Where Do We Know?

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Where are our beliefs? And, how do we know if we even believe them? For example, I know the word “purple”, but is my purple the same as yours? Just because society agrees on a word to represent the color, where is this story?

At first, it’s in the mind, labeled FACT. But to really know – to own it – is on a different level.

If we intentionally reshape the stories in our mind, we can experience our authentic selves (“Authentic” in this article refers primarily to being free of imposed identities).

Studies in neuroplastcity (The brain’s ability to form new neural connections) suggest we can actually CHANGE the results of earlier experiences – even when trauma has occurred.

Neuroplastcity is a fairly recent discovery. It means, basically, that our brain is malleable. It can be taught to override experiences and create new connections.

This is an exciting discovery! It wasn’t that long ago that we thought the brain had a limited number of neurons and cells, and that they each were assigned a specific role. For example, one might hold a memory, another recognizes the color red. We now know,however, that all of this is just the beginners guide to the brain! There’s so much more!

Methods That Are Useful to Rewire the Brain

Research has shown that just writing for a few minutes each day about anything can dramatically boost your happiness and sense of wellbeing.

Try This:

On a deeper level, try writing about an event that truly hurt you in some way. After venting (on paper), take a break. Then, re-write your story with the title “A Heroes Journey“. Notice that a change in perspective is a change in reality.

Crazy, right?

But all of our “truths”, our perceptions, are malleable. They are NOT factual.

My friend and trusted “guru”, Byron Katie, says it this way:

” In this world “I” is always you. I never cease to love what I create and give life to, which is you, me, everything.

How is it okay that children suffer? Look to your own suffering and ask yourself. End the suffering of one child in the world: you.

If you are suffering, you are a child, a child in awareness, innocently suffering your own lack of enlightenment, your own immaturity. As a child, the only possible way to suffer is to believe the thoughts arising in the mind.

The only way to suffer is to believe that you really believe what you think you believe.

Discovering your true self is the beginning of the end of suffering in your world. You have the power to end fear, and the end of fear is the end of war.

I invite you to take yourself to the paradigm-shift that is possible right here, right now.

Take a little walk into you and change the whole world!

Isn’t that what you really want?”

Discover your own innocent story, and give yourself the compassion you deserve.

All You Want to Know About Therapy

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For Therapy to work, you must have a good connection…

and that’s why        

self-help books don’t work.

Our emotional lives, with all their emotional cues, are on board before any verbal or conceptual ability appears. And the consequences of these experiences are unaffected by intellectual efforts to change them.

That may be because emotions, and our most powerful “memories”, seem to be stored in the right hemisphere of the brain. And yet our thinking (or intellectualizing) is a left-hemisphere activity.

Books and conversations about why we act the way we do are certainly helpful, but they don’t seem to be enough to effect real changes in our interactions with the world and ourselves.

So how can we make real changes?

Only by recreating as much as possible the initial conditions in which the processes were created in the first place.

We are born wired to seek connection with others. 

You may have heard that your first loves (parents) create the models for every relationship there after. They become our relationship-blueprints. Our experiences, especially with our caregivers, will become unconscious, intuitive memories that form the basis of our emotional life.

So if you want to change the deep, unconscious patterns that define your reactions to life’s events, you need an environment that can mirror those earliest connections, while, ideally, re-writing them (“neuroplasticity”). The result is a more harmonious existence in your current situations.

A powerful way to do this is through a positive connection with a trained professional (i.e., a psychotherapist). Good therapy aims to create a safe connection with the client so that emotional healing can take place.

And there is more to it, of course. Techniques that require direct experience have proven effective, such as working with the “inner child” , mindfulness meditations, Journaling and others. I believe these techniques work because they access the right-brain.

When my client opens up to me as much as they can in a session, I know that we are accessing the right-brain. In doing so, the chances for authentic change become possible.

If you’d like to contact me, have a question, or want to chat, please click the link:

Work and contact info

call, 801-252-6754 (private voicemail, 24/7),

or Email me:  JaneLCSW@gmail.com

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