Want to go from here to there?

Neuroplasticity Gets You from Here to There
          So, neuroplasticity, that’s a fancy medical term. It’s also relatively new. Up until 20 years ago, researchers and clinicians thought our brains matured until we turned 25. And then? No more maturity. The brain just stopped growing and changing.
          Now, more recent research confirms that our brains mature and grow, creating new neural networks throughout our life span. How cool is that? This gives underlying, neurological foundation for the lasting change that can come from psychotherapy. Two maxims of counseling and psychotherapy apply.
          First, you can stop unhealthy old behavioral habits. Conditioning principles use the maxim, “Use it or lose it.” On your healing journey, this maxim becomes, “Stop using it and lose it.”
          “So. Hank, you seem so excited,” I paused after ushering my patient into my office. “What’s going on?”
          “Well, Doc, you know how you’ve been encouraging me for months to find the new me? The me where rage is not my go-to response with Carrie? Hank sat down and leaned forward in his excitement.
          “Yeah…” I hesitated, anticipating his continuing his story.
          “Well, the new me arrived last night,” Beaming, Hank took a deep breath to collect himself.
          “Great!” I exclaimed, “Introduce him to me.”
          “Okay. After I got home last night, Carrie started off on me, telling me all the things I had failed to do around the house. Some of it were things we had talked about and that I had said I would take care of. More of it was just her ranting about random messes, broken stuff, and such, like we live in a pigsty, which we don’t.”
“Wow! That’s a lot,” I took it all in. “How did you respond?”
          “That’s the thing, ya know? Hank took a breath, smiled, and continued. “In the past I would have countered her every point, shouted back, and stomped off, probably back out to the local bar. That would have been the old me.”
          “And the new you?”
          “I did none of that. Instead, I reached out to her softly and gave her a big hug,” Hank chuckled, thinking back. “She stiffened up. She didn’t know how to respond.”
          “And then?”
          “Then I apologized for not getting to the things she had listed. She softened after my apology and hugged me back. Then I active listened, like you taught me, listening to her stresses with her work, the kids, and the house. I let her talk and then concluded, no wonder she’s so overwhelmed. She broke down in tears. I held her some more, told her to put her feet up, got her a beverage, and did a load of laundry. Pretty cool, huh?”
          “Yeah, really cool. I like your new you, and I bet Carrie wants to keep him.”
          The second maxim of mentalligent psychotherapy is this. What you pay attention to grows. Focus on the bad stuff and it gets bigger. Focus on the good stuff and it grows. Weaving mindfulness, positive psychology, and cognitive behavioral strategies into your mentalligent psychotherapy with patients gives them the tools to shut down old, unhelpful, neuropathways, and to engage your brain’s neuroplasticity to create new, healthy neural pathways along your healing journey.
          For more, check out my new book, The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life, at, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CY9PQXMZ, and on my website at https://authorjonrobinson.com/
Blessings,
Dr. Jon

---