness to share it through your work it has literally breathed new life into my spiritual journey thank you jacob from spring hill tennessee well jacob first of all some of this will probably be a review if you've spent a couple of years researching it i too have been fascinated with the science of psychopathy and this has been something i've studied for a while as well so whatever i say here that's review i apologize but some of our listeners may not be as up on the latest science in psychopathy so if you don't know psychopathy is a psychological and now we understand to be neurological condition where a person has dramatic tendencies towards low empathy for others high aggression towards others and even violence they also tend to be very charming very charismatic and even can be narcissistic now there's a particular researcher that fascinates me he's a neuroscientist named jim fallon he was the first neuroscientist to really document the signature the neurological signs of psychopathy in the brain and one day he was looking at a brain scan of a family member and saw that it had the signs of psychopathy he went to look up the identity of this particular brain scan and discovered that it was him so a neuroscientist researching psychopathy found out that he was a psychopath to be sure that this diagnosis held any validity he looked at the markers he's checked in other patients and other research candidates that he's worked with their genetic markers associated with psychopathy and sure enough he had all of them now here's the funny thing about jim fallon he is a psychopath and he's also not a dangerous person he's a successful researcher and he credits his healthy psychopathy to the very nurturing childhood that he had he grew up in a safe supportive family environment now here's a quote from jim fallon talking about himself i'm obnoxiously competitive i won't let my grandchildren win games i'm kind of an [ \_\_ ] and i do jerky things that piss people off but while i'm aggressive my aggression is sublimated i'd rather beat someone in an argument than beat them up and so here's the thing we have to understand first when we talk about psychopathy there can be healthy high functioning psychopaths in society now when we look at the rates of psychopathy in different professions and i'm not talking about unhealthy psychopaths i'm talking about psychopaths in general some studies peg the rates of psychopathy three times higher in leadership positions than the general population roughly three percent versus one percent so by that measure you can imagine that three to five percent of corporate ceos are psychopaths not an overwhelming percentage but uh still a measurable number of folk now this makes some sense because the kind of killer instinct driven by low empathy having little or no conscious not consciousness but conscious nagging feelings of guilt over actions and a lot of charisma that is associated with psychopathy would be well suited to climbing the corporate ladder now you can imagine that if you're a psychopath it wouldn't bother you to you know knock the other guy down so that you can get up and you can be charming when you need to in meetings uh and that's that's well suited now what about clergy what about pastors well one study in britain found that the eighth most common occupation for psychopaths is clergy again that tendency towards charisma can be helpful psychopaths can enjoy controlling and manipulating other people and the clergy frankly is a good platform to do that now what do i do when i face psychopaths i don't know because this is important is not my job to psychologically diagnose other people that's the job of psychologists and psychiatrists so i don't speculate over whether people in my life are psychopaths or not i think it's best if we leave diagnosing people to professionals but that doesn't mean i'm a doormat i don't have to diagnose people's conditions to understand how their behavior affects me and i'm a person who sets up healthy boundaries in all my relationships so if people are abusive to me if people are exploitive of me if people mistreat me in any way i set up boundaries in my life to protect myself from those behaviors and if i see them happening on large scale if i see people who are in a position where they can't defend themselves against people in positions of power or influence then i offer aid in a corporate context that's what human resources departments are for and in a church context that might be a role of a board of elders that might be a role of a higher church authority frankly i tend to vote with my feet in church situations if i saw something like that in a church i'd be gone just in no time if i saw abuse if i saw any you know any of those behaviors i'd be gone now that said i don't have a lot of personal experience with church abuse i went to a baptist church as a kid that you know i had some disagreements with folk but it was it was nothing like abuse the baptist church i was going to when i became an atheist was just full of people who were kind and loved me i don't have any stories of abuse there well now i go to good samaritan and that that's just a wonderful place so i don't have any personal experiences to share i have read certainly about cases in the media where i've seen spiritual abuse and church abuse and that's a really awful disgusting crippling act but the the key here again i'm i'm not going to diagnose public figures i'm not going to figure out what their psychological problems are i'm going to set up the boundaries i need to be healthy and i'm going to speak out against the abuse of people in all situations that's just a given standing up for the rights of people who don't have the position or the privilege to stand up for their own rights i think is a moral and ethical calling that we all share our job is to amplify the voices of those whose voices are not heard uh and you know if you look at my twitter feed i do try to do that i don't always do it well but i do it to the best of my ability at all times and that's all we can do right so short answer psychopathy is fascinating it's not necessarily indicative of someone who's going to be unhealthy or dangerous research doesn't support that regardless it's not our job to diagnose people it's our job to respond to people's actions and keep things at that level we're responding to what people do not who they are or issues of identity okay as i mentioned at the top of the show i've got a lot of events already lined up in 2016 throughout the year next year we're going to do some aslan's like live events i'm still looking for more venues to do that early in the year and we'll have a big push later in the year when i have my book launch so if you'd like to host ask science mike you can get me for no speaking fee whatsoever just go to sciencemac.com click the book mic link and then fill out the form to go to the chaffey management group and they will talk to you about hosting ask science mike there are events even in january i'm gonna be at i'll be at the first presbyterian church in fort smith arkansas for two events i'll have details up on the website by the time you hear this i'll be at sundance this year so if you're gonna be at sundance come see me at the wynn writer forum michael gunger will be there as well we're going to do a kind of a liturgist talk and lots of fun stuff there and that's all i have in january because i'm wrapping up the book right now so i'm keeping travel schedule really clear but i'll go ahead and get the events page updated uh before this episode comes out remember ask science mike is listener supported thanks for all of you who keep the show going i really appreciate it if you listen to the show and you enjoy it you can go to patreon.com or even just go to asksciencemike.com and click the patreon link and just pledge a dollar a month two dollars a month five dollars a month it makes a huge difference in my life this show is my what i do and i try to do a good job now if money's tight i get it i've been there uh christmas is coming i'm there right now so uh just go to itunes and rate the show that's a huge thing if you leave me a star rating that's a big deal if you write a review that's an even bigger deal and of course if you share an episode on twitter or facebook or tumblr or whatever that helps the show as well we need more questions from girls i have like hundreds of recorded questions from guys but i have like four or five left from girls and i don't want this to be a guy's show based on the facebook page more girls listen to the program than guys in the first place more women than men so i'd love to hear from more women with questions this week bring them on you guys have been you i just said you guys if you listen to last week's show i knew it would happen i would it's just such a habit that you all have been so good about responding to that and i really appreciate it in fact in that case i was literally addressing just the girls in the audience as you guys i'm an idiot anyway so the show's produced by greg nordin uh he is the one who has to spend a lot of 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