M1 : Lesson 8: Regulate™ Core Tool #1 Awareness- Pattern Interrupt – Be Here
Transcript
Module 1, lesson 8. Neuroplasticity tool number 1, awareness, pattern interrupt, be here now. I have a couple of questions for you. Do you believe that you can go back and change the past by ruminating on it? Do you believe that you can control or force your future by thinking about it enough?
Well, your brain is often trying to do both of these things, especially if we have a limbic system impairment. And so it’s important that you, your conscious self, becomes aware of what your brain is unconsciously doing in your habitual thoughts. Basically, this first module is all about gaining awareness of your brain and nervous system so that you can change your habits. So tool number 1, regulate neuroplasticity tool number 1, your new health promoting habit. Awareness, pattern, interrupt.
Be here now. Our focus is to break the brain’s addiction to thinking stressful thoughts. Before I teach you the tool, let’s remember what you’re here doing. We are learning to self regulate the nervous system. Do you remember from the introduction what self regulation means?
Nervous system self regulation requires self awareness of your brain state and your body and personal responsibility to implement the strategies required to rewire your brain and nervous system. We focus the first few modules here on creating awareness so that your situation is seen for what it actually is. And you stop going down rabbit holes of trying to figure out what’s wrong with you. We become aware of our habitual stress response that is often under our conscious radar, and we take responsibility to interrupt our chronic stress response. Okay.
So your first neuroplasticity practice is a habit that is a must for rewiring your brain, and it’s super duper simple. So simple, you’re gonna think it can’t possibly be effective in helping your major health crisis. I assure you this simple process will start reroute your brain patterning and significantly improve your stress chemistry levels. However, it must be repeated often because you’re trying to break an addictive habit in the brain. The first major principle in most brain retraining practices is awareness and pattern interrupting the brain’s habitual pattern of protection and survival responses.
This also involves bringing the brain into awareness of the present moment because usually the mind is stuck in the past or the future. So we will start to shift the brain out of an unconscious stress based thinking into our present moment awareness. This is also a practice of breaking your allegiance with what your brain is thinking as well. This helps your limbic system get the message that you don’t need to think about stressful things to be okay or to protect yourself. So for example, might look like this.
You’re driving down the road and all of a sudden you realize your body checking and you’re ruminating about what maybe you reacted to when you were eating earlier that day because you feel some new symptoms in your stomach. So maybe you’re even thinking, gosh, do I have an ulcer? What is this? As soon as you notice that you’re ruminating and body checking and thinking stress producing thoughts or trying to figure out your symptoms, Soon as you become aware of that, you interrupt the thought by bringing all of your attention and energy to this present moment and whatever you are doing. So this is the awareness of what I was talking about in the first step of a.
So for me, and I’m driving down the road, and I catch myself doing this ruminating thing. I might say, cancel, let it go to my thinking about my stomach symptom, and then I’d say, Be here. Be here. I’m driving down the road right now. This is called a pattern interrupt.
And that’s the second step. And again, I’m gonna go through all of this in a moment in more detail for you. You’re just intentionally interrupting your brain firing pattern of thought and reaction to the moment, and then redirecting the brain to something else. The third step is I’m gonna bring my attention to this moment by very deliberately looking around me at where I’m at and what I’m doing. I might deliberately notice the details of what is around me like the tree that I’m driving by or the color of the sky or even the dashboard of my car.
I would be as present as I can and notice as much detail as I can for about 30 seconds. I also like to imagine bringing my life force energy that I was just spending by thinking my body is all messed up. To bring my life force energy back into the present moment, I think of this as regrouping myself. And then I just try to keep focusing on the present moment. In other words, we’re trying not to be in our heads thinking.
So those are an overview of the three steps of all neuroplastic change. We’re shifting our focus from our brain firing pattern to something else that’s more healthy and less stressful. And we repeat this awareness process many, many times a day. What literally happens as we do this is that our thoughts become things And every time we are thinking stressful thoughts, we are wiring one neuron to another that share a receptor for that thought. So if you’re thinking stressful thoughts, you’re wiring neurons together.
That’s literally a thing. And every time you think the stress thoughts, you’re wiring more and more and more things together. Right? You’re wiring these neurons of stress together. Every time we decide to interrupt that stress signal, we interrupt that neural connection as well.
And over time, we start to prune away the connection that was habituated to creating stressful thinking patterns. Over time, we teach the brain a different association, and those old thought loops will begin to prune away and eventually dissolve. So now let’s go into the actual practice, and I will go over it in more detail. Awareness, pattern, interrupt, be here now. 1st, awareness of what you are thinking, fixated on, ruminating, resisting, or visualizing that is not dose healthy chemistry.
But rather a more likely producing stress chemistry in your body and it’s not health promoting. 2nd step, You’re gonna pattern interrupt by either noticing and shifting your conscious attention to the present moment or even saying in your mind, cancel, be here, or let it go. It’s up to you what you say to interrupt. These are just some suggestions. And third, Be here now.
Deliberately bring your attention to the details of this present moment. What are you doing? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear?
Notice the details for about 30 seconds. Maybe even be willing to notice your body, your spine, your belly, your feet as well. Maybe you’ve even saved yourself over and over. Be here. Be here.
Be here to help you re center. I know I had to do that quite a bit. And consciously imagine your life force energy coming back into this moment to regroup yourself energetically and mentally. I often do this by just taking a deep breath and just landing my awareness in my current experience. So it’s really that simple.
So now that I’ve explained it to you, let’s do this again because we’re gonna have to practice this quite a bit. So Right now, just imagine you have been thinking some thoughts of rumination or stressing about what you need to do. And you notice that you have awareness like, oh, I’m thinking about the past or the future or my stress again. And you’re just gonna pat and interrupt and simply say, cancel, be here, or let it go, and then immediately shift your attention to the present moment. Be here now.
And notice everything around you right now. What do you see? Look at it very acutely Look at the details that you wouldn’t normally notice around you, and do this for about 30 seconds. Maybe you even say to yourself, I’m here. I’m here.
Or be here. Be here. And I also love taking a deep breath in and just calling back all my energy into this moment. Sometimes just feeling my belly, my back, my feet. And that’s it.
You can Change this around to fit your needs, but just keep these 3 principles in mind. Yes, you might have to catch your stress based thinking dozens dozens of times a day. And for each time, be proud because you just became aware of your unconscious state of stress. You just untethered some of those neural pathways. That alone creates huge neuroplastic changes in your brain over time.
I also wanna say something here. I am not recommending you do affirmations or convince yourself of anything different than you actually believe or feel. I’m recommending that you simply move off from the thought or the rumination into the present moment and look at this present moment with as much detail as you can and as much breath and body centered focus as you can. And then move on with your day. K?
Why we do awareness, pattern, interrupt, and be here now, reset process? We’re breaking the brain’s dopamine addiction to worry and negative certainty. I’ll explain more of that in a moment. We’re teaching the limbic system in inner psyche that you don’t wanna focus on what’s going wrong anymore. You might have a habit of focusing on the negative to stay safe or prepared and this was keeping your body in stress.
You’re teaching your limbic system and inner psyche that the past or the future is not happening right now. The limbic system is not surveying the present moment accurately. It’s often stuck trying to fix and resolve the past or prevent danger in a future moment, so you’re just interrupting that habitual response. You’re showing your brain that you can be here with the symptoms and focus on this current moment. This teaches your limbic system and inner psyche that it is safe to have symptoms even though you don’t know what they mean, what cause them or how to fix them, and you can still find a sense of innate okayness even in discomfort.
Overall, we are teaching the brain to be conscious of the current moment. This creates a big biochemical change in your stress response over time as you interrupt addictive stress signaling messages in your brain and break your attachment to ruminating on them. Your vital force will improve and self healing can more easily occur. This will likely be hard for some of you to take your allegiance away from the scary, angry, and upsetting thoughts in your head. That’s normal.
It can be hard to try to convince yourself that it’s safe to not figure out what’s causing your symptoms. Sometimes it’s not even overt worry. It might be thoughts about all the things you need to get done in rehearsing some future conversation, which is actually keeping you in stress. Wanna share with you a little more of why we do this pattern interrupt to break our brain’s addiction to worry and negativity. You see stress is stored in the body.
But stress is interpreted in the brain. And the brain is making meaning of the body’s stress signals through creating thoughts and images. The brain is trying to create a sense of control or certainty through rehearsing the past and expecting a future outcome. And therefore, we become addicted to worry as a method of making the uncertain, more certain. It seems a little weird.
Right? The brain is using worry or negative thoughts and images to get a sense of control or certainty about the stress signal that it’s feeling from the body, it needs to find what does this signal mean? It comes up with things based on things it’s learned from the past. So, for example, if we worry that we’re going to get even sicker and or stuck in pain and illness, it ironically gives the brain more certainty about what the future is, albeit the future is a negative one. The sense of control actually releases dopamine and has an odd sense of control unconsciously because you’re expecting something.
The brain reward center for worry or ruminating is temporary. Our brain does look to create more temporary dopamine hits of control through continued worry and expectation, we literally scare ourselves into dopamine hits unconsciously. So we need to break this dopamine producing habit by embracing uncertainty, by being willing to be in this present moment as it is and find the beauty amidst the struggle and uncertainty. And as we get into module 4, the brain retraining module, you’ll learn a whole process based on this pattern and erupt method, but we’re gonna need to gather some more awareness first and incorporate a few more tools to help activate your vagus nerve and to become more aware of your body before we take this pattern interrupt process further into brain retraining. So I hope that that process makes sense.’
Again, it’s pretty simple. Whatever you’re doing, just try to become aware in my thinking. Pat and her up, cancel. Be here. What do I notice?
What do I see? Breathe in collecting your energy. That’s it over and over again. In the next lesson, we’re just going to go over a summary of all module 1 homework and also have a little talk about symptom talking and the guidelines around that.
Module 1, lesson 8. Neuroplasticity tool number 1, awareness, pattern interrupt, be here now. I have a couple of questions for you. Do you believe that you can go back and change the past by ruminating on it? Do you believe that you can control or force your future by thinking about it enough?
Well, your brain is often trying to do both of these things, especially if we have a limbic system impairment. And so it’s important that you, your conscious self, becomes aware of what your brain is unconsciously doing in your habitual thoughts. Basically, this first module is all about gaining awareness of your brain and nervous system so that you can change your habits. So tool number 1, regulate neuroplasticity tool number 1, your new health promoting habit. Awareness, pattern, interrupt.
Be here now. Our focus is to break the brain’s addiction to thinking stressful thoughts. Before I teach you the tool, let’s remember what you’re here doing. We are learning to self regulate the nervous system. Do you remember from the introduction what self regulation means?
Nervous system self regulation requires self awareness of your brain state and your body and personal responsibility to implement the strategies required to rewire your brain and nervous system. We focus the first few modules here on creating awareness so that your situation is seen for what it actually is. And you stop going down rabbit holes of trying to figure out what’s wrong with you. We become aware of our habitual stress response that is often under our conscious radar, and we take responsibility to interrupt our chronic stress response. Okay.
So your first neuroplasticity practice is a habit that is a must for rewiring your brain, and it’s super duper simple. So simple, you’re gonna think it can’t possibly be effective in helping your major health crisis. I assure you this simple process will start reroute your brain patterning and significantly improve your stress chemistry levels. However, it must be repeated often because you’re trying to break an addictive habit in the brain. The first major principle in most brain retraining practices is awareness and pattern interrupting the brain’s habitual pattern of protection and survival responses.
This also involves bringing the brain into awareness of the present moment because usually the mind is stuck in the past or the future. So we will start to shift the brain out of an unconscious stress based thinking into our present moment awareness. This is also a practice of breaking your allegiance with what your brain is thinking as well. This helps your limbic system get the message that you don’t need to think about stressful things to be okay or to protect yourself. So for example, might look like this.
You’re driving down the road and all of a sudden you realize your body checking and you’re ruminating about what maybe you reacted to when you were eating earlier that day because you feel some new symptoms in your stomach. So maybe you’re even thinking, gosh, do I have an ulcer? What is this? As soon as you notice that you’re ruminating and body checking and thinking stress producing thoughts or trying to figure out your symptoms, Soon as you become aware of that, you interrupt the thought by bringing all of your attention and energy to this present moment and whatever you are doing. So this is the awareness of what I was talking about in the first step of a.
So for me, and I’m driving down the road, and I catch myself doing this ruminating thing. I might say, cancel, let it go to my thinking about my stomach symptom, and then I’d say, Be here. Be here. I’m driving down the road right now. This is called a pattern interrupt.
And that’s the second step. And again, I’m gonna go through all of this in a moment in more detail for you. You’re just intentionally interrupting your brain firing pattern of thought and reaction to the moment, and then redirecting the brain to something else. The third step is I’m gonna bring my attention to this moment by very deliberately looking around me at where I’m at and what I’m doing. I might deliberately notice the details of what is around me like the tree that I’m driving by or the color of the sky or even the dashboard of my car.
I would be as present as I can and notice as much detail as I can for about 30 seconds. I also like to imagine bringing my life force energy that I was just spending by thinking my body is all messed up. To bring my life force energy back into the present moment, I think of this as regrouping myself. And then I just try to keep focusing on the present moment. In other words, we’re trying not to be in our heads thinking.
So those are an overview of the three steps of all neuroplastic change. We’re shifting our focus from our brain firing pattern to something else that’s more healthy and less stressful. And we repeat this awareness process many, many times a day. What literally happens as we do this is that our thoughts become things And every time we are thinking stressful thoughts, we are wiring one neuron to another that share a receptor for that thought. So if you’re thinking stressful thoughts, you’re wiring neurons together.
That’s literally a thing. And every time you think the stress thoughts, you’re wiring more and more and more things together. Right? You’re wiring these neurons of stress together. Every time we decide to interrupt that stress signal, we interrupt that neural connection as well.
And over time, we start to prune away the connection that was habituated to creating stressful thinking patterns. Over time, we teach the brain a different association, and those old thought loops will begin to prune away and eventually dissolve. So now let’s go into the actual practice, and I will go over it in more detail. Awareness, pattern, interrupt, be here now. 1st, awareness of what you are thinking, fixated on, ruminating, resisting, or visualizing that is not dose healthy chemistry.
But rather a more likely producing stress chemistry in your body and it’s not health promoting. 2nd step, You’re gonna pattern interrupt by either noticing and shifting your conscious attention to the present moment or even saying in your mind, cancel, be here, or let it go. It’s up to you what you say to interrupt. These are just some suggestions. And third, Be here now.
Deliberately bring your attention to the details of this present moment. What are you doing? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you hear?
Notice the details for about 30 seconds. Maybe even be willing to notice your body, your spine, your belly, your feet as well. Maybe you’ve even saved yourself over and over. Be here. Be here.
Be here to help you re center. I know I had to do that quite a bit. And consciously imagine your life force energy coming back into this moment to regroup yourself energetically and mentally. I often do this by just taking a deep breath and just landing my awareness in my current experience. So it’s really that simple.
So now that I’ve explained it to you, let’s do this again because we’re gonna have to practice this quite a bit. So Right now, just imagine you have been thinking some thoughts of rumination or stressing about what you need to do. And you notice that you have awareness like, oh, I’m thinking about the past or the future or my stress again. And you’re just gonna pat and interrupt and simply say, cancel, be here, or let it go, and then immediately shift your attention to the present moment. Be here now.
And notice everything around you right now. What do you see? Look at it very acutely Look at the details that you wouldn’t normally notice around you, and do this for about 30 seconds. Maybe you even say to yourself, I’m here. I’m here.
Or be here. Be here. And I also love taking a deep breath in and just calling back all my energy into this moment. Sometimes just feeling my belly, my back, my feet. And that’s it.
You can Change this around to fit your needs, but just keep these 3 principles in mind. Yes, you might have to catch your stress based thinking dozens dozens of times a day. And for each time, be proud because you just became aware of your unconscious state of stress. You just untethered some of those neural pathways. That alone creates huge neuroplastic changes in your brain over time.
I also wanna say something here. I am not recommending you do affirmations or convince yourself of anything different than you actually believe or feel. I’m recommending that you simply move off from the thought or the rumination into the present moment and look at this present moment with as much detail as you can and as much breath and body centered focus as you can. And then move on with your day. K?
Why we do awareness, pattern, interrupt, and be here now, reset process? We’re breaking the brain’s dopamine addiction to worry and negative certainty. I’ll explain more of that in a moment. We’re teaching the limbic system in inner psyche that you don’t wanna focus on what’s going wrong anymore. You might have a habit of focusing on the negative to stay safe or prepared and this was keeping your body in stress.
You’re teaching your limbic system and inner psyche that the past or the future is not happening right now. The limbic system is not surveying the present moment accurately. It’s often stuck trying to fix and resolve the past or prevent danger in a future moment, so you’re just interrupting that habitual response. You’re showing your brain that you can be here with the symptoms and focus on this current moment. This teaches your limbic system and inner psyche that it is safe to have symptoms even though you don’t know what they mean, what cause them or how to fix them, and you can still find a sense of innate okayness even in discomfort.
Overall, we are teaching the brain to be conscious of the current moment. This creates a big biochemical change in your stress response over time as you interrupt addictive stress signaling messages in your brain and break your attachment to ruminating on them. Your vital force will improve and self healing can more easily occur. This will likely be hard for some of you to take your allegiance away from the scary, angry, and upsetting thoughts in your head. That’s normal.
It can be hard to try to convince yourself that it’s safe to not figure out what’s causing your symptoms. Sometimes it’s not even overt worry. It might be thoughts about all the things you need to get done in rehearsing some future conversation, which is actually keeping you in stress. Wanna share with you a little more of why we do this pattern interrupt to break our brain’s addiction to worry and negativity. You see stress is stored in the body.
But stress is interpreted in the brain. And the brain is making meaning of the body’s stress signals through creating thoughts and images. The brain is trying to create a sense of control or certainty through rehearsing the past and expecting a future outcome. And therefore, we become addicted to worry as a method of making the uncertain, more certain. It seems a little weird.
Right? The brain is using worry or negative thoughts and images to get a sense of control or certainty about the stress signal that it’s feeling from the body, it needs to find what does this signal mean? It comes up with things based on things it’s learned from the past. So, for example, if we worry that we’re going to get even sicker and or stuck in pain and illness, it ironically gives the brain more certainty about what the future is, albeit the future is a negative one. The sense of control actually releases dopamine and has an odd sense of control unconsciously because you’re expecting something.
The brain reward center for worry or ruminating is temporary. Our brain does look to create more temporary dopamine hits of control through continued worry and expectation, we literally scare ourselves into dopamine hits unconsciously. So we need to break this dopamine producing habit by embracing uncertainty, by being willing to be in this present moment as it is and find the beauty amidst the struggle and uncertainty. And as we get into module 4, the brain retraining module, you’ll learn a whole process based on this pattern and erupt method, but we’re gonna need to gather some more awareness first and incorporate a few more tools to help activate your vagus nerve and to become more aware of your body before we take this pattern interrupt process further into brain retraining. So I hope that that process makes sense.’
Again, it’s pretty simple. Whatever you’re doing, just try to become aware in my thinking. Pat and her up, cancel. Be here. What do I notice?
What do I see? Breathe in collecting your energy. That’s it over and over again. In the next lesson, we’re just going to go over a summary of all module 1 homework and also have a little talk about symptom talking and the guidelines around that.