Finding Calm: Rebalancing the Stressed and Addicted Brain with Dr. Steven Curtis (Part 2)
Guest: Dr. Steven Curtis (he/him)
Episode Summary:
In this insightful episode of To Be snd Do, Dr. Steven Curtis unpacks the science behind stress, trauma, and addiction, drawing on both clinical experience and neuroscience. Through compelling stories and clear explanations, Dr. Curtis offers a compassionate look at why addiction often stems from our attempts to manage chronic anxiety—and how brain plasticity plays a key role in healing. He also shares actionable strategies from his new book, designed to help anyone seeking a calmer mind and improved quality of life.
Three Takeaways:
1. Addictions Are Attempts to Soothe Chronic Anxiety
Dr. Curtis explains that addiction—whether to substances, behaviors like sermon-listening, or even worrying—often arises from a need to calm heightened baseline anxiety. As stress hormones flood the body and the emotion-focused regions of the brain become overactive, people increasingly turn to addictive behaviors for brief relief. Over time, this process creates a semi-permanent change in brain structure, making the addiction self-perpetuating unless the underlying stress is addressed.
2. “Chronic Calm” is Essential for Brain Healing
To rebalance the brain’s “teeter totter” between the emotional and rational centers, Dr. Curtis advocates for a sustained period of “chronic calm.” He likens this to putting a cast on a broken arm: just as a bone needs rest to heal, the brain requires daily stress reduction to shrink the overactive emotion centers and regrow the prefrontal cortex. Chapter Four of his book offers fourteen practical strategies—including meditation, mindful walks, and group relaxation exercises—to help integrate calm into everyday life.
3. Lasting Change Requires Overcoming Resistance to the New
Dr. Curtis acknowledges that knowing what to do isn’t enough—most people struggle to implement lasting change because the brain is wired to prefer the familiar, even if it’s unhealthy. He offers guidance for working through this natural resistance, emphasizing that creating new habits (like regular meditation or joining community groups) is critical for long-term recovery. Ultimately, fostering calm isn’t just about personal wellness—it’s essential for rebuilding community and improving collective life quality.
For more insights and practical steps drawn from neuroscience and performance psychology, be sure to listen to the full episode and check out Dr. Curtis’s book, “Rebalancing After Stress, Trauma, and Addiction.”
Philip Amerson [00:00:00]:
Greetings, all. This is Phil Amerson again with the To Be and Do podcast. And we've been speaking with Dr. Steven Curtis, who has just publishing it will be out soon, a book, Rebalancing after Stress, Trauma and Addiction. Steve is trained in neuroscience and also is a clinical psychologist. And when we left in the last episode, we had heard of one guest or client that Steve had who was struggling with an addiction to sermons. Steve, do you want to tell us more about that and maybe ways to try to resolve such addictive behaviors?
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:00:47]:
Sure. This unfortunate soul was really very addicted. I mean, this was very clear. And he. He agreed immediately that he had a problem with this. And his wife was sitting next to him and she was nodding. Absolutely. But the goal was, of course, in this case, to get to something that's normal and that's very similar to an addiction to food.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:01:13]:
You can't just go cold turkey and stop eating. You have to figure out how to be at a normal level. And so for him to move to something normal was the challenge. And he said, well, what do you think would be normal? And I said, well, about three sermons would be a good idea. And you mean three a day? I said, no, three a week. And his jaw dropped. Only three sermons a week. But he was very open to the possibility that his life might improve, and his wife.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:01:45]:
And it was in agreement with that, of course, but 60 hours, he realized he was doing 60 hours in five days of sermon listening. I've had people addicted to romance novels 10, 12 hours a day. Of what? Reading romance novels and sports, another major addiction we get into. So the addictions are driven, in every case, as I understand them, by a need to calm down, that the baseline anxiety is high. When baseline anxiety is high, it's like having someone standing on your toe. It doesn't feel good. So baseline anxiety is the real culprit here in that it rises out of enlarging adrenal glands. These adrenal glands dump out more and more stress hormones.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:02:31]:
So you're always prepared to run or fight, which is a very uncomfortable way to live. So you're looking for strategies to give you a reprieve from that discomfort. So addictive behaviors are ones that allow us to have some release of endorphin in the brain. It's morphine substance that's dumped out, and it causes a brief buzz, just like alcohol causes endorphin release. And that's the buzz people feel when they drink. Other drugs, very similar. But as this man, in listening to sermons, he was getting an endorphin release and, you know, I'm doing the right thing by, you know, by my church expectations and so on. So he'd get some endorphin release which would last for a while.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:03:12]:
And then of course, his need for more and more sermons went up. I guess it's kind of picking on that addiction. But every addiction is growing over time. So the alcoholic has to drink more and more to get the endorphin to be released. But at the same time, as endorphins release from the pituitary, you get a ACTH released to the adrenal glands. And the adrenal glands continue to grow then. And that's really the new science in the last 10 years that I've become aware of is that this adrenal system and the whole emotion brain gets stronger and larger over time. It's a semi permanent change.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:03:49]:
And that's the emphasis in the book, is that this imbalance that happens with chronic stress, trauma and addiction are all these changes in the brain and the endurance. The endocrine systems are semi permanent. It's plasticity in the brain.
Philip Amerson [00:04:05]:
So you used a metaphor with me that I found helpful for lay persons like myself. You spoke of if a person breaks their arm, you put it in a cast. But brains can be broken as well.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:04:24]:
Right.
Philip Amerson [00:04:25]:
And what are the ways brains can begin to be re healed?
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:04:32]:
Well, if the primary, and I think it's a good way to look at this, the primary symptom creator is this enlarged emotion brain that's broken, that's not normal. So you can think of it as a broken arm. And what you do with a broken arm is you restrain it and allow the healing to happen over time. But you can't put stress on it and put physical stress on a bone that's healing. It doesn't heal. So you have to do this large cast and keep it on for a long time. The brain in the same sense needs to be protected from stress. There's a chronic stress that causes the teeter totter to be out of balance with the emotion brain large and the rational brain small and atrophied.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:05:21]:
So the goal then is to allow the brain to be protected from chronic stress. So the term I use in the book is chronic calm. So if you have an imbalance in your brain, the cast you put on to allow it to heal is chronic calm. And that's a major change in the way most people live. And I describe in the book all the. I have the first three chapters, here's how things get out of balance then chapter four. I have 14 strategies for creating calm every day in your life and sustaining it over hours and maintaining it day to day. And that's keeping the stress in from maintaining the break in the brain.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:06:07]:
It's allowing the healing to happen. And the healing happens in the. In the direction of reduced size and strength of the emotion brain over time. And with that the inhibition of prefrontal region is removed. Prefrontal can regrow. And all of a sudden, not all of a sudden, but over time you have an increased capacity to think your way through your problems as we should do and normal people do, by the way. Norm is a hard thing to find. Find that Norman, Norma have left the building.
Philip Amerson [00:06:41]:
Have left the building. So I want you said something I think many of us don't know or didn't know. The prefrontal can regrow.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:06:52]:
Yes. So with successful chronic calm, you see a loss of the symptoms of ptsd. There was a nice study done. It wasn't really a formal study, it was a description. I heard of some work done by a man in Vancouver psychologist who had PTSD. Police officers, 63 of them. And they came and the department told them for the next four or five months, you're going to be going every day to work at this office area that this psychologist had. And he just did traditional relaxation methods.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:07:33]:
All day long, eight hours a day these guys would come in and women and they would be subjected to chronic calm relaxation.
Philip Amerson [00:07:43]:
Better than the sermon.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:07:45]:
Yeah, not the excited ones. Anyone from. Any sermon from Phil Amerson is not going to be calming, I'm sorry to say. If you can create, I don't know, you've lost your edge then. But over three or four months, the symptoms of PTSD that were all very clear, I mean the symptoms are damaging to people's lives. You know, the addictions and the chronic anxiety and the irritability and the anger and all of that. Over time, all those symptoms remitted. And in 78% of the 63.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:08:32]:
And he added another technology to the mix. And the other 22% resolved over time. But the strategy was remarkable. It's a difficult thing, of course, to do in someone, to create in someone's life is chronic calm. We don't live with that. And there are new behaviors. Get up and take a walk in the morning and just look at the sunrise and look at the trees and hear the birds and not be thinking the whole time. Because 95% of our stress comes from repetitive thoughts.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:09:04]:
And when we're anxious, we repeat, repeat, repeat, just like the addiction And I have, I'm using a diagnosis these days of addiction to worrying, because worrying causes endorphin release in the brain, just like trichotillomania, which is a condition where you're pulling one hair out at a time and you're causing pain and you get addicted to that. So the goal here is to create chronic calm and allow endorphin to be released at low levels and gradually from the calming experience. And then gradually the endorphin, I'm sorry, the emotion brain shrinks. The prefrontal release from inhibition restores some strength, and you start to be able to put a break. I think of the prefrontal as a braking system on the emotion brain. And if you remove the brakes, then the emotion brain grows, and if you restore the brakes, then the emotion brain can shrink. So this is the plasticity again of the whole system. And the teeter totter can be rebalanced in favor of prefrontal thinking our way through our problems and controlling the emotional responses that we live with.
Philip Amerson [00:10:14]:
14 ways of addressing or looking for chronic calm are in your book.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:10:20]:
Yes. In chapter four, I'm giving you lots of strategies, lots of methods, day to day methods that you can use to create calm and sustain it over hours during the day. So every day you get up and your goal is to be the calmest person in every room. So you are aware of it. One of the methods is to just start giving yourself a number on how calm am I or how anxious am I? And really the calm is the way to go. How calm am I right now? And then try to maintain a low, high level of calm, low level of anxiety, and sustain it, knowing that you're providing the protection your brain needs to heal and seeing that as a high priority in your life and relabeling yourself as, gee, I'm an anxious person to I'm a calm person. And the relabeling is a very important piece of the puzzle. There are also a couple of pharmacological interventions that can be used to speed the rebalancing process.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:11:24]:
And they're described in this chapter as well. So chapter four is the what to do now chapter, the Interventions that can be of Value. Then chapter five and six, talk about why you're not going to do any of this stuff. My major interest over years has been how the brain resists change. We all can easily decide what we should be doing and how we could be better than we are, but how many times do we actually do those things? So chapter four is, here's what you could do chapter five and six or why you're not going to do it. Chapter seven gives you a method to get through your resistance to change so that you actually get up in the morning and do something new. The older we get, the less likely we are to change things. I had an aunt who used to say if it's new, it's no.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:12:16]:
So that's the way she lived her life. But in this case, if you really want to recover from an unbalanced brain from chronic stress, you really have to do new things. And even if they're good for you and they're some kind of easy and pleasant, it's still new. And we reject new in favor of old, which hasn't killed us. That's the goal of the brain is alive.
Philip Amerson [00:12:41]:
The goal of the brain is to stay alive. And if it worked yesterday, it will work tomorrow.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:12:49]:
Yes, yes. And we are default program is to do today what we did yesterday.
Philip Amerson [00:12:55]:
Okay. So one of the things that, because I am a recovering sociologist, we talk about are the ways group functions can assist in the healing. We've talked, many of the listeners are people of faith, not all, but we've talked about the power, for instance, of meditation or in groups or tisay music or singing in a choir. And I'm. I'm struck right now that the mode of, of what many growing churches are perceived growing churches is a lot of repetitive loud music. And they're not places that would be meditative or places of prayer. I know you've got thoughts about that. Would you share some?
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:13:48]:
Yeah, that's One of the 14 methods really is a focus on meditation in your life to bring it up as a higher recognition that this is not just a good idea for my spirituality, but it's a good idea for my health and my brain health. Meditation is very positive, positive benefit. And I mentioned all the different kinds of meditation in the book. There are, you know, all different in history and in cross secular groups and religious groups. Meditation takes all kinds of different forms. And to find one that works for you is an important part to make it something you look forward to doing. So calming through that method is very important. To do it in a group, group singing.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:14:35]:
Group meditation is very, very powerful. But it's difficult when people are highly anxious. They tend to want to. One of the symptoms of PTSD is that I want to be alone in the woods and don't bother me and don't come around. Keeping people away is high priority. So to join in a group is maybe the first challenge of a person Living with high stress is to come out of their house and go out with a group you'd hope of trusted people, people that you feel comfortable with and realize that there's benefit in being in the room doing the same thing with someone. Even exercise classes, exercise is a huge issue for stress. Walking every day if you can, or recumbent bike pedaling, take the stress off your legs.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:15:23]:
Water aerobics, these are just really, really important things. Choices that you can make in your day to again add some calm to the mix and create the calm day to day and look at your schedule for the day and how many calming strategies am I using today? And realize that it doesn't have to go on the rest of your life to be this calm, but to know that three or four months of this can be very, very helpful in rebalancing your brain and returning to a level of rationality that allows you to live your, your life more effectively. Effectively, meaning you're solving problems more effectively, you're thinking more clearly, you're making good judgments, you're able to carry on conversations at a higher level and you're willing to be out with people. Otherwise the chronic stress brain, the unbalanced brain is a person that's going to be in hiding and really very uncomfortable. And life quality is not good. So the bottom line really about all of this is life quality. And it's not just your life quality, but it turns into community quality. As we have lots and lots of people hiding in their homes.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:16:31]:
It's hard to have good community. So again, an epidemic. It's worldwide. We're not the only spot in the world that's living with stress. It's international.
Philip Amerson [00:16:46]:
Well, I want to thank Dr. Steven Curtis for being with us and we're going to post information about how to be in contact with him or to know how to order his book or other way, other resources he may recommend. They'll be posted on the website alongside this recording. Steve, thank you for this time and your wisdom and I've got to go because I've got to listen to a few more sermons today.
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:17:16]:
Somebody needs to. I tell you, I am very happy to talk with people. I have a license in Indiana, but I'm happy to do coaching sessions with people from anywhere. It's not clinical necessarily and that's something I really enjoy doing, is helping people understand what they can do to improve. So happy to have, have them come through the email and I can get back and we can see how we can work things out. But it's interesting work And I feel like I'm adding some value to people's lives, and they most often they feel like they're getting some benefit. So that's the work I'm doing these days. And the book is just part of that mix.
Philip Amerson [00:17:55]:
Okay. And the book is Rebalancing, right?
Dr. Steven Curtis [00:17:58]:
Rebalancing After Stress, Trauma and Addiction or Addiction. And it's subtitle is Can I remember it? I think I've got it here. Subtitle is Some Neuroscience and Sports and Performance Psychology for living in the 21st century.
Philip Amerson [00:18:18]:
Very good. Thanks, Dr. Steve Curtis, for your time and your wisdom. This is Phil Amerson with the Belonging Exchange, and we'll look forward to maybe talking to Steve in the future. We didn't get to a lot of other topics, but they're there and we'll plan on it. Thank you.
