Episode # 31- The Evidence File

Today I want to share a life hack for rewiring old programs in your brain.  It's called the evidence file.  You write down evidence against the current belief you want to change- whether on 3x5 cards in a file, or on a list somewhere you keep.  For example, I have an evidence file of nice things people have said to me or successes I've had.  So when my old program of "you're worthless" comes up, I can easily look at evidence that proves it's not true.  

 

You can use the evidence file to make a case against your pain.  Notice on purpose the times you DON'T have pain when you expected you would.  It is so much easier to notice and focus on when you do have pain.  But reacting to pain with strong emotions like frustration, worry or fear, just strengthens the neuronal connections that reinforce the pain is important.  Most of chronic pain is neuroplastic pain that is created by the brain because of emotional factors, but felt in the body as pain.  

 

The evidence file will help you decrease the strength of the neuronal connections in your brain, and rewire your brain to make less pain.

 

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Transcript- Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 31, The Evidence File. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. I have a little life hack for you today, something that I've started doing in my life that I really like. And so something that I wanted to share because I think maybe you'll like it too.
And it's called The Evidence File because basically our brain has a lot of beliefs already, these programs that it's formed. And our brain likes to find evidence to prove the thoughts that we already believe true. So subconsciously, that's what it will continue to do.
If we're not actively taking a look at what kinds of things we're thinking, then these programs will just run on default. About 95% of our thoughts are believed to be subconscious. And so I think of those as the programs that are running behind the scenes where what we're thinking is what we're seeing basically on the computer screen, and all these programs are running in the background that make all of those things work.
You can tell I know a lot about computers. So when we're working on changing our thoughts, it can be really difficult for our brain. It's hard for our brain to change to new thoughts sometimes.
I mean, sometimes we can just choose to believe something differently, and it really clicks, and we can change instantly. But sometimes with some of those really old programs that we've been thinking since our childhood, it's a little harder to change those. And so some of the programs may be negative things that we think about ourselves, or just qualities that we feel like are facts about ourselves that we don't really question anymore.
We just find more and more evidence to prove them. So if I have a belief that I'm not good at making new friends, then when I go to a place where there are more people that I don't know, I probably will act a little bit awkward, stick to myself, not want to talk to people, and not only find evidence that supports that I'm not good at making new friends, I'll actually create more of that evidence by the actions that I take by not talking to people. So what we're going to talk about today is a strategy to start being conscious of things that may go against our strong beliefs and to start compiling some evidence in the contrary.
And I heard this term, The Evidence File, from another podcast, Danielle Savory, and she was talking about putting, actually making a file, like in your file folders, and writing down things on a 3x5 card that were for her. She was talking about things that are good about yourself, compliments you've received, things that you're proud of, that you did well, successes that you had, and writing them each down, putting them all physically into this evidence file so that you could at times pick it up, take those out and read through them and remind your brain that there have been some positive things that have happened in your life and that people do in fact like you and you can succeed at things. Because remember, the natural state of the brain is to look for what is negative.
In fact, we feel very uncomfortable with being very happy, you know, just tolerating that sense of fulfillment and happiness and success. It actually feels quite uncomfortable for most of us. We have to build up our tolerance to thinking of ourselves in this new positive way.
I've started doing this and for me, it's less convenient to have a three by five card handy and put it into a file folder. So I just have a page of my planner that I've devoted to my evidence file of those positive things or times that I've been successful. So when I've worked with a client that says I've changed their life, I wrote down Katrina Ubell said that I've changed her life.
If you're in the Life Coach School group, you know who that is. She's kind of a big deal. She's a doctor.
She's someone that I worked with. She said I've changed her life. At yoga, someone said I had a beautiful flow.
My dad said that I've always been a teacher and as soon as I learn something, I want to teach it. Another client said I'm saving her life. One of my friends said, you are a great mom and I see it and know it.
Don't let anyone or anything try and tell your brain anything different. My neighbor once said that my vibe is like sitting by the ocean, so I love that. Just reading over those, like I'm smiling, I'm feeling a little energized.
These are actually things that people have said and having it in one place like that where I can just read through, then my brain can literally go from a state of, you know, kind of thinking I'm worthless and I'm not doing things right to having some hope and remembering why I love this work. So I have this list of positive things. And then I heard on another podcast about keeping a list of your taxes, the taxes you've paid.
And those are basically the negative things that have happened, times that are hard, struggles that you've had, things that you wouldn't call successes, maybe failures or things you can learn from. But not trying to look at it in that way of like, what can I learn from this? But really just recognizing this was a really hard time for me, and I really felt emotional about this, and I've paid my taxes in this way.
I always talk about how life is 50-50. So we're not coming out of it pain free. We're not coming out of it without a little bit of struggle or difficulty or hard times.
And so by writing those down, it reminds me that I've been through that, and so those positive things are also going to be coming because I've been paying my taxes. I had someone sign up to work with me and then just change his mind at the last minute. I had a course that I waited a little too long to sign up for, and the morning that I was like, okay, I'm signing up, I found out it was full.
I had someone not respond to a message that I sent, and I made that mean a whole bunch of things. And again, I'm not trying to self-coach myself here. I'm not trying to sugarcoat them or find the silver lining or say that was really good that that happened.
I'm just putting them all out there, listing them, because I know that for each of those times, I can just plan on something good happening to me because I've paid my tax. And for me, it just kind of feels good to write them down sometimes to be like, look, this sucked. I didn't like it.
And it was hard. And just validating that, you know, there are some negative things in my life. And that's part of being a human.
There's one more type of evidence file that I would suggest. If you are having chronic pain or disease, if you're struggling right now with something that you're working on, healing and understanding, then what I usually tell people to do is to be a detective against your pain. We are all very good at thinking of physical reasons why we feel the way we do in our body.
So I might think, oh, my knees are hurting because I was running up and down the stairs a lot yesterday, or my stomach is hurting. What did I eat recently? Or I woke up with this kink in my neck.
I must have slept on it wrong. So we are all very good at being detectives who notice pain and notice what could be going on physically that would cause it. And of course, we notice pain.
It gets our attention. But what I would suggest here is that you make a case against those things that you've been thinking cause your pain. So what I mean is if you say that it hurts when I sit for 30 minutes, then really be perceptive to what's going on throughout your day.
And maybe there's a time that you have sat for more than 30 minutes and not had pain. Like you're watching a really good movie that you're interested in, and you notice it's been 45 minutes since you last had pain or an hour. Maybe you notice that as you're making the bed, the kink in your neck doesn't hurt.
Most people, when I talk to them, and I really get them to think about if there's ever been a time that they expected to have the pain but they didn't, they can think of at least one time that it's happened. Maybe it's like first thing in the morning, you roll over and realize you don't have any pain. And then as soon as you have that thought and that realization, you roll back and, oh, the pain is there.
But we're very quick to notice the pain, not as adept at noticing when we don't have pain. So it's going to be a challenge to think that way. But, you know, maybe if it hurts to walk up the staircase, you might notice that the first two steps don't hurt.
It's not until the sixth step. Just be really, really interested and curious about when you don't feel pain. I think about, like, hunger.
Sometimes I can have a physical sensation of hunger, but then I get either, you know, very nervous about something or I'm having a good time doing something, my mind is distracted, and I'm not noticing the physical hunger. And I think the same can be happening with pain. And the purpose of building all this evidence against your pain is basically rewiring your brain to not think of things so structurally, to not automatically assume that the pain is because of a structural change in the body.
Because we know from MRI evidence that people who have structural changes don't necessarily have pain, even bulging discs or rotator cuff tears or misalignment of your spine. Most of us do have something physical that if we looked with an MRI, we could see some structural changes, but it doesn't mean that that's what's causing our pain. So I want you to clue in to those times, being very selective and writing them down and starting to make this case against your pain.
Another thing to think about is what is going on for you emotionally or psychologically at the time when you're getting pain. So using pain as that red flag or warning signal to check in and then instead of automatically thinking, oh, it was probably because I was squatting down six times in a row to pick things up that my knee is hurting, but maybe the stress of moving to a new place and the timeline that we have and, you know, all of these other psychological factors could be what's going on. This is a quote by John Sarno.
I suggest to patients that when they find themselves being aware of the pain, they must consciously forcefully shift their attention to something psychological, like something they're worried about, a chronic family or financial problem, a recurrent source of irritation, anything in the psychological realm. For that sends a message to the brain that they're no longer deceived by the pain. When that message reaches the depths of the mind, the subconscious, the pain ceases.
And modern neuroscience does back this up. When we feel pain and we respond with fear and we have anxiety and lots of stress about it, then it reinforces that neuroplastic pain that's created by the brain and felt in the body. But if we can continually react with not focusing on the pain as much, not having fear around the pain, not strengthening all of those neural networks that are associated with pain, up to 95% of the pain in chronic pain is because of this neuroplastic pain.
Alan Gordon, the Director of the Pain Psychology Center in LA, says, the majority of chronic pain is not caused by physical problems in the body, but by learned neural pathways in the brain. So when we're not reinforcing these neural pathways by thinking of all the physical causes that could be contributing to our pain, then we are rewiring our brain. When we can react with calmness and knowing that this is just something emotional that we're feeling in our body, because our reservoir of those emotions that we try to repress and the stress that we've been carrying around for so long is getting too high and we need to do something to get ourselves back in balance, then pain doesn't become such a threatening, scary, vast of unknown that continues to keep us in fear and creating more pain.
So think about your evidence file. Do you want to start creating an evidence file of those positive things that have happened to you, nice things that people have said, successes that you've had? Do you want to have a list of the taxes that you've paid, like I do, or do you want to also have a list like a detective making a case against your pain, the times that you didn't have pain when you might have expected to and the times that when you did feel pain and thought of a psychological cause, if the pain changed for you at all or lessened.
Rewiring our brains does take some effort. It takes some energy. It takes some focus.
It takes a shift in your mindset, but it is absolutely possible, and it is totally worth it. So start gathering your evidence. Start making an evidence file so you can rewire those old programs from your brain.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review.
And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.