Came To A Fork In My Path

[CDawg]

Hi folks,

I have a very dear friend over at another recovery site that has an amazing way with words. A long time ago I asked for and received permission from her to repost anything she writes that strikes my fancy. This one is a favorite of mine:

Which path will you choose?



Elmer


Blazing New Trails in Your Neural Network

Imagine that you are at the edge of the dense forest. You want to go home, which is on the other side to the forest. Looking at the forest, you see a path opening into it, and that path seems to be the easiest way through the trees.

But then, next to the path, you see a sign which reads 'This Way to the Party!' To make things even more difficult and old friend appears and tells you, "Hey, this is a Great Party! You are missing out! Let's go!" and he starts to pull you by the arm in the direction of the well-worn path. You are tempted to join him, but you have been thinking lately that going down that well-worn path is not helping you to achieve your goals.

As you are thinking about this, another friend appears, a new friend, and he says, "I've got a better idea. I know another way through the woods that's a little more difficult because its not worn as well, but in the long run it will be easier to walk! The more often we take that path, the more well worn it will become, while the other path will become more difficult to walk down because of disuse!" Then he grabs your arm and begins to pull.

As your body begins to lurch back and forth between the forces, you realize that you must make a decision about which friend to go with. Certainly the well worn path would be easier to down right now, the other newer path has many trees in the way, with branches to be pushed aside and dead trunks to be either moved or stepped over.

Both directions have their benefits. The well worn path will lead you to certain relief from the pressures of the day, and it's so easy; you've done it thousands of times before. And its familiar; you know what will be waiting at the end. But the newer path also has benefits. You wont be beaten, robbed or raped on the way home. When you get there your spouse and children wont be angry with you, you wont take your anger out on them, and you will still have money in your pocket. You know that tomorrow you wont be hung-over, you wont be late for work and you'll do a better job. What choice do you make if your choice is between easy and familiar, or harder and more beneficial to your long term health and happiness?

Your ambivalence is beginning to hurt as your arms start to feel as if they are being pulled from their sockets! Since neither friend is about to let go of their own volition, you realize that the only way to overcome one of them is to add your own energy to that of the friend you choose to go with. Only with these energies combined will there be enough force to get the other friend to let go.

Let's suppose that this time you decide to throw in your energy with the new friend. Then the next time you are on your way home and you get to the forest, your two friends appear again. Only this time what your new friend told you appears to be true: the new path now has more appeal. Its been walked through recently and some of the dead trees have been moved out of the way. Not only that, but the path to the party now looks a little less attractive. There are beer cans strewn about which makes it look a little unsightly. Funny that you never noticed them before. Also for the first time, you notice that it doesn't smell so hot there and your old friend is a bit unkempt.

As your old friend begins to tell you what a great time you missed last time, your new friend breaks in. "If we use the newer path again, the next time it will be more cleared out and easier to walk through, and the old path will be more overgrown and harder to walk through. Remember how much better you felt the next day after you walk down the new path? C'mon - lets go."

Your friend grabs your arm, but this time the choice is easier to make, and you more quickly and decisively thrown your energy in with your new friend.

In the days to come, you continue to approach this crossroads. Most of the time, you choose the new path, but every now and then, you are talked into going down the old path. When this happens, the path becomes more passable, and the path which you didn't take becomes more overgrown.

You can literally make an analogy of the pathways of the forest with the pathways through the neural networks of your brain. The more a pathway is used, the easier it is to traverse, and the less a pathway is used, the harder it is to traverse. You have probably spent years clearing the old neural pathway to the party spot. You have probably been pruning the path with great care. You may have even paved it. This is called learning. Because you have been learning this behavior, reinforcing the old neural pathway for a long time, it's the most natural thing in the world for you to want to stroll right down it, admiring your handiwork. The way to effectively clear a new neural pathway is through vigorous use! Clearing up the new neural pathway also has the effect of causing the old neural pathway to atrophy. This also called learning.

It is important to realize that it can take some time for your neural pathways to switch. As with all changes to your body, this switching requires some expenditure of energy to accomplish, in just the same way that the addition of your energy was required to break free of one of your friends at the entrance to the forest.

Your two friends in the forest actually exist in your own mind as neurotransmitters down one pathway or another. Sometimes, especially for people new to the concept of Automatic Thinking, they seem not to exist as thoughts which can be put into words that your friends were using, but as visceral desires that are initially difficult to assign words to. But by assigning words to these strong desires, we are able to more cogently and elegantly reinforce the new friend, to resolve the conflicts which cause us to choose the old neural pathway over the new one.

And in doing so, you can blaze a mental super highway of sobriety, laying waste to your seedy "boulevard of broken dreams".



Peace,

C