Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
ReChanneling accepts guest posts on social anxiety and related conditions for publication on our website as part of our broader outreach into the community. Listening to and sharing the stories, experiences, and expertise of others broadens our perspective and those of our readers.
Many ideas that eventually become an integral part of recovery come from the thoughts and contributions of colleagues and clients in our groups and workshops.
Furthermore, by supplementing our articles and reviews with other ideas, opinions, and experiences, we better serve the community by providing new advances in the understanding and treatment of social anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and other comorbid conditions.
Do you feel trapped in a vicious circle, restricted from living a normal life? Do you feel alienated from your peers and isolate yourself from family and friends? Do you spurn new relationships in anticipation of rejection? Do you repeat the same mistakes over and over again?
Do you feel like you are under a microscope, and everyone is judging or criticizing you? Do you worry you are making a poor impression on individuals who do not matter? Are you inordinately concerned about what you might do, how you look, and how you express yourself?
Do you imagine you are the curiosity in the room – the scrutiny of everyone’s attention? Do you worry that people will notice you sweating or blushing? That your voice will tremble and become incoherent?
Do you incessantly replay adverse events in your head? Do you constantly relive all the discomforting things that happen to you during the day? Do you avoid meeting people or going on dates because you anticipate disaster? Do you beat yourself up for all those lost opportunities?
ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral self-modification, and positive psychology.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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Topics should focus on (a) mental health, (b) social anxiety {disorder}, (c) anxiety, depression, and comorbidities, or (d) self-empowerment.
Scholarly articles and reviews
Original or previous content from your postings. You can link your article or items within your article to previously posted and similar information. You can provide links to your website or other accounts as appropriate. Copyrighted materials will require your approval.
Personal reflections and experiences
Share your experiences, challenges, success stories, and words of wisdom and encouragement to others experiencing social anxiety and related conditions. How do you cope with your symptoms and situations, and what are your recovery methods? These reflections and contributions are of enormous benefit to others who are going through similar experiences.
Please mail your submissions to rmullenphd@gmail.com. If you have questions or need additional information, please complete the following form.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
In recovery, we do not face our fears, we embrace them. Rather than confront them, which implies hostility, or challenge them, which signals competition, we willingly and enthusiastically recognize and accept all facets of our humanness.
Whether in pre-recovery where our fears and anxieties run rampant, or in-recovery where we have established governance, our experiences are part of our being – who we were, who we are, and who we have the potential to be.
Embracing our social anxiety encourages transformation. The act is not acquiescence, resignation, or condoning. Acquiescence is accepting our condition and doing nothing to change it. Condoning is accepting it and allowing it to fester. Resignation is defeatism. Embracing our condition is accepting who we are – human malfunctioning beings comprised of character strengths virtues, and attributes as well as shortcomings and vulnerabilities. We embrace our totality.
Social anxiety disorder is ostensibly the most underrated, misunderstood, and misdiagnosed disorder. It sustains itself by compelling irrational thoughts and behaviors. Emotionally, we feel depressed and lonely. Physically, we are subject to trembling, hyperventilation, nausea, fainting, and muscle spasms. Mentally, our thoughts are distorted and illogical. Spiritually, we define ourselves as incompetent, inadequate, and unworthy. Since SAD infects during adolescence, many of us have endured the distress of these negative self-perceptions for decades. Estimates reflect that roughly 60% of us also have depression and are prone to substance abuse. Recovering from social anxiety is a commitment that SAD will do anything to prevent us from making.
Recovery Goals
The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is the mitigation of our irrational fears and anxieties. In self-empowerment, it is the rebuilding of our self-esteem and motivation. We execute these goals through a three-pronged approach.
Replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
Produce rapid, concentrated neurological stimulation to offset the abundance of negative information in our brain’s metabolism.
Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.
These comprise our overall strategy.
The success of each activity requires a transformation – a rigorous and dramatic change in form and nature. Through proactive neuroplasticity, our neural network changes its form and configuration. Thought and behavior self-modification subverts the destructive nature of our negative self-beliefs. Mindfulness of our character strengths, virtues, and attributes regenerates our self-esteem. Hence, our form and nature have changed.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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The difference between pre-recovery and in-recovery is immeasurable.The metamorphosis of our form and nature is evidence of the power of transformation. We are not the same entity. Mindfulness of our assets compels us to recognize and embrace the extraordinariness of our lives, self-confirming we are of value, desirable, and significant.
Self-Esteem
While we remain governed by our social anxiety disorder, we view ourselves as helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and worthless. These are the commonly accepted attributions of our malfunction. As we regenerate our self-esteem, we become less helpless and hopeless, but still feel undesirable and worthless. There is joylessness in self-satisfaction for its own sake. As intelligent, social beings, we are driven to share our resources. We are so overwhelmed and appreciative of our renewed self-awareness, we feel compelled to pay it forward.
Self-appreciation is the inherent byproduct of healthy self-esteem.
In pre-recovery, we remain overwhelmed by our negative core and intermediate beliefs. We eliminate those false abstractions by recognizing and rationally responding to their absurdity. We remove ourselves from the target, turn outwards, and expand our vision. Our broadened scope minimizes our SAD-indeed self-centeredness and isolation to embrace the largeness of others as they participate in society.
There is no cure for social anxiety disorder; there is dramatic alleviation of its symptoms. Recovery does not eradicate our past, our memories, or experiences. It heightens them with a new positive perspective. Candid self-awareness is a fundamental component of self-esteem. If we cannot comprehend ourselves, warts and all, we cannot fully understand another.
In-Recovery
In-recovery describes someone who has been through a recovery program and utilizes the tools and techniques to effectively mitigate their symptoms. In-recovery, we are no longer hopeless but confident and optimistic, appreciating possibility instead of inconceivability. We have subverted our core sense of helplessness by reanimating our self-reliance and resilience. We are desirable because we have become beneficial to others. Recovery has rediscovered our value and significance.
This awareness manifests in a sensitivity to the needs and experiences of others. By evicting our negatively valenced emotions of fear, shame, and guilt, we make room for new possibilities unencumbered by the past. This opens us to new relationships and commitments. Recognizing and accepting our strengths as well as vulnerabilities produces a more nuanced and compassionate perspective. We no longer see life through the glass darkly. Our emergence from the cave displays the world as it is, and generates what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now, which we embrace with a vivid sense of belonging.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
Unhealthy or negative coping mechanisms are called defense mechanisms – temporary safeguards against situations we find difficult to manage. Defense mechanisms are mostly unconscious psychological responses that protect us from our fears and anxieties.
At one time or another, we all use defense mechanisms. Dissociation, or steeping outside of the bullseye, is useful in recovery.
Coping Mechanisms
Coping mechanisms are tools and techniques that we utilize to mitigate stress and reduce the neurotransmissions of our fear and anxiety-provoking hormones, cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine and other stress hormones. There are recovery coping mechanisms we employ when exposing ourselves to a feared situation, including distractions, and projected positive outcomes. There are those we turn to when confronted by sudden unexpected stress – controlled breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and slow talk.
There are hundreds of coping mechanisms that make stressful situations in life easier to handle, including yoga, dancing, meditation, painting, writing, and streaming a movie. These activities alleviate the anxiety of the moment and reduce the flow of those pesky chemical hormones. Coping mechanisms are as varied as individual experience and imagination.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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It is important to remain mindful, however, coping and defense mechanisms do not address the unresolved issues of our fears and anxieties. They are temporary ways to mitigate stress and the influx of cortisol and adrenaline. Like an analgesic to relieve the pain of a physical condition, they do not address the cause and remedy of the ailment. Notwithstanding, even a temporary emotional balm has a positive impact on our emotional well-being and helps regenerate our self-esteem.
Defense Mechanisms
Any unconscious mental process that protects us from threats to our emotional well-being and sense of self is a defense mechanism. Cognitive distortions are defense mechanisms. Some, like avoidance, humor, isolation, and intellectualization need no explanation. Other defense mechanisms have positive benefits as well when used appropriately. Accordingly, they become tools in our recovery.
Compensation is one example: We compensate for our negative thoughts and behaviors by replacing them with healthy, productive ones. We compensate for our low self-esteem by becoming mindful of our character strengths, virtues, and achievements.
Ritual and undoing is subjectively undoing negative behaviors or impulses by performing rituals or actions designed to offset them. For example, a person might donate to a homeless shelter to make up for evicting low-income tenants to build a condominium. Substance abuse is a common but extreme example of ritual and undoing.
Utilized appropriately, ritual and undoing is a valuable coping mechanism. It supports negative to positive neural restructuring (ritual) by replacing (undoing) our negative thoughts and behaviors with positive ones.
Most defense mechanisms can be converted to coping mechanisms once we begin to recognize them when they materialize. This allows us to respond rationally, adapting them to support healthy behaviors. Projection and rationalization are two examples of this adaptation. Rationalizing to justify bad behavior is a defense mechanism that, when utilized to logically respond to our SAD-provoked fears, becomes a coping mechanism. Projecting our irrational behaviors onto others is a good way to observe ourselves as others see us. Some, like cognitive distortions, are generally detrimental to our emotional integrity and less adaptable to positive reconstruction. Dissociation, on the other hand, is a prime example of a defense mechanism that is useful in recovery.
In standard psychological terms, dissociation is a disconnect from reality to shield us from traumatic experiences. In theory, our mind unconsciously shuts down or represses emotionally conflicting thoughts, memories, or experiences. Daydreaming or streaming television to block discord in the next room is a harmless form of dissociation. Creating multiple personalities (DID) is at the other end of the spectrum.
While some experts may find fault with my use of the objective, its definition supports our utilization. Dissociation is a disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of self. When our sense of self is that of a SAD person, then deliberate and voluntary disconnecting or severing from that sense is positively functional. Furthermore, the broad spectrum of dissociation encompasses both daydreaming and a disconnect from reality, so the concept is interpretational.
In recovery, we deliberately dissociate ourselves from the symptoms of our social anxiety disorder. We redefine ourselves by our character strengths, virtues, and attributes rather than by the adversities of our malfunction. Essentially, we subvert the disease model of mental health by adopting the wellness model. The disease or pathographic perspective focuses on the problem; the wellness or positive psychology model emphasizes the solution,defining health as a state of physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
To iterate the oft-used analogy: when we break out leg, we do not become the injured limb. We are simply someone experiencing a broken leg. The same concept is important to recovery from our emotional malfunction.
Stepping Out of the Bullseye
While we remain conjoined with our social anxiety disorder, we continue to view ourselves as helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and worthless. These core and intermediate beliefs are formed by childhood disturbance and sustained by our emotional malfunction. By dissociating ourselves from our condition, we remove ourselves from the bullseye allowing us to objectively analyze our thoughts or behaviors, and respond rationally and productively.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F. Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
The 3Rs of Recovery: Restructure, Replace, Regenerate
Restructure, replace, and regenerate are complementary objectives in recovery and self-empowerment. They require interdisciplinary approaches.
Neuroscience and the psychological understanding of repetition in learning support neural restructuring. CBT and positive reframing help us offset our irrational thoughts and behaviors with healthy productive ones. Positive psychology’s emphasis on character strengths, virtues, and attributes spearheads the regeneration of our self-esteem and motivation.
Goal and Objectives
The primary goal of recovery from social anxiety is the mitigation of our irrational fears and anxieties. In self-empowerment, it is the rebuilding of our self-esteem and motivation. We achieve this through a three-pronged approach.
Offset, replace, or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones.
Produce rapid, concentrated neurological stimulation to offset the abundance of negative information in our brain’s metabolism.
Regenerate our self-esteem through mindfulness of our assets.
These comprise our overall strategy.
Recovery and Self-Empowerment
Recovery is regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost. Self-empowerment ismaking a conscious decision to become more confident and competent in controlling our lives. In emotional malfunction, our emotional well-being and quality of life have been stolen. In self-empowerment, it is the loss of self-esteem and motivation. Hence, both recovery and self-empowerment deal with regaining or rebuilding what has been lost.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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Restructure Our Neural Network
All information notifies our neural network to realign, generating a correlated change in behavior and perspective. Our deliberate, repetitive neural input of information that constitutes proactive neuroplasticity compels our brain to consolidate and accelerate the restructuring of our neural circuitry.
Replace Negative Thoughts and Behaviors
Childhood disturbance prompts our negative core and intermediate beliefs, which establish the attitudes, rules, and assumptions that compel maladaptive behavior and automatic negative thoughts of incompetency, undesirability, and other forms of negative self. We reframe and replace our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy new mindsets, skills, and abilities through CBT, positive reframing, and other approaches.
Regenerate Our Self-Esteem
Our neural network has structured itself around negative information due to years of self-destructive appraisal and the general vicissitudes of life. Through the rediscovery and recognition (mindfulness) of our character strengths, virtues, attributes, as well as achievements, we regenerate the latent properties of our self-esteem disrupted by childhood disturbance and the onset of our emotional malfunction.
Multiple Approaches
Just as there is no absolute way to do or experience learning and unlearning, so also what helps us at one time in our life may not help us at another. Consequently, one-size-fits-all approaches to recovery and self-empowerment are exclusionary and inefficient. We are best served by integrating approaches, developed through clinical study, client targeting, cultural assimilation, and therapeutic innovation. Our environment, heritage, experiences, and associations reflect our wants, choices, and aspirations. If they are not given consideration, then we are not valued. Recovery builds upon our strengths, virtues, and achievements. We do not triumph in battle through incompetence and weakness but with skill and careful planning.
A coalescence of science and east-west psychologies is essential to capture the diversity of human thought and experience. Science gives us proactive neuroplasticity; cognitive-behavioral modification and positive psychology’s optimal functioning are Western-oriented, and Eastern practices provide the therapeutic benefits of Abhidharma psychology and the overarching truths of ethical behavior. Crucial to recovery and self-empowerment are individually targeted approaches that focus on the regeneration of our self-esteem.
Complementarity
Complementarity isa state or system of corresponding components combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize the qualities of each other. We are concerned here with two systems: the complementarity of psychological and scientific approaches to recovery and the simultaneous mutual interaction of our mind, body, spirit, and emotions to sustain them.
Individual Over Diagnosis
Hippocrates famously wrote, “It’s far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.” We focus on the individual over the diagnosis through personality-based solutions. Emphasis on the positive aspects of the human condition over pathographic models compensates for malfunction-induced negative self-beliefs and images. Training in prosocial behavior and emotional literacy support typical interventions.
Behavioral exercises are used to practice social skills. Data provide evidence for mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions. Motivational enhancement strategies help clients overcome their resistance to new ideas and concepts.
Discipline Collaboration
Radical behaviorism considers the diversity of human thought and experience, which is more expansive than mind and body. That calls for a collaboration of science, philosophy, and psychology. Philosophy, existentially defined, welcomes religious and spiritual insight. Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. Our mind, body, spirit, and emotions are interconnected parts of the whole that cannot exist independently of the whole or the parts. Each component overlaps, influences, and is interdependent on the others, albeit one dominates until superseded by another. They collaborate in the holism of our personality as the gestalt of our humanness.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
By definition, transformation produces both gain and loss. Recovery and self-empowerment regain what has been stolen, misplaced, or lost. For social anxiety, it is our emotional well-being and quality of life. In self-empowerment, it is our self-esteem and motivation.
By regaining these things, we lose their negative attributions. When we transform our adverse habits and create healthy new mindsets, skills, and abilities, we concurrently experience the abatement of bad habits and self-destructive compulsions, which leaves us with a sense of emptiness and even boredom.
Most human suffering is related to love and loss. but we usually think of loss in the broader sense – that of a job, home, or a loved one. We fail to consider the emotional consequence of seemingly inconsequential and immaterial loss such as opportunity or aspiration.
In recovery, the mitigation of irrational thoughts and behaviors carries a loss of emotional extremes and behavioral excess. And that absence is viscerally felt.
Replacement Creates Loss
To replace is to take the place of something. That something is, ostensibly, no longer extant. It is essential to appreciate the sense of loss we experience, for example, when we offset our adverse thoughts and behaviors. Even though we compensate with healthy substitutions, we are impacted by the residual effects of that which has been replaced.
Why is it important to be mindful of this loss? Because it affects us psychologically and physiologically. It is human nature to experience the loss of things that have been part and parcel of our being for years. In early recovery, this can have adverse emotional consequences. We are still fragile to change. Awareness of this inevitability, no matter how inappreciable, can help circumvent any potential recidivism.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
* * *
Transformation
To recover is to transform – to effect a rigorous and dramatic change in form and nature. Transformation changes our sense of identity, compelling us to reevaluate our attitudes, rules, and assumptions. It causes a readjustment in our behaviors and our perspective. It refocuses our cognitive efforts.
Through proactive neuroplasticity, we change the form and configuration of our neural network. It loses and gains synapses, causes neurogenesis, and rewires circuits. We experience loss when we replace or overwhelm our negative thoughts and behaviors with healthy, productive ones. In regaining our self-esteem, we lose the negative self-qualities that disrupted its growth. Hence, our form and nature change. This metamorphosis is evidence of the power of transformation. We are not the same entity. It is natural, however, to miss the former.
Our Resistance to Change
We are genetically hard-wired to resist change. We are physiologically structured to attack anything that disrupts our equilibrium. Experiencing loss produces changes in our heart rate, metabolism, and respiration. Inertia senses and resists these changes, while our basal ganglia oppose any modification in our behavior patterns. A crucial part of our neural network, the basil ganglia, is involved in processes like emotions, motivations, and habits, so we are psychologically impacted by change as well.
Neurological Impact
We know that our neural network does not distinguish healthy from toxic information. It provides the same benefits whether the stimulus is negative or positive. It reciprocates the energy of that information in abundance. It activates the same long-term potentiation, provides the same BDNFproteins associated with improved cognitive functioning, and provides the same fifty or so chemical hormones that support us physiologically and psychologically.
Loss can also provoke confusion and depression, generate feelings of guilt, and cause us to withdraw from friends and activities. Mindfulness and preparedness effectively mitigate any adverse reactions. As the godfather of positive psychology Abraham Maslow assures us, “… the loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.”
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F. Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided are applicable to most emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, ADHD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
It’s Not Your Fault!
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Social anxiety is not behavior caused. We did not make it happen; it happened to us. Emotional malfunction is the consequence of childhood disturbance. Social anxiety sensed our vulnerability and infected us during adolescence.
Social anxiety is not behavior caused. We did not make it happen; it happened to us. Emotional malfunction is the consequence of childhood disturbance. Social anxiety sensed our vulnerability and infected us during adolescence.
We did not ask for our social anxiety or encourage it. It is not retribution for immortal conduct or disagreeable habits. It is indiscriminate and ubiquitous and afflicts at least one in four adults and adolescents.
Attributions
We have examined the multiple reasons we resist recovery. Public opinion, the media, the pathographic focus of psychology, stigma, and even our families deter us from revealing our social anxiety. These external attributions to our resistance are the tip of the iceberg, however.
We contribute our baggage as well. Many of us choose to remain ignorant of SAD’s destructive capabilities. Some go to enormous lengths to remain oblivious to its symptoms as if, by ignoring them, they do not exist or will somehow go away.
We cling to irrational and misguided assumptions due to our willful pursuit of ignorance or fears of revelation. We avoid confrontation due to unjustifiable shame and guilt.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
* * *
It’s Not Your Fault.
Cumulative evidence that a toxic childhood is a primary causal factor in emotional instability or insecurity has been well established. During the development of our core beliefs, we are subject to a childhood disturbance – a broad and generic term for anything that interferes with our optimal physical, cognitive, emotional, or social development. SAD senses our vulnerability and swoops in, negatively impacting our emotional well-being and quality of life.
When we research its origins, we uncover the likelihood no one is responsible. The disturbance may be accidental or intentional, real or perceptual. The suggestibility of a child is legendary. A toddler whose parental quality time is disrupted by a phone call may develop a sense of abandonment. Nonetheless, as I’ve said before, while not liable for the cards we have been dealt, we are responsible for how we play the cards we’re left holding.
The negative cycle we find ourselves in has convinced us that there is something wrong with us when the only thing we are doing is viewing ourselves and the world inaccurately. That is a natural reaction to our symptoms. SAD sustains itself by feeding us irrational thoughts and behaviors.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
We are Not Alone
Roughly, 124 million U.S. adults and adolescents experience anxiety disorders. 60% of those have depression, and far too many resort to substance abuse. Anxiety and depression are the primary causes of the notable increase in adolescent suicide over the last decade. An estimated 40 million U.S. adults experience social anxiety disorder and roughly one-in-three college students have a lifetime anxiety disorder diagnosis. So, when you start to sweat and hyperventilate at a social event, remember, you are in good company. Social anxiety is common, universal, and indiscriminate.
It is Not the Consequence of Our Behaviors
Combined statistics reveal that the vast majority of emotional malfunction onsets at adolescence or earlier. Excepting conditions like PTSD or clinical narcissism that impact later in life, the susceptibility to disorders originates in childhood. Emotional malfunction is hereditary, environmental, or the result of trauma. Perhaps parents are controlling or do not provide emotional validation. Maybe we were subjected to bullying or from a broken home. Behaviors later in life may impact the severity but are not responsible for the condition itself. While our lifetime behavior can impact the severity, the origins of our malfunction happen in childhood. This disputes moral models that we are to blame for our disorder, or that it is God’s punishment for sin.
We are Not Mental
Not only is the description inaccurate, but it promotes hostile perceptions of incompetence and derangement. It is the dominant source of stigma, guilt, and self-loathing. The word mental defines a person or their behavior as extreme or illogical. In adolescence, anyone unpopular or different was a mentalcase or a retard. The urban dictionary defines mental as someone silly or simpleminded. It is often associated withviolent or divisive behavior.Add the words illness or disorder and we have the public stereotype of the dangerous and unpredictable individual who cannot fend for themselves and should be isolated. Emotional malfunction is not ‘mental,’ biologic, hygienic, neurochemical, or psychogenic, but all of these things.
To the early civilizations, mental illnesses were the domain of supernatural forces and demonic possession. Hippocrates and diagnosticians of the 19th century favored the humours (bodily liquids). Lunar influence, sorcery, and witchcraft are timeless culprits. In the early 20th century, it was somatogenic. The biological approach argues that disorder is due to our brain’s physical structure and functioning. The pharmacological approach promotes it as a brain chemistry imbalance. The first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1952) leaned heavily on environmental and biological causes. Social anxiety sustains itself through the simultaneous mutual interaction of mind, body, spirit, and emotions.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
We are Hopeful, Powerful, Desirable, and Worthwhile
In his extensive examination of anxiety and depression, Aaron Beck, the pioneer of cognitive-behavioral therapy, asserted that social anxiety generates feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and unworthiness. The concept of undesirability revealed itself in my SAD recovery workshops. Until we commit to recovery, we continue to be guided by these destructive self-beliefs.
We are not helpless unless we choose to be. Multiple resources are available to anyone with the motivation and commitment to recover.
Likewise, we are not hopeless. Once we recognize the irrationality of our fears, we see them for what they are: powerless abstractions.
We are not undesirable. SAD compels us to view ourselves inaccurately. It reinforces or justifies our negative self-image, convincing us our cognitive distortions are the truths of a situation instead of emotional interpretations.Our fears and anxieties manifest in how we think about ourselves, how we think others think about us, and how we process that information. Any assumption of undesirability is self-centered and irrational.
We are not worthless but integral and consequential to all things. We are unique in every aspect; there is no one like us. We are the totality of our experiences, beliefs, perceptions, demands, and desires with unique DNA, fingerprints, and outer ears. There is and never has been a single human being with our sensibilities, our memories, our motivations, and our dreams.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Yet, we continue to beat ourselves up for our perceptual inadequacies. We blame ourselves for our defects as if they are the pervading forces of our true being, rather than symptoms of our malfunction.
We are not defined by our social anxiety disorder but by our character strengths, virtues, and achievements. When we break our leg do we become that injured limb or are we simply an Individual with a broken leg?
To moderate our social anxiety, we identify the situations that provoke them. Further self-examination unpacks the associated fears and corresponding negative thoughts and behaviors. We need to know the enemy to conquer it. Once that happens, we take control.
We cannot fix the complexity of our emotional malfunction unless we know what is broken. SAD is the most underrated, misunderstood, and misdiagnosed disorder. Nicknamed the neglected anxiety disorder, few professionals understand it, and fewer know how to challenge it. One has to experience it to know it.
We dread situations that provoke our fears of criticism and ridicule. We anticipate being judged negatively. We reject overtures anticipating rejection. Unless we are fortune tellers or mind-readers, assuming to know what another person is thinking or planning is irrational. It is a symptom of our condition.
We worry we might do or say something foolish. Fretting about something that may or may not happen is illogical. If it happens, it happens. We learn from it and move on. Avoiding doing things or speaking to people out of fear of embarrassment eliminates opportunities and diminishes possibilities.
Once we know ourselves and know the enemy, nothing is standing in the way of recovery. In fact, we turn the enemy’s weapons into assets. The process is theoretically simple, albeit time-consuming, repetitive, and personally revealing. However, the rewards dramatically outweigh the commitment.
SAD sustains itself by inflicting anxiety and fear, but they have no power on their own. We fuel them; we give them strength and power. We control our emotional well-being and quality of life, and only we can compel change. The onus of recovery is on us.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) moderate symptoms of emotional malfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing scientific and clinically practical methods including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups, workshops, and practicums.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
Lecture: Neuroplasticity and Positive Behavioral Change Lake Shore Unitarian Society, Winnetka, Illinois Sunday, Feb. 25, 2023
Lecture
Italicized portions were omitted from the lecture due to time constraints.
What is the role of neuroplasticity in positive behavioral change? It is to access and utilize both hemispheres of the brain to accelerate and consolidate learning. I am a radical behaviorist. What does that mean? Radical behaviorism not only considers observable behaviors but also the diversity of human thought and experience. That calls for a collaboration of science, philosophy, and psychology. And philosophy, existentially defined, welcomes religious and spiritual insight. All this information requires full implementation of our neural network.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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The definition of recovery is regainingpossession or control of something stolen or lost. Self-empowerment is making a conscious decision to become stronger and more confident in controlling our lives. In neuroses such as anxiety, depression, and comorbidities, what has been stolen or lost is our emotional well-being and quality of life. In self-empowerment, it is the loss of self-esteem and motivation. So, both recovery and self-empowerment deal with regaining what has been lost. And both are supported by neuroplasticity.
If there is an underlying theme in recovery, it is that we are not defined by our disorder, but by our character strengths, virtues, and attributes – and our achievements.
Neuroplasticity
Plasticity is the quality of being easily shaped or molded. Neuroplasticity is our brain’s constant adaptation and restructuring to information.
Before 1960, researchers thought that neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons, stopped after birth. Today, science recognizes that our neural network is dynamic and malleable – realigning its pathways and rebuilding its circuits in response to information.
What is information? Thought, experience, phenomena, sensation, sights, sounds, smells, tactile impressions – anything and everything that impacts our neural network. Our wonderful brain never stops learning and unlearning. Absent that, we would be incapable of replacing unhealthy behaviors with productive ones.
What is significant is our ability to dramatically accelerate and consolidate learning by compelling our brain to repattern its neural circuitry. Our neural network is structured around negative information. The primary objective in recovery and self-empowerment is replacing or overwhelming that negative information with positive neural input.
Three Forms of Neuroplasticity
Human neuroplasticity comes in three forms. The two that concern us are active and proactive. Reactive neuroplasticity is our brain’s natural response to things over which we have limited to no control – stimuli we absorb but do not initiate or focus on. Our neural network automatically restructures itself to what happens around us.
Active neuroplasticity is cognitive pursuits like teaching, aerobics, journaling, and creating. We control this aspect of neuroplasticity because we consciously choose the activity. An important component of active neuroplasticity is ethical and compassionate social behavior. We’ll expand on that shortly.
The third form is proactive neuroplasticity – the deliberate, repetitive, neural input of information called DRNI. It is the most effective means of accelerating and consolidating learning and unlearning.
Both active and proactive neuroplasticity empower us to transform our thoughts and behaviors, creating healthy NEW mindsets, skills, and abilities. Through informed and deliberate engagement, we compel change rather than reacting to it.
What does all this mean? It confirms that our psychological health is self-determined. We control our emotional well–being. Now bad things happen, much of which we have limited to no control over. We are impacted by outside forces: life experiences, physical deterioration, hostilities, the quirks of nature. Psychological well–being means how we react to things is self–determined. How we respond to adversity as well as fortune and prosperity
Trajectory of Negative Self-Beliefs
So, where does all this negative information come from? What are its origins and trajectory? Why are our neural networks so clogged with harmful, growth-impeding information?
It starts with our core beliefs. Core beliefs are the deeply held convictions that determine how we see ourselves in the world. We form them during childhood in response to information and experiences, and by accepting what we are told as true. Core beliefs can remain our belief system throughout life unless challenged.
Childhood Disturbance
Cumulative evidence that a toxic childhood is a primary causal factor in emotional instability or insecurity has been well established. During the development of our core beliefs, we are subject to a childhood disturbance – a broad and generic term for anything that interferes with our optimal physical, cognitive, emotional, or social development. Disturbances are ubiquitous – they happen to all of us. What differentiates us is how we react or respond to the disturbance – our susceptibility and vulnerability. Any number of things can precipitate childhood disturbance. Our parents are controlling or don’t provide emotional validation. Perhaps we are subject to sibling rivalry or a broken home. It is important to recognize, the disturbance may be real or imagined, intentional or accidental. I give the example of the toddler, whose parental quality time is interrupted by a phone call. That seemingly insignificant event can foster in the child a sense of abandonment, which can then generate feelings of unworthiness and insignificance. We are not accountable for childhood disturbance or subsequent behaviors. As we mature, we are responsible for addressing our destructive behaviors, but we are not accountable for their origins. It’s important to remain mindful of that.
Negative Core Beliefs
Feelings of detachment, neglect, exploitation are common consequences of childhood disturbance, and they generate negative core beliefs so rigid, we refuse to question them, and ignore evidence that contradicts them. This establishes what is called a cognitive bias – a subconscious error in our thinking that leads us to misinterpret information, questioning the accuracy of our perspectives and decisions. This is why we have such societal divisiveness. We don’t challenge our hard-core beliefs.
Intermediate Beliefs
The confluence of childhood disturbance and negative core beliefs impacts our intermediate beliefs,the next phase of our psychological development. Intermediate beliefsestablish our attitudes, rules, and assumptions. Attitudes refer to our emotions, convictions, and behaviors. Rules are the principles or regulations or moral interpretations that influence our behaviors. Our assumptions are what we believe to be true or real. These intermediate beliefs, of course, are influenced by our social, cultural, and environmental experiences.
Let me emphasize, that none of this negative trajectory is extraordinary. It is a natural progression common to all of us. Our unique personalities and experiences determine our susceptibility to it and the severity of its impact.
Self-Esteem
This accumulation of negative core and intermediate self-beliefs impacts the development of our self-esteem. Self-esteem, loosely defined, is a complex interrelationship between how we think about ourselves, how we think others think about us, and how we process and present that information.
We are social beings, driven by a fundamental human need for intimacy and interpersonal exchange. Human interconnectedness is necessary for our mental and physical health. Low levels of self-esteem jeopardize our social competency and impact our motivation to recover and pursue certain goals and objectives, to self-empower.
We also have an inherent negative bias, similar to our cognitive bias, which compels us to focus more on negative experiences than positive ones. When we lie in bed reminiscing about experiences, it’s usually about bad ones. Add to our accumulation of negativity are the experiences of life – outside forces over which we have little to no control. Hostility, divisiveness, illness, social media. The long and short of it, our brains are structured around an overabundance of negative information. Proactive and active neuroplasticity counter that negativity with positive neural input. That is their role.
Let’s briefly talk about what goes on [in our brain] with active and proactive neuroplasticity. Neurons are the core components of our brain and central nervous system. They convey information through electrical impulses or energy. Whether that energy is positive or negative depends upon the integrity of our information. Our brain receives around two million bits of data per second but is capable of processing roughly 126 bits, so it is important to provide substantial and incorrupt information.
Neural Trajectory of Information
Information alerts or sparks a receptor neuron that algorithmically converts it into electrical impulse energy which forwards that energy to a sensory neuron that stimulates presynaptic or transmitter neurons that pass that energy to postsynaptic or receiving neurons that then forward that energy to millions of participating neurons, causing a cellular chain reaction in multiple interconnected areas of our brain. Confusing? Absolutely.
Here’s an easy way to visualize it.
Neural Benefits
Neurons don’t act by themselves but through circuits that strengthen or weaken their connections based on our information. Like muscles, the more repetitions, the more robust the energy of the information, and the stronger the circuits.
In addition to positively restructuring our neural network, proactive and active neuroplasticity trigger what is called long-term potentiation. Neurons repeatedly stimulate succeeding neurons sometimes for weeks on end. This strengthens the nerve impulses along the connecting pathways, generating more energy and more neural chain reactions.
They produce higher levels of BDNF(brain-derived neurotrophic factors) – proteins associated with improved cognitive functioning, mental health, memory, and concentration.
The positive energy of our information is picked up by millions of neurons that amplify the impulse (or energy or activity) on a massive scale. Positive information in, positive energy reciprocated in abundance. Conversely, negative information in, negative energy reciprocated in abundance. Thus the significance of positive reinforcement.
Chemical Hormones
When the activity of the connecting pathways is heightened, the natural neurotransmission of chemical hormones accelerates, releasing cognitive and physiological support. GABA for relaxation, dopamine for pleasure and motivation, endorphins to boost our self–esteem, and serotonin for a sense of well-being.
Those are the highlights. Scientists have identified over fifty chemical hormones in the human body. Every input or bit of information or data accelerates and consolidates the neurotransmission of these hormones.
Unfortunately, as physics would have it, we receive these same neural benefits whether our information is positive or negative. All information is rewarded by restructuring, long–term potentiation, BDNF, reciprocation, and supportive hormones. The same neural responses are activated. That’s one of the reasons breaking a habit, keeping to a resolution, or mitigating our behaviors is challenging. Our brain acclimates to whatever we input and every time we repeat a destructive behavior or a bad habit, our neural circuits adapt and reward us. Thus, the importance of the integrity of our information.
Physiological Aversity to Change
We are alreadyphysiologically averse to change. Our bodies and brains are structured to attack anything that disrupts their equilibrium. A new diet or exercise regimen produces uncomfortable, physiological changes in our heart rate, metabolism, and respiration. Inertia senses and resists these changes, and our basal ganglia – the group of nuclei responsible for our emotional behaviors and habit formation – resist any modification in our patterns of behavior. Thus, habits like smoking, gambling, or gossiping are hard to break, and new undertakings like recovery, improvement, and self-empowerment, are challenging to maintain.
We inherently desire to be better persons and to contribute to others and society, but we are entrenched with negative self-beliefs. We have tried everything to overcome our condition and achieved less than desired results, which makes us feel incompetent and worthless, generating an overriding sense of futility.
We beat ourselves up daily for our perceptual inadequacies. Our inherent negative bias causes us to store information consistent with our negative beliefs and image. Psychology still focuses on what’s wrong with us. We consume ourselves with our problems instead of celebrating our achievements, and we constantly look for ways to justify or support our thoughts and behaviors. We blame ourselves for our defects as if they are the pervading forces of our true being, rather than celebrate our character strengths, virtues, attributes, and achievements.
Additional Negative Influx
We are consumed and conditioned by negative words. By the age of sixteen, we have heard the word no from our parents, roughly, 135,000 times. That’s a statistic and we take statistics with a large grain of salt but, you get the drift. Some of us use the same unfortunate words over and over again. The more we hear, read, or speak a word or phrase, the more power it has over us. Our brain learns through repetition.
It is not just the words we say aloud in criticism and conversations. The self-annihilating words we silently call ourselves convince us we are helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and worthless – the four horsemen of emotional dysfunction. They cause our neural network to transmit chemical hormones that impair our logic, reasoning, and communication, impacting the parts of our brain that regulate our memory, concentration, and emotions.
Our neural network is replete with toxic information.
Proactive Neuroplasticity
Proactive neuroplasticity is initiated by DRNI – the deliberate, repetitive, neural input of information. What is this information? It is self-motivating and empowering statements that help us focus on our goals, challenge negative, self-defeating beliefs, and reprogram our subconscious minds. Individually focused statements that we repeat to ourselves to describe what and who we want to be. Think of them as aspirations or self-fulfilling prophecies. We incorporate them into positive personal affirmations and rational responses to our negative self-beliefs.
I belong here.
I am valuable and significant.
I am confident and self–assured.
I am strong and resilient.
I am worthy of success and abundance.
Neural Information
We drastically underestimate the significance and effectiveness of these self-affirming statements when we do not understand the science behind them. Practicing positive personal affirmations and rational responses dramatically accelerate and consolidate the positive restructuring of our neural network and weexperience a perceptible change in our thoughts, behaviors, and outlook on life.
It is the integrity of the information that compels the algorithmic conversion into positive electrical impulse or energy. Information of integrity is honest, unconditional, sound, and of strong moral principles. We have established certain criteria so that our neural network will recognize the integrity of our information and restructure accordingly. Our information is rational, reasonable, possible, positive, goal–focused, unconditional, and first–person present or future time. Again, we recognize that actual wording is not as important as its integrity, but it is better emotionally if we are secure in our intent.
Information Criteria
Rational. The only logical recourse to irrational thought.
Reasonable. Unreasonable aspirations get us nowhere. It’s unreasonable to expect a grammy for song of the year if we’re tone-deaf.
Possible. If we are incapable of achieving our goal, it is ridiculous to pursue it.
Positive. Negative information is counterproductive to positive neural restructuring.
Goal-focused. If we do not know our destination, we will not recognize it when we arrive.
Unconditional. Our commitment must be certain. The affirmation, I will give up drinking – when my wife is in the room, defeats the purpose.
First-person present or future. The past is irrevocable so let’s concentrate on what we have control over.
Brief. Succinct and easily memorized. Our personal affirmations are mantras; they evolve. We change them according to need and circumstance.
Let’s talk about how proactive and active neuroplasticity support each other and how their collaboration advances our goal. While proactive neuroplasticity accelerates neural restructuring because of our deliberate, repetitive, neural input, incorporating both active and proactive neuroplasticity consolidates the process. It reinforces and strengthens our efforts. DRNI is a mental process designed to initiatetherapid, concentrated, neurological stimulation that transmits the electrical energy. It is proactive because we construct the information prior to utilizing it.
However, we are more than mere mental organisms. We are also emotional, social, and spiritual beings. Neglecting these human components is limiting and irrational. Mind, body, spirit, social, and emotions are the gestalt of our humanness. Proactive neuroplasticity is a mental exercise.
Active Neuroplasticity
Active neuroplasticity taps into the emotional, the social, and the spiritual. Beyond healthy activities like yoga, journaling, creating, and listening to music, is our ethical and compassionate social behavior. Altruistic contributions to society are extraordinary assets to neural restructuring. The value of volunteering – providing support, empathy, and concern for those in need, random acts of kindness – is extraordinary, not only in promoting positive behavioral change but in enhancing the integrity of our information. The social interconnectedness established by caring and compassion supports the regeneration of our self-esteem and self-appreciation.
One more rather mundane reason we turn to active neuroplasticity. DRNI requires a calculated regimen of deliberate, repetitive, neural information that is not only tedious but also fails to deliver immediate tangible results, causing us to readily concede defeat and abandon hope in this era of instant gratification. I can tell you from experience, it is challenging to maintain the rigorous process demanded of DRNI – the tedious repetition. Tedium generates avoidance, and we know how difficult it is to establish and maintain new habits. Active neuroplasticity fills any gaps and brings our entire being into play.
In closing. Proactive and active neuroplasticity are formidable tools in neural restructuring and the corresponding positive transformation of our thoughts, behaviors, and perspectives. Recovery and self-empowerment are achieved through a collaboration of targeted approaches that compel the rediscovery and self-appreciation of our character strengths, virtues, and attributes. While the realignment of our neural network is the framework for recovery and self–empowerment, a coalescence of science and east-west psychologies is essential to capture the diversity of human thought and experience.
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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI—deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” — WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
“Unable to cope with fear and uncertainty, a person resorts to denial, repression, compromise, and hides behind the mask of a false self.” ― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Defense mechanisms are temporary safeguards against situations challenging our conscious minds. They are mostly unconscious psychological responses designed to protect us from our fears/anxieties.
Notwithstanding their primary function, many defense mechanisms support recovery when utilized appropriately. Some, like avoidance, humor, and isolation, need no explanation. Others such as compensation and dissociation have positive values in recovery.
Without coping mechanisms, defensive or otherwise, we can experiencedecompensation – the inability or unwillingness to generate effective psychological coping mechanisms in response to stress – resulting in personality disturbance or disintegration.
Compensation
Compensation is a way to camouflage or avoid something we cannot do well by excelling at something else. In other words, we overachieve in one area of our life to make up for failures or deficits in another. Example: A teenager may compensate for learning difficulties by excelling in sports. In recovery, compensating for our negative thoughts and behaviors by replacing them with healthy ones is a productive use of this defense mechanism. Additionally, we compensate for our low self-esteem by recognizing and emphasizing our character strengths, virtues, and achievements.
It is easy, especially for those experiencing social anxiety, to overcompensate by setting unreasonable expectations or undercompensate by minimizing or dismissing our character flaws. Overcompensation can lead to perfectionism, with symptoms closely aligned with social anxiety.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
* * *
Denial
Denial isa defense mechanism in which an individual refuses to recognize or acknowledge objective facts or experiences. Denial protects us from thoughts and behaviors we cannot emotionally manage. Our inability or unwillingness to recognize trauma or symptoms of social anxiety is detrimental to recovery. Individuals experiencing drug or alcohol addiction often deny their habit, while victims of traumatic events may deny that the event ever occurred. SAD persons are disproportionately resistant to recovery because they deny its destructive capabilities as if, by ignoring them, they don’t exist or will somehow disappear. Our core sense of hopelessness and worthlessness does not encourage a willingness to accept our condition, which is a primary criterion for recovery. Denial allows us to lie to ourselves; it does not eliminate the situation.
Displacement
Venting our fears and anxieties on people or objects that are less threatening is displacement. An example would be the worker, reprimanded by his superiors, who goes home and kicks the dog. This defense mechanism is prevalent in SAD persons when we take out our situational frustrations and self-loathing on persons or things that pose a limited threat – a roommate, sibling, or significant other.
Dissociation
Dissociation is a disconnect from reality to shield us from distress and traumatic experiences. Theoretically, our mind unconsciously shuts down or compartmentalizes distressful thoughts, memories, or experiences. Daydreaming or streaming television to avoid conflict is a harmless form of dissociation. On the other hand, morphing into multiple personalities is a psychosis called DID (dissociative identity disorder).
In recovery, we deliberately dissociate ourselves from SAD as a mental exercise that helps us regenerate our self-esteem. We redefine ourselves by our character assets rather than our social anxiety. When we break our leg, we do not become the injured limb. We are someone experiencing a broken leg.
Projection
Projection is subconsciously denying our character defects but recognizing them in someone else. We project our negative behaviors onto someone else. For example, we might project our fears of negative evaluation by ridiculing someone else’s inept attempt at socializing. Often. when we instinctively dislike or avoid someone, we have projected our idiosyncrasies and inadequacies onto them.
Rationalization
Rationalizing justifiesour irrational thoughts and behaviors by inventing various explanations for them. Rationalizing defends against anything that threatens our emotional well-being. For example, we might rationalize not getting a raise to our manager’s personal feelings rather than our ineptitude.
Repression
We often conflate regression with repression. Regression is reverting to an earlier or less mature stage of psychological development where we feel safe from emotional conflict. Repression is a psychological attempt to unconsciously forget or block distressing memories, thoughts, or desires. In recovery, our objective is to expose and deal with them as part of the self–discovery process.
Ritual And Undoing
Ritual and undoing attempts to undo negative predilections by performing practices or actions designed to offset them, e.g., confession and penitence to offset bad acts. Many turn to the ritual of substance abuse to atone for self-destructive thoughts and behaviors rather than resolve them.
Undoing compensates for harmful activity by performing a behavior contrary to it. An example is donating to a homeless shelter to compensate for evicting tenants to build a condominium. Ritual and Undoing for positive gain can be a valuable coping mechanism. DRNI (deliberate, repetitive neural input), for example, is a ritual to facilitate neural restructuring by undoing (replacing) our negative thoughts and behaviors with positive ones.
COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
Cognitive distortions are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns that perpetuate our anxiety and depression. We twist reality to reinforce or justify our toxic behaviors and validate our irrational attitudes, rules, and assumptions. Our attitudes refer to our emotions, convictions, and behaviors. Rules are the principles or regulations that influence our behaviors, and our assumptions are what we believe to be accurate or authentic. Social anxiety and other emotional malfunctions paint an inaccurate picture of the self in the world with others.
Understanding how we use cognitive distortions as subconscious strategies to avoid facing certain truths is crucial to recovery. SAD drives our illogical thought patterns. Countering them requires mindfulness of our motives and rational responses. Our compulsion to twist the truth to validate our negative self-appraisal is formidable; it is vital to understand how these distortions sustain our social anxiety.
We are highly susceptible to cognitive distortions when under stress. They are emotional IEDs, capable of destroying our confidence and composure. Cognitive distortions are rarely cut and dried but tend to overlap and share traits and characteristics. That’s what makes them difficult to distinguish clearly. Because of their similarities, distinguishing one from the others is challenging, but as long as we remain mindful of their self-destructive nature, we can learn to recognize and even anticipate them to devise rational responses. After time and with practice, our reactions become automatic and spontaneous.
The number of cognitive distortions listed by experts ranges substantially. The thirteen particularly germane to social anxiety can be found here.
MALADAPTIVE BEHAVIORS
Maladaptive behaviors are actions that prevent us from adapting, adjusting, or participating in different aspects of life. Introduced byAaron Beck, the pioneer of cognitive-behavioral therapy, maladaptive behaviors are prevalent, but not exclusive, in social anxiety and depression. As a result of our negative core and immediate beliefs, our belief system and self-appraisal become distorted, and we adapt negatively (maladapt) to positive situations. Like other defense mechanisms, these behaviors are mostly unconscious and automatic psychological responses designed to protect us from our fears/anxieties.
Intended as temporary safeguards against situations that challenge our conscious minds, these behaviors manifest in many ways, such as avoiding social situations and avoiding things that cause discomfiture or stress. In the long term, however, maladaptive behaviors only perpetuate our anxiety and depression by preventing us from addressing the issues that negatively impact our emotional well-being.
WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
Recovery from social anxiety and related conditions.
Robert F. Mullen, PhD Director/ReChanneling
Subscriber numbers generate contributions that support scholarships for workshops.
The distinction between social anxiety disorder and social anxiety is a matter of severity; reference to one includes the other. The recovery tools and techniques provided apply to comorbid emotional malfunctions including depression, substance abuse, generalized anxiety, and issues of self-esteem and motivation. These malfunctions originate homogeneously, their trajectories differentiated by environment, experience, and the diversity of human thought and behavior.
“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI – deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid Málaga)
Utilizing Psychobiography to Moderate Symptoms of SAD
Abstract: Putting practical application to theory, this paper illustrates how the research techniques of psychobiography are incorporated into a comprehensive recovery program for social anxiety disorder.
Psychobiography can be a most helpful treatment method in moderating the impact of social anxiety disorder (SAD), which is one of the most common mental disorders, negatively impacting the emotional and mental well-being of millions of U.S. adults and adolescents who find themselves caught up in a densely interconnected network of fear and avoidance of social situations.
SAD is culturally identifiable by the persistent fear of social and performance situations in which we claim to be misunderstood, judged, criticized, and ridiculed. The irony is that we have far more to fear from our distorted perceptions than the opinions of others. Our imagination takes us to dark and lonely places.
SAD makes us feel helpless and hopeless, trapped in a vicious cycle of fear and anxiety, and restricted from living a “normal” life. We feel alienated and disconnected—loners full of uncertainty, hesitation, and trepidation. Our fear of disapproval and rejection is so severe that we avoid the life experiences that interconnect us with others and the world.
Fearing the unknown and unexplored, we obsess about upcoming situations and how we will reveal our shortcomings, experiencing anticipatory anxiety for weeks before an event and expecting the worst.
We feel like we are living under a microscope, and everyone is judging us negatively, making us worry about what we say, how we look, and how we express ourselves. We are obsessed with how others perceive us; we feel undesirable and worthless.
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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As a SAD survivor, researcher, and workshop facilitator, I have found that the investigative methods utilized in psychobiography offer a unique understanding of how our motivation to succeed is seriously impaired by the symptoms of SAD. Until my psychology graduate study, I was convinced my emotional dysfunctions were the consequence of poor behavior rather than SAD-symptomatic. It was then I realized the immeasurable value of the in-depth case study that forms the crux of psychobiography.
Recovery can be encapsulated by the phrase: “We are not defined by our social anxiety; we are defined by our character strengths, virtues, and achievements.”
SAD is a product of our negative core and intermediate beliefs induced by childhood disturbance. Cumulative evidence that a toxic childhood is a primary causal factor in lifetime emotional instability has been well-established. Emotional disorders sense the child’s vulnerability and onset during adolescence. (In the later-life onset of narcissistic personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], the susceptibility originates in childhood.)
The disruption of emotional development subverts the child’s natural physiological and emotional evolution, denying the satisfaction of self-esteem. This does not signify a deficit, but both latency and dormancy are expressed by our undervaluation or regression of our positive self-qualities.
In a recent article, I stated the case that the psychobiographic emphasis on the eminent extraordinary limits its potential to understand the character motivations of the “ordinary” extraordinary who has achieved a significant personal milestone. To the average individual living with SAD, a noteworthy milestone is recovery-remission from emotional dysfunction. Putting practical application to theory, I have incorporated research methods of psychobiography into our comprehensive recovery programs.
The role of psychobiography is to generate a more in-depth understanding of the qualities and characteristics that motivate us to achieve and overcome adversity. A primary function of recovery is to galvanize the SAD person to reclaim mindfulness of their character strengths, virtues, and achievements. Recognizing and accepting our inherent and developed personal values encourages us to embrace the extraordinariness of our lives, confirming we are consequential and valuable.
The lifetime-consistent influx of negative self-beliefs and images generated by SAD negatively impacts the natural development of self-esteem, defined as the realization of one’s significance to self and community. Self-esteem is the complex interrelationship between how we think about ourselves, how we think others perceive us, and how we process and express that information.
The roots of this lacuna are illustrated by Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of developmental needs. Childhood physical, emotional, or sexual disturbance disrupts our emotional and physiological development. Our sense of safety and security as well as feelings of belongingness and being loved are subverted, denying the satisfaction of self-esteem. While access to Maslow’s hierarchal levels is nonlinear, when coupled with our negative core and intermediate beliefs, the impact on our self-esteem becomes a certainty.
Maslow and Psychobiography: Realizing Our Potential
The collaboration of psychobiography and positive psychology traces its origins to themes addressed by Maslow that stress the importance of focusing on our positive qualities to realize our potential—to become the most that we can be.
A function of psychobiography is to generate an understanding of the individual to learn what motivates our thoughts and behaviors. SAD functions by compelling irrational and self-destructive thoughts and behaviors due to its life-consistent negative self-beliefs and images. Psychobiography lays the groundwork for rational response.
The foundation of positive psychology is a human’s ability, development, and potential. The SAD symptomatic, life-consistent neural input of toxic information subverts our recognition and appreciation of our inherent and developed character strengths, virtues, and achievements—a trajectory initiated by our negative core and intermediate beliefs. It is the role of psychobiography to study the character attributes that generate the motivation to achieve and apply these understandings toward optimal functioning and improved life satisfaction.
The Influence of Core Beliefs in SAD
Core beliefs are determined by our childhood physiology, heredity, environment, information input, experience, learning, and relationships. Negative core beliefs are generated by any childhood disturbance that interferes with our optimal physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. Perhaps we were subject to dysfunctional parenting, a lack of emotional validation, gender bullying, or a broken home. The disturbance can be intentional or accidental, real, or perceptual. A toddler whose parental quality time is interrupted by a phone call can sense abandonment, which can generate core beliefs of unworthiness or insignificance.
Core beliefs remain our belief system throughout life and govern our perceptions. They are more rigid in SAD persons because we tend to store information consistent with negative self-beliefs, ignoring evidence that contradicts. A recent Japanese study on emotional neuroticism found that core beliefs about the negative self-generate cognitive vulnerabilities in achievement, dependency, and self-control. SAD generates cognitive distortions and maladaptive behaviors counterproductive to logical reasoning, negatively impacting the rationality and accuracy of our perspectives and decisions.
Aaron Beck is the undisputed pioneer of cognitive-behavioral therapy for social anxiety and depression. He assigned negative core beliefs to two categories: self-oriented (“I am undesirable”) and other-oriented (“You are undesirable”). Individuals with self-oriented negative core beliefs view themselves in four ways: we feel helpless, hopeless, undesirable, and/or worthless.
These beliefs can lead to fears of intimacy and commitment, an inability to trust, debilitating anxiety, codependence, aggression, feelings of insecurity, isolation, a lack of control over life, and resistance to new experiences. People with other-oriented negative core beliefs view people as demeaning, dismissive, malicious, or manipulative. By blaming others, we avoid personal accountability for our behaviors.
Intermediate Beliefs: Establishing Attitudes, Rules, and Assumptions
The accumulated negative core beliefs due to childhood disturbance and other early-life experiences heavily influence our intermediate beliefs that develop our adolescence. As with core beliefs, they support our natural negative bias, neurobiologically inputting toxic information that reinforces our negative self-valuations.
Intermediate beliefs establish our attitudes, rules, and assumptions. Attitude refers to our emotions, convictions, and behaviors. Rules are the principles or regulations that influence our behaviors. Our assumptions are what we believe to be true or real. A SAD person’s attitude is one of self-denigration, assumptions illogical and cognitively distorted, and rules interacted by destructive behaviors,
A comprehensive recovery workshop must consider the needs of the individual within the group. One-size-fits-all approaches are anathema to recovery. Just as there is no one right way to do or experience recovery and transformation, so also what benefits one individual may not be helpful to another.
The insularity of cognitive-behavioral therapy, positive psychologies, and other approaches cannot comprehensively address the complexity of the personality. Our environment, heritage, background, and associations reflect our wants, choices, and aspirations. If they are not given appropriate consideration, then we are not valued.
Devising a targeted recovery approach requires multiple perspectives from different psychological and scientific schools of thought developed through client trust, cultural assimilation, and therapeutic innovation.
A collaboration of science and East-West psychologies is essential to capture the diversity of human thought and experience. Science gives us proactive neuroplasticity: cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and psychobiography are western-oriented; and eastern practices provide the therapeutic benefits of Buddhist psychology, as well as a sense of self that embraces the positive qualities of the individual.
The qualitative and quantitative research elements of psychobiography, including the case study, hermeneutics, interpretations and explanations, personal data and evidence, and the narrative are useful tools for understanding the impact of SAD on our self-beliefs and images.
Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Quantitative research involves the empirical investigation of observable and measurable variables. It is used for testing theory, predicting and illustrating outcomes, and considering clinically-supported techniques. Quantitative research generates hypotheses and helps determine research and recovery strategies. It can include data-driven research, scales, personal inventories, and comparative or correlational studies. Although conceived as focusing on data articulated numerically, quantitative analysis is also used to study feared situations and the severity of anxiety.
Qualitative research provides a close-up look at the human side of SAD relative to behaviors, beliefs, emotions, and relationships, supported by such intangible factors as social norms, ethnicity, socio-economic status, philosophy, and religion. A comprehensive study of the status and motivations of a SAD person is partially compiled through interviews, open-ended questions, and opinion research to gain insight into perceptions and belief systems.
The psychobiographic in-depth case study is a reconstructive clinical and systematic analysis of the life and productivity of an individual. The key is the availability of evidence. Accessing therapeutic notes and conclusions is legally impermissible; the workshop facilitator must lean heavily on experience and innovative methods of discovery.
A case study of a recovering SAD person relies heavily on personal interviews—testimony that is conditional and truthful to the extent that the individual believes it or needs the facilitator to believe it. Clinically-supported scales and inventories are useful, and statistical research and studies are abundant. Comparative and correlational evidence supports conclusions.
Psychobiography: Interpretations and Explanations
Psychobiography is an interpretation of the life of individuals, extraordinary or otherwise. Interpretations and explanations compensate for the physiological and psychological resistance to personal revelation. Recollections are highly subject to inaccuracies.
We must ask ourselves, to what extent are memories of subjective experiences and events accurate portrayals of what happened, wistful recollections, or biased reconstructions? Whether correctly recalled or not, memories and recollections must be valued as authentic perceptions of the reality of the individual. In the case of Michael Z., his recollections of childhood physical and emotional abuse helped him understand and moderate his avoidance of trust and intimacy.
Interpretation permeates all investigations from data to statistics, the case study, and hermeneutics. Psychobiography is an intuitive, interpretive method of comprehension based upon the synthesis of evidence culled from all available, relevant sources. Therapists must partially base their diagnosis on the interpretation of observable behaviors.
A facilitator must consider the multiplicities of truth, which means different things to different people and is contingent upon the validity of the information provided by the subject. We must be willing to risk and value our interpretations, instincts, and even speculations while remaining cognizant that we are susceptible to incorporating personal sensibilities and subject to imperfect conclusions, due to the vagaries and ambiguities of the subject.
Hermeneutics: An Essential Step in Recovery
Hermeneutics is essential to recovery due to the core beliefs of the child impacted by a dysfunction-provoking disturbance. The disruption in emotional development coupled with unjustifiable shame and guilt generates negative and often hostile perspectives in early learning which leans heavily on morality and religion. The unjustifiable shame and guilt expressed by Matty S. was a reliable indicator of his sense of undesirability and worthlessness. Recognizing his non-accountability for onset allowed him to realize the irrationality of his adverse moral emotions.
The negative belief system of the susceptible child cognitively distorts their understanding of self and their relationship with others and the world. A major function of recovery is moderating these irrational beliefs. This entails identifying and examining our disruptive thoughts and behaviors and generating rational responses, while proactively repatterning our neural network.
Narrative: The Ordinary Extraordinary
The narrative aspect of psychobiography favors the “ordinary” extraordinary because of their ability to access experiences. While the narrative of the average individual may lack spectacularism it does not impede creativity. Every SAD individual’s life is distinctive, consisting of unique experiences, beliefs, and sensibilities. How we express that information is subject to our self-beliefs and images. Through the interview and narrative process, Liz D. was able to rationally comprehend and moderate her intense situational fear of constructive confrontation. Its complex origins stemmed from her adolescent intermediate self-beliefs. The role of the personal narrative in moderating negative-self perceptions is significant.
Concluding Thoughts
This article illustrates the value of psychobiography in constructing an individually targeted approach to recovery from social anxiety disorder. A psychobiography generates hypotheses and helps determine recovery strategies while offering a close-up look at the human side of SAD relative to behaviors, beliefs, emotions, and relationships. It provides support in evaluating and treating the individual within the workshop gestalt.
The investigative methods utilized in psychobiography, including the case study, hermeneutics, interview, narrative, and the relevant social sciences, are valuable to understanding the trajectory of and methods to moderate life-consistent negative self-beliefs and images. Less reliable is the availability of an informed case study and personal data and evidence. This lacuna is compensated by the experienced facilitator’s interpretation of common threads in SAD recovery, supported by statistical research and comparative and correlational evidence.
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Clio’s Psyche is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, founded in 1994, and published by the Psychohistory Forum, holding regular scholarly meetings in Manhattan and at international conventions. Clio’s Psyche is unique in that it prefers experiential testimony over extensive citation.
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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
Committing to recovery is one of the hardest things you will ever do. It takes enormous courage and the realization that you are of value, consequential, and deserving of happiness.
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“Dr. Mullen is doing impressive work helping the world. He is the pioneer of proactive neuroplasticity utilizing DRNI ‒ deliberate, repetitive, neural information.” – WeVoice (Madrid, Málaga)
“It is one of the best investments I have made in myself, and I will continue to improve and benefit from it for the rest of my life.” – Nick P.
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Recovery: the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.
Empowerment: the process of becoming stronger and more confident in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.
Neuroplasticity: our brain’s ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections in response to learning or experience.
Proactive: controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened.
Proactive Neuroplasticity: accelerated learning through DRNI – the deliberate, repetitive, neural input of information.
Dr. Robert F. Mullen’s years of researching and implementing programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of emotional dysfunction and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives demonstrate the learning effectiveness of proactive neuroplasticity. DRNI – the deliberate, repetitive, neutral input of information dramatically accelerates and consolidates our pursuit of personal goals and objectives—eliminating a bad habit, self-transformation—harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living.
Neuroplasticity is evidence of our brain’s constant adaptation to learning. Scientists refer to the process as structural remodeling of the brain. It is what makes learning and registering new experiences possible. All information notifies our neural network to realign, generating a correlated change in behavior and perspective.
“I have never encountered such an efficient professional … His work transpires dedication, care, and love for what he does.” – Jose Garcia Silva, PhD, Composer Cosmos
What is significant is our ability to dramatically accelerate learning by consciously compelling our brain to repattern its neural circuitry. Deliberate, repetitive, neural information (DRNI) empowers us to proactively transform our thoughts and behaviors, creating healthy new mindsets, skills, and abilities.
Reactive neuroplasticity is our brain’s natural adaption to information. Information includes all thought, behavior, experience, and sensation. Active neuroplasticity is cognitive pursuits such as engaging in social interaction, teaching, aerobics, and creating. Proactive neuroplasticity is the most effective means of learning and unlearning because the regimen of deliberate, repetitive neural input of information accelerates and consolidates restructuring.
Our Online Self-Empowerment Workshops
The ultimate objectives of our Self-Empowerment Workshops are to:
Provide the tools and techniques of proactive neuroplasticity to accelerate and consolidate goals and objectives.
Recognize and utilize our character strengths, virtues, and achievements.
Design a targeted process to regenerate our self-esteem and motivation.
Replace adverse habits with healthy new ones that underscore our potential.
Logistics. Individually target workshops are most effective with a maximum of ten on-site participants, and eight participants for the current online workshops.
Hebbian Learning
Today, we recognize that our neural pathways are not fixed but dynamic and malleable. The human brain retains the capacity to continually reorganize pathways and create new connections and neurons to expedite learning.
Neurons do not act by themselves but through neural circuits that strengthen or weaken their connections based on electrical activity. The deliberate, repetitious, input of information impels neurons to fire repeatedly, causing them to wire together. The more repetitions, the more robust the new connection. This is Hebbian Learning. DRNI is the most effective way to promote and retain learning and unlearning.
We not only prompt our neural network to restructure by deliberately inputting information, but through repetition, we cause circuits to strengthen and realign, speeding up the process of learning and unlearning.
“I am simply in awe at the writing, your insights, your deep knowing of transcendence, your intuitive understanding of psychic-physical pain, your connection of the pain to healing … and above all, your innate compassion.” – Jan Parker, PhD
Accelerates and Consolidates Learning
What happens when multiple neurons wire together? Every input of information, intentional or otherwise, causes a receptor neuron to fire. Each time a neuron fires, it reshapes and strengthens the axon connection and the neural bond. Repeated neural input creates multiple connections between receptor, sensory, and relay neurons, attracting other neurons. An increase in learning efficacy arises from the sensory neuron’s repeated and persistent stimulation of the postsynaptic cell.
Postsynaptic neurons multiply, amplifying the positive or negative energy of the information. Energy is the size, amount, or degree of that which passes from one atom to another. The activity of the axon pathway heightens, urging the synapses to increase and accelerate the release of chemicals and hormones that generate the commitment, persistence, and perseverance useful to recovery or the pursuit of personal goals and objectives.
The consequence of DRNI over an extended period is obvious. Multiple firings substantially accelerate and consolidate learning. In addition, DRNI activates long-term potentiation, which increases the strength of the nerve impulses along the connecting pathways, generating more energy. Deliberate, repetitive, neural information generates higher levels of BDNF(brain-derived neurotrophic factors) proteins associated with improved cognitive functioning, mental health, and memory.
We know how challenging it is to change, remove ourselves from hostile environments, and break habits that interfere with our optimum functioning. We are physiologically hard-wired to resist anything that jeopardizes our status quo. Our brain’s inertia senses and repels changes, and our basal ganglia resist any modification in behavior patterns. DRNI empowers us to assume accountability for our emotional well-being and quality of life by proactively controlling the input of information.
Neural Reciprocity
Our brain reciprocates our efforts in abundance because every viable input of information engages millions of neurons with their own energy transmission. DRNI plays a crucial role in reciprocity. The chain reaction generated by a single neural receptor involves millions of neurons that amplify energy on a massive scale. The reciprocating energy from DRNI is vastly more abundant because of the repeated firing by the neuron receptor. Positive energy in, positive energy multiplied millions of times, positive energy reciprocated in abundance.
Conversely, negative energy in, negative energy multiplied millions of times, negative energy reciprocated in abundance.
Our brain does not think; it is an organic reciprocator that provides the means for us to think. Its function is the maintenance of our heartbeat, nervous system, and blood flow. It tells us when to breathe, stimulates thirst, and controls our weight and digestion.
Hormonal Neurotransmissions
Because our brain does not distinguish healthy from toxic information, the natural neurotransmission of pleasurable and motivational hormones happens whether we feed it self-destructive or constructive information. That is one of the reasons breaking a habit, keeping to a resolution, or recovering is challenging. We receive neurotransmissions of GABA for relaxation, dopamine for pleasure and motivation, endorphins for euphoria, and serotonin for a sense of well-being. Acetylcholine supports our positivity, glutamate enhances our memory, and noradrenalin improves concentration. In addition, information impacts the fear and anxiety-provoking hormones, cortisol and adrenaline. When we input positive information, our brain naturally releases neurotransmitters that support that negativity.
Conversely, every time we provide positive information, our brain releases chemicals and hormones that make us feel viable and productive, subverting the negative energy channeled by the things that impede our potential.
The power of DRNI is that a regimen of positive, repetitive input can compensate for decades of irrational, self-destructive thoughts and behaviors, and provide the mental and emotional wherewithal to effectively pursue our personal goals and objectives.
Personal goals and objectives are those things we want to change about ourselves: eliminating a bad habit or behavior, improving life satisfaction, and revitalizing self-esteem and motivation. The deliberate, repetitive, neural input of information significantly improves the probability of recovery. Likewise, it empowers us to pursue those personal goals and objectives that make our lives more viable and productive.
ReChanneling targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration, utilizing an integration of science and east-west psychologies. Science gives us proactive neuroplasticity, CBT and positive psychologies are western-oriented, and eastern practices provide the therapeutic aspects of Abhidharma psychology and the overarching truths of ethical behavior.
The current workshops consist of twelve online weekly sessions, meeting in the evening and lasting roughly 1-1/2 hours. There is minimal homework (approximately 1 hour weekly).
For low-income students, weekly tuition is less than the cost of a movie and popcorn.
The cost of the workshop is on a sliding scale:
$40 per session if income is $100,000+
$35 per session if income is $75,000 – $99,999
$30 per session if income is $50,000 – $74,999
$25 per session if income is less than $25,000 – $49,999
$20 per session if income is under $25,000.
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Applicants will be contacted to schedule an interview.
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WHY IS YOUR SUPPORT SO IMPORTANT? ReChanneling develops and implements programs to (1) mitigate symptoms of social anxiety and related conditions and (2) pursue personal goals and objectives – harnessing our intrinsic aptitude for extraordinary living. Our paradigmatic approach targets the personality through empathy, collaboration, and program integration utilizing neuroscience and psychology including proactive neuroplasticity, cognitive-behavioral modification, positive psychology, and techniques designed to regenerate self-esteem. All donations support scholarships for groups and workshops.
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Social Anxiety Disorder, Anxiety and Depression, and Comorbidities
