Potentially…Part 2

Human Potential

Last week, I shared some amazing findings we have learned from animal model research. One part of that was the neuroplasticity piece: our brains are optimizing and developing in ways that best suit our environments all the time. Another part of that was the epigenetics piece: our DNA is being modified to adapt to our environments and so our genomes are in no way a blueprint for who we are or how good our life can be. These findings have held up in human research which shows the infinite potential that we share.

The takeaway is that our biology is always shifting to fit our environment. Instead of determining the quality of our life, it mutates to match the quality of our life. If we want a healthy inside, we need a healthy outside. We have the potential to have mental health and wellbeing, but we will not experience that if our environments are characterized by deprivation. For mice, we know aggression, lack of care, abuse, and early stressful life events are toxic. For humans, we know even small stressors that we incur on a daily basis are too. 

Living Your Best Life

I recently asked some of my students to think of their optimal mental health. We were doing a module on anxiety, behavioral disorders, and depression, and most everyone had firsthand experience with these illnesses at some point in their lives. Even those who were on or had taken medication said that what they needed most was a more supportive environment—a community of people in school, at home, and in their neighborhood whom they could talk with. The biological correctors (drugs) were insufficient without a serious shift in their environment (communion).

I shared about my dad’s experience living his whole life with bipolar disorder. Even though he needed drugs to help correct his biology and neurological processes, he also needed communion to help him process his experiences, his feelings around his history of abuse, the deprivation that characterized his environments throughout his life. It took a village to keep him on his meds. He needed his family to work with his doctors and his caregivers to ensure that his present environment was full of love and support. Meds alone would have left him in the same downward spiral he had entered as a child in an abusive home. And, believe me, left to himself, he would always choose street drugs over pharmaceuticals, mutating his biology into worse and worse conditions.

I was happy to learn that even the teens in my class know that you can’t live your best life and live out your potential without having a healthy environment. And for the human organism? That is a place marked by love, listening, respect, and care.