Excerpt from book Find Your Self-Culture: Moving from Depression and Anxiety

Understanding Change

Neural Pathways: The Biology of Change
As you begin your journey of transformation, it is helpful to understand the part your brain plays when you try to change beliefs and old patterns of behavior. The brain has thin neural pathways and thick ones; they could be compared to footpaths and highways. Your long-held beliefs and behavior patterns, those that are inherited and learned through your society, family culture and family dynamics, are ingrained in the wide, complex highway networks of your neural pathways, whereas newer beliefs and behavior patterns form in simple, narrow footpaths in your brain. The former are harder to change because, having been there so long, buried in your unconscious, you act without self-awareness according to your long-held beliefs and behavior patterns.
Look at your family dynamic and see what stands out. What is their “normal” everyday way of being—habits that you may never have questioned and just accepted as your family’s mode of behavior. Examples are habits such as constantly interrupting; controlling others by making them feel guilty; raging; and feeling negative, anxious, worried or fearful. It can be difficult to change this negative behavior in yourself, but don’t beat yourself up if you have not been able to change a pattern; after all, it has been with you since childhood—it is all you knew. However, don’t give up either. There are proven ways to tackle this kind of change. You are up against your biology, but you need not be beaten by it! The more you practice a new behavior, the more likely you are to shift it to the more desired pattern you are seeking. Repetition creates highways of the neural pathways, making the new behavior easier to maintain.
In his book The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Norman Doidge explains that our brains learn to adapt, and the brain’s very matrix changes with repetitive, colorful, multisensorial exposure. Your brain will collaborate with you to change if you repeatedly expose it to new opportunities and experiences that are associated with the self-culture you are uncovering.

Have a blessed day!
Warmly,
Victoria