At our EBT annual meeting last week, researchers, clinicians, and newly-certified EBT Providers and Ambassadors came together. Many of the 15 speakers shared their stories about how EBT has changed their lives.
One leader said, “EBT saved my marriage, saved my life, and stopped my pain. Ever since I rewired my Body Circuit, my pain has stopped.”
Just the week before, one of the physicians I met with to inquire about EBT certification brought up pain, saying she would use it with her patients for pain management. As well, Dr. Michele Welling, EBT medical director, is a pain specialist as applied to addiction.
It would make sense that EBT would impact pain because of multiple factors, but two come to mind. One is that the unconscious mind, specifically the stress circuitry, either amplifies or quiets the experience of pain. The brain’s pain-pleasure pathway goes through cycles that follow intense pleasure with intense pain, so there is no way out. If we have one, we’re apt to have the other.
However, our response to that pain is voluntary. Consider that “secondary stress” or our stress about being stressed. EBT can interfere with that process in just a few minutes, because it uses emotions to switch off that secondary stress wire rapidly. Cognitive methods take 30 or more minutes to do that, and by that time, often we are in our own world of stress overload, and it is hard to get out. EBT is an expert at that, so using the tools rapidly for optimal resilience does the trick.
Another avenue, and what most likely cured this speaker of her pain, was rewiring a Survival Circuit. These wires are unhealthy unions between a fight-or-flight circuit and another, usually innocuous wire that happens to co-activate with it. They lock together, giving the puny wire a bump up, so it becomes our go-to in even mildly stressful situations, and when activated, it has an extreme biochemical drive behind it.
Examples of Survival Circuits that trigger pain could range from being “addicted” or “triggered” to the pain itself, as pain activates endorphins and can be “positive” in its own way. The circuit could also have seemingly obscure wires that fuel the pain from the attention received for the suffering to the moods that precede it, coincide with it, or follow it.
As these wires can drive or attach us to so many sensations, thoughts, emotions, behaviors, or states, psychotherapy is very complicated. However, the EBT Cycle Tool unlocks the unconscious mind and allows the brain to do what it does best, which is to help us heal. By using that tool, the speaker found the precise wire that was driving that pain and rewired it.
A good rule of thumb in EBT is to start addressing the stress with a Quick and Easy (Spiral Up #2) tool to experience immediate results. If the circuit returns, move on to the deeper rewiring. Use Spiral Up #3 Deep Work, and erase the circuit!
