Tag Archives: Change

Change, Neural Pathway Restructuring

How Neural Pathway Restructuring™ Came To Be

To be completely open with you, it came out of frustration.

Growing up in a household with an emotionally abusive mother and then repeatedly getting into abusive relationships, I was searching for answers. Why did I get out of one abusive relationships only to get into another one? Even though I was sure this time it would be different.

When I married, and had a child, I was certain that this relationship would work. And of course, I was wrong. Once again, I had picked someone who would repeat the behaviors I had come to believe were behaviors of someone who loved you. Only this time, I had a child. And I was determined I would not teach her that this was “love”.

During the last year of that marriage I attended a Neuro Linguistic Programming (N.L.P.) training and my eyes were opened to how I had continually recreated patterns from my childhood. How without consciously realizing it, I searched for someone to treat me similar to my mother. Because after all, that had to be love!

I was so amazed by this training that I took the Master level and went on to become a Trainer in N.L.P. Not only did I get a divorce, I opened an Institute and began coaching others in how they could completely change their lives for the better. They could get out of all the old destructive patterns of behavior and be the person they wanted to be.

After working with abused women, children and men as well as drug and alcohol addicts I realized that many people would deal with a presenting problem and heal it but then later, it might show up in a different way. Something was going on that hadn’t been addressed.

That lead me to learning all I could about how the brain works, how we encode information and behavior and what can we do to change it. So much new research was appearing on neuroscience and the plasticity of the brain and I had access to working neuroscientists.

After years of trial and error, utilizing various techniques from N.L.P., Ericksonian Hypnosis, guided imagery, the work of Dr. Candace Pert and Dr. Bruce Lipton we well as the work in neuroplasticity, I began to experiment and test a new process I call Neural Pathway Restructuring™.

As I worked with these presenting problems it became obvious to me that we were working with more than just negative emotions, limiting beliefs and memories. In fact, we were working with the very strategies that define ourselves and our approach to life. These strategies were reinforced in our brains and went as deeply as the cellular level.

It was almost as if we were addicts for our own behaviors. And in essence we are.

Not only do we generate neurological pathways of behavior in our brain, we become addicted to our own brain chemicals. Just as an addict must get high off an external chemical, we too can be addicted to a behavioral strategy which releases the sought after chemicals. If our behavior is of a positive nature then we never worry about it. But, if the behavior is undesirable, we may try all manner of interventions to change it only to find we’re replacing it with something else.

Neural Pathway Restructuring™ is a painless, relatively quick method to restructure the neurological pathways of the brain to create the results we want.

Find out more about Neural Pathway Restructuring™ here and about Debra Fentress here!

Change, Neural Pathway Restructuring

Change is hard

I’m going out on a limb by saying this but change is hard. We are all creatures of habit. To get ourselves to do something different can be equivalent to running a marathon without first training for it. Think how many times you’ve ever tried the “white knuckle” approach to something. How successful were you?

The problem with changing our behaviors is not in our desire to do so. The problem is that we’re dealing with our two minds. The conscious mind, often called the rational mind and the unconscious mind or our emotional nature.

To change anything in our lives, these two minds have to be in agreement.

The conscious or rational mind is that part of us that is analytical and can delay gratification for long term goals or payoffs. The unconscious or emotional mind deals with pain and pleasure and is a pleasure seeking being.

The unconscious mind is interested in instant gratification. It wants things to be easy and quick. And it is the part of us that gets things done. The unconscious mind easily over rides the conscious mind when it comes to getting us to do things. The reason is that most of our behaviors are done unconsciously or without our awareness. We just do them without thinking about it.

We’ve actually created neural pathways in the brain which run automatically whenever it’s time to do a specific behavior. You don’t have to think about how to overeat or brush your teeth….you just do it or you could say your unconscious mind does it.

So every time you try and get your conscious mind to change a behavior through will power, you are attempting to override a neural pathway that is practically set in stone. After a while, we actually get worn down by our own self supervision. How many times have you attempted to do something and just got fed up with the constant monitoring of your behavior? We can only do this so long before we are exhausted.

If you’ve ever tried to lose weight through dieting you know what I mean. Every morsel you put in your mouth you have to think about and weigh the pros and cons.

Another reason change is hard is because we keep changing our minds! One minute our rational mind thinks we want to lose the weight or stop drinking or get that report done and then we’re thinking about that piece of cake left in the kitchen or just one little drink won’t hurt.

So the problem isn’t that you are lazy or lack motivation. The problem is the battle between the conscious and unconscious mind. And to get these two in alignment, you have to restructure those neural pathways.  

Recently, scientists have discovered what they call Brain Plasticity where our brain cells or neurons are constantly making new pathways. This means that your brain can change! You can create the neural pathways of your choice.

Change can then become quite easy because you’re creating on the unconscious level. So the next time you go to repeat an unwanted behavior, you find yourself doing the desired behavior. This is part of the research that went into my development of the Neural Pathway Restructuring™. I’ve used it with several different habitual behaviors such as smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, bulimia, picking, OCD, PTSD, anxiety disorders and Tourette’s Syndrome.  I also use a form of it in many of my workshops to assist groups to let go of limiting beliefs they may have about themselves and their ability to be, do or have what they want.

If you’re interested in learning more about Neural Pathway Restructuring™, please go to: NeuralPathwayRestructuring.com

Neural Pathway Restructuring

Neural Pathway Restructuring™

It’s a real bitch! There’s really only one way to get the life you want. You have to accept and take the responsibility to create the life you want. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about your work, weight, love life, family, etc. it all starts with you.

In order to create what we want in our lives, we have to deal with whatever is keeping us from being, doing or having everything we want. And that is usually based on unconscious limiting beliefs, fears and self-imposed limitations.

Whatever those are, they’ve probably become habits of neurological behaviors of your brain. These behavior are neuro pathways you run over and over again….mostly on an unconscious level.

It’s sad, but no amount of affirmations, or white knuckling it or swearing that you’re going to change this time will make that change. This is because your brain always goes to the easiest system….the path of least resistance.

It wants to do what it knows and is most comfortable.

It wants to go down that neural pathway that in essence cuts a deep groove.

In order to change that you often have to do something very different–maybe even drastic.

This is when Neural Pathway Restructuring™  comes in. With Neural Pathway Restructuring™   we restructure those pathways and create new pathways that support the life you want with new behaviors and new beliefs.

You decide how you want it. We assist you in making those changes on a deep neurological level so that you never go back to the unwanted behaviors.

Find out more at The Life Change Catalyst website!

and Neural Pathway Restructuring


Getting Through

Why She Doesn’t Leave Him

As a Life Change Catalyst© coach for the last 16 yrs. I have worked with hundreds of women trapped in the Cycle of Abuse. Even though these women desperately wanted to leave the relationship, they felt powerless to completely remove themselves from their partner.

If they did manage to get away from him, invariably they would begin communicating, dating and many cases, getting back together.

Why? Why do smart, educated, empowered women in every other area of their lives but this one, continue to allow themselves to be abused?

After working with these women, it became clear to me that we had to approach this problem from something other than just removing a victim from the situation. Even if these women managed to get away and not involve themselves with another abuser, they would end up generating abuse in other ways: such as overeating, drinking, excessive exercising or diet, gambling, drugs….any addictive behavior.

They were seeking something that the Abuse Cycle was giving them. We weren’t working with just the beliefs about self worth or the desire to be loved. We were working with something that went even deeper.

All behaviors are repetitive strategies encoded in our brains as neural pathways that run automatically at the unconscious level. Not only do we generate neurological pathways of behavior in our brain, we become addicted to our own brain chemicals. Just as an addict must get high off an external chemical, we too can be addicted to a behavioral strategy which releases the sought after chemicals.

Let’s look at the Cycle and see what happens. There are four phases to the Cycle:

  1. The Abuse: the actual abuse takes place. It doesn’t matter if it’s physical, emotional or mental.
  2. The Neglect: the abuser begins to apologize, take some blame and begins to back off the abuse.
  3. The Honeymoon: the abuser acts as if everything is fine again. They usually respond to the victim with gifts, loving words and actions…in general, become the perfect partner.
  4. The Tension: the abuser can’t keep up the Honeymoon phase and begins to show signs of abuse again. The victim is aware that the abuse is about to start again.

The problem lies in the Honeymoon phase. During this stage of the Cycle, the victim begins to believe the abuser’s apologies, convinces themselves that this is the “true” person and “falls in love” all over again.

Unfortunately, the victim is also flooded with “feel good” neuro peptides during this phase of the Cycle.  This flooding of “feel good” neuro peptides creates an emotional addiction similar to drug addiction. These neuro peptides sub-sensitize the receptor cells, causing the body to crave more of them, without the victim actually being aware of what is happening.

She will then, unconsciously, seek out people or situations, which will stimulate the release of the peptides of the emotional addiction. If in a relationship, she will unconsciously trigger the abuse to get to the Honeymoon phase in order to get the release of the “feel good” neuro peptides.

In order to break out of this emotional and chemical addiction, the neurological pathway must be altered. Research has shown that we can actively affect how our brains can rewire themselves to create new neural networks and override pre-existing ones. As early as 1998, Merzenich and deCharms were saying that we actually choose how our minds will work which results in physical responses.

For anyone struggling with the Cycle of Abuse, there is hope. You can break out of this pattern and stay out!

One way that has been shown to rewire these strategies of behavior permanently is Neural Pathway Restructuring™.  Neural Pathway Restructuring™ alters the neurological habitual pattern of behavior so much so that it’s impossible to run it again even if you tried to.

If you or anyone you know is trapped in the Cycle please go to: http://www.neuralpathwayrestructuring.com