Patterns of the brain often deny desires of the heart

​I've never been a big fan of the show FRIENDS. Mainly because I don't recall ever seeing it. Oh, I'm sure an episode or two snuck onto the screen over the years; FRIENDS just never became one of my shows.

That might make it hard to understand why the death of FRIENDS star Matthew Perry has stuck with me this weekend the way it has.

Full confession, when Perry's picture and the stories about his death started filling my newsfeed, I had no idea who he was. None.

Thank you Google. Now, I'll never forget him. I've ordered his memoir. And I'm sure FRIENDS is the next show I'll binge.

I guess I was struck by how much I could see myself in Perry's story. How much I could FEEL myself in it. Minus the fame and the millions.

It starts with Perry's childhood friends.

When asked about his life filled with hardships and addictions, Perry's oldest friends said that his heart never changed. No matter what he'd been through or what he was currently going through, when they'd catch up, he had the same giant heart he'd always had.

We make that mistake about people. We think that because someone makes a million dollars an episode to make a television show, there's no excuse for them not acting like their heart.

I hear it asked all the time. How could he or she, with all they have going, make choices that seem to turn all they have going upside down.

The truth is, I often take that question personally. I often feel seen - and judged.

The answer, those are often choices of the brain and not choices of the heart. One of the greatest sources of tension in life is trying to make your brain CHOOSE to be who your heart knows you CAN be.

I assure you, though, just because we see someone throwing it all away doesn't mean they desire to be a person throwing it all away. I also assure you that desires of the heart are often overwhelmed by patterns of the brain.

Perry's childhood is described as one of traumatic invisibility. His dad left when he wasn't yet a year old. His mother worked and was rarely present. In his memoir, Perry described a childhood filled with feelings of loneliness.

At the age of 14, Perry turned to alcohol.

I have often said, my biggest regret about my relationship with alcohol isn't that I drank alcohol. It's that I drank it as a hurting twelve year old.

When your brain is predisposed to loving something, whether it be because of genetics or because your life is in a place where substances might bring the kind of relief nothing else ever has - or both - and you're at the age when your brain is wiring in things you will come to love because of their relief FOREVER, you are in the deadly crosshairs of patterns of addiction and misuse.

At the time in your life when your brain is supposed to be wiring in relationships as the greatest source of soothing, and those patterns get replaced by something else, chances become significantly greater that you will get good at relationships with some things and awful at them with some ones.

Patterns that often even a lifetime won't correct.

In his memoir, Perry acknowledged his early substance use contributed to a life of broken relationships.

Perry also acknowledged he never really got good at overcoming his addictions, but that he always knew how to help someone else overcome theirs. And he was always willing to be there if they needed him.

Again, I know that can be confusing to people. How can you help others with the thing you haven't been able to help yourself with?

Most of my life these days is devoted to helping people have healthy relationships. Even as I struggle to figure out how to do that myself. But it's a gift to reflect on your life and discover all the places where things went awry and be suddenly as equipped as anyone - maybe more equipped - to help people avoid the same pitfalls along the way.

You reach this point where part of your struggle to overcome your own deficits is soothed by helping someone else avoid them.

So I get what you're saying, Matthew Perry.

I get you.

I look forward to reading more about your life. And in doing so learning more about mine. Because that is where we learn the most about ourselves, inside the authentic stories of other people.

It's where we can be reminded unhealthy choices aren't always matters of the heart. They aren't often as easy as 'just follow your heart.'

They are sometimes much more complicated than that.

I pray this morning that Matthew Perry's complications are over.

I pray his life today truly is as simple as, follow your heart.