BrainWorking Recursive Therapy® – BWRT® – was
created in 2012 by Terence Watts, a therapist, author of many books and
training courses and principal of the Essex Institute in Essex, UK.
What is BrainWorking
Recursive® Therapy
BrainWorking Recursive®Therapy is an
innovative new concept of psychotherapy; completely unlike anything that has been
done before it. It presents an entirely new view of the subconscious mind. It
is unique and inspired by the research of Benjamin Libet. In 1983 Benjamin
Libet (2003 winner of the Virtual Nobel Prize in Psychology from the University
of Klagenfurt), Professor at University of California ran a series of
experiments that proved that we do not have free will in the way we think of
it, which is precisely why we all encounter so many “Why on earth did I do/say
that?” or “Why do I have to feel like this?” moments.
What is BWRT?
BWRT was created by Terence Watt, a therapist for more than 30 years who
applied hypnotherapy, as well as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Emotional
Freedom Technique, amongst other therapies, but he always thought the therapies
fell short of something. He realised to really hardwire a new way of thinking,
most therapies require repeated sessions and activities that the patient needs
to keep doing for them to be effective. Watt always thought that existing
therapies fall short of something.
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The
brain is an amazing organ, computing a stream of input from all your senses,
while referencing memories and automatically making decisions as you go about
your day, trying to make sense of everything it hears and sees. Terence Watts
argued there’s no such thing as free will in the typical sense and for many
of our thoughts, behaviours and habits, there’s a response to a situation or
emotion formed before you even realise.
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How
does Brain Working Recursive Therapy® work?
BWRT® enables
you to create a different neural pathway response – in other words a different
mental reaction – before you react to something. ‘The change can be so natural
that the client doesn’t even notice the subtle switch.
BWRT®
has been designed to remove emotive responses from memories that are deeply
troubling and create new, adaptive neural pathways that do not have the old
undesirable emotional responses attached to it.
The therapy extends the neural pathways so that the client/patient’s
brain knows the new patterns to use in future. Every new experience creates a
new template. In fact, immediately after the therapy is finished, the client no
longer feel any negative responses to the usual trigger for their presenting
symptom, no matter how hard they try to ‘fire it up’.
Your
lizard brain controls ‘fight or flight’
These automatic responses come from your limbic cortex, otherwise
known as your ‘lizard brain’ called like this, because way back at the start of
evolution it was one of the first parts of the brain to form.
The lizard brain controls things that don’t require conscious
thought, such as breathing, perspiration, organ function and the hormone system.
It also controls our fight-or-flight mode, which is the physical and emotional
response we feel when confronted with something your brain perceives as
stressful or dangerous. This means some negative, automatic actions or
reactions – such as a fear of flying, or reaching for a sugary snack if you
feel low, could emanate from misinterpreted or outdated information that our
brain has stored from a past situation. The information doesn’t have to be the
distant past. As ones situation changes in life such as your kids moving away,
you retire or it could be something bigger like a health change it can
subconsciously affect you.
You might find yourself suddenly devoid of a plan, or lacking focus
or confidence. Your lizard brain learns patterns associated with these
feelings, such as a release of the stress hormone cortisol and you feeling the
jitters when you go to sign up for that new fitness class. It will
automatically continue that reaction each time the issue comes up, without you
even stopping to realise that’s what is going on.
The amazing thing is, your lizard brain doesn’t differentiate between
reality and imagination and the new insight is that the reaction can be “recorded
over”,
Once the brain has created an automatic response pattern to
specific emotions, it can become so automatic that it would be really difficult
not to do them. We do not consciously think of it but when we experience from, underlying
guilt, panic attacks, anger outbursts and depression. The reaction happens in the
same way. Before we can think, we do something that we’d rather
not, or that prevents us from doing something we wanted to do. This is exactly
where using BWRT a therapist can help you break that loop so that you can start
to do the thing you want to do, instead of what you don’t want to do, but can’t
help doing or feeling.
The name for the process that takes place is ‘preconscious,’
‘subconscious’ or ‘unconscious’ and all has to do with the speed of the nerve
paths in the brain being much faster than we can consciously think. The process is all about speed you do not
control or problematic reactions called instincts or reflexes. These are done by the brain in a split second
choosing what action to take and start to trigger it. What actually happens when you have panic
attacks, anxiety, road rage or guilt feelings is that the brain reacts in the
way it has somehow learnt fits with whatever is going on. It doesn’t matter
what you consciously want, because by the time you actually starts to think
about it, the speedy part of your brain has already made up its mind, and
that’s why it is so difficult to deal with these kinds of problems on your own.
What
happens in a BWRT® session?
If you’ve had any kind of counselling or therapy you will know that
it can sometimes be frustrating, awkward, or even traumatic, as your brain
mulls over problems, past and present. But with Brain Working Recursive Therapy®, you don’t even need to discuss the cause or root of
the problem, making the concept of treating it feel a lot more comfortable.
In a BWRT® session,
which usually takes around an hour, the therapist will ask you to target the
thing you don’t like about how you are behaving and feeling, and ask you to focus
on how you would rather behave and feel.
Essentially you freeze the response before it goes past your lizard
brain – just before the action (behaviour) or emotion (feeling) form. This is
how it differs from therapies such as CBT, which looks to change your response
or reaction once the troubling emotion has already formed. The new response
pattern is inserted into the brain in the ‘Freeze’ moment of a traumatic
memory. If no new information is given, the old software will just start
running again. In BWRT® the exact
moment of the original traumatic event was frozen again is now used to
re-freeze the exact moment of creating a specific set of important
circumstances in the limbic system. We recreate what often happens during a
moment of trauma that is ‘Freeze’ and at that exact moment when the previous
neuropath started we insert the new software, thus creating a new neuropath
while the brain while waiting for further information. We have a fixed point
that we can link forward to the present and hence to a fixed future point. This
allows us to create a huge recursive loop that spans only 1/5th of a second in
‘Brain Time’ but several weeks, months, or even years in chronological time.
What we are essentially doing, is storing new software in the pattern
recognition matrix. We’re uploading a new preferred response in the
preconscious part of the brain. In essence, we’re over-writing the bad software
with better software. We also imagine and install a better future memory. Using
particular techniques to lock it into place, we create a memory of something
that hasn’t happened yet, but you will remember it as if it has already
happened. This is possible because your brain creates new nerve pathways every
time you think of something. Indeed, the brain is a river, not a rock. As much
as 70% of your synaptic connections change each day. BWRT® zooms in on and changes those synaptic connections
that you want to change.
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What we are essentially doing, is
storing new software in the pattern recognition matrix. We’re uploading a new
preferred response in the preconscious part of the brain.
To change unwanted automatic reactions,
all we have to do is get as far back along that signal path as possible so
that we can persuade your brain that a new behaviour is more suitable than
the old one. The term neuroplasticity refers to the lifelong ability of the
brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experience.
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New
Experience
Old
experience
Freeze moment
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‘In essence it is a natural and practical form of therapy, and the
best thing is, the change comes completely from within you’ says Terence Watts.
The neuroscience behind BWRT®
According to research there are at least
ten billion neurons in the human brain, which by seven years of age is almost fully
grown and thereafter its complexity is the result not of the growth of more
cells but of connections between cells. There are between ten trillion and one
hundred trillion such connections.
Each neuron may be linked to an electric
generator. Some neurons are running constantly while others fire intermittently
as they receive messages from other neurons. Each of the nerve cells produces
about 20 millivolts of power. Information is coded by the frequency of the
impulses. It is this electricity that we see on electroencephalographic
tracings. The sending wire of one cell
does not touch the receiving wires of other cells. They lie on the other skit
of a chasm that is a millionth of an inch wide. The message must “jump” the gap,
called the Synapse. The next cell repeats the process. Brain messages can
perform this “leap” 500 to 1 000 times per second but the average speed or
frequency of firing is 100 times per second.
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The neuron consists of three parts:
cell body,
which contains the nucleus;dendrites,
which form the branches or “receiving wires” that picks up messages from
other neurons; andaxon,
or “sending wire” through which messages are passed on after being evaluated
by the nucleus.
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There is no actual electrical connection or any
passage of electric current between one neuron and the next. The sending wire
of the cell ends in little protein vesicles called boutons. The actual
transmission of the message across the synapse is a chemical reaction.
Chemicals produced by boutons “squirt” the message across, like popcorn being
able to pop and hop when heated. When an action is repeated, stimulating cells
at frequent intervals, boutons at the synapse increase both in size and number,
shortening the span over which the message must jump. The more boutons, the
less energy is needed for actions to occur andhabits are formed. The more often we perform the act, the more
firmly the habit.
We cannot destroy the old boutons but we
can grow new ones and build new neural pathways around the old ones (like
bypass heart surgery). The most important element in building new habits is not
time, but energy.
Energy builds new habit pathways. It does
not matter what kind of energy the body feels (emotional, physical, and sexual)
but we do know positive emotional energy such as enthusiasm or visions of glory
produces maximum energy. The best way to create a new pathway is to regularly
repeat the action. In time, results will
show and new habits being build.
