READ TIME: 9m
DR JOHN DEMARTINI - Updated 7 months ago
You’ve likely encountered information in literature, on television, maybe even in your own personal circle where you’ve seen people attributing their psychological or emotional struggles to a biochemical imbalance, particularly in the context of depression. The prevailing model for depression, known as the biochemical model, emerged around 1991 but has since been partially debunked.
This is a topic that I often address with clients or people attending my seminars – many of whom provide feedback that they didn’t fully understand or comprehend the influence they wield in reshaping their own neurochemistry or brain chemistry.
Let’s begin by taking a look at what takes place in your body when you perceive either SUPPORTIVE or CHALLENGING stimuli through one or more of your senses.
When you perceive someone external is supporting you, it activates your parasympathetic nervous system - the rest and digest aspect of your autonomic nervous system - resulting in you experiencing feelings of relaxation and comfort.
This so-called positive perception also activates your neurochemistry, triggering an increase in dopamine, enkephalins, endorphins, oxytocin, vasopressin, estrogen, and acetylcholine. In other words, you experience a surge in supportive or feel-good neurotransmitters or neurochemistries.
Conversely, if you perceive that someone external is challenging or criticizing you, it activates your sympathetic nervous system, your fight or flight aspect of your autonomic nervous system – resulting in your experiencing feelings of distress and tension.
The so-called negative perception also activates your neurochemistry, triggering a rise in testosterone, cortisol, osteocalcin, histamine, substance P, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, while other feel-good chemistries decrease.
Both of these so-called positive or negative stimulus responses and neurochemical changes can occur within a mere 200 milliseconds.
I like to use the analogy of a sudden threat, like a tiger leaping towards you, baring its teeth. The likely result is that your fight or flight chemistries will surge the instant that you perceive the threat.
However, if the threat dissipates and the tiger runs in the opposite direction, your neurochemistry will likely shift again.
In other words, this fluctuation in chemistries is primarily driven by your perceptions and the ratio of those so-called positive o negative perceptions. And these changes and fluctuations take place faster than the blink of an eye.
What's intriguing is that these fluctuations in neurochemistry are based on your ratios of your perception throughout the day. As unexpected challenging events occur or if something happens that doesn’t meet your expectations, your fight or flight responses and corresponding chemical reactions tend to be triggered.
On the other hand, if something exceeds your expectations and brings you joy, it tends to initiate a different set of rest and digest chemistries. So, every shift in your perception tends to alter your chemistry.
For instance, if you perceive someone around you to provide supportive and pride-inducing feedback, your serotonin levels tend to rise.
Conversely, if you perceive that someone is criticizing you, your serotonin levels tend to decrease as you experience feelings of shame.
Engaging in a fight or flight response also tends to elevate your glucagon, adrenaline, blood pressure, blood sugar, and heart rate – again altering your chemistry in a fraction of a second.
These perceptually imbalances in your neurochemistry can also remain unbalanced over time and stored in your subconscious mind or subcortical brain region should you not take the time to rebalance them perceptually.
For example, you may have experienced a scenario where, on a weekend at home, a heated argument with your spouse unfolds. Suddenly, the doorbell rings, interrupting the confrontation. A long-lost friend has dropped by, and you put on a smile, attempting to set aside the unresolved conflict. After an enjoyable hour, your mood shifts slightly, yet the underlying tension with your spouse remains unaddressed. The next day, at work or while running errands, the issue still festers and bothers you, because you left it unresolved.
Why? Because imbalanced perception induced episodic memories, stored in your subconscious mind (hippocampus), can also contribute to biochemical imbalances that affect your overall chemistry.
These unresolved memories or stored memories likely linger in your psyche – imbalances that tend to persist until you bring them back into balance by seeing both sides, positives and negatives, simultaneously.
Not addressing and balancig these imbalanced perceptions can throw your chemistry off balance. Neurochemistry studies may identify a biochemical imbalance, but they seldom reveal that it stems from incomplete awareness and unresolved judgments. Instead, a drug is often prescribed to regulate your brain chemistry. While this approach may provide temporary relief, it falls short of resolving underlying issues and helping you return to a balanced state of appreciation and love.
In many cases, people often don’t want to be accountable for balancing their perceptions. Instead, people tend to prefer playing the victim, being “right”, and having the other individual be “wrong”. In the meantime, they throw their chemistry off, sometimes ending up with a neurological or neurochemical imbalance along with correlated symptoms.
I believe it's wiser to address and resolve issues directly as thy arise, taking individual accountability for calming or governing your system. That's why I developed my signature 2-day Breakthrough Experience Program, where I introduce you to the Demartini Method. This scientific method guides you through dissolving stored, subconscious emotional baggage that disrupts your chemistry, physiology, and psychological well-being.
By asking the right questions, questions that equilibrate or bring balance to your perceptions, it helps you become fully conscious and aware of the imbalances you may have overlooked.
In other words, when you judge someone on the outside as being either positive or negative, it’s feedback to let you know that you’re too humble or too proud on the inside to admit you possess those exact same traits to the same degree.
Romans 2:1 from the New Testament states that whatever you judge in others, you too do yourself. For example, when you experience pride or shame, you tend to exaggerate or minimize aspects of yourself.
Similarly, when you feel infatuated or resentful towards others, your perception of them becomes imbalanced. As a result, authenticity is compromised for both yourself and those you perceive around you.
Imbalances in the brain, often labeled illness are simply feedback mechanisms to let you know that you have an imbalanced perspective.
These imbalances tend to persist until you address and rectify them, restoring balance to both your perceptions, chemistry and overall well-being.
Rather than relying on medication with potential side effects, taking command of your perceptions and chemistry allows for self-healing and a genuine cure. Those who solely depend on drugs may overlook the importance of discerning and dissolving imbalances stored in the subconscious mind.
I firmly believe that if you don't take command of your own perceptions and chemistry, you'll be more likely to resort to drugs. However, like most people, you may be uncertain as to how you can actively balance your perceptions and dissolve emotional baggage that may be weighing you down.
As I mentioned earlier, I created the Breakthrough Experience Program and the Demartini Method to help you systematically balance your perceptions and their corresponding chemistries, bringing them into balance, appreciation and love. This normalization of your perceptions is a powerful way to heal or change your brain chemistry.
For example, I've encountered individuals who had their brain and blood chemistries evaluated, revealing elevated glucagon levels, low insulin levels, and signs of diabetes. Upon further investigation, I identified areas where they harbored bitterness and resentment, triggering a fight-or-flight response. By addressing and calming these emotional factors, and rebalancing their perceptions, I observed a subsequent restoration of balance in their insulin and glucagon levels. This has occurred repeatedly, even in cases where individuals were initially informed of a damaged pancreas or insufficient beta cell production; suddenly, their systems returned toward equilibrium.
So, I'm a firm believer in giving yourself your power back and not robbing yourself of it. While medicine has its place, many individuals have the capacity to bring themselves back into balance but lack the knowledge and training to do so.
I am inspired to educate as many people as possible to do that, providing an alternative to pharmaceutical neurochemistry tampering. You might surprise yourself by regaining control without dependence, or by becoming less dependent, on medication.
In the Breakthrough Experience, I have encountered many individuals with a diagnosis of clinical depression who harbor unrealistic expectations. Identifying and addressing these expectations is a powerful way to dissolve those fantasies and rebalance their chemistry, thereby alleviating many of their symptoms and helping them foster a more realistic outlook on life.
I am inspired to understand the chemistry of perceptions, as every transmitter, modulator, regulator, hormone, and signal molecule in your brain, even at the DNA level, is influenced by your perception.
Change your perception, and you can change your brain or neurochemistry.
To Sum Up
Here are a few action steps you can take today to help you on your journey to balancing your perceptions:
- Understand that you possess the power to alter your perceptions, something that can profoundly impact your life.
- Realize the direct influence of your perceptions on neurochemistry, with so-called positive and negative perceptions triggering distinct chemistries.
- Acknowledge how daily experiences, both expected and unexpected, can initiate fight or flight responses, altering your chemistries.
- Reflect on any of your unresolved conflicts and stored imbalanced episodic memories, and understand how your amygdala or subconscious mind assigns valency, influencing short-term to long term memory storage and survival mechanisms.
- Question the notion of neurochemical balancing via pharmaceuticals as the primary solution and embrace resolving issues, using tools like the Demartini Method.
- Learn to balance your perceptions, addressing judgments and imbalances to bring your internal chemistry back into equilibrium and achieve psychological and physiological well-being.
- Embrace gratitude and love as powerful healers, capable of normalizing neurochemistry and providing an alternative to pharmaceutical solutions.
Understand the value of taking command of your perceptions and neurochemistries, this can lessen the dependency on drugs, leading to greater control over your well-being.
If you’re inspired to learn how to take command and balance your perceptions, allowing a balanced ratio of hormones and transmitters to emerge, come to the Breakthrough Experience.
Let me show you how to address imbalanced perceptions, resentments, infatuations, pride, shame, grief, relief, anger, aggression, blame, betrayal, or any false causalities or false attribution biases.
Balancing your perceptions will lead you to greater gratitude and love, returning your chemistries to normal.
Gratitude and love, as opposed to drugs, remain the greatest healers on the planet.
I believe that if you come to the Breakthrough Experience, what you'll learn will be life-changing and neurochemical balancing.
Are you ready for the NEXT STEP?
If you’re seriously committed to your own growth, if you’re ready to make a change now and you’d love some help doing so, then book a FREE Discovery call with a member of the Demartini Team so we can take you through your mini power assessment session.
You’ll come away with a 3-step action plan and the foundation to empower your life.
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