Your Feelings as the Soundtrack to Your Life
So for the final part of our series on Perception let us pull it altogether.
We’ve discovered that perception’ is not a neutral act of of simply observing or sensing our environment. In fact there are a whole host of cognitive filters impacting on how we perceive and respond to what we experience. At the heart of this process is our limbic system which is essentially responsible for determining potential threat. We also learned that our life experiences and history can effect what its perceived as threat.
The way I like to describe this is that your limbic system plays the soundtrack to your day to day life. It sets your Background Emotional Noise! Watch this short video to really appreciate what this means.
MAKE SURE THE SOUND IS ON!!
This short video plays the exact same scene twice, the only difference being the soundtrack. Did you notice a difference in how you responded to what you watched? How your perceptions changed based on how your mood changed?
Usually in the first version you are more likely to perceive aggression or grimacing faces, threat and peril etc. In the second version you will perceive smiles, laughter, calm and a far more enticing situation. Why not play it through again and pay specific attention to how you perceive facial expressions.
So what does all this have to do with Psycho-Sensory Therapy?
The ‘mood’ of our amygdala is often related very closely to our baseline levels of stress. If you are a worrier or an over thinker, or experiencing prolonged stress your amygdala will not feel ‘safe’ and your soundtrack will be threatening. Psycho-Sensory Therapy (PST) is effective in several ways at changing your soundtrack:
Firstly: PST offer a unique way for you to truly understand why you feel and behave the way you do focusing particularly on the underlying biology. When you understand what its going on and how you can transform those feelings you can have a sense of real control and hope for the future.
Secondly: Unlike more traditional talking therapies, Psycho-Sensory Therapy (PST) uses techniques that work directly with your limbic system not just your thoughts and cognitive processes. PST can create a calming effect in your amygdala. During our sessions I will give you highly effective techniques to create bubbles of calm on a daily basis and help you to ‘reset’ your emotional baseline and therefore your Background Emotional Noise
Finally: PST is very effective at dealing with specific triggers or events that have historically created trauma or that trigger anxiety when anticipating certain situations. I describe these as ’emotional bombs’. PST can be used to disarm these completely.
If you’d like to find out more about how you could change the soundtrack to your life book a complimentary appointment with me now.