Dear Prash:

I want to give a little more thought to your recent post. I agree with you that “neuropathways can probably never go away”, not those involving strong emotions. Strong emotion, especially fear, is  like glue that keeps the pathways strong. I think that each neuron in our body is either On or Off, One or Zero, that is, it is either connected to another neuron or not, there is no in between. No 2-9.

As we learn, emotional learning, that is, not the dry kind, we add pathways to our brain, new connections made. These new connections affect the overall three dimensional mapping of connections. In certain issues (and there are multiple pathways regarding each significant issue), the new take the power away from the old. In other issues, not so.

Every brain is a highly individual map of pathways therefore healing and learning is a highly individual and personal process. I do notice that I don’t experience fear at all in some circumstances where before I did experience fear. On the other hand, I still experience fear as before in other circumstances.

Inserting realistic thinking to replace distorted thinking when afraid helps a lot. And yet, at times, the fear emerges later on, after correcting thoughts, a result of a spontaneous activation, it seems, it just so happens.

anita