You clearly do understand what I am talking about!
Neural superhighways, being around people that help us be calm, asking yourself how much of what you may feel is purely physical (stepping on a nail) and how much our brain and nervous system may be contributing and feeding the fire (panic mode)
Here's another set of thoughts I keep having:
Although it makes sense, to avoid stressful triggers, develop relaxation techniques etc, to keep us from adding to the cycle
But how about another angle, rather than avoid them, I wonder if we can condition ourselves to not respond in the way that we do to trigger events? Have it both ways?
Like rather than avoid a scary movie, or even fun but exciting things like a rollercoaster ride, a video game, do these things anyway, make observations about what we experience, and develop techniques to avoid going into fight-or-flight mode?
Recently, I returned to active work, very stressful indeed, and as expected, my pain levels went up. Not so much from physically doing anything, just the anxiety and anticipation of all the things that could go wrong...
(Once I got back to work, remembered how to do it again, confidence returned, I relaxed, and hey, whattyaknow, I felt better!)
But I also went to a concert, sat in the very front row, and I was certainly very excited about it, enjoyed it very much. But that too, also really increased my pain.
So I learned something from this, that it may be ANY excited state, with all cylinders firing, that increases heart rate, muscle tension, and maintains the neural superhighway.
So for me, my quest is to find a way to do BOTH, live a full active lifestyle, not avoid doing things I need or want to do, but continue to find ways to keep my nervous system from over-responding when I don't want it to!
Of course, this wouldn't be the kind of thing that could get "fixed" overnight, took many years to get to my current state, so even if I am successful at lowering my response to stressful triggers, by changing the thought patterns and learning new tunes, it would for sure take considerable time to tear down the existing neural superhighway
But another fact that the book mentions gives hope. That the cells receptors that receive pain signals replicate every three days, and so the ones that we have three days from now will be another new chance to begin..
