What Do I Do If I Can’t Tell What My Motives and Desires Are?

I’m going to start off this article by going over the process of how discerning what our attitudes are at any given time, and surrendering selfish attitudes to God works, according to the Bible, and how we are instructed to go about it. Then I’m going to explain how mental illness can disrupt important perceptions needed for this process.

First, let’s talk about how this process works in a mentally healthy individual.

In mentally healthy individuals, they actually do not know their own hearts, according to the Bible.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Jeremiah 17:9

Think about this problem for a minute. If our hearts before conversion (and to an extent after conversion also), are this deceitful, how can we ever be honest enough with ourselves to know our true motives and motivations?

We can’t without help, because we lie even to ourselves if we’re this deceptive.

Thus this presents a huge problem, but praise God the Bible gives us the answer in the next verse!

I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.
Jeremiah 17:10

The Lord searches and knows our hearts, and He can make us aware of what attitudes we’re harboring and what our character is really like, and give us the power to surrender those attitudes to Him if they are immoral ones.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24

Contrary to the popular opinion of the world right now, which is that no one knows us better than we know ourselves, and we’re the authority on ourselves, the Bible is actually quite clear that we can’t understand ourselves or know our motives and desires, without God and His Word. This is not only due to the deceitfulness of our hearts after sin, but it’s also due to the fact that no one except the Maker understands the creation fully and completely.

No one except God can fully understand any created thing, from a mollusk to a human being, to a star galaxy.

As human beings we understand these things partially; we do not hold all knowledge. Our finite physical brain is incapable of holding all the knowledge of the universe. Only God’s immaterial infinite mind can do that.

Relying on our own human judgment and wisdom, we will arrive at the wrong conclusions about ourselves without God’s aid. It’s a common problem the selfish heart makes where we see ourselves as better than we really are, in fact, we don’t see our sins as that great, if we even believe in the concept of sin at all. Many people in the world don’t even believe right and wrong exist as objective, transcendent truths, and thus there’s no standard to measure their attitudes or conduct by to see if it’s benevolent or malevolent. All other world religions besides Christianity, have a different definition of right and wrong that isn’t the true one. Humanism for instance, doesn’t believe in objective right and wrong at all. Promiscuity is not consider wrongdoing in the Wiccan religion.

One of the main doctrines that sets Christianity apart from the others, revealing it to be the truth, is that it’s the only religion with the true definition of sin (wrongdoing), and righteousness (right-doing).

Only in Christianity is sin defined as breaking a moral law that matches up with what is actually inherently wrong by its very nature.

Worshipping other gods besides the true God, or alongside the true God is wrong.
Making images of God and worshipping them, or having people represent God and forgive our sins in His stead, or do other divine acts that God alone can do, as Catholic priests do when members of their church confess their sins to the priest – this is wrong and steals worship from God.
Taking God’s Name in vain directly, or living in a way that doesn’t glorify Him is wrong.
Having one God and being true to him, but it’s not the Creator who is also our Savior, the only true God, is wrong.
Failing to honor our fathers and mothers and to respect authority figured is wrong. This commandment also entails the responsibility of those in authority to love and serve and protect those under their authority.
Murder is wrong, also hate and any form of disrespect and mistreatment.
Adultery and fornication are wrong, also any form of sexual fantasizing.
Any form of stealing is wrong.
Any form of lying, like intentionally leaving out important details, or exaggerating information for personal gain, is wrong.
Coveting something that belongs to someone else, or that God has said no to, is wrong.

These commandments are the ones that match up with what is actually sinful.

In Wicca promiscuity is allowed, but lying and murder are seen as wrong. They get some things right, but many things wrong.

In Buddhism they don’t really believe in objective wrong or in human nature as being fallen and sinful. You are a basically innocent person who just needs to learn lessons, and you’ll suffer until you learn the right way to live, eventually leaving suffering completely behind and reaching a place of nirvana. They believe all desire is bad and causes suffering, even benevolent desires. They meditate with the purpose of letting go of all desire, and thus are often very quiet and non-confrontational people, but they don’t have strong benevolent desires motivating them and filling their heart with a holy zeal.

These false religions appeal to a fallen heart. They allow you to engage in some sins that maybe you really want to do, and justify them. They don’t require a person humble themselves and admit they’ve done objective wrong in their lives and that the only way back from that is through the blood of God Himself. They trivialize the sin in our hearts, calling it mistakes rather than wrongdoing, or they distort moral truth in some other way where they fail to see right as right and wrong as wrong.

The Holy Spirit has to convict us of sin through the Word of God, show us what our sins did to Christ when they put Him on the cross, and open our eyes to just how wretched and vile we really are. We don’t come to this conclusion on our own, and this conclusion is only reached by those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; who respond to the Holy Spirit’s prodding and calling with a humble desire to know the truth about themselves, and to be washed clean by the blood of Christ.

The proud Jesus can’t wash clean or instruct in His way.

Humility is a gift that God is willing to give to anyone who receive it. He will be found by all those who earnestly seek for Him.

Wonderfully, the Word of God (working through the Spirit of course, teaching us its truths) is able to judge the intents and motives of the heart. This means that in prayer and Bible study, we can evaluate our inner attitudes, and know when they are selfish ones. We can see when we’re harboring jealousy towards someone, for instance, and then we can surrender that jealous attitude to God, and ask Him to give us a generous attitude of love and goodwill towards that person instead.

We can even see when we’re tempted to be jealous, but haven’t crossed the line over to jealousy yet, and petition God for strength to resist the temptation altogether.

The Word of God gives this clarity to us.

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
Hebrews 4:12

Not only does God examine us, but He gives us the ability to examine ourselves through the scriptures with His help, and arrive at correct conclusions about the state of our heart and what attitudes we’re having at the time.

Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD.
Lamentations 3:40

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?
2 Corinthians 13:5

The Bible tells us that by God’s moral law is the knowledge of sin. Thus by studying God’s law, and the Holy Spirit making its principles of love clear to us, we learn what righteousness is and what sin is, can discern between the two, and can then judge whether we’re having righteous attitudes and making righteous choices, or whether we are harboring sinful attitudes and making sinful choices.

by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Romans 3:20

What then shall we say? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed, I would not have been mindful of sin if not for the law. For I would not have been aware of coveting if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”
Romans 7:7

In teaching the law to the world, Jesus made it plain to them that He hadn’t come to abolish the law. Rather, He came to fulfill it. To live a perfect life and then die on our behalf, then go to heaven and as our High Priest stand before God, answering our prayers for forgiveness and giving us strength to live and walk in holiness.

Abolishing the law would make none of this possible. It would just make sin legal in the universe, and thus no one could ever be forgiven of sin and made holy. It would be an action that worked directly against Jesus’ mission that He came to do to save us from our sins.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”
Matthew 5:17-18

Rather than doing away with the law – Jesus the Savior from sin – established the law with His life and His offer of forgiveness for our breaking of the law.

While on earth He taught and instructed the people, explaining that the law went much deeper than the outward actions. It encompasses all the thoughts, motives, desires, attitudes, as well as the actions that stem from these attitudes.

For instance, it’s certainly adultery and a breaking of the 7th commandment to commit the physical act and sleep with someone who isn’t one’s spouse, but it’s also adultery to lust after someone in your heart. It’s a lesser-way to break the 7th commandment about adultery, and still a sin, though not as great of a sin as actually going out and committing physical adultery.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[e] 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew 5:27-28

The disciple John echoed this same teaching He learned from Jesus and said:

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,
1 John 3:15

Jesus understood that these actions really come from the cherished sinful desires in the heart. They don’t appear out of thin air. By the time someone commits an act of adultery with another person, they have been cherishing lust in their inner thoughts for a while.

“Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body?
But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them.
For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander
These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
Matthew 15:17-20

The disciple James echoes these same teachings that He learned from the mouth of Christ.

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?
James 4:1

Thus, a person needs a new heart, a character change from within. Which happens at conversion when we see that we’ve lived a life of sin, and we need a Savior as there is no other way to be forgiven and cleansed, and we arrive at the foot of the cross asking Christ to forgive us of all of our many sins, willing to lay them all down and forsake them all.

He then gives us a new character, a nature that can love, rather than being selfish. A heart that has unselfish desires now. Being changed from within in our very nature, our thoughts run in a new channel of loving thoughts, and our actions follow these thoughts and desires. We can now put others first and serve them, and desire to bring them to Christ to experience the peace and joy we’ve discovered in Him.

This transformation is called being born again, because our whole nature changes from being motived by selfishness to being motivated by love.

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
John 3:3

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws

Ezekiel 36:26

The new heart that Jesus gives us can keep His moral law. Instead of coveting what someone else has, for instance, we can have genuine gratitude to God for giving Himself to us and for us, the greatest gift He could ever give. Gratitude can fill our hearts instead of covetous greed which really leads to misery and unhappiness.

However while we now have a new heart that is fundamentally different from our old one, and motivated by the just and good principles found in God’s moral law, rather than motivated by selfishness, our heart isn’t perfect. It’s been changed, but not completely changed. Thus there are still some selfish desires in us and our character is still somewhat evil.

This is why we must daily surrender immoral attitudes and desires to God, and fight battles with self on our knees, where we give these things up to God, rather than act them out and let them motivate us and determine our choices and actions. This isn’t always easy, and the Bible describes it as warfare against the flesh. But we are promised that God will give us the victory if we will actively cooperate with Him.

The Holy Spirit will convict us, and initiate the actions that need to take place. For instance, He will make it clear that it’s through the Word that we have strength, and convict us to spend time in the Bible. He will convict us of our need for prayer, and how we can’t subdue selfish desires if we don’t spend time surrendering them to God. Then it’s our job to respond to this conviction and pray and keep up a relationship with God. If we’re tempted to yell mean words at someone when they’ve been very rude to us, it’s our job to excuse ourselves from the room and pray for strength to bite our tongue. Jesus will convict us that He will take care of the person, and that mean words is a human solution that is unjust. We will find clarity and peace in the truths in His Word, and will be able to surrender the situation to Him.

This is how the process of sanctification works. But this process requires a working mind in order to engage in. And if you’re suffering from a mental illness, there can be confusion rather than clarity, lots of brain fog, and inability to discern.

Some people with mental illness can’t tell what their motives, and desires, and attitudes are, even after searching the Bible and praying. Some people with obsessive-compulsive symptoms have spent many dozens or even hundreds of hours trying to pinpoint what the general state of their heart is, what “spirit” actuates them, and have come up empty-handed, perhaps with even more confusion than when they started out.

They can’t discern whether they have really repented and turned their life over to God or are still resisting Him and rebelling against Him. For instance, if they have harm OCD and have an intrusive thought of violence, they can’t tell if they enjoyed the thought or not, or if they feel an intrusive emotion of intense anger that comes over them, they can’t tell if they actually wish harm on people, or if they want good things for them and have benevolent desires.

Christians with the obsessive-compulsive fear of being lost and going to hell (a symptom often unofficially referred to as scrupulosity), often can’t tell if they really love the God of the Bible’s character and what the Bible says He stands for, or if they are at odds with His principles and just want to be selfish and worship self instead.

This is obviously a big problem. How can you surrender attitudes of jealousy, anger at God, and other un-Christlike attitudes to God if you don’t know whether you’re harboring such attitudes, and don’t seem to have access to the part of the brain that is involved in submitting your will to Christ?

While some people may simply be experiencing a lack of emotions, and still have a will they can use to surrender to Christ, others with more severe symptoms may actually lose the ability to surrender attitudes to Christ.

That makes this symptom a serious issue that you will want to address and take care of. You definitely don’t want to sweep this one under the rug.

I’ve been doing some research into this symptom and related symptoms, and it turns out there’s a number of conditions – besides just OCD – that can cause a person to lose access to the parts of their brain involved in values, motives, and desires.

Dissociative disorders can cause this. If you get too dissociated you’re kind of in a haze, not really connected with all the parts of your brain. People report feeling lots of brain fog and disconnect from their bodies and brain.

Personality disorders can involve a loss of awareness about crucial parts of the self.

The fight-or-flight response has a way of closing off certain brain processes, especially the ones involved in deep thoughts, and morality and judgment. Fight-or-flight’s purpose is to activate your survival mode and get you out of danger, not to philosophize or think about or form your values and beliefs. The regions involved in values and morality and self-analysis are closed off during fight-or-flight, and the regions involving intense emotions like anxiety and alarm are activated, with the goal to get you quickly out of danger.

Not only can fight-or-flight close off deeper parts of the brain, but it can over-activate some parts of the brain, causing involuntary powerful feelings of anger, or false guilt that overwhelms you, or impulses to harm others, along with images of the violence. Yes, it can give you overpowering feelings and emotions, that you didn’t choose to feel or bring up, that come up involuntarily due to the brain inflammation randomly hitting certain parts of your brain with force.

Think of this like having a virus on your computer. Image and sound files can pop up without you ever clicking on anything. You didn’t intend to open those files, but the virus opened them impulsively without your involvement. This is what can happen due to fight-or-flight. The fight-or-flight response is involved in a lot of the symptoms of mental disorders, everything from PTSD symptoms, to ADHD, to schizophrenia, to OCD, and more.

Once out of danger the person returns to rest, relax, and restore mode. It’s in this mode that we have access to the deeper philosophical questions like what do I value, what do I think and believe, and who am I as a person, what are my motives and desire, and are they right or wrong – and if wrong we can then decide to do something about that and make changes (I believe through God as I’m a Christian, but your beliefs may differ on this).

But people chronically in fight-or-flight don’t have access to those deeper regions and often find them to be barred and closed-off. Fight-or-flight will usually remain as long as there’s a major stressor present. For many people that’s things like mold exposure, Lyme disease, nutrient deficiencies, lead exposure, pesticide exposure, abuse. All of these things can bring on a chronic fight-or-flight response.

People with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, may not simply have the deeper regions barred off, but the deeper parts of the self may be wrongly connected, a symptom referred to as altered connectivity, which can cause them to have psychotic motives, and desires, and goals that don’t make any sense. Not only can the goal itself be nonsensical, such as their chief goal in life may be to become an angel, but the motive can be a nonsensical mesh of good and evil where they confuse the two. For instance, they may believe that becoming an angel is an evil thing to do and that evil is actually good and will result in benefits to the world. They may also believe things like evil is blue and is just a color.

The concept of good and evil, selfishness and love, can be meshed together or confused in such a way that the person can no longer understand the principles behind good and evil, and cannot choose good motives or evil motives at all. They can have blunted or completely absent or distorted perceptions of good and evil. This can lead to errors in judgment that cause them to harm themselves or others, not always deliberately due to confusion, but sometimes due to neglect as well. 

This is why a lot of people need to do health protocols to get well, or to change their lifestyle, or in some cases take medication.

If you’re thinking it seems like a serious thing that you can’t access your desires and motives and clearly see what they are, you’re correct. This is a very serious thing. However, this part of the brain can often be brought back rather easily, for instance, if the person has experienced trauma, working through the trauma psychologically and healing psychologically can often bring them out of this state of losing access to motives and desires.

Sometimes something as simple as taking some 5htp to reduce inflammation or gaba supplements can bring back access to these important parts of the brain.

Or if the person has a psychotic disorder, antipsychotics can bring back this part of the brain. Lithium worked wonders for me in bringing me out of psychosis. It’s a mood-stabilizing medication that for many people with bipolar 1 has antipsychotic effects.

So the solution can be something simple and work rather quickly. Even in the case of a psychotic disorder, the brain is usually very healthy and in tact, and it’s more an issue of inflammation affecting the functioning of the brain. The inflammation can be brought down quickly with antipsychotic and anti-inflammatory medication, and the person can regain their perception of their motives and desires.

People with psychotic disorders do not really have severe conditions. They aren’t the people with brain damage and loss of nervous system activity, confined to wheelchairs, having lost the ability to walk. These types of symptoms indicate severe brain or nervous system damage. People with psychotic disorders are healthy by comparison to such people, they simply have symptoms that can cause a lot of problems and a lot of distress.

But manage the symptoms, bring down the inflammation, bring them out of psychosis and they do quite well in life.

It’s important to take this symptom of losing perception of motives and desires seriously, without panicking. Because constant panic will only push you more into the fight-or-flight response and keep those areas of perception closed off.

ERP has a positive effect on the immune response. Excessive worry and rumination lowers immunity. When we refuse to worry and do rituals, we’re refusing to participate in the natural inclination our immune system has to go into fight-or-flight, and we’re pushing back against it, thus strengthening our immune response and bringing on a state of better health.

Every Part of Us Is Physical and Finite
It’s interesting but sometimes I think we forget that everything about us – every part of us – is physical. Our neurons are physical, things. Even the neurochemicals that get off balance when we’re mentally ill and affect the neurons in our brain and cause us to have irrational fears and to be chronically in fight-or-flight are physical things.

Sometimes we tend to over-spiritualize the human brain, and this can lead to false beliefs that aren’t helpful and don’t steer us towards health. We might for instance, blame a loved one for the immoral things they did during a psychotic break, rather than understanding their brain is physical and, thus, when it malfunctions they can lose the ability to tell right from wrong and do dangerous things but not intentionally, just due to the confusion.

Or, in the case of OCD we may blame ourselves for having intrusive sexual or violent thoughts that are just a symptom of malfunction, holding ourselves responsible as though we have an infinite consciousness and will that is not limited by our physical, finite nature.

We may tend to always hold ourselves responsible, as though we’re a divine God with a mind that is indestructible and cannot break-down or err, rather than recognizing we are dependent on our brain for our perception and our ability to have and use a will and choice, and our agency, and if our brain malfunctions we do too; we are subject to its handicaps and limitations.

Sometimes I hear the argument made that is meant to bring comfort, that God knows the deeper parts of ourselves that we don’t understand or have access to, and He can communicate with those deep parts of us even if they get confused, and rewired due to a psychotic disorder, or completely closed off due to damage from a stroke, or severe inflammation.

The person may say “God knows what your motives are, even when you don’t, and He can help you align them with Him. Or that “God knows your motives are good even when you’re having violent hallucinations.”

While it’s true God knows every part of us, if the deep parts of us are re-wired to be nonsensical, then what God knows about those deep parts of us is that we’re in a state of confusion. And He also knows who we were and the choices we made before we entered the state of confusion, and He will take these choices as our decision. But there isn’t a deeper part of us that is always able to understand morality even if our whole brain malfunctions and is re-wired at the deepest levels, as occurs during severe psychosis.

Even the Deep Parts Can Malfunction

It’s not true that there’s a deeper part of a person that is always rational, and uses rationality to have good motives. Such a belief hinges on the idea that there is an untouchable deeper part of us that can’t be re-wired by psychosis. But, since our brain is physical, and every part of our brain has the ability to malfunction, this can mean that even the deepest parts of ourself can become confused and re-wired to be nonsensical. Not just the more superficial parts of our selfhood and our perception.

I have been in such a state, and recently slipped into a near state of losing moral perception again, and it reminded me of just how “locked-in” within their own mind someone in psychosis really is. Thankfully, I came out of this recent state by taking lithium which brought me out of my psychotic break in 2016 again, but honestly I’m feeling very shaky and scared because 1/3rd of people with my condition reach a point where they become treatment resistant and that could happen to me.

I want to make sure to get this message out loud and clear: When you believe Jesus is the Queen of England, you can’t put faith and trust in Him. When you believe sin is righteousness or that there’s no such thing as good and evil, or that good is the color red and evil is the color blue, you cannot repent of sin and ask forgiveness of God. The person enters a state where whatever choice they made prior to the psychosis is the choice registered in heaven’s books.

And this is why if you suspect your loved one is not saved, and wasn’t living in obedience to God when they slipped into psychosis, it is extremely important you do everything in your power to bring them out of psychosis, and really put their doctor’s feet to the fire to prioritize bringing them back into sanity, so they can again have a chance to make a different choice and choose Jesus this time.

This is what I would want someone to do for me if I were lost and not right with God when I slipped into psychosis. Do not give up on them. Do not trust your loved ones atheist psychiatrist to prioritize their salvation or their ability to discern between right and wrong. Most psychiatrists are atheists. Atheism gives a person a completely different worldview from Christianity with completely different values and priorities. You’re going to have to go to bat for your loved one in a wise but perseverant way. I’ve spoken with some people with psychotic disorders who had to try 20-30 different medication combinations before they came out of psychosis. It can sometimes take that much work and effort. Don’t give up and allow them to exist perpetually in a state of no longer understanding right and wrong.

Not only can the person not understand right from wrong when in full psychosis, but they also suffer terribly on the inside. Due to how psychosis slows down time, one day can feel like more than a week, and it’s just high-level psychological suffering 24/7 when in a state of full psychosis.

They can also be a danger to themselves and others when in such a state. Inflamed states often bring on violence and suicidality or impulsiveness, and if the person doesn’t have a working frontal lobe to weigh and control their actions and choices, they will just go with the violent impulses. This makes them a danger in society. So that’s the other big reason to bring them back to sanity if at all possible.

We Can Study the Brain Because It’s Physical
We can study the human brain because we are physical beings. Since the brain is a physical organ, we can use MRI machines and do blood tests to learn more about how it works and whether ours is functioning in a healthy way or an unhealthy way.

Our brain is sitting in a chemistry lab of neurotransmitters and immunomodulating hormones. These chemicals signal neurons and are a big part of the functional working of our brain. So if there’s an explosion in the “chemistry lab” because some of these chemicals are in the wrong proportion or there’s a pathogen present in the brain like Lyme disease, these chemical reactions will affect the brain function. We can start to have intrusive thoughts and other mental symptoms outside of our control.

And since every part of what makes up our self and nature is physical, even things like our psychology can malfunction if our physicality malfunctions. If we have too much histamine in our brain for instance – an immune-modulating hormone – It’s not just superficial things, but also the deeper parts of the self and our perception of the self that can malfunction.

For instance, someone with psychosis may be highly motivated to go to Jerusalem because they believe they are the Messiah. But they aren’t motivated to go to college and pursue a degree in mathematics, even though they are very skilled at it, and could make contributions that benefit the world by studying math. Notice how the delusion they are the Messiah also involves the reward system itself being rewired to align with the delusion. They not only believe they are the Messiah, but they are highly motivated to fill that role, and can no longer find any motivation to do things that make sense.

Not only this but if you tell them they aren’t the Messiah, they feel deeply hurt by this, as though being the Messiah is a part of their core self. It’s somehow become part of their sense of self – their new rewired self the illness created. They have a new psychology now, that doesn’t fit a healthy, properly aligned psychology. While people are different and there’s uniqueness to our personalities, goals, and abilities, feeling deeply hurt you aren’t acknowledged as the Messiah is not a part of human psychology. Our brain was not created to experience that. This is something out of alignment with our design.

Distorted, or Nonsensical Psychology Can Occur With Mental Illness
For the person with anorexia, they often have cognitive distortions that affect their psychology. They have a re-wired psychology. Their beliefs, sense of self, and motivation/reward center is different from the healthy person without anorexia. For instance, many of them believe being frail is desirable. Not just thin, but so thin their body starts breaking down. If you say they look “healthy”, they don’t have a place in their brain for that concept. Instead there’s fat, skinny, and frail, and “healthy” means fat. They can’t see that there’s a whole other category of healthy where a person is thin, and also strong and feels great because they have the proper endorphins and are consuming needed nutrients that affect mood and strength. And that this category is desirable.

They stop having any dopamine reward for actually fulfilling things, like building a business, going to college, making a scientific discovery, inventing a machine or technology that benefits the world and reduces suffering. Instead the only thing they get a dopamine reward for and have motivation to do is count calories and starve themselves. This gives them a sense of accomplishment, (but also causes much pain with it and in general they are miserable and suffer a lot) and nothing else does anymore. Nothing else in life seems fulfilling anymore.

Their psychology has changed, due to new neural wiring and connectivity in the brain.

So…when we’re asking how do I know if I really enjoyed that violent image that popped into my head…it’s important to keep in mind that every part of your processes can be altered by brain inflammation…and to not always take it personally as though you’re guilty. The person who really believes they are the Messiah due to having psychosis, isn’t lying or at fault. They haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just an error their brain is making; they aren’t trying to lie and deceive people.

The person with anorexia who has some cognitive distortions will have a harder time choosing to fight back against the illness and refuse to starve herself than someone who doesn’t have anorexia, but if she has enough of a grasp on reality to know starving herself is wrong then she needs to live up to this truth, and should be held accountable to do that.

There are some people with anorexia – usually people who also have a psychotic disorder as the two often co-occur – who cannot tell right from wrong. Such a person can’t be held responsible for something they can’t discern, and shouldn’t be held responsible for it. Instead they need to be involuntarily hospitalized and put on antipsychotic medication to come out of the psychosis and gain awareness. 2/3rd of people with schizophrenia respond well to antipsychotic medication and come into awareness. I imagine this number would be similar for people with other types of psychotic disorders as well.

Due to how inflammation rewires the brain you could have something like a feeling of joy that comes over you when you see a violent image. You could have an inappropriate reaction such as laughter when you see a violent image.

Like I said earlier even the deep parts of ourselves like our psychology and motivation can get confused and malfunction, and I don’t believe we’re responsible for things outside of our awareness or outside of our control. (Some people such as those who have had strokes have irresistible compulsions they actually can’t control, for instance).

The more out-of-alignment and disjointed the parts of the self become, the more you see these kinds of inappropriate responses.

It’s common in people with psychotic disorders for them to laugh when someone dies, and to have other inappropriate responses, as well as emotions that don’t fit the situation, like they may feel elation at hearing someone died. Or they may feel nothing at all and have anhedonia. This happens when the inflammation in the brain causes confusion, and the more confusion there is, the more you see a disjointed person emerge who doesn’t act like a person, and you can see something is wrong.

So if you find yourself very disjointed, or let’s say you’re so dissociated you’ve lost access to the deeper parts of the self, like your values, your character, your will and desires, and motives…then what needs to happen is treatment to bring you out of fight or flight.

ERP will help. As explained earlier it strengthens the immune system, and balances it, bringing you into a calmer, more grounded state of being.

There’s also supplement protocols you can do with Functional Medicine doctors or on your own. There’s a condition called undermethylation you may want to google and read up about. A lot of people with undermethylation have OCD. The treatment is to take methyldonors; supplements like an amino acid called methionine.

Undermethylation causes a build-up of histamine which if it gets too high causes repetitive thoughts and compulsions and imbalances the immune system. There’s also other conditions that cause histamine to be too high. For instance, exposure to mold toxins. The treatment for mold illness is binders like charcoal, and some people use a medication called cholestyramine. You can also take antihistamine supplements like calcium, high-dose vitamin C, an herb called sophora japonica, or even ask your psychiatrist to try antihistamine medications like low dose Seroquel, or another low dose antipsychotic or mood stabilizer.

Low serotonin can also cause OCD symptoms, including losing access to the deeper regions of the brain from neurotransmitters being imbalanced. Low serotonin tends to cause the excitatory neurotransmitters to be too high, like adrenaline and histamine, and when these are too high you go into fight-or-flight and the regions of the brain needed for deep thought close down.

You can try 5HTP, a supplement that gives the body the precursor to build serotonin. I’ve taken this supplement in the past and I balanced my brain chemistry with it (for many people it makes long-term changes and the positive results last long after stopping it), and what I love about it is you can stop it rather quickly even after being on it a long time, with no withdrawal symptoms. Unlike SSRIs which it can be very dangerous to stop cold-turkey – even fatal in some cases (never do that please) – to stop my 5htp I would just take lower and lower doses for about 5 days and then just come off it completely, and it’s safe to do that with it.

Supplements in general rarely cause bad effects, even if they end up being wrong for you the effect they cause will usually be mild, and they don’t cause withdrawal symptoms because they don’t work like medication and you don’t become dependent on them.

But SSRIs are another option for treating OCD caused by low serotonin and they’ve helped a lot of people, so if you’d like to try them ask your psychiatrist or doctor about that.

Another thing that helps a lot of people with OCD is taking antiviral and antibacterial herbs. Kids with a condition called PANDAS that involves OCD symptoms and psychotic symptoms, have these symptoms from a chronic strep infection. When they treat their strep infection with antibacterial herbs their OCD symptoms abate (as well as their psychotic symptoms too many times).

I read a book called Toxic that explained that any infection or toxin that a person is so full of that the toxin or infection completely fills the cells and starts overflowing into the bloodstream can bring on a condition called CIRS – Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome – which causes histamine to go up, and one of the core symptoms of CIRS is OCD.

When toxins get loose in the bloodstream, they can damage vital organs and it’s very dangerous, and so the body has a defense mechanism in place where it will shoot out histamine and rev up a certain part of the immune system to kill off the infections or neutralize the toxins. While your body is keeping you alive and that’s a good thing, the chronically high histamine brings on either mental symptoms, or physical symptoms, or a combination of both, and OCD and brain fog are common mental symptoms people experience from the high histamine.

Some people with CIRS get physical symptoms too, but there’s also a large portion of people with it who only get mental symptoms, such as OCD, brain fog, irritability, intense feelings of anger, etc.

The treatment for CIRS is to remove the toxins or kill off the pathogens. A lot of people have chronic infections that don’t show up in the typical mainstream medical testing, like a CBC (Complete Blood Count, the standard test ERs and doctors give). For instance, I ended up in the ER with nerve pain and psychotic symptoms from toxic black mold exposure, but tested as perfectly healthy on my CBC and the blood work they did at the hospital.

To test for mold do a urine mold mycotoxin test. You can get one at Great Plains Laboratory, and Genova diagnostics, as well as a number of other places. These tests are very accurate.

The tests for chronic bacterial and viral infections aren’t as accurate. Usually the best way to determine if you have a chronic viral or bacterial infection is to go on therapeutic doses of antiviral and antibacterial herbs for a month or so, and see if they help. Many antibacterial herbs are also antiviral, so you may only need to take one herb to deal with any infections you may have. For instance, I did excellently on therapeutic doses of cat’s claw, an herb that is antibacterial and antiviral. Cat’s Claw helped me gain awareness that I wasn’t going to hell, and I could see around my scrupulosity fears. It really seemed to connect parts of my brain again that had been disconnected, and corrected faulty neural wiring.

Along with killing off infections, Cat’s Claw also repairs damaged neurons, and grows new neurons.

Antibiotic medications are also an option if you can get your doctor to agree to let you try them.