Top 10 Therapy takeaways- The Brain, part 2

Hey y'all, hey, and welcome back

We are actually going to be doing part two of the brain. So last time we talked more about the lies that our brain could tell us and understanding our amygdala. This time we're going to jump into a little bit more information on our brain and the power we have behind it. I felt like it was worth a part 2 to finish up brain stuff. We touched on memory last time and that if we're in survival mode, if we're in that fight, flight, or freeze, our memory has a hard time.

It's like if something's really loud, like that guard dog barking, you can't learn information. You can't take in and hold on to that information. That's why when our kids that have been through traumatic situations are staying in fight, flight or freeze, they're not doing well in school because they can't shut that part of their brain off or reconnect their thinking brain. So it's their hippocampus that is not working the way it should. The other part about memory is that your body holds just as much memory as your brain. It's where you hear, like the title of the popular book, “The body keeps the score”. that it's the body just as much as the brain. Your whole body remembers things.

We've seen this with times of the year that someone will start having physical problems and realize that it's around the time of a traumatic event. I've seen kids that are in the foster care system when that time of year hits that they were removed from their home, they might start having nightmares or they might start having bathroom accidents, all those things because the body is remembering some of that trauma even more so than the brain. It also could have happened before they had the verbal language. And so they really can't tell you about it, but that memory is still stored in their body.

I listened to a book the other day, and they were talking about how everything we take in is not absolutely accurate, it's perspective, and the memory holds it differently as well. We don't actually see things the way they are, which is a little bit tricky and hard to understand, but that just shows us again how often our brain can trick us.

So I want to get a little bit scientific, but nothing crazy. Again, this is stuff that I share with both kids and adults in my practice. And if kids can get these concepts, I feel like we can too.

In our brains, we have neurons and we have neurotransmitters that go between the neurons and those form pathways. And that's how we learn and get better at things. Every time that pathway gets a little stronger and stronger. To think of this in the beginning, it's almost like walking a tightrope. The first time you do something, it only creates that tightrope. The tightrope can be a little scary. I don't know about you, I don't want to fall off of that. There's no room for error. But if we repeat that action over and over and over, it becomes more like a sidewalk. There's a lot less risk of falling off the sidewalk than there is of falling off the tightrope. I can have a misstep. There can be a big old chunk missing and it's not gonna throw me off the sidewalk. I'm okay. Like learning to ride a bicycle. At first you're falling a lot. It's hard to stay up. But with more and more practice you can do it without a lot of thought.

That works in a lot of different ways. Yes, it's how we learn things, but it's also how we try to change something. When we're trying to get a new thought into our head that we're having a hard time with, that's why we have to repeat it over and over and over. I often tell my clients that if you haven't repeated it to yourself, whether it's seeing it, writing it, saying it, hearing it, whatever, if your input hasn't hit the point of ridiculous, you haven't done it enough. Because we need that repetition to really strengthen that pathway in our brain. The other part of that is that thoughts or feelings are just that. It's just a thought. It's just a feeling. Having a thought, having a feeling doesn't actually make it true. We struggle with this one a lot because we feel like if I thought it, if I felt it, it's true. But it's really something that can come and go. And just like we had the miss associations part, the same thing is true for these automatic thoughts that jump into our head.

A lot of times we call them ants, Automatic Negative Thoughts. They come creeping in just like ants that we don't like, and they take up space. And we have to be able to combat them. The good news is you can. You have the power to change that. Our brain is ever changing. We create the pathways, we cut out pathways. So we're trying to really improve ourselves and get to a better place mentally. And we do have that power, and that's something that we really have to remember. Thoughts come into your head notice them and then let them go especially if they're creating a problem

Let's go back to middle school because I feel like that's one trauma that most of us had. You're walking up to a group of kids sitting down and someone starts laughing, and that automatic negative thought of, no, they're laughing at me, pops into your head. And then you have the feeling of being embarrassed or mad or sad. And that leads you to an action. And the action often is that you no longer want to go sit over there. Maybe you isolate yourself. Maybe back as a junior high kid, you completely left the cafeteria. And that's where you start to spiral. That's when you start to think, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't anyone like me? Why are they laughing at me? And most of us can relate to this concept back in those junior high days, no matter how long ago that has been for some of us. But our power comes from when we change it at the thought level. If I'm walking up to that table and someone starts laughing and I'm able to go, huh, I wonder what's so funny. Well, that completely changes everything about those next few seconds. Now, I'm curious. I go, I sit down, I might even ask, what's so funny? And here's the part that some of us struggle with, and that's that truthfully our day is going to be better no matter what is the next part. It doesn't really matter. They're probably gonna say nothing or it was this, and the chance of it being about us is actually pretty slim. But even if it was, they're gonna move on from that thought, and so we are not as negatively affected. We aren't running away. We aren't isolating. We aren't spiraling. Now I'm sitting there, I'm engaged with other people, I'm having a good time. And all that changed with that was that very beginning thought. I didn't let that automatic negative thought take away from everything else. Again, sometimes truth might be true, but it doesn't mean it's helpful.

We do have the power to change our brain and it is an awesome power. It does take work though. It is not automatic. It does not come on its own. You have to be willing to put in the work. Maybe I just need to change the way I feel about something small. Maybe I need to start changing a lot of things. But I've got to start in one place. So again, I'm going to tell you hundreds of times you have to replace this because that broken record, sorry for the dated reference, is already playing in the back of your head over and over.

So it's been input that many times and now you have to combat it that many times. If I'm struggling with not being good enough, which tends to be one of the most general things we use against ourselves, it's really hard for me to connect to I'm amazing. But if I can start to connect with I am enough, well that's really a good first step. And now I have to repeat that concept because the first time my brain doesn't believe me, it's still stuck on that not enough.

I have to start inputting 500 times, a minimum, hit get to that ridiculous point. It's

It's still connected to the negative and I've got to change it. If I keep going, eventually it believes me, and then I start to feel better. On the flip side, when we do the opposite to ourselves, we begin to feel worse. We've all heard someone say, I'm so stupid, I'm such an idiot. I've definitely been guilty myself. And that really tears us down because you hear it enough that your brain starts to believe it. I've done it, I know, but I don't actually think I'm an idiot. I think I'm a fairly intelligent person, and I feel I've worked hard for some of the things that I have, so I am not an idiot. But if I keep telling myself that, my brain is gonna connect to that, truthfully, I say it the most when it's a careless mistake, and that's the change I have to make, “that was a really careless mistake”. Let me tell you, my kids have called me out on this one to make sure that I made that change. That change helps my brain see me for who I am. It's huge. I don't want to feel like that. I don't want to feel horrible. It's like being in an abusive relationship with myself. We start to believe those negative things we're told or that our brain tells us.

The other thing I want to talk about is goals that you set for yourself. So goals can be very powerful, and we've heard this a million times. You need to have goals, blah blah blah. You need to have goals. But one of the things that I learned when I read Rachel Hollis's book, “Girl Wash Your Face”, several years back, is she tells you to write your goals as if they already happened. She said, if someone else was looking at your list, they would almost think you were a little bit arrogant or a little bit full of yourself. Because I write my goals like this. “I am an amazing wife.” “I am an awesome mother.” So I'm writing those because they're goals. I want to be an awesome mother. I want to be an amazing wife. But if I'm gonna get my brain to connect to it, then I need to write them as if they've already happened. I write the goal that I have XYZ in the bank because that helps my brain connect to make those decisions, to save the money, to put it back, to not spend all the things.

I used to write, I have my own private practice, and now I do. I really believe that writing the goal as if it's already happened helped my brain connect to it and want to make it a reality. So I strongly encourage you to pick three or four goals, make a personal one, a professional one, whatever. Start writing it every day as if it's already happened. Maybe it's a weight loss goal, maybe it's a size goal, maybe it's a workout goal. It doesn't matter, but write it like it's happened every day. Start with a two-week goal.

And see the difference it starts to make in your mindset. Give yourself that time, and I really believe you will see it. Again we barely scratched the surface, but that's okay because I think that some of the things I shared with you were right at the top. I do want to remind you that this is for educational purposes, and because I want to share it with you, it is not a replacement for therapy. If you are struggling, please reach out. Reach out to me, if i am not the right match I can help you find someone. Reach out to a therapist in your area get the help you need. If you are in crisis, please reach out to a crisis line like 988 or even 911, especially if you don't feel like you are in a safe place.

*Podcast transcripts are AI generated and slightly edited before posting in blog