You Can Change Your Brain Excerpt from the NY Times Bestselling Book, The Tapping Solution by Nick Ortner To look deeper into why tapping is so successful in stopping phobias, anxiety, PTSD, and other problems, let’s go back to the limbic system. Not only does tapping halt the stress response, but the combination of stimulating acupoints while thinking of an upsetting event or problem also retrains what’s called the limbic response. Retraining the limbic response is the basis of the psychological technique called exposure therapy, which is what Dr. Callahan was doing with Mary. Over time, he had Mary approach the swimming pool and later dangle her feet in the water—gradually exposing her to the source of her phobia. In exposure therapy, the person is exposed either in vivo (e.g., in a real situation, like Mary at the pool) or by imagining a scene or event that creates limbic arousal or “triggers” the response. But this kind of conventional exposure therapy often works very slowly. In Mary’s case, after a year and a half, her anxiety level during her in vivo treatment was still high and caused her painful headaches. When you tap while recalling an upsetting scene from your childhood, you are doing a modified version of exposure therapy. The exposure happens when you think about the upsetting scene. Tapping often retrains the limbic system rapidly. Here’s how it works. When you think of something that causes you anxiety or other uncomfortable feelings, the thought sets off the amygdala fire alarm. Tapping as you trigger your fight-or-flight response sends the message that the amygdala can deactivate, even though the threatening thought is still present. With repetition, the amygdala gets the message: this thing that was previously filed as “dangerous” is not, in reality, a threat. The amygdala learns not to set off the alarm, you remain calm, and the hippocampus now categorizes the experience as nonthreatening. The hippocampus is the structure in the limbic system that controls contextual associations. The formerly upsetting event or thing is now filed as “no big deal.” So the next time you think about or encounter the trigger, the amygdala will not set off the alarm—and you will not be plunged into a stress response. After doing tapping on a particular issue, I often hear clients say that they “just can’t connect with it anymore.” They still have the memory, but there’s no strong emotion attached to it. That’s because the limbic system has refiled the memory in a neutral, and sometimes even positive, way. Scientists speculate that retraining the limbic system in this way permanently alters the neural pathways in your brain; that the conditioned fear pathways in the amygdala are eliminated. This fits with recent scientific discoveries regarding the neuroplasticity of the brain—i.e., that the brain’s pathways are not permanent, but can be altered. To put it simply, you can develop new ways of thinking and perceiving the world. You don’t have to stay with your old fixed viewpoints. Like Mary, you too can release debilitating fears, thoughts, and memories. Through tapping, painful memories—and your focus on a specific part of them—can change. I’ve tapped with people on negative childhood experiences and then had them remark, “When I visualize my family as I was growing up, I’m actually seeing them smiling now and remembering all the good times we had.” Did we alter the past or change their memories? Of course not. But we did clear the emotional trauma and the subsequent focus on negative experiences. When that happens, the positive experiences—which were always there—can rise to the surface.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 16:39:48 +0000
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