mind your own business

     Your mind is minding your own business all of the time. Like computers, there are plenty of moving parts. Mentalligence, a New Psychology of Thinking (Lee, 2017) provides the foundation for my strategic practice of mentalligent psychotherapy (MPT). Mental is the software of our brains. How we size up situations and respond. Intelligence is the hardware of our brains. The capacity we bring to the table that defines our ability to respond to our environment. Focus on the interaction of the two and we have “mentalligence.”
          The substance of our brains are neurological pathways. How we receive and respond to stimuli. Conventional wisdom back in the day told us that our brains mature to full function at around age 25. We grow and learn until then and that’s the hand we are dealt. Thankfully research over the past 20 years tells us that the brain’s capacity for neurogenesis extends throughout our lifetime.
          With counseling and psychotherapy, neurogenesis is the source of hope and change. You can identify hope and change on your healing journey by noticing how you are thinking. We’ve identified four stages of healing on the journey.
          We are living our lives, doing what we always do, and thinking little about the impact of our words and actions on others. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but this is just who I am. What you see is what you get. This first stage is one of Unconscious Ignorance. We don’t know that there’s a problem and we don’t know that we don’t know. During this stage, your neurological pathways are unchallenged and continue to fire from habit without question.
          The second stage of our healing journey begins with a precipitating event. Something happens that gets our attention and we know we need to do something about it, but don’t know what to do. This stage is defined as Conscious Ignorance. With this stage, you decide (or are forced) to begin psychotherapy. Too often your motivation is to get someone off your back. While it takes time and commitment for change to last, you are challenging your habitual neural pathways. You resist change, relapse to old habits, distance yourself from well-intentioned family and friends. Nonetheless, you become more aware of your conscious ignorance and choose to invoke new neuropathways.
                With time and practice, trying on new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving, your brain begins to challenge your conscious ignorance. As new neuropathways emerge and grow stronger, the old, habitual neuropathways wither and die. As you continue your new journey, the stage of conscious ignorance transforms into one of Conscious Awareness.
                 You notice the differences between old and new habits and choose new habits. This is scary because your brain follows the old adage, “This is how we’ve always done things.” Yet, friends and family notice and reinforce your changes. You understand what used to be and fumble a bit with being awkward, because the new you is very different. Yet, as you persist, the new becomes more familiar. New neuropathways, formed from neurogenesis, become stronger and more reliable.
            Finally, as your new normal becomes habitual, your healing journey enters the final stage, that of Unconscious Awareness. Your new, healing neuropathways firm up. Your downward spiral of stuckness is becoming distant history. You continue upward spiraling and soaring, even when encountering adversity. With new neuropathways secured, your healing journey continues.
              For more, go to amazonbooks.com and buy my new book, The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life at https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Journey.../dp/B0CY9PQXMZ.
Blessings,
Dr. Jon

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