Dr Emily

I've used this reflection before.

Exactly.

Rick Hansen has this beautiful saying that the mind is like Velcro for negative and Teflon for positive.

Yeah.

And so basically that we are primed to notice and pay attention and stick to negative content.

And it makes sense from an evolutionary point of view, right, is that we need to pay attention to threat in order to stay alive.

So don't do that again because that could risk your life.

Remember that time that you stepped out of the bushes and there was that tiger?

Like definitely don't do that.

That was really silly.

So it has a greater valence.

But we can absolutely make the positive experiences last longer if we're willing to pay attention to them.

Yes.

There is, again, using Rick Hansen as an example, he has an approach to therapy which is called positive neuroplasticity training.

And basically it's this idea that we're rewiring the brain for good so that we actually take in the good.

We're not discarding the negative, but we're actually able to actually resource our minds and our bodies with a felt experience of the pleasant stuff.

And so...

For example, I would do this in conjunction with like the healing trauma parts too.

So if someone was coming into therapy that we would obviously go back and have a look at some really pivotal moments where there was like a need that went very unmet and we would do some, again, some bottom-up processing.

So very much using the body, how does it feel in the body, kind of meeting the younger part of you, very experiential, so really in the moment.