Transcription
[Music] welcome back and now we're going to dive a little bit deeper into how our amygdala plays a role in our sense of self and how we experience ourselves in the world around us.
When we're in that fear-brained state and we have those fear sunglasses on, our amygdala will actually take over our sense of self. She will play a role in defining how we feel about ourselves and our ability to navigate the world around us. Perhaps you felt that way before. You know, sometimes we have these less than preferable considerations of, "Oh, I'm just dumb. I'm stupid. I'm unlovable. I'm alone. I'll always be alone." These big thoughts.
In the world of cognitive behavioral therapy, we call those maladaptive cognitions or core beliefs. And these big thoughts, their inception point is in the amygdala. And so, the tools that we utilize here really are empowering in that we can actually get to where these spots are encoded in our brain and help them shift and heal. That empowers the rest of the work we do in our more traditional psychotherapy practice.
I just want to take a quick side note here and highlight that we utilize this technique, uh, called havening, that I mentioned before. Those two doctors on the east coast that created this. Havening is a technique that empowers all of the other traditional psychotherapeutic work that we do. We are always working with our prefrontal cortex and healing our amygdala, as well as the entire mind-body system for the most effective, efficient, and sustainable healing.
But when our amygdala is running the show, remember, she's got that superglue going on, and she will take over the entire system. And here's why. So, something happens, and within 75 milliseconds, she pops up a little warning flag and says, "Oh, that reminds me of this." And that little amygdala receptor starts glowing like a red-hot coal in our brain. And she sends that information up through this part of our brain called the working memory.
Now, the working memory is a very simple memory system. It usually holds between five and seven bits of data at any given time, say five, seven plus or minus two. The reason our phone numbers are the length they are is because of the working memory. It's what we can retain. And that working memory is going to source all of this other information, experiences in our life. And she'll send that information up to our thinking brain through the working memory and go, "Hey, do we remember anything about this? Does this remind us of anything? Does this activate anything familiar?"
And if our thinking brain goes, "Yeah, I have a vague memory that somewhere along the line, something like this happened," it'll kick that data back to our amygdala. And guess what? Amy's going to go, "Oh, yeah, you're right." And then another little amygdala receptor is going to light up. And so now we have two glowing coals in our amygdala that are playing a role and weighing in on how our brain is experiencing the present moment.
That feedback loop will continue, and it's as though our thinking brain and our amygdala are gossiping. Now, you're noticing I'm doing this. This is a cycle. If you've ever experienced rumination, that's what I'm talking about. So, if you've ever had a moment where you've gotten a communication from somebody, I do this because, man, do I sometimes have some rather interesting reactions to text messages. There's some really great literature that's coming out on the idea of when a text message has a period versus not having a period and the significance our brain gives that. It's fascinating.
Well, I know that I can sometimes look at that and go, "There was a period. Oh, they're making a point." And then I go, "Oh, Amy, oh, honey, it's okay. It's okay. It's just a text message." But in those moments when we're activated and she's filtering data, so you'll notice even me, over here, as an expert in this space, expert quote-unquote, I will never know all there is to know about this stuff, which is amazing and exciting to me. But quote-unquote expert, I still get caught up when my amygdala starts running the show. Those are those glasses, and she will start running the way our brain is experiencing the world.
So, she gossips with the rest of her brain, and she's, it's like she's the powerhouse on the playground going, "We need to find all data that reminds us of this." One of the ways I liken it, one of the ways I like to frame it, is that we have different freeways running through our brain, you know, and those are technically neural pathways. And when we're in our amygdala, amygdala neural freeway, it's as though we're in gridlock on the 405. And the rest of our brain and our body may be saying, "Hey, you know what? I need an off-ramp here."
Um, and if you're not from California, the 405 is, if you've heard those stories of these epic California freeways we have that are like 12 lanes and non-stop traffic, you're just going five miles per hour for hours to go a mile. That's the 405. That's what Amy feels like when she starts running the show. It's just fear-based gridlock. And so, when she's colluding in that space, she's just adding more and more cars onto that 405, and we're getting stucker and more stuck and more stuck and more stuck.
And so, what we want to do is find a way to break that feedback loop so she can't put more cars on our 405. Instead, we want to figure out how do we start pulling cars off the 405, or better yet, just build an off-ramp so that we can slide on off and let's go where we want to go. Let's go up to Ojai or Napa or Santa Barbara. Let's go somewhere beautiful, San Diego, whatever, somewhere we'd much rather be than sitting in gridlock on the fear-based 405.
And so, that's where this experience of havening comes in. We start doing different brain games and experiences and also welcome in this experience called the havening touch, which we'll go into greater depth in another video, that then calms and soothes the system. The havening touch releases very specific electrochemical experiences in our brain that are the opposite of what happens in a moment of traumatic encoding. And so, it's just over wrapping a warm, fuzzy, cozy blanket around Amy and saying, "Hey, sweetheart, it's okay. We're safe."
But then we're also giving this working memory a different job so it can't continue gossiping with our amygdala, making sure that it finds all the scary data so that she's ready to do what needs to be done to keep us safe. And do keep that in mind, she's always trying to keep us safe. So, we apply the havening touch, which is nice, soothing, and loving. And then we start giving our working memory a new job, which, guess what? Stops the collusion, stops the gossiping, because our working memory, five to seven bits of data, it can't do a lot all at one time.
And we call this creating personal resiliency for the amygdala, or CPR for the amygdala. We're giving the working memory a different job, which allows us to start healing the amygdala and breaking down this feedback loop so more and more amygdala receptors aren't participating in the process. As we're doing CPR for the amygdala, we're actually even calming down and starting to soften those amygdala receptors and releasing them at their inception point. How amazing is that? That's what we call self-healing in our own hands.
And that allows us to slowly calm the system down and move into the actionable relationship with resiliency. And so, what does that mean? That means we're now going to go back to that very, very, very cool 50-millisecond experience and say, "What do I want to teach my thalamus so that we can start weighing positively in a sense of agency and resiliency?" Harnessing the opportunities of neuroplasticity, the fact that our brain can change and grow across the course of our life and build new neural networks. The more we do that with intention, the more impact our thinking brain has to calm Amy down.
So, ultimately, our thinking brain will be able to circle back, even when we have a little amygdala receptor, you see, that's still activated, and say, "Hey, Amy, maybe we don't need to go into a red light stop. Maybe we can take a breath and look at this and have some space." At the very least, though, we're teaching our amygdala that we have resilience, that we have her back, and that we have a tool in our pocket that we can say, "Okay, I see that you're scared. Let's go ahead and do some CPR for the amygdala so we can create some spaciousness so she's less reactive, and we can move forward with choice and reason and invite our self-brain to the party." It's a very, very, very cool experience.
And then, like I've been sharing in our sessions, we take all of these tools and we go deeper. We find these original encoded experiences, the core deep encodings. And what we're looking at, once we're starting to work with those deep encodings, is the overarching impact of walking through our life and how our brain has developed because of these little quiet grenades hanging out back there.
One of the things that we know about our brain is that when we encode trauma, our brain starts functioning differently, particularly if it's early childhood trauma or scary enough trauma, acute enough trauma, that we develop symptoms of depression, of anxiety, PTSD, chronic fatigue, even gastrointestinal problems, fibromyalgia, cardiac concerns. All of those things are related to our amygdala running the show or having undue influence and impact.
So, we want to work with the system to not only heal the amygdala, and the CPR is a wonderful tool to support that process, but to build and harness neuroplasticity to stabilize the overarching system. It's very cool, and I myself am a beneficiary of it, and I see the incredible work that my patients do. So, come and join us for the next video where I will be unpacking CPR for the amygdala and supporting you in beginning to develop your brain care program at home. So, when you begin your healing journey, or if you're already midway through it, you're just now joining us with these videos, you can go, "Oh, that's why they're always talking about doing CPR for the amygdala and this other thing called creating possibilities protocol." Now you know why. Or keep watching those videos and keep reminding yourself why, because we have the power for healing in our hands.
And guess what? Agency and resiliency is focused on self-empowerment. When we know we can create actionable change, our amygdala calms down. Amy steps back, and she goes, "Oh, self, you've got this. You don't need me to be on vigilant. You don't need to be a vigilante over here. We're cool because I now know you have this." Frequently, it's almost as though she breathes a sigh of relief. She gets to go rest and just make sure that we don't walk off a cliff. That's really what she wants to be doing. She doesn't want to work as hard as she can.
So, stay tuned for the next video, and we will be teaching CPR for the amygdala, as well as a wonderful little hack called creating possibilities, that will support this thalamus, our friend Thou, and saying, "Hey, Amy, guess what? We've got this. Take a breath. Go to the beach, watch the waves, or read a lovely book. But self's on board here. We're in charge."
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