When the doctor says: "It's really a circuit. Why not use EBT to rewire it . . ."

• emotional brain training
• health care paradigm
• neuroscience
• positive emotional plasticity
• stress management

When you go to the doctor, she or he may start talking to you about your wiring. Listen for: "Well, this problem is really a circuit. It's your wiring. You can change it!"
 
More people are looking to access the best of the old paradigm of health care that focuses on mopping up the damage caused by chronic stress, but are looking at all these problems from a neuroscience perspective. They are saying:"It's a wire. It's a circuit, and sure I'll give you all these medications, but what about learning how to rewire?"
 
The medications, devices, procedures are still very important, but our power to take charge of our emotional brains? That's revolutionary. But these days are like that. More people are getting back to basics and dealing with the root cause of cause of problems.
 
I still take medications and nutritional supplements, and am glad to have them, but like others, I'm taking less of them, and looking to my own power of positive emotional plasticity - also known as adaptive neuroplaticity, too.
 
Another way of thinking about the whole emotional brain retraining strategy is to consider what happens if you don't have the tools to clear away the emotional clutter of the day. Or if you don't understand that when you reach for that cheesecake it's not just an basal ganglia thing -- a habit switch. It's an entire circuit that is fueled by emotions -- by survival drives, and if you try to change the habit without changing the whole circuit -- the emotional "I've gotta get it NOW and I don't care what I SHOULD do" then you can get hooked on trying again, and again and again, without success.
 
It becomes a spiral. The more stressed you are, the more the prefrontal cortex spews out rigid thoughts, so the more you fail the harder you try! That's stressful, so you are more fixated on losing the weight, controlling your appetite until what happens? You get exhausted, and say: What's the use? Nothing ever works, and go back to the old ways. Also, oddly enough the addiction can be to thoughts and emotions, not even the behavior. It's so delicious to blame and shame -- these are emotional external solutions.
 
Get stuck in that lovely, luscious shame rut and even though it feels bad, the brain embraces it because it is familiar. Or the false high before the binge, oh so sweet. Or the unnecessary low after the indiscretion: so familiar, so brain friendly, too.
 
So with EBT, we're taking on the whole circuit!