Since you were a child (actually, even in the womb) external experiences have impacted upon your sensory apparatus subsequently sculpting neuro-circuitry in your grey matter to accommodate to those experiences as a means of directing future thought, emotion and behavior should that experience be encountered again. This is a survival mechanism and every brain is genetically hard-wired for survival above all other biological imperatives.
Repetitive experiences drop under the conscious radar into a subconscious/unconscious neural realm in which conscious thought is unnecessary to perform the behavior, but nevertheless, the behavior is performed perfectly. The only time conscious attention need be switched on is when something goes wrong in the performance of the behavior.
"The Passive Frame Theory goes like this: nearly all the decisions and thoughts that need to be made throughout the day are performed by many parts of the unconscious brain, well below our level of awareness. When the time comes to physically act on a decision, various unconscious processes deliver their opinions to a central “hub,” like voters congregating at town hall. The hub listens in on the conversation, but doesn’t participate; all it does is provide a venue for differing opinions to integrate and decide on a final outcome. Once the unconscious makes a final decision on how to physically act (or react), the hub — consciousness — executes that work and then congratulates itself for figuring out a tough problem." SINGULARITY HUB: Think your conscious brain directs your actions? Think again.Every sensory experience you have ever encountered is wired up in your brain and any new experiences will be immediately installed to determine future responses. However, experiences that result in intense emotional reactions may sculpt neuro-circuitry to direct future behaviors to conform to unhealthy habituated reactions.
Severe traumatic experiences (PTSD) are examples of unintended neural pathways that can result in a host of future symptoms, all related to a specific neural network fueled by an extreme emotional response to the traumatic event, based on the individual's unique capacity to cope with stress (also neurally hard-wired). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder involves stressful reactions that result from life threatening circumstances encountered in the past and it is easy to understand the obvious impact this would have upon brain circuitry and future responses.
However, many people have not experienced life threatening trauma in their lives, but have experienced intense emotional episodes that reverberate throughout the brain's neural network often resulting in future maladaptive thoughts, feelings and behaviors that impair mood and functioning in a repetitive intensity that can symptomatically progress for months, and even years, following the experience. Intense emotional episodes shape behavior in ways that the conscious mind resists, because the cause cannot be identified as a result of your denying the effects and demanding you "suck it up, buttercup" following the past episode. As a result, future reactive behaviors persist in response to your failure to acknowledge the emotional impact of the past episode.
The memory of intense emotional episodes (like PTSD) sink into the subconscious/unconscious realm of brain circuitry and are often inaccessible to conscious retrieval, since you cannot definitively state why you are feeling and acting as you are in response to a current stressful episode, because in the past you denied the effects of that episode. Nevertheless, you feel guilt and remorse over your actions in response to a similar current episode and this guilt inadvertently fuels behavior, thereby, hardwiring the brain for a repeat performance should that episode be repeated, as it most likely will be in the future.Your brain is a master of repeat performances, based on subconsciously stored mental scripts that habitually shape and mold future behavior. Seemingly minor traumas of the past can severely impede future mood and functioning, resulting in an inability to effect change and from this can arise the various brain-based states now referred to as "mental illness."
We live in a world of the quick fix leading to instant happiness, which only serves to cover up and camouflage deep-seated insecurities resulting in neurally charged behaviors that reinforce the maladaptive circuits in a negative feedback loop. You can "suck it up, buttercup" in the frontal lobe (thinking cap) but this only serves to deny the actual impact the intense emotional episode inflicted upon your psyche (brain). The autonomic (automatic) functions of the brain will incorporate any experiences that, in the past, have involved fear and if the actual impact of those events were denied, future symptoms may eventually manifest.
The first step to rewiring maladaptive neural circuitry is acknowledging and accepting what actually happened to you. By doing so you engage a recovery process by gradually installing more adaptive neural pathways that can minimize and redirect the pathways that lead to compulsive and dysfunctional thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
INTERPRETATION: Suffering = Pain + Resistance
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