The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

by Gabor Maté

While Dr. Schwartz originally developed these steps for healing obsessive-compulsive disorder, they readily lend themselves to reprogramming other kinds of thought loops as well. After all, negative thinking has a more-than-obsessive quality: we are compelled to it, over and over, despite deriving no pleasure from it. The idea is to retrain the brain, to strengthen through conscious effort the prefrontal cortex’s capacity to break out of a past-based trance and repatriate us to the present. Any repetitively self-deprecating thought pattern can be worked with in this way. The method is an experiential one, requiring commitment and mindfulness. It needs to be not only done but fully experienced. Only when attention is present can the mind rewire the brain. “Conscious attention must be paid,” Jeffrey Schwartz insists. “Therein lies the key. Physical changes in the brain depend for their creation on a mental state in the mind—the state called attention. Paying attention matters.”