As I develop each edition of EBT training programs for therapists, I ask myself, “What is EBT?”
The answer used to be more scientific. It is a self-directed, professionally supported positive neuroplasticity of the stress response.
Yes, but what is that really?
I believe it is an opportunity for each of us to unlock our potential, be healthy and happy, and give back to the world in a way that makes our lives complete.
Again, what does this really mean?
But as stress overload becomes part of our daily physiological diet, these standard responses border on annoying. We know that Freud was right; It is the unconscious memory system that shapes our reactions, and the emergent effect of all our wires gives us our sense of self.
With the latest update to the method and app, the unconscious memory system is quickly becoming so accessible that the method will soon become mainstream.
Our subconscious emotional brain memory system is the controller and now with EBT we have more power to control it.
It’s not that the subconscious hasn’t been available for rewiring before. Prayer, meditation, or just daily reflection on our circumstances is enough. But in my own habit of running everything that “bothers” me through the Cycle Tool, not entirely unfazed but definitely safe, I will find out what hair-raising, unreasonable expectations stored in my subconscious were responsible. Then fix the problem or at least calm myself down so I can understand myself a little better.
When I explain EBT to therapists, I say that it is a tool for self-regulation and reconsolidation of faulty wires, and patients are trained to use it—and to do much of this rewiring themselves.
However, with the latest version of the app, people understand how to use EBT effectively much faster. I think we’re on the verge of having an app that makes it possible to specifically rewire overreactions, unwanted moods, and disconnected states in everyday life, empowering people to take care of their subconscious, much like they do with their oral health or fitness regimen.
The significance of this borders on chilling. What does it mean that we have significant control over our resilience pathways so that we can experience joy when we desire, regardless of the circumstances?
The world of cognitive therapy got it right in some ways and said: We are what we think about, but what we focus on is part of a cycle. When this wire is a homeostatic, health-promoting, resilient circuit, emotions are low and stress chemicals don’t bother us. However, if what we are thinking borders on something distorted, maladaptive, or harmful, and it is the symptom of activation of one of these allostatic, disease-promoting response circuits, that is a different story.
Now we can recognize what physiological state we are in, and when these stress wires control us, we can push them back a little and even turn them off in a few minutes. With the EBT skills in our bio “pocket,” we can be about as happy and perhaps even as healthy as we want to be.
It appears that EBT is evolving rapidly as more and more people “grasp” the desire to become EBTers. In an intensive group today, members talked about the changes they had seen in themselves – we have only been in the intensive group for three weeks. One new member, who was initially in the “Foundations” course, reported that after rewiring her nutrition and mood circuits, she felt as if her entire life experience had changed.
I had seen her change in real time in our daily group. When she told me this, it was true and I moved on to Brain State 4. If it could change so quickly, are we at the beginning of a shift in what we can expect from life? Over the past two years, the method has sharpened skills at both ends of the stress continuum—strengthening bliss, love, and virtues, and combating, grinding, and spitting out trauma.
Perhaps this new EBT, which EBT Medical Director Michele Welling, MD calls “EBT3.0,” will take back personal control over health, happiness, quality of life, and perhaps even other aspects of our lives. We know about AI and how it is changing our world. What if we distributed EBT the way AI is distributed? If we changed our emotional world by rewiring the circuits that control everything important, we might have a chance to save the planet and live in peace and love.
This is an idea worth thinking about. . . and to sit with my feelings and feel them. I hope so, and who knows what might happen if we prioritize cultivating an EBT practice and find ways to increase our ability to penetrate and rewire our subconscious?