This next blog post in the series for counselors focuses on the need to identify the self-talk that counselees say to themselves about themselves. This enables the counseling process to explore the cracks in the foundation of the “house” (the self), and begin to recognize the ingrained Core Irrational Beliefs (CIB) coined by Albert Ellis in Cognitive Therapy. Once those beliefs are identified, counselors can help counselees begin to learn a new language/a new way to talk to themselves. It is during this process that new foundation is laid based on the truth of who they are, not the lies that have come to believe as truth.
Here is another tip to aid in the counseling process:
Tip #2: Identity the “Brain Groove”
There has been very exciting brain research coming from the University of California by Dr. Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist who founded the Brain Plasticity Institute, and is also the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of the Posit Science Corporation, and from a neuroscience professor from Berkley, Dr.William Jagust. Both describe a plasticity of the brain that was once thought to be fixed and unchangeable. It is now believed that the brain can be changed, or rewired, to produce healing in the brain. This brain research has also been popularized in the media by Dr. Daniel Amen. He is a psychiatrist and medical doctor who wrote several books about using the “Brain to Change the Brain”, and “Unleashing the Power of the Brain.” Although, there is still so much we cannot know about the brain, this neuroplasticity research has helped identify how negative self-talk affects the brain.
A “brain groove” or “brain rut” as researches have called it, is described as the negative neural pathways created by cell communication that leaves a negative imprint on the brain. As information comes into our brains we attach meaning to it. As we interpret that incoming information, and it travels via neurotransmitters from one cell to another, we produce a thought attached to that event, comment, situation, etc. As we do this, we often begin to attach the same thought to all of the information that we process through our perceptions.
For example, when I became sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) I lost much of my former self. I had to quit my full time job, I could not keep up with the duties of a wife and homemaker, I could not make plans with family and friends as I often had no idea how I would feel. As I began to process the events of my life at that time, it was filled with the message that “I am not good enough.” I was not necessarily doing this on a conscious level, and without me realizing it, it began to make an impression on my physiologically. Eventually, no matter the event, comment, situation, etc. my automatic thought translated to that I was not good enough. The more I talked to myself this way, the more it became a foundational truth defining my self. As the same negative thoughts are told over-and-over again the more the neuropathways creates an actual physical groove/rut in the brain, which then acts like a moat for all of my self-talk. These grooves are my new automatic self-talk because it is the brain groove now established in my brain.
My first step is to help counselees identify that thought, or series of thoughts, that are heard over and over in their self-talk. This becomes the truth which counselees define themselves by, function out of, and use to create the construct of the self (their foundation and the house they have built on it).
Once a brain groove has been established it can take an average of three years to repair it. I tell my counselees that this is good news and bad news. Yes, it takes time, but three years compared to years, or even a lifetime, of a negative brain groove is to be kept in perspective. And with all the research that confirms neuroplasticity, we can now use the brain to help change the brain.
The next blog will focus on a tip to help identify these thought patterns if a counselee is struggling to recognize what their negative self-talk/CIB might be.
