How often have you heard someone say, “It’s just the way I am”?
Or limiting their options in some way.
Or undermining a sense of self-esteem.
And how often have you been the one saying it?
(Or maybe even just thinking it).
Yet there’s another way of looking at all of this. Of looking at us.
For our brains tell a different story about who we are. They remind us that we, quite literally, can change at any time. That our behaviour – towards the world and towards ourselves – actually shapes us, from moment to moment, right down to a synaptic level.
So what are you doing with your brain?
And how might you use it more mindfully to sculpt your self?
This phenomenon is called “experience-dependent neuroplasticity” – and basically, it’s about how your experiences, and what you make of them, literally shape your brain at a physical level. And, in turn, how your experiences can therefore shape the kinds of thoughts you might be more likely to have next time.
This experience-dependent neuroplasticity stuff is “automatic and relentless,” as Hanson puts it. Which might sound a bit grim at first.
But the good news is that you can use it to your advantage.
Because you can control some of the experiences you have – and the way you react to them. So you can start your own course of “self-directed neuroplasticity” and invite change and healing into your life. Right now. (For, as it turns out, your thinking impacts how your synapses work and connect “within minutes”).
So what might that look like?
Well, from the outside, it may not even look like much at all.
So it turns out that that statement – ‘It’s just who I am’ – doesn’t quite capture the full story of you. For at a neurological level, who you are turns out to be kaleidoscopic, ever-changing, ever-evolving.
Hanson, R (2011) ‘Guiding Self-Directed Neuroplasticity: A Mindfulness Investigation’, The New Brain Science Series Teleseminar by NICABM (The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Bhavioural Medicine), 14/4/2011.
If you’d like hear some of the world’s leading thinkers on interpersonal neurobiology and neuroscience, tune in to this free online seminar series (available until 4 May 2011).
Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar (Grad Dip Counselling & Psychotherapy) is a writer, blogger and Sydney psychotherapist in private practice at One Life Counselling & Psychotherapy. Gabrielle also co-facilitates telephone support groups for people who are living with cancer, for their carers, and for people who have been bereaved through a cancer experience. She was the former editor of a journal on counselling and psychotherapy and she provides regular therapeutic updates on facebook and Twitter @OneLifeTherapy.