Are you struggling to break a habit? The answer could lie in how your brain makes connections, known as “neural pathways”. Like any pathway, these can be rerouted to take you in a new direction – towards a positive outcome and lasting change.
To successfully break an unwanted habit, we need to rewire these neural connections using solution focused hypnotherapy. Are you ready to set off along a different route?
What are neural pathways?
Neurons are nerve cells that carry messages around your body, and a neural pathway is the route they take. Neurons can be motor or sensory, and are connected by inter neurons.
A neural pathway develops when we make a connection. In its most basic terms, a pathway is created by cause and effect. You stir the pan, the food doesn’t stick. You learn this from experience then start automatically applying it. Your brain has made a connection.
We’re born with neurons but need input to create the connections. As you can imagine, babies and young children are constantly building new neural pathways as they learn about themselves and the world around them. Every grab, giggle, rattle and roll is the baby developing new connections.
And we never stop making these new connections. Throughout our lives, we’re busy creating different neural pathways through our experiences – and some of these routes are more helpful than others.
The benefits of rewiring your brain
A habit is a neural pathway, and as we all know, not all habits are good! Comfort eating is a good example of a negative neural pathway, and it’s a connection that many of us develop in childhood – a sweet to console a grazed knee, a lollypop after a trip to the doctors. We learn that food makes us feel better for a while, so after a tough day at work, we take the well-trodden (neurological and actual) path to the fridge.
These connections are at the heart of many of our habits: a glass of wine to ease social tension, a cigarette before an intimidating meeting, a pack of biscuits at the end of a long day. When we try to break these habits, we often find that this connection is so ingrained, that we simply can’t undo it.
However, like a physical pathway, a neural pathway can be re-routed. Just as we create new neural pathways all the time, we can adapt existing ones – this is called neuroplasticity. If we want to break a habit, rerouting – or rewiring – our brains will have a lasting effect.
Sometimes, adapting a neural pathway is as simple as putting a traffic cone down, while other routes need a whole bypass constructing. Think of your therapist as your brain’s Highways department!
How hypnotherapy can create new neural pathways
Like any journey, a neural pathway has a destination in mind, so solution focused hypnotherapy is the ideal therapy to support a change of neural direction.
When I meet a new client, we spend time discussing what they want the outcome of their sessions to be. We then collaborate to notice the positive steps taken towards this bright new future. During the sessions, the hypnotherapy trance state, combined with psychotherapy, is the perfect way to gently reroute the brain’s pathways along the desired route.
Let’s use weight loss as an example. A client comes to me because they want to lose weight, and we agree that snacking is a barrier between them and their weight-loss goal. They tend to reach for the biscuits during moments of stress or anxiety because eating makes them feel better. This is completely understandable and very common, as our brains easily build a route between stress and a quick way to get that dopamine hit.
The mission here is to identify the goals, and building new pathways towards it.
This is just one example, other examples could be feeling more confident generally, or nail biting, hair pulling, procrastination, overwhelm, or delivering successful presentations at work. These techniques can be used to help manage those negative thought processes that come with anxiety. If your brain takes you down an unhelpful route, we can gently change its pathway.
Our brains really are amazing and are far more adaptable than we fear they are. With a bit of work and a clear destination in mind, we can create new neural pathways and break those negative habits, step by step.
Hypnotherapy for rewiring thought patterns with Great Minds Clinic
If you have an unhelpful habit you’d like to break, we can work together to change your neural pathways. Rewiring negative thought patterns and habits is definitely possible through a solution focused hypnotherapy approach.
