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  "description": "Exploring the relationship between brain biology & mental health 🧠",
  "path": "/mental-health-and-biology/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-14T06:00:06.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.gilespcroft.com",
  "tags": [
    "4-part story about that here",
    "Psychiatrist Dr Bill Pettit",
    "It's not true",
    "deluded",
    "upstream of it all",
    "Sufi Comics strip",
    "https://www.suficomics.com/blog/whats-in-a-name",
    "Unknown unknownsThe thing that’s going to help you change lies outside of your current frame of reference ✨The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft"
  ],
  "textContent": "When I first came across the Innate Health understanding (there's a lengthy, 4-part story about that here, if you're curious), things changed for me considerably, and I saw pretty much all of life quite differently.\n\nExcept mental health conditions.\n\nSee, I'd done a psychology degree, gone to medical school, worked as a doctor (even considering Psychiatry at one point) and basically been indoctrinated into the medical model of mental health _so_ comprehensively, that when I heard people like 3Ps Psychiatrist Dr Bill Pettit saying things like,\n\n> _“There's only one cause of mental illness, and therefore one cure”_\n\n…well, I just dismissed it out of hand. Because I (i.e. the Giles Ego Construct 📦) knew **for a fact** that it was more complicated than that. I'd read textbooks, had training, hell, even got qualifications that supported a much more granular view!\n\nI also, very understandably, subscribed to the widely-held view that things like depression were caused by a deficiency in brain serotonin, because—again—that's what I'd been taught, over and over again, and I never thought to question it. (It's not true.)\n\nThe first time I listened to Dr Bill Pettit being interviewed on a podcast, I switched it off half way through, somewhat disappointed that 3 Principles teachers I trusted were having conversations with someone who was clearly deluded, when it came to mental health.\n\n😂\n\nHa ha! I can laugh now, having met Bill, been on courses with him and immersed myself more deeply in the Innate health understanding. Because I can see how the simplicity—the ‘one cause’ aspect he talks about—doesn't so much replace, or negate the complexity that we see in human behaviours & symptoms, it just lies upstream of it all, giving rise to it all.\n\nStill, my poor medically-trained Thought System couldn't seem to get past the difficulty of biochemical changes in the brain surely _causing_ different thoughts, feelings and behaviours? (I'd drunk enough alcohol in my life to have seen how _that_ works! 😆)\n\nIt couldn't be the other way round, could it? Thought _couldn't_ cause changes in our biology… could it?\n\nUntil one of those 3 Principles teachers I trusted pointed out something as simple as embarrassment, or anger—i.e. thought/feeling constructs—causing profound physiological changes within us.\n\n🤷🏻‍♂️\n\nI recently came across this joyfully cheeky little episode of the Sufi Comics strip, that—in a slightly different context—spells out the same thing:\n\nRead the full thing, here → https://www.suficomics.com/blog/whats-in-a-name\n\nWhen I slowed down and reflected that a room full of people could have a range of reactions to all sorts of situations, all of which could easily be accompanied by physiological changes, it just started to loosen my sense of ‘rightness’; of ‘knowing for a fact’ that things were indeed the way I'd been taught for so many years.\n\nWho was I to say that repeated habits of thinking couldn't affect biochemistry over time, or cause long term organic changes in the body and/or brain, or even switch genes off and on?\n\nI still don't know, but I'm a lot more comfortable not knowing these days.\n\nI certainly don't proclaim to know much of anything ‘for a fact’ any more, and I have to say, life's become a lot less aggro, since!\n\n✌🏻\n\nGiles\n\nSIGN UP FOR THE DAILY REMINDERS newsletter\n\nWant to start __your__ days with helpful, insightful content like this? The Daily Reminder is a quick, lighthearted email that arrives in your inbox, to help keep you grounded in reality, so that you get to __‘Think less, and live more.’__\n\n __“They feel like a moment of stillness in a world of madness.” ~__ Neil, UK\n\n __“One of those small things with big impact. Honestly, just sign up!”__ ~ Paula, UK\n\nGET YOURS NOW\n\n### Related\n\nUnknown unknownsThe thing that’s going to help you change lies outside of your current frame of reference ✨The Daily RemindersGiles P Croft\n\nYou could fit the sum total of everything I don't know into the infinite void of the universe.",
  "title": "Mental health and biology",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-14T14:31:49.093Z"
}