Components of healing
Three important aspects of healing that I see are 1) updating early mental models (see my blog post Neurobiology of Healing) 2) processing implicit memory to explicit memory (blog post—Making the Implicit Explicit) 3) training our nervous systems.
The body takes time to change. Every thing you do or don’t do either strengthens or weakens a habit. Our neo-cortex (where our explicit thoughts are mediated) has the most neuroplasticity (the ability to change in response to usage), while our subcortical brain (i.e. limbic brain and brain stem, which can take over when we’re triggered) has less plasticity and takes much longer to change. Changing patterns in our subcortical brain requires feeling sensations in our bodies, our emotions, slowing down and many, many, many more rounds of repetition. Staci Haines talks about an embodied skill is one that is available to us even under pressure (and may require around 3000 rounds of practice). Rick Hanson asks, how can we make transient states (e.g. of grounded, open-hearted, strength) into enduring traits?
Here’s a personal example that might flesh out these ideas. The other day, I saw a friend. For 6 years when we were neighbors, we would go for a hike with our dogs every week. On our last walk, I felt self-conscious and had thought that I wasn’t enjoyable enough company and wondered what could I do differently. Later, I wrote “I have the thought Elizabeth doesn’t like me.” Writing this unleashed emotional flooding. I think it articulated an early, perhaps pre-verbal, learning, an emotional knowing of “I am unlikeable” (which I believe is a distinct mental model in my system from “I am unlovable”). I think the self-consciousness and self-doubt (expressions of shame) I felt with my friend was implicit memory. As a child, I had no one to turn to for comfort if I felt sadness or shame around not feeling welcomed, wanted by peers or people in general. I believe this resulted in painful emotional experiences remaining only as implicit memory instead of being processed, integrated into explicit memory with a sense of recall, with a distinction of past and present. When I’m not triggered, I think my friend likes me. We’ve known each other for about 11 years. But it really didn’t feel that way to me while I was experiencing implicit memory.
My pattern when I feel shame is to withdraw. I experienced strong doubt whether to continue putting energy into this friendship during our hike. I have a nervous system that has been strongly shaped and practiced in shutdown, collapse, withdrawal. Since our survival strategies are associated with pain, it’s really easy to negatively judge and reject them. Survival strategies like withdrawal or fighting or appeasing are often problematic if they’re automatic. But elements of survival strategies can be really helpful tools that we can consciously choose at certain times. It can be helpful to walk away, or to fight skillfully or to help someone calm down. I think it’s healing for me to notice and be with my impulse to withdraw from my friend in response to shame (without either following through or overriding the impulse through approaching). Doing this can help de-couple shame with behavioral withdrawal.