The Thriving and Self-Defense Systems

To understand thriving in life more fully, let's look at how the science of emotional well-being works. The first step is to ask good questions. We can start with two good questions about well-being. What do people who are happy, successful and satisfied with life believe and do? And, how are these mental and behavioral practices acquired? Many lines of research are now devoted specifically to these questions and illuminating answers have been forth-coming for some time.

The next step is to adopt a conceptual model to make sense of available research findings. One of the main ideas used in biological science is the concept of adaptive systems that tie small complexities into larger processes. An adaptive system is also one of several parts of a larger system. In this sense, a cell is a system, a person is a system and there are a multitude of human systems in between
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A living self-adjusting adaptive human system is something that plays both regulatory and adaptive functions through the interaction of its various parts. These functions serve key roles in a person’s constructive interaction with his environment, largely by detecting patterns and cues in the environment and regulating habitual responses to them. To be adaptable, there also must be intentional mechanisms to change perspectives and habitual responses when new information is available and new challenges arise. In the context of emotional wellbeing, adaptation involves creating positive beneficial personal experiences in response to challenges in life, and ultimately deriving benefit from opportunities and adversities.
The description of interacting systems is called a model. Once a model is proposed, it can be tested and revised.

In this paper I describe a comprehensive model of thriving in life that integrates relevant psychological and biological components, balancing the complexities of current knowledge with the simplicity to render it useful. Additionally, I present a system of thriving practices to more fully implement the model in our lives.

The model presented in this paper is based largely on two important adaptive systems that are different but interacting parts of each person. Together the thriving and self-defense systems participate in the regulation of most human functions. Candace Pert, a former lead researcher at the National Institute of Health referred to them as psychosomatic systems. “Psyco” represents the mind part of the systems, and “somatic” represents the body part of the systems. The mind and body are so intimately connected in these systems that each is involved in virtually all of the regulatory and adaptive functions that the systems play in both physical and emotional well-being.

Our thriving and defensive regulatory and adaptive functions are elaborate, highly interconnected and holistic in nature. Pert and her colleagues discovered that all of the major functions of the body, including the cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, immune and other functions continually communicate with each other and the brain through messenger peptides that move through body fluids to link to specific receptors on cells in each organ. In addition, the heart and brain communicate through neurological pathways that enable them to cooperate in regulating each other, and regulating the functions of other organs.

Our positive and negative emotional feelings are very important parts of these two psychosomatic systems. Pert discovered that the exact same regulatory processes (described above) that communicate between the mind and organs both cause and respond to the basic feelings in our bodies that we interpret as emotions. Our brains combine our immediate and stored emotional experiences with the information they receive about the status of all of our organs to regulate our total human functioning. This regulation can range from very optimal to highly dysfunctional.

The separate emotional contributions of the thriving and self-defense systems are illustrated by research that examined the roles of psychological resources and psychological vulnerabilities in well-being. Veronika Huta at the University of Ottawa found through analysis of relationships between personality measures of psychological resources such as hope, enthusiasm, humor, and forgiveness had stronger and more consistent unique relationships with well-being. Measures of emotional vulnerabilities were found to have stronger and more consistent unique relationships with “ill-being”. She proposed that there are two psychological-neurological systems, “a strengths/positive affect/approach motivation complex and a vulnerabilities/negative affect/avoidance motivation complex”.

These correspond to the thriving and self defense systems. The thriving and self-defense systems help regulate our organs, experiences, beliefs and behaviors. The three thriving emotional states mentioned in the last section activate and maintain personal resources that support beliefs and life practices largely responsible for health, happiness and satisfaction with life. Defensive emotional states constructively direct us to avoid threats and to suppress impulses to act carelessly and dangerously. When poorly regulated, defensive emotions accumulate and build physical and emotional vulnerabilities that undermine health, happiness and satisfaction with life.

The thriving and self-defense systems have two different purposes, as is evident in their names. They each have their respective regulatory functions, which operate on somewhat different biological processes. They have distinctively different patterns of feelings, beliefs and impulses. They operate on different adaptive cycles, with thriving experiences building resources and self-defensive experiences building vulnerabilities. They operate psychologically primarily through different life themes that are stored mainly in neural networks in different hemispheres of the brain. The emotional functions of the two psychosomatic systems are central regulators of both physical and psychological functioning. Our emotions include basic feelings, thoughts and impulses. Basic emotional feelings are automatic biological responses to the events in our lives that are subsequently stored as the most important component of our experiences. They are bodily sensations somewhat similar to touch on the skin and fullness in the stomach, yet they convey personal meaning about threats and opportunities.

Thoughts become emotional when they are closely associated with basic feelings, and the two tend to activate each other. Emotional feelings and thoughts create impulses, or tendencies to approach, avoid or attack others, things and ideas in given situations. Together, emotional feelings, thoughts and impulses comprise full emotions.

The emotional parts of the thriving and defending systems are not always highly active. Some of our thoughts have very little personal meaning, and consequently little emotional content. They indicate marginal involvement of both systems and have little impact on thriving or defending in life. If asked to rate our emotions at these times we would say that they are fairly neutral.

The hardware for the thriving and self-defense systems are organized by DNA, and the software is developed and modified by life experiences. Together, these systems provide psychological continuity in life by maximizing and maintaining their own psychological and neurological organizations through rather stable mental life themes that are stored in neuronal networks in our brains. These life themes and neuronal networks represent our mental selves, and provide identity, purpose and personal psychological dispositions and resources.

Jaak Panksepp at Washington State University has identified a small number of distinct primitive neural circuits common to all primates that each serve as the hardware for a very specific type of instinctual behavior. Behavioral impulses are activated by these circuits through one or more of our primitive feelings. In the thriving system there are individual circuits for learning and accomplishment (competence), for spontaneous and playful social contact, for social closeness and connection with others (belonging) and for tenderness for and care of others (compassion). In the self-defense system there are distinct circuits for avoiding danger, and for aggression toward perceived threats. These circuits create and maintain most of the habitual responses that each person develops and adopts as he adapts to his life.

While these neural circuits serve as the hardware in the brain for the thriving and self-defense systems, life experiences serve as the self-adaptive dynamic software that develops in the mind for specific emotional responses and behavioral expressions. The adaptation and maturity of both systems are provided by durable changes that occur in feelings, beliefs and neuronal structures in response to new life demands. Both systems mature throughout life in response to thriving experiences which serve as nutrients for optimal development. However, the development and subsequent optimal function of both systems can be limited by traumatic and chronic defensive experiences.

The basic instinctual thriving and defending feelings produced by the primitive neural circuits are the most influential parts of our experiences in life. They are automatic whole body biological responses related to measurable changes in neurological and hormonal subsystems. When these instinctual feelings become associated in our minds with ideas and impulses, the combinations become emotions. Since there are hundreds of such ideas, there are potentially hundreds of emotions.

Those stable emotional ideas that guide our impulses and choices are referred to as beliefs. Thoughts, feelings and impulses change from moment to moment. We would not be adaptive in life if we consistently accepted any one thought or feeling in any one particular moment as representative of our identities or our true beliefs. Yet we do act at times as if they do. It is helpful to remember that fleeting thoughts and feelings are just momentary experiences.

The thriving and self-defense systems operate somewhat separately to congregate our experiences over time into themes that are the source of more stable representations of our stored personal experiences, identities and life stories. Consequently, some themes and beliefs promote thriving while others promote defending and survival in life. These stable combined feelings, beliefs and impulse patterns guide our responses to our lives.
The interactions between and within the thriving and self-defense systems illustrate how they promote or undermine physical and mental health. The thriving system suppresses the self-defense system when it is dominant over a period of time, producing a state called parasympathetic dominance. The self-defense system suppresses the thriving system, and both physical and mental health, when it is dominant over a period of time. Optimally, individuals spend the vast majority of their energy interacting with life through their thriving systems.

There is a critical difference in how the body and mind affect each other when thriving and defending. When thriving in life, physical health and mental health activate and support each other. Interaction between the two psychosomatic systems provides mild to moderate levels of arousal to most body organs when energy is needed to accomplish goals. Moderate to intense arousal is provided to some organs and is restricted to other organs to respond to physical and psychological threats. Upon completion of goals and resolution of threats, calming is provided to allow for rest and reflection.

When defending in life, the emotional self-defense and the immune systems suppress each other as they compete for resources. This can result in a compromised immune system when a person is chronically stressed and distressed. It also can result in compromised emotional coping resources and strategies when a person is physically ill.

The Thriving System

The thriving system meets our most basic intrinsic physical and psychological needs by regulating all of the human functions that allow us to flourish in life. It regulates all bodily functions to run on an optimal healthy level, the process that scientists call coherence. In emotional and behavioral areas, the thriving system produces happiness, beneficial connections with people and engagement in life opportunities, and meaning in life. The personal resources to cope constructively with life challenges are built by the thriving system out of life experiences.

One hallmark of thriving is the basic impulses to approach and engage people and life opportunities for growth and success. The tendency to react to life events and situations through this system is called thriving reactivity, and is manifest in what we experience as health, emotional security, happiness, loving-kindness and satisfaction in life. When thriving, we interact with people constructively and kindly through our social-neurological engagement systems. We engage beneficial life opportunities through a self-determined life orientation. We derive meaning in life through personal success, personal growth, and relationships with and contributions to others.

Thriving is associated largely with the basic related feelings of attachment, pleasure and contentment. These names were selected to capture the central psychological features and impacts of the core biological responses associated with each of these feelings. Research indicates that attachment and attunement to others plays the most central role in psychological well-being, largely by meeting universal human needs for belonging. It results from receiving and providing compassionate care-giving from and to significant other persons.

Attachment promotes the sense of safety in life that is characteristic of mental states of contentment. Attachment is also an important source of feelings of social pleasure, the most sustainable source of pleasure. It acts as a basis for the development of social competencies. Some satisfactory level of attachment to others is essential to those experiences of loving kindness which are critical for fully thriving in life.

The Self-Defense System

The self-defense system protects us from threats to our physical and psychological selves through the basic related feelings of fear, pain, and confusion (again, names selected to capture the central psychological features and impacts of the core biological responses). This system is activated by both perceived and real threats, and functions emotionally on related fear in the mind and stress in the body. Fear, stress and loss produce emotional pain. Confusion occurs as fear overwhelms reasoning, depletes mental energy and leads to apathy as a defense against fear and pain. The emotional defense system activates the primary impulses of avoidance and attack. This system also regulates most bodily functions to operate on a minimal unhealthy survival level. The basic self-defense feelings are described in greater detail in a later section.

The chronic tendency to react to life events and situations through the self-defense system is called defensive reactivity, which is manifest as negative moods and poor health. One of the main sustainable emotional states associated with defensive reactivity for most individuals is blame. Blame is holding oneself, other persons and situations responsible for distress related to past and anticipated experiences that one persists in embracing for self-defense.

Never the less, the emotional functions of the self-defense system are crucial to sustained well-being, or to physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Optimally, this system perceives actual threats, responds with intensity consistent to those threats, and the resultant defensive reactivity subsides when the threats are resolved. Inability to perceive real threats leads to unwise impulsive behavior, disappointments, traumas and injuries. Persistent unwarranted perceptions of threats lead to chronic stress and distress, poor health, addictions, and poor decision making.