The modern world is in the grip of a crisis of self-identification and meaning . More people (from ages of 30 to 80) are anxious, depressed, alienated, lost, than any other time in our history. 

People are busy building some security and sacrificing their present for the future in an increasingly complex world. 

We don’t necessarily know why we feel adrift, but for many people who place their faith in knowledge and don’t believe in a god, it’s become increasingly difficult to believe their lives matter. New scientific findings are undermining traditional notions that previously gave people a sense of specialness, a feeling that who they are matters, and that the self is real. 

SCIENCE

Neuroscientists claim to be able to ‘locate’ the parts of the brain responsible for mental phenomena such as aesthetic appreciation, religious experience, love, depression and so on, but they haven’t found a part of the brain associated with our underlying sense of self. Therefore, many scientists feel justified in concluding that this doesn’t exist. While leading Scholars in psychology suggest that the self is just a collection of what is called ‘memes’ – units of cultural information such as ideas, beliefs and habits. We are born without a self, but slowly, as we are exposed to environmental influences, the self is ‘constructed’ out of the memes we absorb. And, after decades of intensive theorizing and research, no-one has yet put forward any feasible explanation of how the brain might produce consciousness. 

Quantum physics concludes that time doesn’t exist and neither do we physically. And, there’s no essential meaning in the vastness and randomness of the universe. So, how can our life matter and what hope do we have for finding a higher purpose or meaning? 

Scientists are finding that the self is a kind of necessary illusion manufactured by the brain and often more fragile than we’d like to imagine. Many scientists argue that we have no soul, no fixed self, and no inherent purpose. We are just tiny specks of star dust in an infinite universe. This conception, called “naturalism,” leaves many people feeling deeply uneasy—consciously or unconsciously—and casting about for meaning. 

What is the unbearable burden of being—the unbearable burden? Is it the pain we carry, or is it the pain we force others close to us to carry? Is it our suffering, or our bitterness and anger to a hostile world? 

Much of society is suffering a crisis of “neuroexistentialism” -expressed anxiety. People are questioning the meaning of their life and what difference they are going to make. Life is hard, it’s difficult so it’s easy to be swamped by doubts and existential angst. 

This contemporary angst suggests we really cannot reveal the mind, let alone define it and that death is the end for us all. If the brain’s processes give us our experience of life and there is no “immaterial spirit” or soul, then when the brain stops functioning, nothing follows life, and nothing “survives” us. Along with this understanding of ourselves comes another loss—the sense of agency or free will. 

New research by Society and Public Policy Studies at Vanderbilt University suggest that the increase in “deaths of despair” observed among middle-aged Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) in recent studies are impacting the youngest members of Generation X (born 1974-1983). The results suggest that rising despair among the young adults cuts across racial/ethnic, educational, and geographic groups. 

The latest research explains that our cultural beliefs are even more powerful than our genes, and demonstrates how these belief systems set us up for self-sabotaging behavior that negatively effects our well-being. 

Today’s profound cultural, social changes and political polarization continue to provoke widespread malaise and ultimately prompt a reconstructed view of what it means to be human. 

Meanwhile, suicide, depression, and anxiety are on the rise everywhere in the modern world. We’re facing a new, contemporary “crisis of meaningless.” 

We seek meaning, but increased social alienation, smaller families, and a declining belief in religion make it extremely difficult for many of us. 

In order to keep existential anxiety at bay, we need to find and maintain a meaningful life. We are a species that strives not just for survival, but also for significance. We want and need our lives to matter. It is when people are not able to maintain meaning that they are most psychologically vulnerable.

Unfortunately, we don’t yet have open discourse on the meaning and significance of the new self-as-illusion. While the old ideas that have been around for thousands of years are difficult to abandon. The new, alternate view of humanity makes many people feel lost and alone, leading them to conclude that a meaningful life is near impossible. 

A key to our angst is that we need meaning so we can act purposefully even if we are not part of some grand cosmic plan. 

THE NEED

- We need to better interpret the knowledge and insights of the behavioral, cognitive, and neurosciences to satisfy our existential concerns and achieve a level of flourishing and fulfillment we require to have a meaningful life. Ignoring the scientific evidence of our reality isn’t going help us.

- We need to better understand our self, our human specialness, our purpose to make life more meaningful.

- We need to learn how to transform our anxiety into a positive energy form that empowers us to life a richer, more productive, healthier, happier life….a life that matters. 

THE SOLUTION -THE WAY FORWARD 

Self Awakening starts with what scientists call interoception, our awareness of our subtle sensory, body-based feelings: the greater that awareness, the greater our potential to control our lives. Knowing what we feel is the first step to knowing why we feel that way. 

If you have a comfortable connection with your inner sensations — if you can trust them to give you accurate information — you will feel in charge of your body, your feelings, and your self. 

However, most people feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of interior discomfort. Their bodies are being bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. 

The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them feeling lost and stressed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or they develop a fear of fear itself. 

The experience of fear derives from primitive responses to threat where escape is thwarted in some way. People’s lives will be held hostage to fear until that visceral experience changes. Self-understanding and Self-regulation first depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it people begin to rely on external regulation — from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others. 

Because most people often have trouble sensing what is going on in their bodies, they lack a nuanced response to frustration. They react to displacement of their self, anxiety and stress with energy sapping, negative emotion. They can’t tell what is causing them to be uncomfortable with themselves. This failure to be in touch with their Self inhibits a sense of meaning. One step further down on the ladder to depersonalization — is losing your sense of yourself. 

The first step towards recovery of the misplaced Self is becoming familiar with and befriending the sensations in the bodies. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of victims from someone’s toxic emotions are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past self. 

The Integrated Mind Body Organism

Traditional western medicine, in theory and practice, tends to treat mind and body as separate entities. Meantime, a growing number of Health and Wellness books and articles refer to a “connection” between the mind and the body. However, there is no separation nor connection! They are one and the same. Everything that affects the mind also affects the body and everything that affects the body also affects the mind. 

Our bodies and minds have evolved in exquisite harmony, so perfectly integrated that it is impossible to consider one without the other. By understanding how our minds influence and reflect our physiology, we can finally live in tune with our bodies. 

The Mind-Body interface and Resetting its Operational Code!

Western medical practitioners, who are trained to consider mind and body separately, are often helpless in arresting the advance of most of the chronic diseases. Today, research confirms that stress together with suppressed negative emotions (our state of mind) is the major predisposing factor for cancer, ALS, or multiple sclerosis to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease or Alzheimer’s. 

The separation of mind and body has now been demonstrated by modern science to be incorrect. For example; the brain and body systems that process emotions are intimately connected with the hormonal apparatus, the nervous system, and in particular the immune system. Emotional stress such as; anxiety, fears, frustration, feelings of being overwhelmed and unable to cope, sadness/depression and even worry over aging undermines immunity, disrupts the body’s physiological milieu and prepares the ground for disease and aging. 

Our mental and physical health rests upon the foundation of counteracting mind-body connection disruptions from multiple etiologies. The brain and body are powerful electrical systems that can “short circuit” and need to be “re-set.” 

Insight, when inspired by self-awareness, can promote self-transformation. Insight into ourselves and the workings of our minds and bodies is the key agent for self-rejuvenation.

BCI's evidence-based, ICC accredited, Neuro Coach training course is about teaching students how to first help individuals become aware of their emotional behavioral drivers and connect their emotional states and physical sensations to psychological events. Clients can then can begin the process of reconnecting with themselves by re-aligning their lost or misplaced self inside their mind and body with their future self. 

The Process of SELF Healing.

The challenge of living in a modern, ever complex and challenging society is to re-establish ownership of your body, its connection with the mind and brain — of your self. Feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming alienated, lost, unvalued, overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. This involves learning how to become calm and focused, learning control over one’s emotions, engaging the right mindset and be fully alive and engaged in the present. 

In an important sense, our psychological well-being can be seen as the ‘end point’ of the process of where and who we are. Guided perceptual, self-awareness can provide important openings where we can identify, embrace, and integrate our Healthier Future Self to produce a better life with purpose and meaning. 

The Behavioral Coaching Institute's Neuro Coach Training Course:

To fast-track this self-development it is best to establish a safe, trusting relationship with a qualified, specialist caretaker (Neuro Coach). The first task of the Neuro Coach is to help their client establish a secure base to work together from. Essential to this attunement between the coach and coachee is subtle interactions in which the caretaker makes them feel attended to and understood. 

The client's secure attachment with their Neuro Coach combined with the cultivation of competency builds an internal locus of control, the key factor in healthy coping throughout life. 

All of us, need confidence that others will know, affirm, and cherish us. Without that we can’t develop a sense of agency that will enable us to assert: “This is what I believe in; this is what I stand for; this is what I will devote myself to.” Once we have established our Selves those who love us can identify, reach out and embrace us. When we feel our Self is safely held in the hearts and minds of those we love we can climb mountains and cross deserts and stay up all night to finish projects. Children and adults will do anything for people they trust and whose opinion they value. But if we feel abandoned, worthless, or invisible, nothing seems to matter. Fear destroys self-development, curiosity and playfulness. 

To help create a healthy society, as Neuro Coaches we need to create secure spaces for people to safely learn and develop themselves in. To help people of all ages and position find who they are, what matters to them. To help them find meaning, purpose and a direction in their life. The outside, modern world offers little space or facility for self-exploration and growth.

POST NOTE:

Whenever we have a brush with our mortality we immediately create a ledger and account for our life — for who we are, our “sins”, what we stand for, what we have done for the world and how we wish to be remembered. 

People who have been brought close to their life ending reflect on the most elemental questions of existence — what makes a life worth living, worth remembering? 

Many of these survivors have chronicled how they found vitality in the natural world. After examining their relationships and the power of love they also found that man’s affinity with Nature - the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons, the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night -provided them a space to find themselves in.