Quote:
Originally Posted by Le.Monsieur.S
What? guilt and shame activate our brain's reward centers? Do you mean that they release something like dopamine, and makes us addicted to it? But this is in opposition to the definition of "reward system", because guilt and shame make us feel bad and not happy, isn't it?
Also, what does make us feel guilty or ashamed in the first place? The brain is truly a mysterious organ. It controls itself, and it affects itself. So you need to control your thoughts of pride, guilt, and shame, before it becomes a habit, or to break the habit of feeling guilty. But then what generates out thought of guilt in the first place? I would assume our genes and biology have the tendency to do so.
I am not familiar with the brain's part's names and how those things affect the brain (or the brain affects itself), but I think pride has a lot to do with suffering, and I think it might be the source of guilt and shame, and indeed it is stronger. We don't want to reveal our weak self to others. (When I first joined these forums, I was more comfortable posting about my personal issues. But now, that I feel I began to know some people, more like familiarity, makes me less comfortable to post.)
Anyway, but again, back to the anatomy of the brain, and the processes of mind., those are like knowing a computer's hardware design to a computer's end-user. It is nice to know how the computer works, but that serves no help if you don't have a software interface to interact with it. This software is something flexible and can be changed and adapted to best use the hardware. We need something we can control to access our brains and minds.
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It's not me suggesting that these feelings pump the reward center, but science:
"the nucleus accumbens has a significant role in the cognitive processing of aversion, motivation, pleasure, reward and reinforcement learning; hence, it has a significant role in addiction. It plays a lesser role in processing fear (a form of aversion), impulsivity, and the placebo effect. It is involved in the encoding of new motor programs as well." (
source) I do wonder if there may have been some larger original purpose to deeply harboring feelings of guilt and shame that was necessary to prior versions of our species, of which it's now mostly a vestigial psychological remnant; similar to how fight-or-flight serves much less useful purpose in modern interactions than it once did.
I get a lot of peace and comfort from understanding how things work; it helps me to commune in general, both with the world and with myself. Helps me to stop asking myself the question "why would I do XYZ" when I can better understand why, and freed up from berating myself about what I might otherwise ascribe overbearingly conscious responsibility I can then better deal with what's happening in real time.
(I suppose I consider myself more than an end-user of my brain. I'm also the administrator, the development team, the finance department, marketing, human resources.. hospitality.. room service..
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As far as this forum goes though.. I've been actively posting for over a year now, and it's still the case that when posting about something personal, the emotional stakes are raised for me, and I think that will always be the case to some extent. It has gotten better over time; it's not that the stakes have changed, but that I've become more accustomed to the idea that the existence of differing opinions needn't negate the validity of my own -- and through the discourse that results will generally serve as enhancements to my thought process, and I think that's been a positive development for me. I've always been someone who can articulate myself pretty well, but I notice that I now make more judicious communication decisions in real life, that is, better selecting with whom to most successfully share various subject matter, having had the opportunity to see the results of more freely workshopping a wider array of thoughts, topics, and interaction styles here with the good people of PC.
