How Our Finite Nature is Behind Why We Have Unconscious, Involuntary Brain Processes. And What Happens When This Part of the Brain Malfunctions.

We are finite beings. This means that in order to have voluntary processes, processes involved in choosing to move your hand, choosing to think a thought, choosing to surrender a selfish attitude to God, or to choose to believe in Christ as one’s Savior, we must have involuntary, inaccessible areas of the brain and body that operate without our direct choice. Voluntary processes are made possible by involuntary biochemistry and physicality that is outside of our control.

Behind the decision to say “Thank you” to your mother when she buys you a nice gift, there are brain settings that enable you to choose “Thank you”, or to choose not to say thank you, or to choose to say something else. If these settings didn’t exist beneath your conscious thoughts, you couldn’t choose whether to say Thank you or not. You wouldn’t even think of it, which is what occurs when people with psychotic disorders have a symptom called poverty of thought and poverty of speech. These settings stop operating due to brain inflammation, thus conscious thoughts are no longer accessible to choose to think. The person shuts down, and when questioned as to why thy never communicate, they may eventually say during a time when thoughts are more accessible “I don’t know why but I just can’t respond.”

With every designed machine, there’s a hidden, internal part of the machinery that allows the part you manually operate to exist and to work.

Since human beings are living “machines”, creations of God, we are no different in this respect.

To choose to think a thought one must have involuntary parts of the brain that store information and store it in a way that it’s easily retrievable so you can then choose to consciously grab a thought or idea and start thinking about it.

God not being finite, has a brain that can operate without any finite constraints, and that is not dependent on anything to work.

The Holy Spirit can think without a physical brain, and is immaterial. For us to think though, we can’t do it in a vacuum of immaterial space. We don’t exist and can’t think without a brain. In giving us a brain, God is giving us the ability to think. God can think without a brain, but we cannot. God isn’t arbitrarily constraining us by giving us a brain, rather He’s making thought possible for us by giving us a brain, and thought is not possible for us (or existence) without a brain.

Malfunction is not possible with God’s divine mind.

Malfunction didn’t happen in Adam’s pre-fallen brain either, but not due to anything inherent in Adam or in his power, but due to God’s almighty power holding Adam’s brain in a state of perfect functioning.

However, after Adam’s sin the curse rested on the earth and there was a degree of separation from God. This meant that God no longer kept people’s brains in a state of perfect health. We could now experience brain dysfunction.

Jesus who took on human nature after the fall, could experience mental malfunction in His humanity. His brain could forget things or experience brain fog. I’m sure the mental changes he experienced from the horror of the cross were extreme.

Jesus knows what it is to have a finite brain capable of malfunction due to the fall. He experienced it in His person while He walked in this world, and He knows it by experience. He can sympathize with us in our mental conditions, and understand us from personal experience having a body like our own.

Unlike God’s divine mind which is dependent on nothing to operate, with us, we are dependent on our physical body in order to think. Our physical brain is what makes thinking possible for us. Thus we must have unconscious parts of our brain and body, which make the conscious parts possible to work.

With mental illnesses there can be malfunction between the two parts of ourselves – between the conscious and unconscious parts. Unconscious thoughts and memory storage can cross-over to conscious thinking, and a person can experience vivid memories from a past trauma as though they are happening right now. Auditory voices from bits and pieces of memory can be heard if the auditory centers of the brain are over-activated while unconscious parts of the brain are overlapping with conscious centers.

Many different conditions involve this specific kind of malfunction of these two types of regions cross talking with one another. From PTSD, to psychotic disorders, to depression with psychotic features, to OCD where a person doesn’t hear voices but they experience strong intrusive thoughts.

As mentioned previously, this kind of malfunction is possible because we are finite beings. We are constructed and created with a set physical design. Thus that design that has parts that are meant to be unconscious and operating under the surface, can malfunction in a way that under-the-surface processes break into conscious thought and become consciously experienced.

What’s the difference between involuntary processes and voluntary ones?

One key difference is that involuntary processes must involve physiological changes that are best controlled by the body itself without our involvement.

They must be the kinds of processes that would impede or interrupt our human experience if we had to go in and manually control them.
And when they become conscious this is exactly what they do – they impede and interrupt regular living and keep a person from experiencing life in the world as a human being in the way God designed and intended. Instead the person becomes like a living machine that is stuck repeating certain actions or assaulted with disturbing images all day long, and can’t break out of the cycle of malfunction. At least not without some help or aids.

If a process is best controlled “manually” or consciously, then God has our brain do it consciously; if it’s best controlled automatically or unconsciously then God built it into our design to operate automatically.

The other distinct difference is that conscious processes are ones that involve the higher parts of the brain. Things like study of the scriptures, communion with God, the selection of values, and goals, and plans. These things can’t be unconscious processes because if they were that would go against free will and being made in the image of God to will and to do. It would make it so people were not moral agents, just flesh robots without any agency.

What kinds of processes fit the bill? Well let’s think about something like romantic love. This is a higher-level conscious thought process. Admiring how your spouse is in the image of God and the attributes they possess, both physical and moral ones. Being drawn to them as a person, establishing that they can be trusted based on their past history of faithfulness and acts of kindness and love, and then choosing to love them and marry them and join them in the union of marriage. This is all higher-level conscious brain function.

But when it comes to readying the body to engage in the sexual act, it doesn’t make sense for people to be consciously choosing to do that. If it had to be consciously chosen they’d have to take their mind off of the deeper, more important thoughts like wanting to be one with this person, wanting to experience a deep love and connection. Or, if both were consciously experienced together, you’d have something similar to OCD where intrusive sexual impulses and loud thoughts would clutter your mind, making it hard to focus on the act itself and the bond it brings.

So instead God designed that unconscious processes bring about the fast physiological changes needed to prepare your body for the act. This is instigated when the person gets close to us, begins kissing us, or showing skin, etc.

You can see how it wouldn’t work for these changes to occur psychologically and consciously. Our conscious psychological processes are too slow. We can’t sit there for 10 minutes talking our body into readiness. There would be no passion if it worked like that. Physical passion is needed for the act, and this comes about due to unconscious processes.

And a mistake many couples make when sex dies out in their marriage is to think it’s always a psychological problem. It can sometimes be a purely physiological one. If one’s hormones are not working properly you really can’t talk your body into being ready for sex or into desire for sex. It is controlled by hormones and physiology.

There are many, many more involuntary unconscious processes the brain is responsible for. These are signals and impulses and communications that lie under the surface – underneath the consciously chosen thoughts. These signals, and information, and communications do not operate like regular thoughts, and they don’t look like regular thoughts. The reason why is because these are the signals that make those conscious thoughts possible and readily available to be accessed and chosen.

These signals are the back-end infrastructure that supports the user-facing parts. These signals aren’t fully-formed thoughts and they don’t look or sound like real thoughts. They are distinctly different in form, structure, and essence. When they come to the surface and into the conscious thinking, and since there is usually a lot of inflammation and alarm neurotransmitters involved when this happens – they are startling to the person, and often dark. Violent impulses or thoughts that are part of what should be the hidden impulses of the fight-or-flight response, when these become conscious can be frightening to the person. This is what happens with OCD – violent, intrusive thoughts of the person harming someone.

These impulses to harm someone are what the body involuntarily does when you are cornered and there’s no hope of escape except to kill your attacker and prevail over him so you can break free. These get kicked into action not by conscious thought, but when involuntary parts of your perception perceive that you’re cornered. It wouldn’t work if you had to psyche yourself up into a state strong enough to fight off an aggressor before they kill you. It’s not something you can talk yourself into. Physiological changes must occur for you to do it fast enough and strong enough to have a change at winning the fight and escaping.

These are powerful urges to “finish off” your attacker. Not just to make attempts to win the fight, but to fight with urges to “off” the aggressor so you can survive, as it’s often the only way to survive is to fully win the fight and “off” him. But those with OCD often interpret these powerful urges and involuntary thoughts as homicidal thoughts. They are not homicidal. Self-defense is not homicide.

But since involuntary thoughts have crossed over into the conscious part of the brain – the part that makes moral judgments and decides what to think about things, the person mistakenly concludes they are choosing to think the violent thoughts and that they have homicidal desires or attitudes towards others.

Things get confusing because they are not supposed to be seeing violent images in their brain, or have repetitive consciously-processed and known thoughts of violence. These are just supposed to be impulses under the surface and away from their conscious perception, but the parts of the brain have seeped into each other due to inflammation.

Ways the Fight or Flight Response is Activated
Let’s talk about why the fight-or-flight response is being activated. It can happen from an onslaught of toxic black mold exposure. day-after-day facing an attacker – in this case mycotoxins which assault the immune and nervous systems – pushes the person into fight-or-flight because fight-or-flight is not a voluntary process; it’s involuntary.

This is also why you can’t have total success addressing this response psychologically. You can to a certain extent talk yourself down from aggressive thoughts, but as long as the attacker is still there, you’re going to have some of the intrusive violent thoughts or impulses.

To get out of fight-or-flight in such situations you need to send the signals to the body and brain that you’re safe and there’s no attacker. This is not done psychologically. It’s done by removing the stressor, or physiological things like taking supplements that calm the response, or sensory things like smelling essential oils or wrapping yourself in a soft blanket that sends signals to the nervous system that all is soft and relaxed and calm.

I learned from personal experience that there isn’t one type of fight-or-flight response. There’s a response the body goes into when it gets the signal that an attacker is lurking around, trying to get to you, where you actually go into a kind of subconscious planning stage of planning out how to attack first. There’s a kind of alertness that the brain goes into that is different from the alertness needed to attack instantly someone who has fully cornered you.

This second type of fight or flight displays itself as involuntary images and thoughts of jumping someone when they expect nothing and inflicting harm, and also of having involuntary fixated thoughts about where they are and how and when to do this, that occur around-the-clock. It’s like an around-the-clock surveillance type of fight-or-flight that would actually be very helpful if you’re a soldier hiding in enemy territory and striking first can be the difference between life and death and you have to know where your enemy is at all times.

I’ve noticed that I get the overpowering urges to fight to the death when molds or pollens in the environment are especially high.

Then after treating myself and coming out of some of these intense urges, I get the other kind of fight-or-flight where I feel ok, but my body doesn’t feel safe, since I’m kind of just barely controlling symptoms, and I get break-through histamine attacks. This puts my body in the high alert state of scouting our threats 24/7 and feeling like I need to plan an attack.

Then if I continue to treat myself with supplements or medication, my body calms down even more as symptoms lower, and I enter a state where I’m no longer having urges to harm or look for threats, and I can relax into my day.

There’s not just two types of fight-or-flight either. There’s many different variations and kinds, that can morph and modify to the situation you find yourself in.

The immune system is involved in fight-or-flight. Even if you have fear from an actual physical person attacking you, or a bear or something like that, it’s still the immune and endocrine systems that rev your body up to fight. This is why a revved up immune system from an attacker like black mold, is very similar to the revved up state one experiences when there’s a physical bear attacking you. They are pretty much indistinguishable because they are the same response.

Psychosis Makes Involuntary Impulses and Compulsions Very Dangerous

I have experienced how when I lost my frontal lobe activity and it was shutting down due to entering psychosis, the strong intrusive impulses and compulsions became impossible to not do. If my frontal lobe activity and higher-level thinking were intact, then even if I had violent or suicidal images or compulsions, I wouldn’t act on them. At times my compulsions were so overpowering, they were impossible to shut off, but I found I could direct my energy to something safe. Such as going for a walk or going to the mall, where I could walk and shop and burn off energy that way. Or working compulsively on a song I was writing.

But when my frontal lobe stopped working due to psychosis, I couldn’t redirect the energy, I just started acting out the compulsions. My whole self and body was fueled and operated by involuntary impulses and no longer voluntary ones. It was a terrifying experience! Without that frontal lobe we are all like someone who is drunk and out-of-control. In that state I did things like jump out of my window (thankfully my window was on the first floor and our house was only one floor at the time), cutting myself open with scissors, started running erratically at random times, because the impulses just took over, verbally abusing other people because my brain saw everything as a threat and I would yell at people in an out-of-control way and could no longer tell that cussing was vulgar or discern that certain tones were disrespectful or rude. I lost perception of those kinds of things and thought I was just being clear and giving a sound of urgency to a serious situation. Plus I didn’t really have control anyway.

Such behaviors are common in people in psychosis. They are also common in kids with extreme ADHD, Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Personality disorders, autism, and similar conditions where the lower-level impulses can take over the brain for short periods (or longer ones in some cases), and the frontal lobe is temporarily hi-jacked and overpowered.

The person temporarily is operating basically only via involuntary impulses and compulsions, with no real voluntary ones.

Some people even fall on the floor and start seizing, and seizures are another example of an involuntary response that accompanies brain inflammation and can be seen alongside psychosis symptoms, bipolar, ADHD and many of these explosive conditions.

Infact many bipolar medications are anti-seizure medications that were found to work for mood symptoms along with stopping seizures.

I have a friend whose son would go into psychosis and he would become completely disoriented and roll around on the ground, and get into his poop and do other very strange things while going to the bathroom in this state.

He was put on antipsychotic medication and got his sanity and his life back.

Disorientation, where the frontal love becomes confused and nearly shuts off, and the involuntary processes in the brain take over, is one of the symptoms of psychotic disorders.

What We Can Learn
When you see the cases of catatonia, aggression, psychosis, and the involuntary symptoms, you get a look into the interior design of a person.

It’s as though the back-end of our design, the inner part, comes to the forefront and the person just becomes only involuntary unconscious processes. The conscious, voluntary ones take a back-seat and are immobilized when inflammation gets to severe.

Like going on a tour of the back part of a studio and seeing the lights and the sets and all the cameras involved that are not visible when you’re watching the program, or having an electrical engineer strip your house of its walls and show you the electrical infrastructure of your home, and explain how all the parts work and interact with each other, and make each other’s functions possible, these conditions where a person loses agency and is controlled by involuntary unconscious processes give us a “tour” of the infrastructure of human beings.

This can give us a view and understanding of what we are in the interior, of what parts of us make possible our conscious parts and how that works.

It gives us a view into God, the designer and His genius wisdom.

Catatonia or kleptomania show us that there’s a part of us involved in motivation. We always knew this, but it shows it in a more profound way. A person can’t even move if their dopamine receptors are hi-jacked by inflammation and aren’t working properly. With kleptomania, a person can’t stop moving and doing specific compulsive actions if the dopamine receptors are overstimulated in specific ways.

It’s in our body that motivation, agency, energy, impulses, and desires all exist. Both the deeper psychological “drives”, and the more superficial, primitive ones. We always knew this, but I think we have a tendency to think of ourselves as more psychological, and less of the raw “bare-bones” part of us, but it’s that raw part of us that is so much of what we are as a person, a living being with an operable and functional design, and that powers and controls the whole organism.