Mbetstudents

Mindfulness Based Experiential Therapy Centre: Integrating Ancient Wisdom with Modern Science - A place to share for MBET students and friends.

The approach is grounded in a dialectical perspective on reality and experience. It attempts to integrate acceptance and change strategies into a coherent treatment package.

In dialectics, an idea or theory called a thesis elicits an opposing idea or theory called an antithesis – a reaction to the failure of the thesis to account for aspects of reality that it may have neglected. The approach emphasizes a synthesis of acceptance and change via the therapeutic relationship.

Recent and current neuroscience findings regarding the neurobiology of human development have definite implications for the field of counselling and psychotherapy. Understanding the neurobiological context giving rise to mental distress can help counsellors apply therapeutic interventions appropriately.

There is increasing evidence that the integration of neural circuits is essential in the amelioration of psychological symptoms. At the moment there are a number of strategies that are solidly grounded in neurobiology.

Cozolino (2002) proposes the following: The establishment of a safe and trusting relationship. Gaining new information and experience across the domains of cognition, emotion, sensation and behaviour.
The simultaneous or alternating activation of neural networks that are inadequately integrated or dissociated.
Moderate levels of stress or emotional arousal alternating with periods of calm and safety.
The integration of conceptual knowledge with emotional and bodily experience through narratives that are co-constructed with the therapist.



Some of the neurological concepts that we integrate include:
* Neuroplasticity - Experience continues to change the structure of the brain across the lifespan by creating new neural pathways. The specific experiences of the infant will for example trigger specific neurobiochemical reactions that enhance or block gene expression.

* The right brain is functional at birth and is dominant for the first 2 to 3 years of life enabling infants to communicate emotionally prior to developing left-hemisphere verbal skills around the 3rd year.

* From birth, the right hemisphere functioning includes a type of implicit (also known as procedural or nondeclarative) memory that may not be accessible to conscious memory or the reasoning process that later develops in the left hemisphere.

* Mirror neurons are activated in the brain whether one is observing an action or performing the action oneself. This may impact nonverbal communication processes including the development of empathy.

* The neurobiology of attachments results in the development of internal working models which impact the development of later relationships. Disorganized / disoriented or D attachments often involve an adult whose history includes unresolved traumatic
attachment(s).

* Furthermore, early trauma disrupts the integration of right and left hemisphere connections due to chronic triggering of innate survival mechanisms located in the more primitive parts of the brain. The brain stem, right limbic system and hemisphere become over developed and produce a fear response that is hypersensitive.


* Internal imagery can activate and stimulate the same brain systems as do actual sensory perceptions; thinking or dreaming about a past experience activates the same pathways have been active during the past experience.

* From a Mindfulness perspective, symbolic representations (internal working models) give us great capabilities in problem solving. Problems arise when our ‘simulations’
are perceived by more primitive neural pathways as real threats to be dealt as
a matter of urgency. An essential aspect of cognitive treatment is to focus not
only on the primary emotional expressions, but also on the mental models that
are built around such expressions which give them extra meaning and so maintain
the disorder.



* Using the doing mode to suppress or elaborate emotional expression can reduce attentional control and capacity which leads to increases in emotional disturbance and helplessness. Mindfulness strategies do not aim at getting rid of these processes, but about coming to see where natural, automatic reactions stop and the simulation, elaboration and avoidance process begin. It does this by cultivating an alternative ‘being’
mode through practices that teach people how to pay attention to objects in the
exterior and interior world as they unfold, moment to moment.


Any neurobiologically informed approach to therapy will continually evolve as a result of new findings.