If you are not in the present, you are in the past. In psychotherapy encourages you to finally process, digest, and accept the events that have shaped you. While many people understand that being in the present is not being in the past or the future, to master this concept, you must go beyond the beliefs, memories, identity, experiences, and bodily reactions that remind you of the past.
That is the whole point of psychotherapy: to revisit the past to a certain degree in order to gain insights and understanding—not to relive past experiences, but to re-signify and transform them into a strength that is uniquely yours. This magic only happens in the present.
In case you missed: Embrace your madness.
Psychotherapy and the Brain: A Repetition Machine
Your brain works based on your past experiences. It’s a repetition machine. When you do any task, specific brain networks activate, creating a state of mind. The more you repeat a task, the stronger those brain networks become. This makes your brain reflect your past experiences in an endless loop—often of suffering.
Needs help? Consider joining a community like Growth Nation – an English support group in Germany.
Common Limiting Thoughts and Beliefs
These limiting thoughts can sound like: “I can’t. I have never been good at ( __ ). I am always bad at ( __ ). I can’t deal with anger. I can’t control my emotions. I am not capable for ( __ ). I will always be alone, and that is the way it is.”
Breaking the Cycle: Tools for Change
These thoughts create reactions in the brain that influence the way you feel. This creates a loop of feelings and emotions that are essentially a reminder of the past, conditioning your body and mind to follow a familiar pattern—causing you to live on autopilot and create a future based on the limited beliefs of the past.
When you change the way you do things, you will become unstoppable because where your attention goes, energy flows. That is why meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and breath exercises are so important. By doing so, you break from patterns of the past and start shaping a new creative reality.
This reality is based on what you want to become professionally, relationally, sexually, and socially, with a new vocabulary for the brain and emotions for the body.
Comment