How to rewire negative loops of thinking to nurture a more mindful mentality

‘With neuroplasticity, extraordinary change is possible.’ - Rick Hanson.

On the whole, people seem more busy than ever before and that includes me too. I work as a Psychotherapist, I am finishing off my first book, and I have three young kids who I spend every day after school with. So I understand busyness. I get it. I feel like I live it.

Last week I hosted a workshop at the Mental Health and Wellbeing Summit in Dublin on how to incorporate mindfulness into your life when you are super busy. I hear people say that they would love to ‘get into’ mindfulness but they feel too busy for another habit that takes up time. So my aim at that workshop was just to talk about my own experience of mindfulness, not to try to ‘sell it’ in any way to anyone and the point I started with is the one that resonates the most with my own life; find out your ‘why’ for mindfulness. Once it is something you believe is relevant, it is something that can be incorporated very easily into your busy day.

The Brain

The human brain is fascinating to me and while I love that we are all very different, I love too the fact that in ways we are also, very much the same. One of the ways that we are the same as everyone else is in the sense of us all having the potential to train our brains to rewire themselves and form different loops of thinking. This for me is an important aspect of mental fitness training, it is something I put effort into on a daily basis. I am firmly of the belief that being able to train your brain to work well for you links directly to mental health. And taking this on can really support us to work out how to manage how we feel each day.

Neuroplasticity

When it comes to mindfulness, my ‘why’ relates to the process of neuroplasticity. Knowing about neuroplasticity matters because it is a step towards awareness of the self and self-awareness is central to good mental health. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganise itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. We have neurons in our brain and they join up and link together forming thoughts. The way these neurons join together to make connections result in thoughts being established and everything that we experience, whether it is a thought, a sound, a sight or a feeling; it all requires underlying neural activity and influences neural activity. Therefore how we interpret our experiences right across the board; it all contributes greatly to how we think and feel.

Neuroplasticity and Mindfulness

While this rewiring or reconnecting of neurons happens more easily at a younger age, it is something that is possible at any age, once we make an effort to focus our attention on it. We can all change our patterns of thinking and this is good news because we can all get stuck in loops of thinking that are perhaps self-critical or pessimistic, loops of thinking that maybe contribute to a lowering of our mood or a spike in anxiety levels. We can’t take our brains out of our heads in order to try to understand them, but we can come to know our brains in various ways by gaining knowledge and by becoming self-aware. By being aware of the neural activity in our brain and the possibility of changing how the neurons link up, means that we gain control. These patterns of neurons linking up become ‘the norm’ in terms of what our patterns of thoughts become.

We get into habits with our thinking, we each develop a style. And just as we can develop a particular style of dress that becomes ‘comfortable’ for us to wear, we develop ways of thinking that become comfortable for us to fall into. The ‘comfortable’ thinking is akin to our fall back option, the way of thinking that we tend to fall back into when we aren’t really focussing on where our thoughts might be going. For some, this fallback option regarding thought is a really positive or optimistic thinking style. But for others, the fall back option can be more negative, more anxiety-provoking; perhaps it is very self critical. So if you think a lot or if you tend to worry a lot and become anxious, it can be good to know how to put this neuroplasticity that is possible for your brain into action, in order to make it work in your favour.

The Magic of Mindfulness

One way to take the concept of neuroplasticity and make it work in your favour is to understand what happens to these neural connections during mindfulness practice. When you are practicing mindfulness, your thinking style is interrupted for a moment, it is almost as if the plug for patterns of thinking is unplugged and that can be a very good thing. The loops of thinking stop running at full speed, your brain gets a chance to slow down and the neural connections loosen. Because the connections loosen, you are making it possible to break out of old ‘comfortable’ habits regarding the way you think, perhaps a thinking style that is contributing to feeling anxious. By practicing mindfulness, you are slowing the connecting together of neurons down. You are in that moment setting the scene for neuroplasticity to work its magic and allow other patterns to begin to take shape.

My Why for Mindfulness

I remember not too long ago deciding that I wasn’t drinking enough water during the day. It became important for me that I did and so I now bring a bottle of water with me everywhere I go. It’s easy to stay hydrated because I made the choice to believe that for me it really mattered. And mindfulness matters because of neuroplasticity. When super busy, things need to really matter in order for you to make time for them. That makes sense to me. For me, mindfulness is enjoyable and it is calming and it is nourishing for the soul but it really matters most because of neuroplasticity. I work on my mental fitness every day and so I practice mindfulness every day. It’s not at all time consuming; just like drinking water.