Odd about survival circuits . . . untouchable!

I keep thinking about survival circuits, marveling at their power. Imagine a circuit, a memory, a wave of neurons that are encoded into a wire during a full-blown stress response, an allostatic response that is like stepping into a black hole of stress. Who knows if we will ever return?

We need a life line, a way of not perishing, and we reach for something, anything that stops the terror, even if it is a cookie or a bag of them or any mood, thought, person, role, behavior, and there we are with a circuit that is untouchable. We can’t arouse the memory which is necessary to rewire it. For when we do, it feels as if we are tempting fate, we are just asking to expire. Until that circuit is rewired, of course we will keep repeating the same power.

Thanks to emerging neuroscience, we know that we can rewire it. I am watching what’s happening in my groups, as I share with participants how to break those circuits. The response is . . excitement. A NEW sense of power.

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