Seeking Serotonin: The Memoirs of an Anxious Schoolteacher

By Bradley Owen Southwell, OCT

Picture a single domino wobbling in a sea of dominoes inside my mind. A traumatic event triggers an emotional reaction that knocks it over, crashing into two more dominoes. They each create two thoughts that trigger two more emotions that knock down two more. One hundred milliseconds later, the area of my mammalian brain responsible for habits and emotions known as the amygdala detects fear and signals my nervous system to initiate fight-or-flight, unleashing a tsunami of ruminating thoughts, feelings, stories, beliefs, and behaviours. Survival patterns that may have helped my ancestors avoid becoming a T-Rex's snack but that wipe out any chance of living a happy or healthy life in the digital age.

That subconscious process is known as the trauma response, and trauma-informed professionals believe we spend up to seventy percent of our lives suffering from the stress it can cause. I was caught in a similar loop for decades that caused three chronic illnesses.

I'll combine my story with emerging theories and current science to teach the reader about trauma and how to use self-awareness and emotional regulation to manage it. I'll explore the science of meditation, the neuroscience of addictive substances, the teenage warning signs that I was slipping, the lesser-known tools and techniques I found that eased depression and anxiety, and the little steps I used to change my habits and systems that turned my life around.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jun 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228868736

Bradley Owen Southwell, OCT

Bradley Owen is a high school teacher and a trauma-informed speaker who spent years as a BigTech corporate trainer. Brad, a passionate healthy lifestyle advocate, lives in the Toronto Harbourfront with his fiance Jackie and daughter Tessa. In the gym five mornings a week by 5:30, he loves hiking with his girls, sports, practicing meditation and Sudarshan Kriya Yoga, sipping pints at the local brewery, and eating.Find out more about how Brad and Jackie can help you or your loved ones overcome trauma or how they can help your organization get trauma-informed at the following websites:www.bradleyowen.cawww.journeybacktohealth.ca

Book preview

Seeking Serotonin

The Memoirs of an Anxious Schoolteacher

Bradley Owen Southwell, OCT

Seeking Serotonin

Copyright © 2022 by Bradley Owen Southwell, OCT

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-6872-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-6873-6 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Science

PART 1: Trauma

Chapter 1. The Teenage Trend Toward Dependence

Chapter 2. Dazed and Confused

Chapter 3. I Can’t Not

Chapter 4. Blood-Stained Toilet Paper

Chapter 5. Rocky Mountain Rehab

Chapter 6. The Comeback Kid

Chapter 7. Mr. Southwell’s Opus

Chapter 8. How Cortisol Caused an Opioid Crisis

Chapter 9. Surrounded by Sufferers

Chapter 10. Recovering from Rehab

Chapter 11. The Western Medicine Mess

Chapter 12. The Tsunami of Shame and a Reason to Fight

Chapter 13. The Angel Gabriel

Chapter 14. Severing the Daddy Daughter Connection

Chapter 15. Rock Bottom

PART 2: Healing

Chapter 16. The Engineer of the Out-of-Control Freight Train

Chapter 17. The Doctor of My Dreams

Chapter 18. Out of the Darkness, into the Light

Chapter 19. Salsa Dancing in South America

Chapter 20. Dealing with Abandonment

Chapter 21. I Create My Destiny

Chapter 22. The Healing Power of Meditation

Conclusion

About the Author

To Tessa, Jackie, Mom, and Dad. Thanks for putting up with me.

Dear Reader,

I’m lucky to be alive. I hit rock bottom several times because I didn’t understand how to turn my monkey mind off. Emotional trauma robbed me of happiness, health, and almost a million dollars in income and pension. It also taught me the importance of self-mastery, how to learn from my mistakes, get the most out of every moment, and enjoy life again.

Writing the first version of Seeking Serotonin, a memoir about my search for the root issue of three chronic illnesses was cathartic; it helped me heal. Shortly after the memoir published in June 2022, I learned the science behind emotional trauma, and it concisely explained why I couldn’t turn my mind off. I spent more than a decade searching for answers in hospitals, and no one ever mentioned emotional trauma. I know now that it was the root. The earlier I learned about trauma, the less I would have suffered.

In January 2024, I weaved a simple self-help guide to managing emotional trauma through the memoir by adding the introduction, the science, the end-of-chapter trauma notes, and the conclusion. The memoir now includes chapters 1-22 and was edited by a professional. I used much more reasonably priced artificial intelligence software to edit the updates. I wrote the updates to raise awareness and to help sufferers and their loved ones. Please be gentle.

After I break the science down into easy-to-understand chunks, I’ll use the end-of-chapter notes in part one to explore how to become self-aware of the trauma response while telling stories about the events that led me down a path that not many people return from. I’m going to show you what it’s really like to suffer.

Part two is about how I got my life back on track. I’ll meet a beautiful alternative doctor and psychotherapist who I fall in love with while she guides me back to health. I’ll show you how I ended the suffering by exploring the teachings, tools and techniques that I still use every day to manage my monkey mind and hopefully, one day, master it.

This book is about how to change your habits and take responsibility for your health. It’s about learning to regulate your emotions and then finding out what lies on the other side of a traumatic thought (the wobbling domino) if it doesn’t start the tsunami.

This book is not medical advice. I’m discussing what helped me heal in addition to Western medicine. Always talk to your doctor before changing your medical protocols.

Seeking Serotonin is the culmination of thirty years of suffering and five years of learning from failure, research, writing, inner work, and self-love that healed me.

I’m entirely grateful that you have decided to join me.

–Brad

Introduction

Less than five percent and possibly as little as one percent of the population are born with a genetic disorder. Ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of the illnesses we suffer from have a significant environmental factor, meaning our health has everything to do with our choices. Everyone knows we should exercise, eat well, and get enough sleep, but most of us still don’t.

For decades, big pharma has bombarded us with advertisements that have conditioned many of us to believe that we are not responsible for our health and that popping pills and taking injections is synonymous with health. The issue is that while medications are effective, most don’t cure disease. They mask symptoms that usually return once the user is titrated off the drug, and few drugs are meant to be taken for life. I learned that living an unhealthy lifestyle because big pharma’s symptom-controlling pills could make me feel better was like putting a piece of tape over the check engine light in my smoking family vacation station wagon and continuing across the country toward Wally World. In one way or another, it was going to end in disaster.

Medication saves lives. Surgeons and other medical doctors save lives. I know because I took pills that stopped an eight-week acute anxiety attack just before I was going to end my own life, and it took ten surgeries to get my life back on track with an ileostomy after the stress-fueled autoimmune disease ulcerative colitis destroyed my large intestine. Not too long ago, I was almost one hundred pounds fatter, laying in a medical detox bed trembling while rehabbing from doctor-prescribed opioids and benzodiazepines, wishing that I was dead. I was also receiving multiple injections, popping four dozen pills a day, and being infused every six weeks with a potent immunosuppressant that worked well but left me susceptible to all the other illnesses that a healthy person’s immune system would fight off. One example is epiglottitis, a sickness that required a four-day medically induced coma to save my life. I knew that half of the medication I was on was for symptoms caused by other drugs, but I trusted the Western medicine system, and the truth is that I am alive today because of it.

In 2019, with the help of my partner, an alternative doctor and psychotherapist whom I had just met, I began wondering why I was sick, what I could change about my beliefs and lifestyle to get better, and how to prevent more suffering. After focusing on exercise, nutrition, and sleep for a year, I tapered off most medication while developing a toolbox of techniques that helped calm my mind and relax my body. When I went on to write at the end of the memoir that my root issue was resolved by finding happiness and a balanced mind through meditation, I wasn’t wrong, but my understanding was incomplete. The science I found after I published the memoir taught me that the goal was to build nervous system resilience and emotional regulation by improving vagal tone and that to overcome trauma, you must become self-aware, learn from your emotions, decide the type of person you want to be and then take little steps toward becoming that person.

Trauma-informed professionals agree that most of the population is dealing with trauma without even understanding what trauma is and that we can trace back many of the illnesses with an environmental factor to stress that results from the trapped emotions that cause the trauma response. Dr. Gabor Mate, who was honoured by the Order of Canada for his work with addiction, trauma, and mind-body unity, says: Our schools are full of kids with learning difficulties and mental health issues that are trauma-based, but the average teacher never gets a single lecture on trauma […] We need trauma-informed medical, trauma-informed legal, trauma-informed education. If we had a trauma-informed society, we’d have a society that looked much more compassionate.

I’m passionate about sharing my story and what I’ve learned because I’m lucky to be alive, and most of what I went through could have been prevented. The time is now for a trauma-informed, emotionally rich, self-aware and self-empowered society, and this is my best shot.

The Science

The Evolution of the Brain

Schematically, the human brain has three functional layers:

The Brain Stem. The first brain, also known as the reptilian brain, appeared in fish and amphibians about 500 million years ago. It connects our brain to our body.

The Limbic System. The second brain, also known as the mammalian brain, appeared in small mammals about 150 million years ago. It contains the amygdala, creates long-term memories, and controls our habits and behavioural patterns. It is the primal emotional and intuitive part of the brain and has to do with battling for dominance in a herd, anger, fear, anxiety, and sexual arousal.

The Cortex. The third brain is the most recently evolved area and is the seat of the conscious mind. It is responsible for language, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness.

Long-term Memories

Long-term memories are created from highly emotional experiences or what has been termed emotionally enhanced vividness. Like a flashbulb that illuminates the scene for a picture, the higher the emotional quotient, the stronger the memory. Brain scans show that the amygdala is the most active part of the brain when we experience a vivid event.

Trauma and the Trauma Response

Trauma is how we react to a profoundly distressing or vivid experience. What one person considers traumatic might not be regarded the same way by another. Trauma can be caused by an event or the lack of an event, like not having a basic human need met.

Trauma is not the event; it is our reaction to the event. When something traumatic happens, the body responds by initiating fight-or-flight, which creates beliefs, emotions, thoughts, stories, and behaviours designed to prevent further trauma.

The trauma response can lead to chronic stress because the body can’t tell the difference between the event or thoughts about the event. So, thinking about the trauma will cause the body to loop and continuously launch fight-or-flight until the emotions are resolved.

The Subconscious (aka nonconscious, unconscious) Mind and Habits

Your body isn’t just a vehicle for your brain. Your body is your subconscious mind. It’s your interface for interacting with the world around you. According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, by age thirty-five, ninety-five percent of our lives are run by subconscious programs. Habits that have been repeated so often that our body knows how to do them better than our mind, freeing up resources (energy) for the brain to focus on other essential tasks.

Fight-or-Flight (FoF)

When our brain receives sensory input that danger is present, the amygdala signals the sympathetic nervous system with hormones that tell it to stimulate the pituitary gland and the adrenal glands. These glands release adrenaline, noradrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Hormones and neurotransmitters that cause heart rate, blood pressure, and breath rate to increase. The pupils dilate, allowing more light into the eyes for better vision. The skin becomes pale because blood flow has redirected from surface areas to the muscles. Carbohydrates get stored in fat because in antiquity (the ancient past) FoF often meant a food shortage. Digestion, immune responses, and cognitive thought slow, and the body’s blood clotting ability increases to prevent blood loss in the event of an injury. This five-hundred million-year-old efficient evolutionary survival instinct has existed since life began. FoF is also known as emergency mode or survival mode because all we can do in this state is run, fight, or hide to save our lives.

Homeostasis is the opposite of FoF. It is a state of relaxed balance, free of stress. Once the body believes it has found homeostasis, it will subconsciously do anything to remain in balance because the nervous system is adverse to change.

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) is a network of nerves whose primary process is to stimulate the body’s fight-or-flight (FoF) response. When the SNS is active, we are stressed.

Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSNS) is a network of nerves that relaxes the body after periods of stress or danger. It maintains a homeostatic state and is known as the rest and digest or feed and breed system.

Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) comprises the SNS and the PSNS. It acts predominantly unconsciously (automatically, subconsciously, or nonconsciously) and regulates bodily functions. It can be thought of as the electrical wires that run the machine.

Vagus Nerve is the main nerve in the autonomic nervous system and the longest nerve in the body. Eighty percent of the information on the vagus nerve travels up from the body to the brain (20% from the brain down), which means that our body (our subconscious mind) controls most of what we do in a day.

Vagal tone is a clinical measure believed to indicate overall levels of vagal activity. It is measured indirectly through heart rate variability (HRV). Abnormal HRV is associated with many severe conditions like diabetes, heart failure, and hypertension.

Emotions are mental states caused by nervous system changes brought about by thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and behavioural responses. All our emotions correlate to levels of certain neurotransmitters. Just as the three primary colours are the building blocks for the rest of the colour wheel, all emotions are some combination of neurotransmitter levels derived from the eight primary emotions.

Survival Emotions Of the eight primary emotions, there are five survival emotions: fear, anger, disgust, shame, and sadness. These survival emotions initiate fight-or-flight. They are known as escape avoidance emotions and generate complex behaviours. The feelings they produce can cause us to catastrophize and imagine worst-case scenarios in a way that becomes inhibiting and disempowering. These emotions can lead to difficulty controlling or regulating our reactions, keeping our cool, or staying centred.

Attachment Emotions There are two attachment emotion spectrums: love/trust and joy/excitement. The effects of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine mediate them, activating the brain’s reward systems. We want to repeat behaviours that give us these good feelings, like hugging a loved one, going for a run, or using drugs and alcohol.

Surprise Between survival and attachment sits surprise. It is known as a potentiator emotion because it can flip our response between attachment and survival or vice versa. Noradrenaline intensifies the effects of other neurochemicals and is thought to underlie this primary emotion. It’s the feeling we get at the top of a roller coaster or in a horror movie when we don’t know if we are going to laugh or scream. Tapping into this emotion by diverting ourselves from the usual response is a typical strategy therapists use to deal with a recurring issue in a new way. Check out chapter six of Tara Swart’s book The Source to learn more.

Stuck emotions are energy that has not been processed or experienced. They remain in the body after the initial emotional reaction and cause stress from the trauma response. Unresolved emotions can lead to catastrophized worst-case scenarios, thought rumination, and chronic illness.

Interoception: The awareness of physical and emotional sensations.

Interoception is one of the fastest-moving areas in neuroscience and psychology. It is a lesser-known sense in addition to the five senses that allows us to understand what is happening inside our body. From hunger, thirst, and body temperature to heart rate or digestion, our capacity to decode cues like physical body pain or mental pain is influenced by the way we learn to take note of or ignore different types of feelings. The better we get at tuning into these signals, the stronger the brain-body connection becomes, and the more efficient we become at understanding and regulating our emotions.

Part 1

Trauma

Every human being has a true authentic self, and the trauma is the disconnection from it, and the healing is the reconnection.

– Dr. Gabor Mate, MD. The Wisdom of Trauma

Chapter 1

The Teenage Trend Toward Dependence

Addiction is not a choice that anybody makes; it’s not a moral failure; it’s not an ethical lapse; it’s not a weakness of character; it’s not a failure of will, which is how our society depicts addiction. Nor is it an inherited brain disease, which is how our medical tendency is to see it…What it actually is: it’s a response to human suffering… Not only is that my perspective, but it’s also what the scientific and research literature shows. So, addiction then, rather than being a disease as such or a human choice, it’s an attempt to escape suffering temporarily.

– Dr. Gabor Mate, MD.

I grew up in the suburbs of Toronto in a middle class family. My father was a VP in a bank, my mother the head secretary at a high school. I couldn’t have asked for better parents; they were loving, took interest in my well-being, supported me and were always on my side no matter what. I love them dearly and I hope I can be the same to my daughter.

I was an athlete from a family of athletes, and our house was the gathering spot for sports teams. We hung out, played video games and sports, enjoyed hobbies and competed at everything. We spent our formative years with several other successful athletes and eventual pro-athletes all cut from the same cloth. We were leaders from loving families with strong connections to the community.

I began to show the early warning signs of an addictive personality before I was a teenager. At twelve I wasn’t sleeping with anyone, but I had started exploring my body, and I soon learned that once I started, I could not stop. Masturbation is a normal part of growing up for young men. Some did it once a month, others multiple times a day. At twelve, I was wanking so many times a day it hurt, but that didn’t slow me down. I couldn’t go out for long without stopping in a washroom at school, in hockey arenas, malls, restaurants; this went on for decades. Much later in therapy, I realized I was providing my slightly anxious body and mind a calm feeling others enjoyed naturally.

Video games became popular during the Nintendo vs. Sega console war around that time. By thirteen, at least one but often both consoles were in every house I hung out at. I played so much I had the indent of the Nintendo controller cross on my thumb. Besides sports, video games and choking the chicken, I didn’t do much in my formative years. I was using these things as an escape, which would become the norm.

Research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows our brains treat video, visualization, and reality the same way. When I got my first computer with access to the internet in 1992 at the age of fourteen, the porn videos streaming slowly through the 56K dial-up connection began to train my brain as if I was having sex with a different woman dozens of times every time I sat down. As internet speeds increased so did the number of videos I could watch in shorter periods of time, hardcoding neural pathways through a developing brain in its formative years and leading to the inability to enjoy a relationship later in life. One woman was unable to meet my needs better than the infinite number of women on my computer screen.

One day I was successfully sneaking through grade nine, hiding at the back of the class and staring out the window dreaming about the young women in Catholic school skirts all around me. The next day I was a popular model and actor surrounded by beautiful teen models with my forever-wood tucked up into the belt of my pants. For eighteen months I constantly saw my face in print or on TV, and the attention made the pit of anxiety in my stomach grow. My career disappeared just as quickly from a bad case of acne that was resolved by my family doctor with a popular medication now known to cause ulcerative colitis (UC), an autoimmune disease that I’ve undergone five minor and five major life-changing surgeries for. Somehow I did not qualify for the class action lawsuit against the manufacturer.

Problematic drinking started not long after around the age of seventeen. I was a weekend warrior who loved how alcohol slowed the