Well I have two years of Christian psych training, but this is above my pay grade.
I always try to find more succinct ways to tell this . . .
I've learned about and seen in myself the connection between my chemical depression and my thoughts, emotions, and behavior. I've learned about how foods and metabolism can have profound effects on mood.
A simple example is yeast in the digestive track. Overpopulation of yeast reduces probiotic populations, resulting in poor digestion and it's effects. Yeast excrete chemicals which in sufficient quantity cause anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and the list goes on. The gut has so many neurons it's considered like a second brain. Chemisty affects it profoundly.
And this has effect on how we think and feel and act.
I had to learn about this as part of learning to deal with my anxiety disorder. There was a period of time, well, I noticed that every day, around 5 pm or so, my anxiety would start to increase, then the next morning I was normal. To shorten an even longer story, I finally figured out this was the diurnal cycle of the yeast bacteria, becoming active in the PM. And when I treated the yeast, the anxiety become the random thing it had been instead of daily at 5 pm.
Anxiety is just another word for fear. It's the "feeling of fear", without something to incite fear. But before I learned to associate that feeling entirely with the body, I'd become afraid, literally, in whatever I'd think about. I'd fear over something with my job, then deal with that. Next moment the fear is something with my car, or a tooth, or a tax, or a relative, or whatever.
At the end of the day, I learned how corruptions to my body, the body of flesh, resulted in inaccurate thinking, inappropriate emotions, leading to inappropriate behavior. And as I deal with complusions and obsessions imprinted, literally hard wired into my brain from a traumatic childhood, I see the same thing. Corruptions of the flesh, ie maldevelopment of the brain, results in wrong thinking, and the rest.
So the inner drive to do something wrong, I realize that's my body, my mess of a body, with it's corruptions, pushing to sin. Just like I've learned to ignore my depression when I find it intruding into my mind, I've learned to ignore the "feeling of fear", knowing it doesn't describe me. I'm trusting Jesus. My body is feeling afraid. But I'm trusting Jesus.
My body insists it MUST have _______ RIGHT NOW, and that I have every right! It want's what it wants, that's my corrupt flesh! It's not me. I want what God wants.
Am I making sense? I always feel so disjointed trying to talk about this.
Much love!