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Sunday, January 23, 2011
Rewiring the Brain
Integration means that the reliving of a key memory will affect nearly every system in our lives. So we measure natural killer cells, serotonin and brainwave function to test whether there has been integration; and we have found profound changes (normalization) in all of those over time in our therapy. So we might ask, “Does it matter if we don’t relive events during womb life? Yes, because that reliving can produce a change in many physiologic parameters and in behavior? So the answer is clear. Yes, it matters because we have seen engraved patterns (migraine, high blood pressure, impulsive acting-out) from early childhood and fetal life get resolved and integrated decades later in therapy. If patients needed to do more than relive, then they would feel worse, not better, months and years after therapy. And their physiologic changes would not hold up. (The stress hormone, cortisol, would again diminish to pre-therapy times). As I have reiterated, the only time we can rewire deviated set-points is when the brain retreats to an earlier prenatal time and deals directly with the original causes of deviation. This means getting below repression and into history with every fiber of our being, and that history contains life before birth.
Late research seems to confirm this assumption. Scientists from Mass. Inst. Technology have found that the brain becomes much easier to rewire the younger we are. In the journal Current Biology (Oct 14, 2010), lead author, Marina Bedny suggests that as we get older it is much more difficult to rewire the brain. Most circuits are pretty well fixed. I wonder if it is not easier to rewire the brain when we go back and relive those very early brain states. It may be why we see such progress in those patients who do successfully relive early imprints. This may defy current research which indicates how difficult it is to rewire circuits later in life.
Let me be clear about all this: any intervention by a therapist after the critical period can only be palliative. The warm, attentive doctor can only provide a cushion against the impact of the internal pain. That warmth cannot penetrate deep enough to attack the original imprint. Of course, the patient will feel better; she has been palliated, and that feels good, as I have reiterated. The analysis of transference, understanding one’s pattern of behavior toward the doctor cannot make fundamental change, nor can any insight therapy; the shuttered sensory window won’t permit it. Repression is locked into place. It stops any deep penetration. It keeps us on a superficial level.
I suppose it is impossible or at least very difficult to calculate and define, which is the optimal level in our physiologic parameters (vital signs) and in our behavior. I suppose the level for each and everyone of us is as unique as our fingerprints. A phenomenon I have given a thought now and then is that a lot of knowledge (for example, languages) and development I have acquired as a consequence of a paindriven neurotic lifestyle I still enjoy, while most of my filters of impulsive acting out and thinking is gone like my hallucinations and fits.
My own answer to these reflections is that I might have acquired another knowledge which I could have enjoyed in a healthier fashion if I had had an “ideal” life from the start. However, the experience of having been through reliving early imprinted memories, even if it has taken many years, I would not have had. It is an added value which gives me both mental satisfaction and physical relaxation.
How lucky I was that I and my epileptic reactions could not stand the warm attentive palliatives from cognitive therapists. They provoked and confused me for some years. The last 20 years I avoided them in order not to offend them.
Jan Johnsson
