You may have heard coaches and therapists talk about 'transformational change' and wondered what this actually means.?
This is how I see it; that there are two types of personal change; unnecessarily slow, laborious, and sometimes painful - or rapid, natural, and gentle. Personal change can be either incremental or transformative.
Whilst incremental change practices require ongoing effort to progress and maintain, it has to be said that they can certainly make a huge difference to a person's functionality and life. With transformational change however, the actual moment of change is trypically rapid, following a short period of preparation. Importantly the effects endure.
Following transformational change, you continue with a different was of being. Symptoms disappear, and there's happily no need for ongoing efforts to maintain.
What enables transformational change?To encourage natural and transformational change the brain and nervous system need to be enabled, encouraged, and gently nudged to update and replace 'locked-in' emotional learnings. |
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."
Albert Einstein 
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We have no choice but to learn life on the job
Drop into any moment of life; yours or mine; and we can be pretty sure that in that moment we will have been doing the absolute best we could given what deeply held beliefs we were operating from. Whichever role we have, we've no option as humans but to 'learn on the job' of life!
This 'learning' is automatic, and happens mostly out of our conscious awareness. The challenge however is that looking back it doesn't always feel like that we did our best 'back then'. This in turn can create self-criticism, judgment, and a loss of confidence in our current life.
As human beings, we're programmed to 'make sense' of whichever moment we find ourselves in. We do this according to our underlying core beliefs and/or through fresh beliefs we create to fit that moment. (These beliefs may ultimately prove to be helpful or not helpful over time).
Your brain and nervous system have one over-riding intention for success: your survival.
We all have an incredible in-built and over-riding instinct to survive. However, with good intention, it can sometimes refuse to let go. A neurological pathway is created and reinforced - resulting in our perceptions, feelings, and survival behaviours to re-run, strengthen and amplify, over time. We can then get 'locked in' to a survival response which is no longer required. Whether it's a general or specific loss of confidence in certain situations, a fight or flight trauma response to past life events, or full blown chronic PTSD with symptoms lasting more than 3 months, the ongoing effect can become both extreme and debilitating.
Known in neuroscience as 'memory reconsolidation' we're all equipped with an incredible brain mechanism which enables self-healing of implicit (emotional) memories. Under the right conditions, the brain and nervous system (which together we can call our 'psychological immune system') is reassured into unblocking the old neurological pathway initially formed with the first trauma response. In realising that the danger has passed this first response is over-written and replaced in keeping with our current situation and needs.
Importantly this process leaves our episodic (informational/recall) memories intact; being stored in another part of the brain. This factual memory therefore remains unchanged and may even be enhanced.
So in order to heal, the brain pays attention to what it's 'learnt' (made sense of) in the past about 'reality', whilst also experiencing and feeling a safer reality in the present. This process results in our current beliefs - and therefore also our perceptions and resulting actions being updated to serve us better.
It's worth noting that whilst here are many helpful approaches that 'write' another neurological pathway to counteract and ideally overwhelm the trauma response, these 'coping' approaches - unlike the memory reconsolidation process - can cause two opposing neurological pathways (responses) which then compete with each other - requiring continual and exhausting emotional maintenance and 'stoking up' of the remedial response against the continuing out of date trauma response.
*Fascinatingly, neuroscience research shows that when the trauma pathway is successfully re-opened for re-writing, it will only remain so for 4-5 hours before automatically again locking-in any updated learnings.
Occasionally, regardless of the technique or practice used, the old trauma response pathway can be unknowingly unlocked, erased and re-written, resulting in the spontaneous and permanent removal of the old trauma response.
When for whatever reason spontaneous change doesn't happen, an appropriate professional coaching intervention (the 'nudge'), will enable the same unlocking and permanent relief. I provide that nudge.
As human beings, we're programmed to 'make sense' of whichever moment we find ourselves in. We do this according to our underlying core beliefs and/or through fresh beliefs we create to fit that moment. (These beliefs may ultimately prove to be helpful or not helpful over time).
Your brain and nervous system have one over-riding intention for success: your survival.
We all have an incredible in-built and over-riding instinct to survive. However, with good intention, it can sometimes refuse to let go. A neurological pathway is created and reinforced - resulting in our perceptions, feelings, and survival behaviours to re-run, strengthen and amplify, over time. We can then get 'locked in' to a survival response which is no longer required. Whether it's a general or specific loss of confidence in certain situations, a fight or flight trauma response to past life events, or full blown chronic PTSD with symptoms lasting more than 3 months, the ongoing effect can become both extreme and debilitating.
Known in neuroscience as 'memory reconsolidation' we're all equipped with an incredible brain mechanism which enables self-healing of implicit (emotional) memories. Under the right conditions, the brain and nervous system (which together we can call our 'psychological immune system') is reassured into unblocking the old neurological pathway initially formed with the first trauma response. In realising that the danger has passed this first response is over-written and replaced in keeping with our current situation and needs.
Importantly this process leaves our episodic (informational/recall) memories intact; being stored in another part of the brain. This factual memory therefore remains unchanged and may even be enhanced.
So in order to heal, the brain pays attention to what it's 'learnt' (made sense of) in the past about 'reality', whilst also experiencing and feeling a safer reality in the present. This process results in our current beliefs - and therefore also our perceptions and resulting actions being updated to serve us better.
It's worth noting that whilst here are many helpful approaches that 'write' another neurological pathway to counteract and ideally overwhelm the trauma response, these 'coping' approaches - unlike the memory reconsolidation process - can cause two opposing neurological pathways (responses) which then compete with each other - requiring continual and exhausting emotional maintenance and 'stoking up' of the remedial response against the continuing out of date trauma response.
*Fascinatingly, neuroscience research shows that when the trauma pathway is successfully re-opened for re-writing, it will only remain so for 4-5 hours before automatically again locking-in any updated learnings.
Occasionally, regardless of the technique or practice used, the old trauma response pathway can be unknowingly unlocked, erased and re-written, resulting in the spontaneous and permanent removal of the old trauma response.
When for whatever reason spontaneous change doesn't happen, an appropriate professional coaching intervention (the 'nudge'), will enable the same unlocking and permanent relief. I provide that nudge.
