Neuroplasticity is a general term that covers the brains ability to adapt, modify and change throughout our lifetime. There is a growing body of research that points to our incredible ability to reorganise our thinking throughout our lives. Through the research it is now undertood that the crucial windows in early development are not the only periods of opportunity to inform our thinking. Our brains have an amazing capacity to be dynamic and adaptable, our thinking can change – a piece of information that can help fuel anyone with an ambition and desire to change.
Relationship is where it is at when it comes to Psychotherapy. Relationship to everything and your position in this relationship matrix is what you will uncover as you take a deep dive into the beliefs and attitudes you hold about all elements of your life. How you view authority or your parents / care givers. What that view means for you – where does it position you in relation to them. How you view your peers – do you compete with them, do you feel accepted by them, what does this mean for you? How you view yourself – who are you, what do you have to offer, what do you do well, what is your place in this world? Which of these answers are real and evidenced and which are in fact just fabrications that have been shaped by the unspoken and the “implied” – can you challenge any of them or are they concrete and rigid?
No matter the answer to any of the above, they all have a consequential and associated dialogue. This is self-talk. The volume may be down for some people and for others it may actually be speaking to your self aloud in private or public for time to time! But we all do this, we all relate to ourselves through language and through the lens of relationship, informed by our life experiences.
When you place a needle on a record it plays along the grooves of the record producing the sounds of each groove and the needle runs without guidance – auto play, if you will. Self-talk is like this, with the added twist that the longer we lay the needle down on the groove, the deeper and more entrenched the playback audio becomes. Sigmund Freud much earlier on put this simply as “we repeat to remember”. This has an obvious use in academia and such – but what are the implications for us when we have the needle down in an unhealthy, un-nurturing, skewed or isolated groove that is only deepened further by our incessant repetition and the whole sale buy-in we can have for the validity of the language and the story we tell ourselves. Hearing something once like; you are bad at a task, that you are a failure or you are not good enough etc. can be enough to set the needle down on a groove that speaks to our insecurities. We will design a story and relationship with this information that initially will try to serve us, defend us and keep us safe from exposure to these external messages but will ultimately morph into a malicious and debilitating presence in our psychological experience. When we repeat low quality and unhelpful messages to ourselves, we unfortunately can integrate these pieces and this can have a really negative effect on how we show up, interact with others or simply allow ourselves to be ourselves.
But we now know that we can lift this needle and it is not just anecdotal. We can lift the needle; we can change the record – the potential for change is limitless. One way of thinking about this; is that in the inverse it is a kind of superpower – if we can repeat to remember and create a sticky and concrete thought process based on a nurturing relationship with ourselves, we can send higher quality and congruent messages to ourselves and build and bolster our sense of who we really are and our place in the world. Speak to ourselves in a way that perhaps we preserve only for others – this is the redirection of some of our resources, compassion, empathy and consideration pointed inward, in place of judgement, criticism and ridicule.
Counselling and Psychotherapy are all about helping people uncover such resources and redefining their use and distribution – with consistency and metronomic repetition you can begin to lift the needle, consider the messages and set yourself off on a different, healthier and more affirmative groove and path. Our amazing team are here to help you on this journey – info@remedyclinic.ie for bookings.
Remedy Clinic – Counselling Dublin & Psychotherapy Dublin
We are an in-person counselling centre in Dublin 2 and offer online counselling and online psychotherapy.
