53: Pain Processing Pathway (Part 1)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 53. We are continuing our series on joy. Today we’re looking at the joy elevator and the pain processing pathway.

Hello, my Father.

[00:32] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. We just had a Father’s day celebration over the weekend.

[00:37] Stephanie: We did. It was so fun. And, yes, what did Ben say?

[00:43] Marcus: Yeah, he said, “I wish every day was Father’s day,” but I think he was referring to the food.

[00:47] Stephanie: Yeah, we had some very good food.

[00:50] Marcus: Yeah, we did. We ate well.

[00:52] Stephanie: Yes, Mom made sure of it, she’s great. I have a little bit of an icebreaker today. I’ve been thinking, you’ve always had your hands in many fields growing up. You played several sports, you did some drama, you were really into your studies, and history. And we’ve talked before that you loved Lord of the Rings and you made different things. Have you ever found jargon from one area crossing over into the other?

[01:25] Marcus: Jargon from one into the other? Well, we use sports metaphors all the time, right? But nothing’s jumping into my mind right now because I cross those barriers constantly. But we were just talking about the “four hobbits” of joy-filled people. You know, that’s Merry, Pippen, Frodo and Bilbo.

[01:47] Stephanie: How dare you skip Samwise?

[01:49] Marcus: Oh, well.

[01:52] Stephanie: Oh, I was just thinking about it because apparently I say “Huzzah” a lot, and sometimes people don’t know what I’m saying.

[02:02] Marcus: Where did that come from?

[02:04] Stephanie: So I have realized that this is something that comes from the epic fantasy reader writer side of myself because we say it all the time in that community. It’s  “Ah, huzzah!” And so it’s spelled, h u z z a h. I’ve had people in person and in messages  say, “Oh, that’s what that is?” Or that’s what you’re saying, because I’ll use it with them in person. And anyway we get a good laugh. But I was like, you know what, I think I say this a lot on the podcast and I should address it. It’s like, “hip hip hooray.”  I looked it up in the Merriam Webster Dictionary. It defines it as “an expression or shout of acclaim, often used interjectionally to express joy or approbation.”

[02:52] Marcus: Well, there you go.

[02:53] Stephanie: Hey. And we’re talking about joy, so Huzzah.

[02:55] Marcus: Yeah.

[02:56] Stephanie: Cheers. So that’s what I’m saying. And apparently it’s a crossover term.

[03:02] Marcus: You’ve adopted from your epic fantasy friends.

[03:06] Stephanie: Yeah, that’s what we do. All right, and on that note, let’s get back, let’s get epic.

So last episode, I alluded to the five levels of the pain processing pathway, and how to meet someone’s pain at each level. And I’ve also had a request for us to spend a little bit more time on the issue of attachment pain, and I think that’s a good idea. So the pain processing pathway has five levels which contain the four levels of the joy elevator, right.  Remind us, what is the joy elevator?

[03:41] Marcus: So the joy elevator basically, is the right side of your brain. So real simply, it’s the right hemisphere of my brain. That right hemisphere operates at four levels of function. So if anything goes wrong at level one, it will affect level two, three, and four, and level five on the other side. If something goes wrong at level two, it’ll affect three and four. Defining it by levels is partly the point of the joy elevator.

It’s also the idea that It goes sequentially. It will always start at level one, then always go to level two, then always go to level three. You don’t skip around levels. It always goes in sequence. And so our goal as people, to be our relational selves, to act like ourselves, and to not turn to somebody else, is that we want to be living from the fourth floor of that joy elevator.

That fourth floor we call the action center. That’s the identity center, the joy center, the action center, or it’s the captain. There are a whole lot of terms that we’ve used for it but it’s the part of our brain that we want to be in charge of. Because that’s the part of our brain that remembers who we are, how it’s like us to act, what our core values are, what our character is like, and it just shows up automatically.

So problems happen if my Joy elevator gets stuck at the first floor and I’m operating in huge attachment pain, then I may not be able to operate from that top floor. And so part of maturity is about developing the capacity to experience some disturbance at these lower levels, without it getting me offline at the higher level where I act like myself. So in a nutshell, the joy elevator is the four levels of brain function on the right hemisphere of the brain.

Also, your brain always goes not only from bottom up, so 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th floor, it will also always go from right to left. So it has to go through the joy elevator first before it ever gets to what we call the narrative engine. It gets to that part of my brain on the left hemisphere that starts doing problem solving, making decisions, analyzing, putting things into words, and all that other stuff. And that’s why we regularly talk about things happening faster than conscious thought.

And the reason they’re happening faster than conscious thought is they’re happening on this right hemisphere of the brain. It’s this joy elevator process that’s taking place. And if something breaks down there, I can be offline and have everything messed up before I ever get to what something means to me. Before I ever get to this idea of, okay this is what I have learned to think about this, right?

In other words, I can be offline before I ever even get to that part of my brain function. So this was really a revelation to me because I had grown up being taught that all emotions are rooted in what I believed. And so belief was the starting point for everything that I was doing in terms of resolving emotions, only to find out there’s a whole other half of the brain over here that is dealing with stuff before I ever get to my beliefs.

And so bringing these things together creates the pain processing pathway. The pain processing pathway in a nutshell, is I have to deal with all four floors of the joy elevator, and I have to deal with the narrative engine on the left side of my brain. This is why simply telling somebody to change the way you think, or don’t believe that, doesn’t always help. Because it’s only addressing this fifth level, if you will. It’s addressing the left brain side of it and bypassing everything going on on the right side of the brain.

[07:19] Stephanie: Yeah. So could you talk a little bit more about the pain processing pathway? And it was Karl Lehman who coined the term “pain processing pathway,” correct?

[07:27] Marcus: I believe so. It was his book where I read the term.

[07:30] Stephanie:  Okay.

[07:31] Marcus: So the pain processing pathway is that if we start in the left side of the brain with beliefs, then I should just be able to correct your thinking on something and that should resolve the problem. If I say to you, oh, well, look at it this way, look at it from this perspective, and that works, that means I had a level five problem. My problem was at the interpretive part of things and just looking at it from a different perspective actually took care of things, and I’m okay now. So that lets me know where my problem was.

But if I give you a new perspective and I say, well, the Bible says this, and this is what God wants you to think about it. And if that doesn’t resolve it then that means we have to move now, and start going backwards down the joy elevator.

I go to the action center of the brain, my identity center. And at this point I’m needing somebody to show me what this looks like so my mirror neurons can watch you do it, and go, okay, I think I see it now. I can imitate you. I can do what I’m seeing you do and learn at that level. If that doesn’t fix things then we go to the next level, and that’s number three of the joy elevator.

And that is where my goal is to stay attuned to the world around me. Where I say, let’s do this together, tune into me, stay focused on me, let’s do this together. And that can sometimes take care of that. If I’ve spoken to you and that didn’t fix it, if I’m showing you and that doesn’t fix it, and if I’m saying let’s do this together, and it doesn’t fix it. Now I’ve probably got an amygdala, fight or flight issue going on.

In which case I need to soothe that before we can do anything else. So maybe we’ll take some deep breaths together or go through some of the soothing exercises together. But we’re trying to calm down that amygdala. And then if I get all the way down to level one, it means I’ve got an attachment pain problem. And at the attachment pain problem, my goal is to sit with you and to be present with you, so that you know that you are not alone in this, no matter how dark and deep it gets. I can think of these all with “S” words. You know, obviously, it’s shocking to everybody that there are “S” words to all of this.

[09:48] Stephanie: Yeah, you don’t have an acrostic for all of that, you’re going more pastoral where you have the same letter for every point.

[09:55] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. So this will preach. Right? If I have a narrative issue then I speak to you and give you a new narrative, if it’s level four of the joy elevator then I show you. So that’s the word, I “show” you at that point what to do. If it’s at level three of the joy elevator, now I’m going to share it with you, we’re going to do it together. If it’s at the amygdala, level two assessment level, then I’m going to soothe, help you soothe from where you’re at. And then at level one, I stay present with you. I’m going to sit and stay present with you because this is an attachment issue.

So I can give you a couple of examples of this because this is pretty heady, hard to picture stuff. Chris Coursey explained it to me this way. He and Jen were walking up the stairs in a lighthouse, they live in Michigan. They are walking up this lighthouse together and part of the way up Jen remembers that she has a fear of heights and begins to shut down.

And so his first thing was to talk to her, Oh, it’s going to be okay, we’re going to get through this, but it didn’t help, right? So that told him, all right, this is not a level five issue. Then he’s like, let’s just take a step, it’s just like this. And that didn’t help. And then it was, okay, let’s do this together, let me hold your hand. That still didn’t help, right? So he’s just going down the list, okay, let’s just take a minute to breathe together and to be together.

Finally, they just sat next to each other and they began doing it in the opposite order. He sat there for a while and then they went to soothing for a bit. And by the time they got back up to level five she was the one saying, well, this is the perspective I need, this is what’s going on. They were able to make it all the way to the top. But when we talk about pain processing, if on this pathway I get stuck at some point then my pain remains unprocessed.

And to the extent that my pain remains unprocessed,  I’ll be stuck and I won’t be able to function the way that I want to function. And so it’s helpful to think in these terms because you can kind of tell where somebody is stuck and the way in which they are stuck, and which intervention is needed. And so I found this an incredibly helpful thing. I think I said, I’d tell two stories?

[12:30] Stephanie: If you have a second in mind.

[12:33] Marcus: Yeah. So when I was speaking one time a story I told triggered somebody. I try not to tell stories that are too triggering, but sometimes you can’t help it, because you just don’t know. Well, this guy was hyperventilating and couldn’t function and couldn’t talk. It wasn’t going to do any good for us to have a conversation, he couldn’t do that. So first I just sat there, and then I asked, “Is it okay if I touch your arm?” Because you know, you get permission to just be together.

And then I said, “Can I help you?” We had to quickly get to the point of let’s practice breathing together. And this helped him get his breathing under control. And then I tried to go back up and found that he still can’t talk.

Okay, so let’s go do some more breathing. I got my hand on your shoulder, so you know,  I’m here with you, it’s okay, and you’re not alone. And then finally, he got the bright idea to text. He couldn’t talk but he started texting me what was going on in his head and found out what triggered him. I was able to actually do a spiritual warfare prayer with him. To which he agreed, yes, because he’s like, yes, I agree with what you just did. And then he took another deep breath and after that he could talk. And so now we walked through this whole process.

By the time we were done he had processed this pain. It had gone all the way through the pain processing pathway. And that meant he was functional again. He could take off and do whatever he needed to do. It didn’t mean he was totally better, but he was functional again because he was now back within his window of tolerance. So that’s an example of how understanding those five levels of function, of the pain processing pathway, can help you know what kind of intervention is needed.

[14:24] Stephanie: Yeah, it’s so helpful. And so you went through the “S’s”, there are also some “A’s”.  And I thought we could start slowing down maybe a little bit on each level and look at the task of each level. Because the “S’s” that you shared are the solution to the problem. And it’s also helpful to understand that at each level this is the task involved. So, for instance, level one is attachment, and you are to stay securely connected as a situation unfolds. Could you talk to us more about level one?

[15:00] Marcus: Yeah. Level one is the attachment level. It is anchored in the nucleus accumbens and the thalamus, right? Because that’ll clear everything up for everybody. The attachment is the part of our brain that craves things. And so what happens is that I have at this very deep level a craving for something. It could be everything from a craving for chocolate to craving for an experience, an addiction, for a person, or connection. And it can be from mild to intense.

So, for example, I’ll give you one you’ll appreciate. You bought us these really nice fountain pens for Christmas. I have now washed three fountain pens in the last six months. And every now and then I find myself missing my fountain pen. I’m looking everywhere. Where’s my fountain pen? That is a low level craving, if you will. It’s like, no other pen will do, I want that fountain pen. That’s an example of something that is happening at level one, attachment. It’s not a rational thing happening because I’m thinking about this. It’s just a craving that says, I want my fountain pen, nothing else will do.

We all have these experiences, right? Tacos are the only thing that’s going to work right now. It can’t be a burrito. And I have these very specific cravings and I can have generalized cravings too. So what happens is my attachment level wants to bond with another person in joy. I want to be with somebody who’s happy to be with me. So it’s at this level that addictions form.

Because at this level if I can’t have access to someone who’s happy to be with me, if I can’t form the kind of joy bond I’m actually looking for, I will find a non-relational substitute. That’s when I can find myself craving cocaine, craving heroin, craving alcohol, and craving carbohydrates. Craving whatever the non-relational substitute is. Craving sexual stimulation.

[17:02] Stephanie: To be clear, not you yourself.

[17:04] Marcus: Well, no, I mean, I’ve probably craved all those at some point. Although I’ve never done drugs, I know people who have. This is also the level at which we experience attachment pain, which was the source of your question. Because I have this craving, in a sense, is where the light bulbs come on. The light bulb coming on means a craving is arising, I want to be with you, I want to be with somebody. And what I’m looking for isn’t available to me. That will create attachment pain. So I can literally have attachment pain for that fountain pen, right? It’s like it’s not here.

So that’s a very low level attachment pain. I can have attachment pain wishing I could be at our home in Michigan right now, I wish I didn’t have to be here. And that’s a form of attachment pain. You can have attachment pain for the past and nostalgia. I wish I could be back in those good old days when I did this. You can have attachment pain for all kinds of things at all kinds of levels.

And so the issue is that there is no natural pathway back to joy from attachment pain in the same way that joy pathways or neural pathways can form back to joy. Either from sadness, shame, disgust, despair, anger, and fear. So with that in mind, attachment pain kind of falls into its own separate category. It can also be combined with all of those other emotions.

So when you think about grief for example, I am usually combining attachment pain with sadness because I’ve lost something I want. And with despair, like, I’m not going to get this ever again. With anger, this isn’t fair. With fear, what’s going to happen to me now, right? And so what happens is you go through something like grief, and literally all of the emotions are being triggered simultaneously.

Which is why they sometimes talk about it as stages. You deal with this, and then this, and this. That may be true, but I also know that at some level, what’s happening is that all of my emotional systems are getting triggered. So at different times I’m going to be dealing with different levels of those emotions. So attachment pain is kind of like that craving pain that says something I desperately want is not available to me. So it becomes the source of a lot of love songs. Right? Oh, you know, I’m in so much despair because I can’t have you right now. All I want is you.

[19:44] Stephanie: So when someone is stuck at level one attachment in a more mild case, from the fountain pen to a relationship with a person, but it doesn’t feel impossible, do you have suggestions for how to recover?

[20:12] Marcus: This is where you talk about things like being present, mindfulness if you will. It is being aware of my condition, recognizing it, and then saying, I’ve got a problem to solve here. Maybe I can find a healthier solution to this problem than an unhealthier solution to the problem. So if it’s a mild one, I can usually think my way through to a better choice. If I’m feeling attachment pain and I suddenly realize I’m rummaging through the refrigerator and I don’t even know what I want, I can catch myself.  I can go, hey, Marcus, you’re just feeling attachment pain right now, you don’t really want ice cream. That sort of thing. At milder levels I can do that. At more extreme levels I need help doing that. I need somebody to be present with me.

[21:05] Stephanie: Even being able to recognize it. For instance, I think about how often I have been separated from you, mom, and Ben. I’m not usually very good at actually being on my phone, but when I am separated from you guys, you are my people, I will call one of you on the phone. I will reestablish a point of connection because I’m having attachment pain because we are not together. And that’s a way of, okay, yes, I’m able to be with my people even when we’re not actually able to be together.

[21:41] Marcus: Yeah. Well, and because it’s the deepest level of brain function it is also the deepest level of pain we can feel. And that just means sometimes we just have to feel it and try in the midst of feeling it, to get back to the relational part of my brain and act like myself anyway.

[22:04] Stephanie: Well, and maybe what I’m about to say could come into the next part of my question. But this is also where listening prayer and seeking God can come in. And there’s some really good Psalms, like “Oh my soul, seek the Lord.” And so talk to us about what happens if you’re having desperate attachment pain and the person you were attached to has died or you’re estranged, or for whatever reason you have no access to them. It feels impossible and you can’t solve it, what do you do?

[22:41] Marcus: Well, I use this example. I remember when I was in seminary. I had about a five month gap between the city where I grew up having a ton of friends and knowing everyone, to relocating to a different state and city. I was living with my parents and I really only had one relational connection at that point. There was a girl who asked me out and I said yes, and quickly fell in love because she became my whole world. All of my attachment was connected to her.

Well, my dad was in a car accident, Grandpa Warner, and almost died when a drunk driver hit him going like 90 miles an hour through a stoplight. He was unconscious for three months. We didn’t know if he was going to live. And then just as he’s getting out of the hospital she breaks up with me. And at the time I had never felt that kind of attachment pain. I had no category for that. And I had convinced myself that this was the future and I’d found the one.

And so I went into depression because the only solution to this is for her to want to be with me again. And so as I was in that, I started seminary. Right in this place of having just gone through the crisis with my dad and being in a deep place of attachment pain, I couldn’t focus, because I’m having level one issues in my brain. It’s making everything else above that struggle to stay online. That didn’t actually resolve until I met somebody else, and all of a sudden there was this hope of oh, maybe there’s a different solution to what I’m feeling right now, I couldn’t think my way there.

Once I experienced it even though it was actually just a fleeting relationship, it was the fact that, oh, there is hope in this world, that took away that attachment pain for me. It helped me get back to being myself and gave me some lessons. But in the middle of it, honestly, I had no tools for what I was going through. It was a pretty dark time.

[24:59] Stephanie: Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing. That’s a very good example I think.  Thank you for sharing.

[25:06] Marcus: Well and honestly, Brenda, your mom, has similar stories of having painful breakups in her past that made her go into a very dark place. And it’s because you’re dealing with attachment pain that then triggers despair, that joy is now hopeless. It now triggers this belief. So there’s a despair, then a belief that goes with the despair, and then all these toxic thoughts that accumulate around it and it takes on a life of its own at that point.

[25:39] Stephanie: Yeah. So what are some steps to get out of it?

[25:45] Marcus: So some things you can do yourself and some things you need help. So one of the things that helped me was talking to a guy at seminary who’d gone through almost exactly the same thing, only worse.. He had been engaged and on the verge of his wedding day, his fiance called it off. And talking to him, talking to somebody who could be empathetic, and then realizing that he was currently married and had kids and was living a good life. It was helpful to have people tell me their stories and say, okay, maybe there is some hope here. To have somebody who could understand the depth of what was going on so I didn’t feel alone in it. Like, okay, there’s somebody who gets it.

And so all of those things had to happen. I needed people who could still be happy to be with me. I needed people who could kind of enter into what was going on. I could say, okay, other people have lived through this and could share it with me. And at some point, I realized too, that God actually gave me a way out of this early on. I remember I was sitting in a restaurant and this thought came into my head, ( and this is where you learn to recognize what are God thoughts and what are devil thoughts) give her to me, and if you’re supposed to have her, I’ll give her back. And I remember basically saying, no.

[27:25] Stephanie: That’s one of those stop, listen, obey, watch things. (S L O W) And you choose not to obey and you still have to watch what happens.

[27:29] Marcus: A stop, listen, and obey moment where I stopped, I listened, I knew what God wanted me to do, and I said no. And literally, my depression kind of began there. And so there was a rebelliousness at the heart of some of this depression in my case. Because I was intentionally saying, I know what I need to be happy and you need to give me what I want. And that’s really not uncommon either.

There’s a lot of us who are convinced we know what we need in order to be happy, and so we are not going to be okay with God until he gives it to us. And that is a form of rebellion and it always gives ground to the enemy. And so I think a big part of my depression has some spiritual warfare to it that was anchored in that as well.

[28:14] Stephanie: That is really helpful and really deep. And wow, we’re running out of time for this.

[28:21] Marcus: You don’t want to keep counseling me because this is really therapy.

[28:23] Stephanie: I would love to just keep talking. And I had budgeted two episodes for this topic, but I think we’re going to need more. So we’ll see how that goes. But I do think, unfortunately we’re going to need to wrap up for this episode and we’ll keep talking. If you want to know more about these levels, the Journey groups curriculum, both levels one and two, have really good, whole, lessons, and units that cover this. And I’ll give you some more recommendations next week. So we’re at the end of our episode and we’ll continue discussing this topic next episode. Any closing thoughts for now?

[29:03] Marcus: Well, I just want to remind people, too, that I learned all of this stuff from Jim Wilder. I don’t want to just talk about that constantly, but I just want to make sure credit is due. If you want to go deeper into this you’re probably going to find it in his materials or in Karl Lehman’s materials. Because I kind of learned this stuff and then tried to introduce people to it. But if you want to go deeper with it, then I would go to those two ministries, Life Model Works and Immanuel Approach.

[29:35] Stephanie: Very good. All right. Well, thank you, Father. And hey, thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more.

And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review, and share with your friends. Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week.