Hi all,

Hope you’re keeping well and enjoying a period of better health.

Today I want to talk about the difference between brain training and emotional processing, and the fundamental difference between them.

I’m not here to shit on brain training, because I gained a great deal of benefit from it in the past.

It was a huge needle mover in my recovery early on, and also not all the programs are created equal.

The Gupta program (which I first did) for example, incorporates elements of somatic tracking and awareness, as well as IFS and parts work - and I got a tonne of benefit from this.

The lightning process however, not so much.

For those unfamiliar with brain training, the premise goes something like this.

A hyperactive and sensitised nervous system has become this way due to a combination of factors.

Lifestyle, genetics - all predispose the system and leave it vulnerable ahead of a final ‘trigger’ that will push the system over the edge.

This is likely very familiar to many of you who were burning the candle at both ends, overtraining or burnout ahead of your final ‘trigger’.

A trigger, whether it be a virus, or a physical/ psychological event, then tips this primed system into overdrive, stuck in a hyperprotective mechanism where the system is sensitive to any external inputs in a bid to protect itself.

This loop is supposedly perpetuated by the subconscious part of the brain.

An unconscious mechanism that triggers both the nervous and immune system, without thinking.

Now the thinking behind brain training is that we can influence such unconscious mechanisms through conscious awareness. Hence the general premise of teaching is to first become aware when we notice this loop in play (say noticing fear towards symptoms, or noticing the symptoms themselves) and then we ‘interrupt’ and ‘rewire’ the brain through visualisation and redirection.

Now this can be a useful tool at points, but this ‘top-down’ approach seems to, (as it did for me) temporarily mask symptoms.

It is very true that neural pathways have the capacity to be redirected, but in my opinion, what we are dealing with is not simply a case of the brain ‘misfiring’.

What I instead think is going on is deeply, deeply physiological, and not simply an ‘unconscious loop’ that needs to be ‘rewired’.

Whilst I do agree with the concepts of genetics, upbringing, and environment leading to an increase in ones allostatic load (stress bucket), and a final trigger then leading to a system stuck in a state of high interception, where all sensations are sensed as dangerous.

I think instead what is happening is a system that is tilted towards sympathetic and even dorsal activation.

One that has been unable to complete the survival energy that has been repressed time and time again.

This is not some ‘unconscious loop’ going wrong.

This is a deeply physical mechanism where the body tries to surface this survival energy through symptoms and rumination etc, in an attempt to complete, and the body resists or attempts to fix it time and time again.

This is not woo woo.

This type of Somatic suppression has been linked to autoimmune expression, vagal dysfunction, and altered limbic system reactivity.

This also is the fundamental difference between brain training and emotional processing.

Brain training operates on the assumption that there is an unconscious loop that must be rewired every time it is noticed. Emotional processing operates on the notion that these symptoms and sensations are not something to be rewired, but simply unprocessed survival energy attempting to complete, and what we must do is let it do so.

Studies have shown us that practices of acceptance, and non-resistance enhance the prefrontal cortex and reduce the amygdala, establishing lasting safety.

Which is why emotional processing is based on acceptance, allowing what needs to come up come up, as opposed to distracting and positive visualisations every time you notice such sensations.

Brain training can in fact often lead to another kind of repression.

Obsessively and rigidly ‘catching’ every negative thought loop, and ‘rewiring’ your way out of it.

It can be exhausting.

And for many, like myself, it may bring temporary relief, only for this repressed message to reappear sometime later, in a different place, with a different form.

So to conclude, having been through these various ‘techniques’ myself.

There are benefits to brain training - the awareness, the understanding, and the ability to see how heightened interception can heighten symptoms.

But for me the answer is not to endlessly distract and ‘rewire’, for this is simply another form of suppression.

Instead, what helped me was to allow the sensations, sit with them, and allow them to complete.

And every tool and technique that I have done over the last half a year has been entered around that - EMDR, bilateral stimulation, somatic work.

Instead of changing, we just need to let it all complete.