The Neuronal Butterfly Effect

More powerful insights as I work through Norman Doiges book The Brain that Changes Itself. In the chapter 'Turning our Ghosts into Ancestors', the author talks about childhood development of emotion in terms of the critical times in our lives when we as very young children or babies are rapidly evolving our brains and laying down future neuronal pathways. These pathways and constraints to actual brain real estate may last into audulthood, but according to the rules of brain plasticity, can also be changed.

In my order to explore this idea, I began remembering emotional states from as early in my life that I could. I built on some of my earlier experiments with free-associating with memories in a kind of dream-like, contemplative state. The earlier posts clarified my observation that spending time in this type of relaxed memory is a very powerful way of stimulating creativity. This time I wanted to specifically shift negatively charged early childhood emotional memories using EFT, in order to pave the way for spontaneous reprogramming of freed up neuronal real estate.

I started with free associating around two memories from four and five years old. These were both memories that that I have worked through multiple times in several different self development seminars, but which still seemed 'stuck', in the sense that they were blocking a more rich insight into that time of my life.

After spending a little time just free associating around these memories to see what the image and emotional detail level was (they after all, are things that happened over 35 years ago!) I created the following EFT-PEC statement. EFT-PEC is my proprietary combination of diffusing emotional obstacles using EFT and then re imprinting powerful new positive ideas using PEC.

Using EFT-PEC for Reprogramming Negative Past Memories
Here is how I structured the EFT-PEC setup statement was:

Even though I have this memory of fear from when I was four years old, I choose to remember what my Pure Energy of Creation felt like when I was four years old

The bold sections are the pieces that I customized to fit this particular EFT-PEC scenario. I then ran through my usual EFT protocol and tapping points, then during and after the tapping round, consciously directing my attention away from the negative emotion, to the most positive, empowering and energizing emotions and memories from the same time period (your Pure Energy of Creation).

With this structure, I was doing something I hadn't done before: Bringing together three distinct and separately power elements into a powerful therapeutic neuro-reprogramming protocol:

Memory - easily access past emotions without the effort of logic thought
EFT- the technique to diffuse the emotional charge (existing neuronal real estate and patterning)
Pure Energy of Creation - my own technique for engaging optimum states of personal resource

I did about six EFT-PEC rounds, each focusing on the emotion of fear associated with the memory, or other emotional blocks, then refocusing very deliberately each time on a positive emotion or memory from that age.

One round I did simply on the idea that I didn't have many memories from that age. The result of that round was an immediate jump in my ability to recall many more events and emotions in a lot of detail.  In between these rounds I let my mind relax focus and discover new connections and memories that were revealed by the mental shifts that occured on each round.

This whole process took about 30 minutes, interrupted several times by my kids wanting extra good night kisses and cuddles. So you don't have to lock yourself in a sound proof room for this work! What this short process revealed was just amazing. Through diffusing the  'emotional entry portal' of these two 'stuck' negative memories with EFT, and refocusing on positive emotional with Pure Energy of Creation, I uncovered a rich tapestry of childhood understanding, and some never before comphrended insights into my childhood emotional life.

I saw more clearly than ever before that my mother, who was always quite emotionally restrained, had a big impact on my own emotionally restrained nature. I realized that in the community I now live in, I have subconsciously tried to provide the same sort of safe sort of suburban environment that I experienced in those years. And I had a huge outpouring of compassion when I remembered the neighbor whose child died of cot death when I was three or four years old, an event that I realized must have rocked to the core the small suburban community where almost every household was young parents with small children. I left this session feeling energized, calm, compassionate, moved and appreciative - and ready to write this blog post.

So the question is really how much this sort of exercise changes actual brain chemistry at the neuronal level. The view of neuro-scientists working directly with brain damaged patients to completely remap brain functions is that hours of practice spread over weeks or months is required to cause significant brain remapping to occur.

The Neuronal Butterfly Effect
However, I'm not working as a neuro-scientist with stroke victims. From the self-coaching or personal development view that I working from, I believe that even a 30 minutes session of the sort I did can have both immediate and potentially lasting impact. The reason is the following. I believe a kind of 'Neuronal Butterfly Effect' occurs, especially if we work with memories right on the edge of what we 'think' we can remember. The butterfly effect is the idea that even a butterfly flapping it's wings could start a chain reaction of events that end up causing a hurricane. I believe when we re-structure memories that have an emotional association, then spend time deliberately focusing on other valuable positive emotions that were overshadowed by the stronger negative emotions, that restructuring can have a knock-on effect which results in a strong contribution to your current sense of well-being.

This knock on effect is also why it is so important to include the positive re-patterning step (positive, powerful associations - the PEC component of the setup statement) as quickly and directly as possible, whenever you work with negative emotions. If you don't shift very, very consciously from negative to positive, negative emotions will simply associate with and reinforce each other and lead you to other negative emotions in different periods of your life. This can quickly snowball into a downward spiral where you get stuck in the ghastly memory in more and more excruciating detail, and instead of refocusing on how emotionally positive your life as a four year old was, you focus on feeling sorry for yourself at age six, ten, fourteen, twenty, twenty five and so on. The butterfly effect can potentially work in that direction as well.

So good luck, happy remembering and reprogramming...