Neural networks in your brain unfolded from the moment of your birth and every experience that you encountered immediately constructed literally miles of neural circuitry and over the years those early neural networks have been, subsequently, altered (neuroplasticity) by all the experiences that have impacted your brain up to now.
How Your Brain Looks When Forming New thoughts
In your childhood, year after year, experiences sculpted the neuro-circuitry that would carry you into adulthood and actually determine much of how you respond to current incidents. A brain impacted by childhood trauma and fear may become overwhelmed and obstructed from encountering experiences of happiness and peace, while a childhood open to discovery and exploration may retain that same momentum in adulthood.
As long as you breathe, there is no end to the experiences that could sculpt your brain circuitry and by that, give meaning to your life. Unless, of course, you admit defeat.
CONFIRMATION BIAS: Confirmation biases contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. LINK
Belief is a product of the neo-cortex or frontal lobe and has the potential to annihilate or magnify reptilian based and neo-limbic addictions, obsessions, dependencies and fears. The chief systems of your brain are entirely focused on survival and reproduction and have no consideration of 'meaning.' It is only the frontal lobe or neo-cortex that develops and requires meaning beyond safety, survival and reproduction.
Most of the systems of your brain are autonomic (or automated) and are outside your conscious control and designed exclusively (evolution) to facilitate your optimal survival capacity.
Your frontal lobe, neo-cortex is adaptive. It imagines, conceptualizes, chooses, decides, ponders, invents, creates, develops, etc, and is the only neural system of your brain that you can assert conscious control. In fact, if one of the automated systems (reptilian, neo-limbic, paleo-limbic) become defective or maladaptive (anxiety, fear, rage, depression, panic) it will only be the adaptive capacity of the frontal lobed, neo-cortex that can facilitate corrective procedures necessary to reduce and terminate symptoms of the automated brain systems.
However, beliefs about the yourself, others and the world are actualized in the frontal lobe (right behind the forehead) and if those beliefs are maladaptive and dysfunctional, the adaptive capacity of the neo-cortex is lost and those maladaptive messages will engage the automatic systems behind the frontal lobe resulting in fear-based responses and physiological symptoms.
Such a maladaptive orientation to reality, and associated symptoms, can be lessened or minimized through psychotropic medications, but if the maladaptive belief is not re-oriented or reframed in the neo-cortex, eventually the medications will lose effectiveness and higher doses or additional prescriptions will be necessary. I have met with numerous individuals on high doses of several medications who continue to report chronically depressed mood along with the physiological symptoms of panic attacks.
The intricate electro-chemical mechanics of the brain is much more complex and powerful than any cocktail of meds one could utilize to manage the mechanics of the automated brain systems.
Confirmation bias filters out truth, demanding reality conform to belief and, if that belief is defective and not oriented to actual reality, this can lead to brain processing disorders and even physiological symptoms, because what happens in the brain does not stay in the brain. The entire body will eventually know all about it and this realization will be uncomfortable and even physically painful.
Avoidance of this discomfort and pain DEMANDS that the adaptive "you" (Frontal lobe, neo-cortex) know what beliefs are not oriented to actual reality and seek to reframe or restructure those beliefs in ways that are adaptive and provide for optimal functioning in actual reality.
If the adaptive powers of the neo-cortex or frontal lobe has aided humanity in creating entire civilizations, it can certainly aid you in overcoming hypothetical fears generated through the limbic and reptilian brain systems that result in physiological-bodily symptoms.
But recovery requires diligent work in identify and replacing non-adaptive beliefs with beliefs that promote adaptive and healthy mood and functioning.
The Progressive Realization of a Worthy Idea
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