In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a Theory of Human Motivation which came to be called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow’s list of human needs is often depicted as a pyramid, since you must fulfill the lower, most basic needs first and only then proceed to higher needs. You will note that, after the first two physical needs of food, drink, sleep, and shelter, needs # 3, 4, and 5 all deal with feeling good about yourself. With #3, you want to be accepted into a group. In #4, you want to feel that you are recognized by your peers and in #5, you want to feel you have self-actualized, or made a difference in the world. That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself by the way. We live in a world of over 8 billion people. We live in a day when mental discipline is in short supply. As individuals, we need to examine how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs affects our lives. We need to realize that our vanities, feeling victimized, or refusing to apologize due to pride are the natural tendencies of our minds. Your brain never wants to admit it was wrong. Like the prodigal’s son, we must frequently “come to ourselves” to realize where we went wrong, recognize our true friends, and try to make amends.
Email - ScottRFrazer@gmail.com
Website - ScottRFrazer.com
S3E6 – Sometimes your Brain is your own Worst Enemy
This is the podcast Science and Scriptures - Discerning Truth from Error, Season 3, Episode 6, or “Sometimes your Brain is your own Worst Enemy.”
Hello everyone. This is Scott Frazer of the podcast Science and Scriptures. Today, I must be careful as I talk about something very dear to you, but can still be your own worst enemy – your brain. With the arrival of social media, then COVID-19, then our present-day world and economic unrest, our brains are often simply exhausted. Depression still exists at record levels. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and other counselors are putting in lots of overtime, trying to assist as many patients as they can. However, there are things we can do to stabilize our own mental states.
It is important to note that the human brain has the unique capability to step back and, like a third person, examine its own thoughts, desires, and wishes. You can argue with yourself, and you can have “problems making up your mind”. Part of your brain may want to go to bed, while another part wants to stay up and check out the latest movie on Netflix. Think of your brain as more of a committee than a single entity. Be aware that your “natural man” is somewhere on that committee. If you can come to understand what your brain wants and diagnose your frustrations at what it can’t have, you can take more control of your life.
I have spent a lot of time studying and writing about the mind. I wrote a book entitled “Mentally Calm, Spiritually Connected” because I heard so many people complain that while they were going through a depression, Heavenly Father stopped answering their prayers. These people thought that their mind and spirit are mutually exclusive.They believed a mental depression could be separated from a spiritual struggle. Summarizing my book into a few words – your spirit, whatever it may look like, is intimately connected with your mind. You cannot separate your mental, spiritual, or physical lives. For example, it is nearly impossible to be spiritual when you have the flu. It is equally impossible to be spiritual when you are an emotional wreck. The three parts of our being – physical, mental, and spiritual - are all connected.
Since I wrote the book about depression, another mental state has become an epidemic - victimhood. I’m certainly not a psychiatrist, but seems that depression and victimhood are related. Many people seem to want others to recognize that they are, indeed, victims of actions by… their parents, their employer, a romantic partner, the government, disease, or unspecified villains. They believe they should be treated with additional care, concern, and, in some cases, compensation. We can all feel like victims at some point or another. I repeat, I am not a psychiatrist, but I would like to propose a way to understand this new trend. I’d like to begin with a review of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
In 1943, psychologist Abraham Maslow developed a Theory of Human Motivation which came to be called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.Maslow’s list of human needs is often depicted as a pyramid, since you must fulfill the lower, most basic needs first and only then proceed to higher needs. Though I have given this list in a past podcast, for this discussion, it’s important to review it.
Need #1 Physiological needs - air, food, drink, warmth, sleep, etc. This makes sense of course. If you haven’t eaten for a day, food becomes your first priority. Fortunately, we live at a level of civilization where food and drink are readily available in most parts of the world.
Need #2 Safety – a home and protection from the elements, security, freedom from fear. While homeless people do not have a home to call their own, the majority of people do have such a place.
Need #3 Love and Belonging needs - One might also call these the first of our social needs. Simply put, you don’t want to be alone. You want friendship, intimacy, and acceptance into a group, be that a family, friends, a church, or work colleagues.
Need #4 Self-Esteem needs, such as attaining recognition. You want to feel that you matter and that others recognize your efforts.
Need #5 Self-actualization needs - realizing personal accomplishments. Feeling you have become everything you were capable of becoming.
You will note that, after the first two physical needs of food, drink, sleep, and shelter, needs number 3, 4, and 5 all deal with feeling good about yourself. With #3, you want to be accepted into a group. In #4, you want to feel that you are recognized by your peers and in #5, you want to feel you have self-actualized, or made a difference in the world. That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself by the way. We live in a world of over 8 billion people. It’s hard to feel special with that much competition for the limelight.
Social media giant Facebook first developed a social network for college students to join and make connections. This development really should have helped members to meet Need #3 and feel like they were part of a group. However, in a rather unexpected turnaround, Facebook and similar social media websites cranked up the pressure on you to feel special. A vicious cycle began. First, your friends posted photos of their houses, cars, families, dinners, vacations, and new clothes on their Facebook page - so that they could feel recognized and validated. You looked at those photos, increasing your desire to feel recognized and validated. In response, you posted photos of your house, family, and dinners to feel good about yourself. The competition between you and your friends increased. Everyone ended up trying to impress everybody else. Never in the history of the world have we seen the kind of influence that Facebook has had in our personal lives. Facebook was launched 19 years ago. During that time, many people have gotten frustrated with the continual marathon of trying to keep staging their lives to compete in the Facebook Follies. Many long-time members have left Facebook altogether. However, learned habits are hard to break, and the mental games continue.
If we compare Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs with our social networks, a few changes in our society may become more understandable.Today, different special-interest groups are tearing into one another with accusations that we rarely heard even 20 years ago. People are reacting more vigorously to the promptings in their brains to satisfy needs #3, 4 and 5. We seem to have forgotten all about the Golden Rule. Taking them in order, let’s consider the effects our social needs are having on us today.
Need #3 – The Need for Love and Belonging.
This should be simple enough. Obviously, we need love and belonging. The need for Love and Belonging is actually a Gospel principle. To fulfill that need, God gave us families. Family gives us love, belonging, care, and sanctuary from the world. When your immediate family is not around, your church ward will try to fill in with support. Despite the desperate need for them today, families are just not as strong as they used to be. For example, the need for a father figure in the home is being questioned or ignored completely by many families. Society has tried to define families as parochial, traditional, and too confining.Many youth cut family ties as soon as possible for the freedom they think leaving home will provide them. This has gone on for generations of course, but the world is a harsher place to be alone in.
In fact, in Luke 15:11–32, we can find a story about cutting family ties. It is called the parable of the prodigal’s son. As soon as he can get away, a prodigal’s younger son collects his inheritance and leaves home. He parties hard for a while, drinking away his inheritance. Unfortunately, just as he ran out of money, a famine hit the land. This parable is held up as a lesson in repentance and humility as the son makes his way home. But really… if you think about it… the prodigal’s son simply does the logical thing when he finds himself eating food meant for hogs. He went home. To his credit, when his father embraces him, the young man offers to be a servant.Instead, the father throws a party for him. When the more responsible eldest son hears the celebration, he gets angry about it - and I don’t really blame him. The father comforts his eldest son and assures him that he will be rewarded for his dedication to the family business. The lesson from this closing part of this parable is this – family is hard. It requires work, patience, and forgiveness. The prodigal tells his eldest that “it was appropriate that they should make merry” for a member of the family who had been lost was found. The father understood the need for forgiveness to make families work.
Many of our youth are following the same path as the prodigal’s son, thinking their drinking buddies can replace family.It’s great to have friends of course.They can help us fill our need for love and belonging. Often, however, drinking buddies have also chosen to escape their families, be adrift in the world, and are still trying to decide on their life course. Consequently, they don’t provide a lot of stability for others.
You may feel that you are a strong, independent type.However, rest assured, Maslow’s Needs still drive you. Love and belonging are multifaceted emotions. Your best friends are those who provide stability, counsel you in choosing the right path, and provide resources to succeed. Such friends are usually called parents. The moral of this story is this. If we accept Maslow’s theory that we all need love and belonging, we need to find the right people to provide that for us. By divine wisdom, families are provided for us at birth. But family is still hard. The search to find other people to give you love and belonging – like a spouse – can be difficult.
Need #4, Self Esteem Needs and Attaining Recognition.
… is one of the harder needs to define. If you define your self-esteem needs by the same definitions of our present-day society, you may never be happy. By society’s definition, you must earn a large income, own a large home, and drive a large car to find satisfaction in life.If you accept that definition – and many, many people do – you will most likely fall in the rut of never being satisfied with your life.
We have a poem on a wall of our home called the Desiderata. It contains a number of tips about how to find happiness in life. My favorite is the following, “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.”
We are often encouraged to be humble and to avoid recognition. Despite this, please note that “Self-Esteem Needs and Attaining recognition” is still one of Maslow’s needs. You will be driven by it. So, what do we do? Evidence tells us that society’s definition of success will not bring happiness. If it did, then rich people should be very happy, not having to drink, do drugs, get divorces, or make a shambles of their good fortune.
We hear so often that you should follow your dreams and “live” the person you are. If people really did that, wouldn’t you expect to find more people who don’t want to live in a big house, drive a big car, or go on expensive vacations?My wife and I live in a comfortable but smaller home. I’ll admit that I spent much of my life wanting the big home, etc., but I think I am finally beyond that. Our house fits us. I fully agree with living the person you are, because that is where you can look for self-satisfaction. I write because I love to write. Granted, I like it when other people appreciate my writing. But there is a reward for me just to get my thoughts down on paper – or into a Word file in today’s world. I get boosts to my self-esteem by simply writing a well-written paragraph.
Meeting Self-Esteem needs and gaining recognition should reflect very personal aspects of your personality. You decide whose praise is most valued by you. You decide which possessions mean the most to you.Though society thrusts its definitions at you, you don’t have to accept them. You can be happy without the possessions that Facebook promotes.
Need #5 – Need for Self-Actualization
This need is much like gaining recognition, but it has an even more personal twist to it. Self-Actualization, as I understand it, is to actualize what you believed you could become when you were young. Whether that goal was to become a corporate CEO, a missionary, a parent of four children, a best-selling author, or a combination of all of them, we all want to feel we have achieved our goals. We want to know that we have met our potential and accomplished things we deemed important in life. Meeting one’s goals really is important and the upside to doing so means finding contentment.
But there is a downside to this need as well. Being successful in life is great – for those who find success. However, if you don’t feel that you have kept up with friends and family – if everyone else’s Facebook page has cooler photos of bigger homes and better vacations – how do you cope? This is an important concept that I would ask you to consider for a moment, because it is a monumental problem in today’s society.
Mentally, we don’t want to blame ourselves for unrealized expectations. Your brain will fight you every step of the way if you try to go there. So, instead of blaming ourselves, we look outside of ourselves for others to blame. Inevitably, we find them. Once we have found who we believe to be the person or group that has undermined us, we will conclude that we have been victimized. I recorded another podcast on feeling victimized over a year ago because it had become such a problem. Victimhood is far worse today, as everyone claims that some aspect of their being is being criticized or found contemptible by society at large.
The reason I have returned to discuss victimhood is because it goes against several principles of the Gospel. Victims do not need to feel any responsibility for their own decisions or actions. Nothing was their fault, so they don’t have to repent for any part of their current dilemma.As long as they cling fast to their victim status, victims have no incentive to try to better their lives. They feel that those who undermined them are still out there and, since they are victims, they are powerless to improve their lot in life against those forces.
Maybe you have someone in your family that considered themselves a victim. In my own family, my maternal grandfather served in the military. After he left the service, he claimed disability – an opinion that the Army did not share. For years, he appealed to the government for disability payments that never came. He never stopped feeling he was a victim and never held down a paying job. Consequently, my mom grew up in severe poverty, living on what her mother earned in doing other people’s laundry and sewing. Even in the 1940’s, people clung to victimhood. Today, we have more victim groups than we ever thought possible.
Here is the bad news for victims that few seem to be willing to voice. Victims never win. Oh, they may get some airtime by posting videos about their grievances on social media outlets.Their friends may offer them condolences. But unless they recognize that their present situation is unacceptable, repent of their past decisions, and head off in a new direction – victims will stay exactly where they are in life.
In the church, we often grieve for families in the ward who are going through hard times. We pray for their spiritual health – when really it’s their mental health that is ailing. Many strong members of the Church suffer from their unmet expectations, not realizing their own disappointment is the source of their depression. As stated in the title, your brain can be your own worst enemy.You often must come to an agreement with your mind (however strange this suggestion sounds), do a reality check, and then choose to make hard (but doable) choices that will allow you to be happy and content. Those choices will often include the need to forgive.
I would like to once again borrow from the parable of the prodigal’s son to make my last point. In Luke 15: 17, as the rebellious young man was eating husks meant for the pigs, we read, “And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!”. The phrase “he came to himself” is significant to our discussion about mental health. This young man, who had made so many mistakes in his short life, finally recognized how low he had sunk. He forced himself to do what he had to do. Swallowing his pride, he returned to his father and confessed his thoughtlessness.
We live in a day when mental discipline is in short supply. As individuals, we need to examine how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs affects our lives. We need to realize that our vanities, feeling victimized, or refusing to apologize due to pride are the natural tendencies of our minds. Your brain never wants to admit it was wrong. Like the prodigal’s son, we must frequently “come to ourselves” to realize where we went wrong, recognize our true friends, and try to make amends.
Background noise reduces the accuracy of scientific analyses. Noise also distracts us from the goals of earth life. The are 8 billion people on Earth, many of whom want desperately to be heard. Yet, you may still go to a quiet place and look inside your own mind. Take some time to meditate and consider if your brain is taking you in the direction you want to go.
So, that is all I have for you today. As always, thank you for listening to my podcast. If you have friends who might benefit from this discussion, please share this episode with them. This is Scott Frazer from the podcast Science and Scriptures. Take care, have a good week, and may God bless.