What wires together fires together

I listened to a ted talk about brain plasticity, I hear you shouting “what is brain plasticity”

Here is a paragraph from Wikipedia.

“Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, or neural plasticity, is the ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual’s life” taken from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity)

Scientists believed for many years that the brain contained everything it needed from birth. This has been proven to be incorrect, our brain changes, plasticity means it can change and our brain does. It changes throughout our life. The neural pathways that we learned at school (for example leaning our times tables) they are strong and present whilst we are using them. I know from personal experience that I can’t remember my times tables from childhood, until more recent years (my children in school) I haven’t needed to use my times tables, therefore the neural pathways in my brain for times tables have reduced or ‘faded’ and in some cases gone completely. My brain has changed, neuralplasticity.

So our brains change, I am sure we have heard of “if you don’t use it you lose it” this is so true for the neural pathways in our brains. This leads us on to “what fires together wires together”.

So bear with me for a moment, I want you to think about smells, often a smell can remind us of someone or take us back to a time and or place. For me lavender reminds me of my grandmother, it takes me back to the talc-on powder she used and had in her bathroom.

This is where the phrase “what fires together wires together” when you smell that smell and it takes you back to a time or person in your life, that is because our sense are in use, we don’t just smell our grandparents we feel them (hugs maybe, or a touch of the hand, soft skin), hear their voice (maybe a story they told us over and over again), see them (their faces, the cloths they wear, the house they lived it). Our sense are how we experience life, our senses are stimulated by the world around us all the time.

Now what about something that triggers a negative emotion, something that catches us and makes our stomach drop or makes our heart beat so hard we can feel like it’s going to beat out our chest.

The same thing is happening within us, our senses are taking us straight back to a negative situation. For example, bullying, someone bullied at school may come across a work colleague as an adult who makes them feel very uncomfortable. It could be a word, a smell, a tone of voice, a posture, the brain picks up on it and bam, you are back to that younger you being bullied again. What wired together in those moments as a child have suddenly been fired up again. That flip that your stomach did as a child has just done the same as an adult.

As I am writing this listening to music, a song has come on and taken me straight back to a film and where I was when I first saw it, our brains are amazing.

BWRT is able to change our response to something, as our brains are plastic, able to change, BWRT can help you to change. BWRT (BrainWorking Recursive Therapy) works as close to the beginning of a response as possible to stop it in its tracks and put in a preferred response (how you would prefer to feel) allowing you to feel more comfortable when you see that work colleague for example.

Here is a link to my webpage that has a short video about BWRT, you may be interested in

http://hypnotherapistcumbria.co.uk/associations/

Here is the link to the ted talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chr3rQ6Vpcw