Why Do I Keep Repeating the Same Patterns?
Like many people, I'm the proud owner of a Covid dog. Meet Tank...
When he was the tiniest puppy and we first brought him home, we would play with him and then spin his little puppy body around in a little circle in the middle of playing tug of war, catch, or wrestling, then resume playing.
Now he's a fully grown adult dog, but any time he thinks it's time to play he still spins himself around in a little circle. He still does it when we're playing tug of war, or catch, or wrestling. He does it when someone walks in the door after a day of being out. He even does it when he sees another dog and gets excited to say hi and play.
He has absolutely no idea that this isn't normal dog behavior. He wasn't born spinning himself in little circles, he learned it by how we interacted with him. Now he does it because he has always known to do it during play time, in his canine mind the association is strong and the two actions - playing and spinning in a circle - are paired. He keeps repeating the same pattern because it became wired into his brain through experience.
Neurons that fire together wire together
We've all had the experience of a certain smell calling to mind a specific memory, like the smell of fresh cut grass bringing up a memory of childhood summer fun, or the scent of a certain perfume bringing to mind the memory of a beloved relative. Have you ever wondered why this happens? It’s actually neuroscience. The reasons that some things become strongly paired together in our minds centers around a simple principle: neurons that fire together wire together.
Every time you have a thought or an experience, neurons fire in your brain and create associations and connections between different things. For my dog, Tank, at an early age he was spinning in a little circle at the same time he was having a lot of fun. Every time he enjoyed these moments, neurons tied to playing linked to neurons tied to moving his body in a circle, causing them to wire up into a strong association between the two activities that continued to get reinforced and repeated.
Eventually it became a pattern.
See how that works? Repeated thoughts and experiences strengthen connections in our brains, and over time create ingrained neural networks that become filters for how we respond to life. Every time we learn something new, recall a memory, or form a habit, it’s the result of neurons firing and connections between neurons strengthening or weakening. Each time the paired activity repeats, the connection gets reinforced, making the association quicker and more automatic and the pattern more deeply ingrained.
This can be very useful because it helps our brains to quickly process and make sense of new information by finding an associated neural network - then we can understand new things based on old experiences and memories without putting in a lot of time or effort. It makes our brains super efficient at sorting through and responding to information we take in from the world around us, but it can also sort of malfunction.
Sometimes neurons fire around negative experiences and create powerful connections and patterns that keep us stuck
In the wake of trauma, associations to certain sounds, smells, images, sensations, or any trigger can instantly bring up overwhelming feelings and reactions because intense emotions are paired with specific cues. Or in the case of addictions, finding relief in the face of feeling overwhelmed is paired with a substance or behavior that keeps getting strengthened because it's acted on over and over again. And when it comes to relationships, some unhealthy patterns can feel familiar because in our past experience they were paired with love. In these situations, patterns keep getting repeated because they are linked to strong neural networks by powerful past experiences.
Neural networks can be rewired and negative patterns can be reworked
Our brains have an incredible ability to rewire themselves in response to new experiences and associations. Neurons that fire together wire together, and on the flip side, if neurons stop firing together the connection weakens. This is sometimes called “neurons that fire apart wire apart,” a pruning process that keeps your brain efficient by letting unused or unneeded associations fade. This process also allows patterns to change.
EMDR therapy is the most powerful and efficient way I've experienced to rewire neural connections that aren't working well anymore, break old patterns keeping you stuck, and un-pair triggers and memories so that they can become neutral. EMDR desensitizes negative associations so that "neurons that fire apart wire apart," and EMDR also helps new neurons fire with more positive and adaptive memories and experiences to create new associations and patterns that are positive. EMDR can rewrite the brain’s story and change the brain's patterns, one network at a time.
