Taylor-LeighThis is not an ad, nor is it sponsored. I am simply sharing what helped me the most to change my life for good.
Change your mind to change your life.
Trigger Warning: At the beginning, I briefly mention suicide ideation.
For most of my 20’s and unknowingly in my teens, I felt stuck in what felt like an endless cycle of depression, anxiety, and being a prisoner of my own mind. Out of desperation to get out of it, I read every self-help book I could get my hands on, adopted mindfulness habits, ate what I thought was food that would heal me, all to end up back in that painful cycle. I didn’t want to be alive. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
Knowing what I know now, it wasn’t me who wanted to die, it was that part of myself that felt so stuck in a place that I never thought I would get out of. My body was giving me signs to kill off that part of me so I could rebirth a new, higher part of myself who was ready to be born.
For years I was giving all my power away to therapists, doctors, food, supplements, a morning routine, cold showers, and any other healing modality. It wasn’t until I realized that the power was within me all along, that I finally started to not just heal, but transform.
Thanks to Mind Change, I know that my body was and is always working for me. Every little sign or symptom is communication waiting for me to listen. Using the information I’m talking about in this post, I not only stopped my depression & anxiety, but I also stopped “doing” insomnia, trichotillomania, IBS, and gluten intolerance, while improving relationships, having the birth of my dreams, and more.
But in the depths of my despair, if you would have told me that I was causing my own suffering as a mechanism of my body to keep me safe, I would have cried in your face, called you mean, and ran away.
So many “healers,” self-help gurus, and niche experts give advice on how to be happy, how to be healthy, how to change your life. But how much of it actually sticks with people who heed their advice? I have no doubt that these experts are sharing information to help people from their hearts’ best intentions, and because it helped them in their journeys. But I’d like to share what might be a link that is missing between self-help and real transformation.
Rewiring the Brain With Mind Change
As taken directly from their website,
“Mind Change is a healing system utilizing the power of the mind/body system. It is a system designed to allow psychological stability by reprogramming the brain’s mental patterns to impact our responses and behavior towards life positively. Mind Change operates with tangible physical mechanics backed by science. It is a collection of new cutting-edge techniques and processes that integrates the most effective elements of many modalities using the minds great ability to transform itself. One of the most appreciated aspects is that it is fast, direct and to the point.”
After meeting the creators, Heather and Kent McKean, they would tell you that Mind Change is not a “system” or a “method” that they invented. Rather, they dig deep into neuroscience and mind/body research that is already out there, making it compact and accessible to anyone to use as tools in their own lives. The whole thing was started after Heather weened herself off of her death bed, medications, mental illnesses, and diagnoses. She has since gone on to help thousands of others change for good too. She talks all about it in her book that started it all.
Memory
At the core of Mind Change, is memory. Memory is stored in the body not just through visual experiences, but also through kinesthetic (feeling), auditory (hearing), gustatory (taste), olfactory (smell), and audio-digital (beliefs/affirmations we tell ourselves) experiences.
The way we perceive memories is based upon our Reticular Activating System. This is a bundle of nerves at the base of our brain stem that essentially acts as a filing system for our brain, to filter in important information based on our repetitive thoughts and beliefs. You know when you think about a red car often, and then you start seeing them everywhere? That’s the RAS at work. It seeks to keep your life in alignment with what you know and believe. For example, let’s say two siblings grow up in a family that values excellence in sports. One sibling does really well at soccer and is highly praised, while the other sibling is not good at sports. Even if the second sibling excels in another area, he may only hold on to the negative view the family has of him, and may grow up feeling devalued, as well as discouraged to try anything athletic. Meanwhile, the first sibling may grow up with confidence and a positive regard of his family.
While these are fairly surface level examples, the more I dive into Mind Change and my own perceived experiences, the more I am able to realize why I have the beliefs that I do. The best part of it all, is that once I realized I had certain beliefs that didn’t serve me, and in fact, were really bringing my life down, I was empowered to change them.
Core Beliefs
Our core beliefs shape our worldview and are formed based on our experiences. In the film Inside Out, we get a look inside the brain of the main character, a young girl. She starts to form her sense of self based on her core memories. Each memory powers her “islands” that make up her core beliefs and thus, her personality. Of course, this was happening without her being aware of it.
When people say, “I can’t change my personality, I am who I am,” you absolutely can change the things that don’t serve you. However, we can’t consciously change a subconscious belief. We have to enter into the subconscious mind.
When negative memories are stored in our body and we aren’t able to release them, perhaps because we aren’t aware of it or we don’t have the tools to change the memory, they can wreak havoc on our nervous system, our health, our relationships, and our reality.
Why Change A Memory?
Early in my Mind Change journey, this was a difficult concept for me to grasp. If I already know what happened, how is it possible to change the memory? Remember, memories are stored in various ways. The objective is to get into the subconscious mind to rewire the way the memory is stored. So even if you know that someone treated you poorly, you can still change the way your body stores the memory in order to improve your life, get you out of a stuck cycle, and go from being victim to victor. It’s not about distraction from the problem/memory, it’s about leaning into the feeling, hopefully for the last time.
And this is how I changed, and continue to change for the better.
In simplest of terms, the Mind Change system works like this:
1. Identify the “problem” – What’s bothering you? This can be a physical ailment, a belief, an inner feeling, etc.
2. Spend about 10 seconds really feeling/seeing/hearing/tasting/smelling this problem, and try to enhance it.
3. Pattern interrupt. This is the crux of Mind Change. We must interrupt the neuropathway. So do things like jumping jacks, clap your hands, EFT tapping, singing.
4. Go back into the memory/feeling/belief. See if it’s changed. Keep repeating this process until the problem doesn’t bother you anymore.
5. Change the memory into what you would have rather happened. And don’t hold back! This is how the body remembers something new and positive that you create. The brain needs something to move towards. So it’s not just about releasing the bad memory and changing it, it’s about enhancing a newer version of the story.
While this method is backed by neuroscience (see book), in the world of manifesting, this is where you tap into the sensations of what you want to attract. (Neurons that fire together, wire together).
6. Finally, practice positive emotions for the Reticular Activating System. In Mind Change, this is the GPS (gratitude, positive affirmations, smiles/positive memories). These are things to do throughout the every day. If we don’t do this then we risk falling back into our old patterns, as the mind needs somewhere to go!
Why therapy didn’t work for me:
Therapy was a great stepping ground for me to transition into bringing to light some of my deepest despair and be guided by a professional. I would recommend therapy to everyone with access. Some therapy modalities have been incorporated by Mind Change, such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). However, after a certain point, I realized that it was keeping me stuck in the cycles and patterns that I was trying to break out of.
Why?
A lot of times we think we are feeling our feelings, when really we are just rehearsing them in our minds. Rehearsing means that we are practicing the scenario, reinforcing that neuropathway that is keeping us stuck in a pattern or belief. This could be because its easy to stay in our thinking brain. It may suck at times when you want to escape your thoughts. The hard thing to do would be to drop into the body where the feelings exist. The mind is what we think about the situation, but the body is the more challenging place to be because it forces us to sit with the discomfort. It requires courage to go there. Some body-based therapies exist to get the client to drop into their body, but the difference between this and Mind Change, is that once we feel into these darker places, we are actually trying to change them.
So for me, while it was helpful to be listened to while I expressed my feelings, and given some tools to help cope with the things that bothered me, therapy didn’t address the root cause of my problems. On a positive note, I had the pleasure of attending a Mind Change retreat in Texas in October where I connected with people from various walks of life. One person is actually a mental health therapist who incorporates Mind Change techniques like pattern interrupts into her practice. She shared that the clients she does this with experience the most beneficial results of working with her.
Finally, as a very emotionally aware person, I often felt that my therapists didn’t know how to help me because I would explain my emotions and how I believed they related to my childhood, etc. While it was healing to have space held for me, I now know that I was going into my “stories” or things that I believed about myself or my problems, which could have been reinforcing secondary gains that were keeping me stuck. Secondary gains, the roles we keep people in, etc, are deeper topics within Mind Change that we can explore another time.
What Exactly Changed?
For those wondering, okay but how can you tell you changed? Is it just in your mind? Ding ding ding! That’s exactly where it is! I was creating my problems because that is how my body learned to keep me safe. For example, my depression was a suppression of my emotional expression. I learned through experience in childhood that if I expressed my emotions, they would not be held safely and would be squashed. Over time, my brain and body shut down. I could go into details about each thing that healed within me, but usually by addressing the bigger perceived negative experiences hiding within us, our problems get resolved secondarily. Of course some bigger things may need additional guidance.
Just because we are aware of a pattern, doesn’t mean that we can necessarily change it if it is ingrained into our subconscious, especially when I think of my journey with trichotillomania. Physical conditions are manifestations of emotional patterns that are using the body to communicate (a lot of people think of this as “stress,” which is true, but can be explored deeper than what a relaxing bubble bath can solve). Whether or not these concepts are “woo woo,” they are ancient ideas and now backed by science.
As they finish all their podcast episodes, the only way out is through – through the body and the mind. My favorite aspect of Mind Change is the focus on self-empowerment. Rather than blame ourselves or others for “creating” our problems, we can reframe this and put the power back into ourselves to not only heal but to create what we want our lives to look like.
Am I fully healed and don’t have any more problems? Absolutely not, but I am working on it, and I have the tools to continue to change my life not because I believe I am broken, but because now I value my worth enough to know I deserve better – for myself, my family, and my daughter.
To understand more about Mind Change, I recommend reading the book. This + the workbook is how I got started. I then wanted to go even deeper, so I dove into the course.
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