Psychotherapy can be very helpful. Because what the heart longs for is a safe haven, a loving presence to feel seen, loved, and felt by others.
However, the methods currently in use predate the emotional brain era, which began in 1980 and was fully formed by 2000. Shared stress levels have become so high that current cognitive-based stress recovery methods are inadequate to handle emotions. An influx of stressors. Rates of chronic physiological stress overload (CPSO) began to rise.
Cognitive control becomes less effective as stress increases
Before the year 2000, most of us were able to “think our way through” problems, but today, increased stress levels cause our prefrontal cortex to become less functional, our emotions become more extreme, and our brains become more It triggers the release of control of the reflex wire of stored stress overload. emotional brain.
Information overload, the speed of change, and increasing existential threats like climate change have forced our primitive hunter-gatherer brains into a default state. More often, thoughts have gone from producing comfort and wisdom to causing stress with rumination, numbness, or cognitive decline.
Prescribing drugs without EBT can be counterproductive
Because the emotional brain is a social brain, we rely on the healthy brain states of others to buffer us from the inevitable downtime in life. But as stress overload has become a widespread experience, and technology has distanced us from social experiences, our stress has been exacerbated by lower social set points.
Medical care also contributed to the stress overload, as talk therapy and friends and family were unable to ease the burden. Pharmaceutical companies helped those most in need, but they may have relieved the pressure on all but the most vulnerable to learn how to cope in healthy ways. No. The current protocol has been to use more treatments and medications without addressing the fundamental problem: processing life cognitively without robust emotional tools and rich relationships.
A certified EBT provider psychotherapist talks about EBT as a new psychotherapy.
Cognitive paradoxes can cause remorse
Researchers have served to draw our attention to the missing link, a way of processing emotions that suits the needs of the times, but it has been largely ignored. Researchers at New York University studied the effectiveness of cognitive control of stress and found the worst possible results.
Cognitive techniques worked when stress was low, even when they weren’t needed, but they didn’t work even under moderate stress when they were needed most. This “cognitive paradox” gives users the illusion of being in control, but when stress spikes, they realize their brains aren’t working the same way and find themselves feeling out of control and blaming themselves. Masu. Patients say, “It’s all my fault,” or “I’m the problem.” They don’t know that the problem is not them, but their lack of emotional processing skills.
We need to adapt to the age of the emotional brain. Specifically:
Adjustment 1.
Treat stress as the basis of psychotherapy.
Chronic stress causes biochemical and electrical changes that are the basis of most health problems. When assessing the patient, reframe the presenting concerns as symptoms of stress wiring that the patient can change. Check in with them to see their current brain state (on a 5-point scale) and monitor their chronic stress levels or setpoints (on a 5-point scale) over time.
Adjustment 2.
Teach skills to combat stress overload and rewire circuits.
The basis of psychotherapy is training the root cause of the symptoms: not having the emotional tools to overcome today’s extreme stress levels. All patients need basic skills in EBT and need to understand that they can use it to change their entire physiology in 1-3 minutes. If they have problems or issues, they are just wires and in addition to therapy sessions, they need a circle of support and tools to combat stress overload and rewire circuits between sessions. A week in which patients use EBT alone, with friends and family, and with an EBT support group to arrange therapy sessions in place of therapist-centered treatment and interrupt the stress chemical cascade anytime and anywhere. This will be the start of.
Adjustment 3.
The treatment goal is set as raising the brain’s set point.
Instead of focusing on one problem after another, reframe every problem as a symptom of your brain’s set point for stress. Resolving the current concern by rewiring the circuit immediately reduces symptoms and contributes to the overall physiological goal of raising the set point.
Cognitive approaches do not rewire physiological stress circuits and are more likely to cause the “problem” to recur or be replaced by something else. Increasing the set point makes rewired circuits less likely to undo, improving the patient’s overall mental and physical health.
Stress levels are on the rise, and demand from patients who want a practical, physiologically based treatment, as well as therapists who feel their methods are missing something, has made EBT a popular choice for psychotherapy. It is inevitable that it will be the basis of As EBT becomes more integrated into healthcare, all current methods will work better. Many problems are prevented because the therapist is addressing the root cause: stress overload.
