I recently was sent an email from Sarah Woodhouse https://sarahwoodhouse.com
who is a trauma specialist and psychologist. She was alerting people on her mailing list to a new course but as a introduction to that had a video on over thinking and tackling it. It was very helpful so I will summarise it here.
I KNOW I overthink! It has been pointed out a lot to me in my life, so it was very comforting to hear how I am not alone with this, it is an integral part of having had childhood relational trauma.
Basically your nervous system gets rewired to be hypervigilant. Growing up unsafe means that your amygdala is rewired to be more sensitive to potential threats, an overactive survival response set up. This is then coupled with an overpowering superego voice which tells us which are the specific threats to look out for. The nervous system sets up the adrenaline, cortisol flow and the superego points out the specifics with fear and shame based messages, “you are not enough, you’ve messed up” especially around relationships. The alarms are sounding so the superego is obsessively searching for problems and threats. Hello! That is my life! I’ve added climate change, plastics in the sea and misogyny to my list to fill the gap as my day to day life bobs along sweetly!
But, BUT we can rewire those brain responses. We can reset those as we have the neuroplasticity to do it.
She says that studies show that it takes 66 days of practice to reset.
The mechanism for rewiring is
1) Observe
2) Interupt
3) Reconnect
Now these rewiring processes are not new to me, basically yoga, meditation and breath work plus exercise are all really helpful to working in this direction. What was really nice about this was seeing my thought processes described, laid out, and then a clear practice suggested to help dampen down the emotional rollercoaster I live on. And to learn how I am one of many, not just a damaged, neurotic individual on my own!
So overall I would say that I am already well on the way of that 66 day rewiring process, and it has already helped. The video worked as a reminder and set it all out very straight forwardly to help me interrupt and block those thoughts in day to day life, not just at yoga.