Chunk #85 — Studies of EEG Biofeedback in Substance Abuse Treatment — Continuing Research — Self-Perception and Experimental Schemata in the Addicted Brain
Individuals with SUD present with a vast number of paradoxical characteristics; including an overwhelming sense of inadequacy disguised by an apparent overwhelming sense of confidence. Similarly, an apparent abundance of anger and aggression utilized as a disguise for a paralyzing sense of fear, more specifically, fear of people, economic insecurity, rejection, and alienation, which paradoxically are exacerbated by the continued use of the substance. One of the more profound idiosyncratic characteristics of this population is the tendency to ruminate and associate past events, perceptions and the associated emotions with both present and future. The perception of experience is often clouded by the personalization of events (real or imagined) and reinforced with a deliberate, ambiguous effort to avoid reconciling this confound, which reinforces an uninhibited association of all current interactions and situations with past events. Opposite to what often is implied, these features may not originate from the consequences of substance abuse, but from earlier periods in development (Vos 1989), and in the perspective of this research these features and others have an etiology in specific neurophysiological regions that are the
