I first came across the idea of false neural connections in the work of Tony Robbins. He spoke about a lady he worked with who’d lost her passion for her art work. Tracing it back it seemed as if her passion had been lost following a heartbreak in a romantic relationship.

Tony Robbins also made me aware of the way our brain tries to keep us safe. I’ve been learning that with the brain trying to keep us safe it’s up to us to make ourselves happy and we get happy when we’re making progress to who we are and what we really want from our lives which is where false neural connections like this come up.

Tony Robbins helped the lady see that to keep herself safe from the trauma she had experienced she had created a false neural connection between the pain of the break up and her passion. She had stopped being passionate as a way to avoid potential pain again.

In creating a vision of how she wanted to become a better artist and I guess create other rewarding relationships she could create a new meaning of what had occurred. She could see the truth that she was just with a person with different values who was never meant to be her long term partner.

She opened up the possibility that her passion was never the problem and the passion is separate to the trauma and something she needs to move to who she wants to be.

I was reminded of this as I was supported to work through one of my own recently. I was supported to see how I related an anxious state I go into to being ‘good’. As if when I am worrying about things it is part of what I’d identified as me being ‘a good person’.

A positive always comes out of a way of being and I could see how I felt myself to be good when I was being anxious. I’d created a neural connection between the two things.

In moving towards who I want to be I definitely do not want anxiety to be a general state so we were able to split apart and open up the idea that being good can go alongside things like caring, growth, being create and does not necessarily need to go alongside anxiety.

How about you ? Are you moving towards who you want to be and what you want ? Are their some possible false neural associations you may need to explore and move through ?