Have you ever wondered why you can’t remember your high school algebra? Have you been astonished at how much of that junior year Spanish you can’t recall?
Don’t be surprised. If you don’t use it, you lose it. That’s how the brain protects itself from overload. It is called Synapse Paring and it can work to your advantage with mental health.
Your brain, from birth, begins to develop neural connections known as synapse. The brain uses proteins and fats to develop actual thread-like connections that are pathways for neurons. Your brain, like a set of knitting needles, develops a set of patterns and mosaics of beliefs and reactions, based on your synapse development. This explains PTSD, as the highly-fearful event impacted the brain of the abuse and violence victim, creating hyper vigilance.
If you were raised in a negative environment, you have negative neural synapse issues. Those are developed by the brain to protect the body, the ultimate goal of any human reaction. If you are out of the dangerous situation (physical , mental or emotional), you can begin to repair your brain by building positive neural connections. As you build the positive, the brain relies less upon the negative. Over time, with practice and patience, you can allow your brain to begin the paring process on the negative synapse bundles.
Use it or lose it and---in this case, you want to lose it!
However, have you noticed that you still retain enough of that high school Spanish to ask for directions or understand part of a menu? It is not completely gone. The connections for the language have been pared but, not entirely. The root connections remain. Such will be the case for negativity. It can be easily revived with new negativity. This is why bombardment of positive thought is so very important.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy relies upon the paring of the negative synapse system to allow the positive to build and overwhelm. It is a bit of a battle but it can be won. Through talk therapy, sometimes made more effective by using antidepressants to rebuild Serotonin levels and combat negative changes in the brain’s chemistry, you can and will “change your brain.
Think of it this way. Your brain is like a hard drive. Every program your brain absorbs is readily-accessible Your active memory is like your computer's RAM. The RAM accesses the programming and data on the hard drive, depending upon what the brain is experiencing. However, your computer tends to go to the most recent activity, basically, the computer's cache system. The RAM loads that first. If negativity continues in your life, that's what loads in your brain, each and every day, as you rise to consciousness from sleep.
Cognitive Behavior Therapy is designed to help you fend off the negative uploads, much like when you click off notifications for programs that annoyingly come on your screen during the computer's loading process. If you are trained to stop those programs from loading, replacing them with encouraging and gracious thoughts about yourself, your RAM will eventually allow the negative programs to live as ghosts and maintain an active upload, each and every day.
If you are haunted by negative thoughts that race through your mind, give Cognitive Behavior Therapy a try. A good counselor can help you but becoming your advocate, teaching you how to stand up for yourself, during all those negative internal conversations.
Let’s start the pruning process, together. Out with the bad- in with the good! Let the paring begin! Negative robs you of your joy. Learn to live, joyously!
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