Today I’m talking about two things, inspired by the AMAs from March. You’ll notice that they’re seemingly separate issues… but, actually, they’re built on the same neurological problem… with a similar new-connection-forming remedy.

So, first we’re going to expand briefly on a new topic – our personality fragmentation learning – as we concurrently go back in time to last month’s Ask Me Anything. You know, the one about defining and changing core beliefs. This month’s inquiry is building off the last. This time, we hear from our friend Leanne.

Hi Jess, March AMA question – what is the best way to craft a “mantra”/affirmation/new belief to replace a fucked-up core belief. i.e. what wording to choose, how powerfully to say it, how often to say it or write it.

Well this is pretty perfect timing. First I read your questions and went “what the fuck do I know. I’m already shocked that anything I’ve said so far has been useful.” Immediate overwhelm and imposter syndrome. But then, I started reading about Schema Therapy (shoutout to the Belgian listener who nudged me in this direction) and some of the information aligned perfectly with this question. Sort of. In the way that the book I’m reading started talking about neural infrastructure and plasticity. AND then I got deeper into fragmented personality research, and holy shit – all of this is relevant.

So, to talk about extremely basic neuroscience and not really answer your question yet… your memories, beliefs, and methods of operation are all stored in your head via neurological pathways, right? We build these meaty structures that act as electrical conduits as we learn, they connect to other meaty wiring structures in the brain, and transferring electrons down them causes various areas of the brain to light up to produce various recollections and responses.

Visualize this. think of a spider web in your brain. But, realize that there are MANY spider webs in your brain – all built to respond to different stimuli. Think of them changing into different colors or being highlighted one by one with a yellow light. Which web will be activate? The depends on the triggering circumstances. Stimuli “someone being ambiguous” leads to a very different activation than stimuli “someone smiling,” which is still very different than the stimuli “someone disrespecting my physical space.”

You can feel those different system activations just thinking about the triggers, right? Right. My skin is crawling thinking about someone in my personal bubble.

When we use those meaty brain pathways, we strengthen them. We’re more likely to continue activating already-historically-active connections. They become easier and easier to rely on. There is a lower required action potential to shuttle energy down this path, because it’s already primed and ready to go. Kind of like a siphon; if the water is already flowing, it pulls more water along with it. And we get somewhat rigidly “set” thoughts, behaviors, and emotions because we’re always enlisting the same instructional architecture.

This is also how your core beliefs work.

Last time I mentioned the ways that your beliefs are linked with your emotions and behaviors – so you might not need to have an explicit narrative about the sentiment to react to it, your emotional state, itself, can be a reflection of a core belief.

But. Why.

This is a result of your neural networks. Connections made over time between diverse areas of the brain that activate together.

Meaning, you see something in your environment, your brain immediately funnels electrons down the same ole same ole structures, and you wind up with the same pairing of memories, emotions, and behaviors that are intricately linked. The same thoughts. The same beliefs. The same behavioral outcomes. They are all hardwired together through experiential adaptations in brain structuring.

And this is why it’s so hard to change those FUCBs.

You actually have to build NEW STRUCTURES in order to circumvent the old patterns. You can’t just “change your mind” one day, in the way that we all like to imagine. You can’t instantaneously have different brain hardware to operate your software on. It has to be built.

So, I like to imagine that this is a lot like having a run down highway system already established, and later needing to create a series of overpasses to avoid the roads below. You’re trying to get to a new destination without automatically following the flow of traffic towards the terrorland on the south side of town. You have to build new structures.

And to finally answer your question… this is where those stupid counter beliefs have to come into play. This is the purpose of having mantras and counter-arguments with yourself for the sake of dispelling core beliefs by building new operating systems. Disregarding the old road (or the old spider web) and laying down pavement (or silk) for new ones.

So, how to do this? What language should you use to accomplish this goal? How often to repeat the new directions to yourself? How to navigate the new path with an internal reckoning of power?

Let me see if I can pull something out of my ass. Because whatdoIknow. I think use of language is super subjective and I also know nothing about neurolinguistics at this point.

But I have a few ideas.

First of all, we just talked about these not-very-flexible neural pathways that we’re trying to build alternative routes away from, yes? When we start traveling down the road that leads to “everything is horrible, self included,” we want to divert that energy elsewhere – to another set of thoughts, feelings, and actions. So, I’d recommend that the language you choose for you counter belief is semi-similar to the language of the old core belief you’re trying to get rid of.

You already have this framework that includes certain narratives in certain language – and you actually want to be triggered by the onset of this shitty neural network washing over you, so that you remember to re-right the belief with an alternative. So, using the same or similar language can be useful, because it’s more like making a “correction” to your thoughts than trying to impart a brand new, completely incohesive one.

We all know it’s harder to absorb new material in class when the lesson is conducted in unfamiliar language, because we’re trying to build the structures to understand the new terminology at the same time as developing the conceptual program, yeah? Much easier when the instructor uses words you can already understand and build from? Right.

And, of course… that verbal style is going to be different for everyone. It’s probably going to have a lot to do with your cultural and personal learning. They need to be words that you can absorb; ones that feel congruent with your normal life or at least familiar in a way where you aren’t questioning the definitions of what you’re saying or calling yourself a phony butthead. In other words, not language that feels like a covert narcissist, for example, would use. (To mention an upcoming episode.)

This is why, like I said last time, let’s probably not go with over the top positivity and flowery statements. If you’re listening to this show, I doubt that those sentiments actually mean jack shit to you.

You know me, I go with the tough love approach when talking to myself. Pretty evenly keeled, down to earth, here are facts and you need to calm on down. And that works for me, because those are the neurological frameworks I’ve already built in my head. My core beliefs are always pretty assholeish, so my counter beliefs are quite similarly worded in order to most efficiently build on the old neural pathways that have existed for 30 years.

Does that answer your question? It’s kind of a common sense answer filtered through neurobiology. Butttt it’s harder than that, and I know it.

What if your narrative isn’t that accessible, so you can’t just swap a word here and a word there to achieve the desired result? This is probably a more realistic method for most of us, who don’t pay that much attention to the words streaming between our ears being fucked up and who operate almost exclusively on implicit memory.

AKA – we’re good at encoding and retrieving the things we see, feel, and otherwise sense as memories, and we lag at processing or accessing wordy narratives as memories. Left brain, right brain problems.

So, using this information to our advantage… Which words can bring up images, emotional memories, and feelings that you can tap into? We probably don’t know offhand… but you can decide by following the feeling backwards to uncover the language that comes along for the ride.

When we have negative core beliefs, we feel negatively and see the world negatively, yes? Yes, emotions and cognitions go hand in hand like me and crumbs in bed. And the emotion we WANT to achieve is… the opposite of that. Both of those things, really. My crumby bed doesn’t make me feel great.

Hopeful and positive is the aim of the game, correct? Well, first of all, the language and the powerful feeling that you’re aiming for go hand in hand. Those issues are sort of one and the same. Your language will bring up your desired emotions or your emotions will bring up the right language.

So. What language should you choose? The language that makes you feel CONNECTED with what you’re telling yourself. The words that make you FEEL what you’re trying to convince your brain of. The verbiage that can connect your implicit memory factory with your explicit narrative contractor, so you integrate both.

This is what will really change your fucked up core belief over time. Repeating words doesn’t matter if you can’t acknowledge and appreciate them in your protein suit.

So, again, I think that if you’re struggling on this front, you should start with the emotion you want to feel, instead of searching for some magical combination of words that doesn’t sound like horseshit right out of the gates. We’re better at accessing our emotional memories than our verbal ones, which can actually be useful. You can make yourself feel things – good things, not only terrorizing things – and walk your way backwards to access other information that’s connected through those neural networks, instead of the other way around.

I think this is what I was trying to describe when I told you in the last core belief’s episode that it helps to imagine a time when you didn’t feel in line with that belief. Imagine a time in your past – even a fleeting moment – when you felt the way you want to feel presently. Free, excited, content with yourself, not horrified by your current or future life. When you did feel like you had value. Or you weren’t feeling destined to be poor and destitute. A time when you felt open, present, and optimistic.

And, from there – from the sensory memories – you can pull out other information from your associated neural web, like the beliefs that need to be examined or the words that make you feel like a badass.

So, I think that when you feel the emotion of a core belief wash over you, it’s really helpful to try to connect to an oppositionally powerful memory. It could be as simple as mine – a specific memory of running in the woods on a warm, damp, semi-tropical morning, surrounded by dark trees and contrasting springtime leaves, feeling free and powerful in my body, with no one else in the entire park. Peace, quiet, beautiful imagery, organic smells, freedom from work, social, and social pressures.

And from this place, I like to develop my counter-narratives. Remembering that there was a point in time when I felt this way and using it as an anchor, I can draw up the same emotional state from my gut to the top of my skull.

I find that from this position, it’s not so hard to have meaningful, connective, functional and realistic thoughts flow through this head. “Ah, life’s not so bad. I am more than working. I am more than social disappointment. I am more than struggling to feed myself. I can be alive, content, in control, and in love with everything around me. I don’t have to worry all the time. I don’t need to be on edge. I’m not always doing something wrong. It’s okay for me to just be here, being me, doing my best.”

In a general sense, I just laid the groundwork for developing useful mantras with that little practice. I can parse out pieces of those thoughts and feelings, and create similarly worded phrases that bring me back to the same state of mind or recollection of existing. It’s not so much about creating detailed stories for yourself, as it’s about creating shortcuts to a good emotional state. Anchors. Catalysts to get back into a healthy, integrated, not fucking terrified place.

Does that make sense? It’s like using a sensory and emotional anchor from your past to change your thoughts in the present, and then using your own chosen variety of language – words that you actually connect with, that feel similar to the normal language you use, words that maybe even streamed through your head in that peaceful moment – to create a new verbal anchor that will easily pull you back into the sensations of that visual and emotional moment down the road.

Figure, if you’re feeling better, you’ve just effectively switched programs in your head. You’ve changed the neural network; activating a new pathway from how you want to feel to the narrative you’re developing. So, through repetition, you’re building new network connections between your left and right hemispheres and new neural webs to serve as the framework for how you see and respond to the world.

And this is how you can permanently change your implicit reactions to things – your core beliefs, your personality parts, and so much more.

The example I gave is super generic, but if you have a specific belief that you recently discovered and want to create a counter mantra for, focus on that. So, if you’re feeling like you’re doomed to be alone because all of your relationships are too marred by your trauma responses and inherent dislikability… think of a counter example, a time when you felt and embodied the exact opposite of that. If you’re telling me that’s never happened, you’re full of it. There is a time, even if it’s so brief. You know there is.

For example, when I would go to shows and start running into everyone I knew, have a blast acting entirely like myself, and sing my heart out arm in arm with my comrades… and then have a raging party afterwards with all the people I’m most comfortable with. I actually felt like I was allowed to be me, I was accepted, and I was part of something larger than myself.

Drawing up those memories of feeling like one cohesive Jess – a rough and tumble dirt kid with few resources but many friends and interests born of the struggles – I can feel the empowerment build. I can feel the… connections to lost parts of myself reorient themselves (more on that in another episode). I can think of words that little show-going party animal would have spoken.

And I can use them to remind myself – “You’re not a hopeless loser, loser. You’re capable of making and maintaining connections. You’re embraced when you act like yourself. You’re socially successful when you’re actually aware of the moment, uninhibited, and allowed to be you.” Which, honestly, I’ll probably reduce to a shortened, “Stop hating yourself, you’re fucking fine.” for practical in-the-moment corrections.

Boom, new mantras. Remembering them or repeating them puts me back in that historical memory and reminds me that I’ve been capable of things in the past that I want to accomplish in the future. My old core belief has been disproven. And I have a verbal anchor to rapidly remind me to get back into the emotional state of this epiphany moment.

And then… I just need to continue forcing this realization down my own throat until the neuropathways develop in my brain that automatically circumvent the old core belief, in the first place. Every time I start wandering in the wrong direction, my energy needs to be consciously diverted away from the old architecture – the old, banged up highways below – and redirected towards the sparkly new overpass that tells me I’m a human worthy of social connection. Over and over and over again. Until my brain forgets the directions to reach that decrepit old roadway, in the first place.

Does this make any sense? Or have I made the issue more complicated?

I guess the long and short answer is – I can’t tell you what language to use. But a cooperative relationship between the present you and the younger you probably can.

First, you have to tap into that place of empowerment and counter-emotion to shut down whatever unique combination of self-hatred and shame your core belief normally elicits, preferably with a historical memory, if you have a safe one. Feel those circumstances. Embody that version of you. And find the natural wording that would come to you, both in that moment and in the present. Then, turn it on it’s head and feel those new phrases elicit the calm feeling you’re aiming for.

Your emotional response will be the indicator that you’ve been successful. If you can feel a relief, a “shift” into a new mental program, essentially, you’ve done it! You’ve found words that matter to you and can forge a new neural connection in your brain based on the existing structures. So, pay attention to your inner sensations. When you connect to what you’re telling yourself, you’ll feel it. I promise.

Okay, as for how often to repeat the process and for how long… ugggggghhhhh. I have no goddamn clue.

Honestly. I think researchers keep changing this, but generally say it takes 3-4 weeks to form new habits? This core belief nonsense would fall into that category of semi-reflexive responding, but I don’t know how quickly any human can do this work. It’s going to be a case by case basis, undoubtedly. Like I mentioned a few minutes ago – your end goal is to build those new, healthy brain structures that bypass the diseased ones – and that’s going to take different time and energetic commitments depending on the individual, their focus, their biology, and their level of emotional upset.

Also, their level of dissociation and parts switching. Going to keep throwing it out there. It’ll make sense in a few weeks, you’ll want to relisten to this episode, and everything will suddenly click into the theory behind fragmented personality. Just watch.

But. Like anything, I think we can all assume your progress will move faster if you repeat the process frequently and with as much intention as possible. As in, if you’re going to repeat your mantras every day at a set point in time… okay, that might fast track your core belief reset… but not if it becomes so routine (i.e. forced and uninspired) that you zone out, repeat the mantras on autopilot, but don’t do the associated inner work.

Again, I think you really need to feel what you’re telling yourself and visualize it. So, if you’re just playing a mantra tape in the background to the point that it becomes white noise, you’re not actively accomplishing anything. I don’t believe this is a passive process that you can just “hypnotize” yourself through, or implant in your own brain without effort.

So, if you can’t do all the work that I’ve discussed too many times now – including putting yourself back in old, worn out shoes – I don’t think counter belief work is going to be effective. It’s just going to be… words. The same as when you read some advice online and think “well, that’s something” before forgetting and never thinking of it again.

This is really about… I’m sorry to keep mentioning it… getting in touch with some forgotten parts of your personality and re-righting them in alignment with your adult, comprehensive self. And none of that happens without a lot of inner emotional work. Yeah, our least favorite thing ever!

The other thing I mentioned that will impact effectiveness, on top of your degree of focus, is your current emotional state.

Fact: there is a window of emotional activation where we can accept and integrate information. You’re not making things up when you feel like being anxious, depressed, sad or stressed stops your brain from absorbing details or compiling them into something useful. That’s real. That’s completely proven by science. When you’re upset, your emotional limbic center has taken all the resources from your thinking-man prefrontal cortex and emotional integration center – the lateral prefrontal cortex – and had a field day with system arousal that doesn’t allow information integration.

So, if you’re completely immersed in the depths of your core belief crises right now (or, in any kind of trauma state) – feeling riled up with screaming sensations of danger, doom, and defeat… your mantras aren’t going to do shit until you bring yourself back to a steadier emotional level.

You have to recenter yourself before you can do the work. Juuuuuust like the stabilization phase that’s generally necessary in trauma therapy before anything else can take place. If your central nervous system is screaming “doom,” your brain is hijacked by explosive and obstinate terrorists, not ready to listen to the well-meaning instructions of the control tower.

I mean, just try to force new information or ideas on an anxious soul and god fucking help you. If I’m in an aroused emotional state, I’m like the Hindenburg, just ready to explode as soon as someone lights a match with their suggestions or attempts at being helpful. I think we’ve probably all seen that from the inside and the outside of many, many experiences. (Don’t shame spiral right now, thinking of your own examples – kay thanks)

Soooo… That’s why I don’t think there’s a time of day, frequency, or a number of repetitions that is going to work for anybody. Even YOU probably won’t be in the right state of mind to consistently run through your mantras in a meaningful way day after day, at a specific time.

Again, who knows what personality you’re expressing this day or this moment – do they have the same skill and dedication necessary to do the inner work? Do they remember that you were supposed to be doing anything differently? Are they repeating a different core belief than yesterday? Probably, because I think our parts are literally the same things as our FUCBs. But it’s hard to tell until you’re in it.

If we could predictably control our mental, memorable, and cognitive states, I don’t think any of us would be Traumatized Motherfuckers.

All of this is to say, if you want to do this shitty work, I think you need to prime yourself first.

I would say, if you want to have successful counter-belief work take place – you want to build those new neuroconnections as efficiently as possible – either you need to restrict your concerted efforts to the periods when you just naturally happen to be emotionally chilled and open, and have the present wherewithal to recognize that this is a good time… but I would estimate that doesn’t happen very often for us. Which will really slow down our progress, if we’re waiting for the two emotionally peaceful days we’re granted each year.

OR you need to learn how to successfully use your grounding practices first.

If you can bring yourself down from a heightened state, you can open the door to doing hard inner and emotional jobs.

The good news is, again, having connected your mantra to a point in time when you were feeling content in one way or another… this can become a grounding practice, all on its own. Visualize that moment, try to feel it again. The visual and sensory version of your mantra should settle some of your nerves and bring you to a less activated state, where you can then proceed with the narrative version and try to fully absorb the lesson you want to learn.

So, in a bafflingly vicious cycle, I’m saying that I think you can use your counter belief as a memory anchor to ground yourself and calm your system to the point where you can then feel and integrate the verbal message of the counter belief. When you notice the shitty energy state you’re suddenly in, you use your mantra to travel back through previously recollected instances of empowerment and re-regulate your nervous system. Then, you can actually APPLY the mantra, in narrative form, once your body has settled.

Jesus, I still don’t know if any of this made any sense. At this point, it’s easy for me to feel it and to do it myself, but I’m not so sure that describing it can impart the same process in others.

Basically, it all comes down to emotional and cognitive feedback. Your level of intention. Your degree of seriousness. Your dedication to doing difficult private work. Your presence and awareness in the process of catching and correcting yourself.

If you just go through the motions, it’s not going to do shit.

This is why I’m afraid of using the word “mantra,” and giving people the idea that mindless repetition will help. It won’t. It’s like cramming for an exam 5 minutes before the test – you’ll be able to access that information for the next half an hour and then never again for the rest of your life. If you don’t truly sow the emotional seeds that go with the verbal sentiment you’re trying to program, you’re going to forget in no time flat when your inner *feeling* state pushes you back to that old, ugly cognitive pathway you want to avoid.

So, how often should you repeat mantras or counter beliefs? And for how long?

Well, how often are you in the right place to do the right work? I think most of us have a stop and go approach to life, rather than a steady march forwards. And that’s going to give us stop and go positive results unless we ground our shit and learn to switch back and forth between destructive and beneficial neural networks.

Anyways. Excellent questions and I hope I answered them. I’m sorry that there’s nothing super definitive to say. Like everything in trauma, this really is a person by person process that will be effective depending on your own circumstances and commitment. I think. I don’t know. I’m going to get out of the business of trying to give people advice one of these weeks.

But, first, I’m going to come back to talk about the OTHER AMA I received from Leanna. It’s a whole other conversation. Let me put on my “pretend I can tell you what you need when most of the time I’m too dissociated to know who I even am” hat one more time. We’re going to talk about behavioral maintenance after using ABA in trauma management. Catch you in a minute.

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Second question.

Jess – I’m finding that ABC’ing certain behaviours I don’t like in myself is definitely causing them to lessen, almost disappear, which is great. My question is, how long should I keep ABC’ing them to make sure I don’t fall back into these bad habits which mostly now only appear if I’m anxious or fatigued. 6 months? A year? Forever?

Two questions in one month? Ehhh I don’t know.

JK. I love Leanna, she’s been a Patreon and source of constant support from the beginning. She can expect answers from me anytime.

So, first of all, this is FUCKING AWESOME TO HEAR! Hell yeah. I have gotten some good feedback on the ABA practices helping people to learn things about themselves – and hearing that just noticing has made so many of your problem behaviors disappear is really encouraging. Thanks for the update on trying out that data driven trauma recovery system!

But, let me just say one thing first.

Last month I had two folks ask me anything about the controversy of Applied Behavior Analysis as it’s applied to Autism treatment, which, honestly, was news to me. Not really something they’re describing in my program, and from what I’ve seen on the internet, the complaints are pretty few and far between… but I could be wrong about that.

Anyways, I didn’t want to devote a whole AMA to the questions, because, well… frankly, I had core beliefs to focus on. So, at the time, I answered those AMAs individually, but didn’t see a need to talk about it publicly. Buttfuckit, here’s an opportunity to address it.

From what I can tell, the complaint about ABA in autism treatment is that practitioners don’t concentrate on the inner experiences of their clients and reduce them to behavioral robots, essentially. It’s compared to dog training. Which… I mean… behavioral training basically is the same process across species, so. Okay. True.

BUT this literally is what I’ve been speaking against. I think it’s ridiculous to exclude emotional, motivational, and cognitive worlds and have any understanding of behavior. Clearly, you don’t have one without the others. Even with dogs. Like I’ve said, I’m not an advocate of reducing everything to observable behaviors OR using punishment as the prevailing consequence, so there are those concerns, dispelled.

The other thing is… the nature of the controversy doesn’t apply to what I’ve been talking about doing.

I’m not talking about using ABA on other people, where you could disregard their experience or apply excessive force, in theory. I’m talking about using it on yourself. And the entire focus is on noticing your wants, needs, thoughts, and emotions, and using any degree of bodily awareness to honor them. Like we usually don’t.

So, I don’t exactly understand how it could be feared that one would abuse one’s self by noticing their internal landscape in conjunction with behavioral actions. The circumstances inherently don’t line up between autistic applications of a practitioner working with a client, and the self-applications that I’m pushing for.

And, to just take this one step further… Let’s be fucking honest. The ways we’ve all been living with ourselves WITHOUT any emotional and behavioral awareness have probably been extremely self-abusive this entire lifetime. A lot of punishment that we apply to ourselves for unwanted behaviors we don’t understand. So, the idea that tracking your distress levels and trying to change conditions to lessen the daily upset is somehow going to cause you further harm? How. It can’t even begin to be on par with my self-abusive experiences living with an unexamined brain, a gnarly inner critic, and self-destructive tendencies.

So, that’s that. Wanted to address it. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t know how the autistic ABA controversy is related to using ABA to notice your internal states switching.

And, to be perfectly clear, I never have and never will work with autistic treatment programs because that is not my interest. Do not let me near your children, you know how I speak and act. Soooo… I can’t answer for problems in completely different applications. I literally know nothing about them.

Hearty shrug. And I’ll leave it there.

Anyways, back to Leanne’s question about how long to perform your ABA processes and when you’re safe to quit. Now, I don’t want to get too annoying, but your question falls right in line with other important Applied Behavior Analysis principles and practices; namely, the need for monitoring progress, determining best generalization and maintenance plans, and deciding when to terminate the intervention. Important parts of teaching someone new behaviors long-term and with minimal intrusion.

As usual, I wish I had across-the-board answers to give you, but clearly I never do. So, forgive the crap, but I’m going to give you the ABA rundown about how to test and decide if you’re ready to stop on your own. Because I can’t tell you if a month, 6 months, or ten years are going to fix anyone issues forever.

In ABA, you determine if generalization has taken place (i.e. the behavior will be applied across a variety of environments and circumstances) and if maintenance is necessary (as in, how much intervention is necessary to keep the desired level of behavioral response) by holding treatment and checking what happens to your baseline, control condition without it.

So, if your baseline was being anxious to the point of agoraphobia, but the experimental condition of monitoring your ABCs and making changes to your external stimulation kept the destructive thoughts and feelings at bay successfully enough to leave the house… that’s the beginning of demonstrating a functional relationship. Showing a correlation between changing some variable and receiving a different behavioral outcome.

But we don’t know how effective or encompassing the change is, only that TODAY, under these circumstances and under express control of the independent variable, we receive the desired dependent variable alteration.

That means nothing about how your behaviors will be TOMORROW or a year from now. If it’s snowing outside. If it’s a major holiday. If you just went through a breakup. If you didn’t sleep well. If you’re hungry. If that one song reminded you of that horrific night of pure tequila. Or, if you aren’t pointedly putting yourself through the ABA gamut with annoying worksheets in hand. The stimuli, the consequences, and your reflexive behaviors will all change the outcome – even if you’ve practiced the behavioral change before.

Think of practicing an instrument or typing on a keyboard – you’re amazing at it every day when you practice by yourself, giving it zero thought. As soon as someone else is in the room, your internal and external stimulation conditions completely change. Suddenly, the behavior isn’t so easy to enact with perfection, because your brain goes somewhere else. A different neural pathway is being utilized. Now you actually can’t remember how your fingers are supposed to work. It seems like you’ve never touched a trombone or a computer before in your life, even though you were pretty sure you’ve done it every day for the past several decades.

This is why we have to figure out the need for behavioral maintenance and generalization.

So, back to the beginning. You’ve managed to circumvent the problematic behavior of locking yourself indoors because you’ve been paying attention to your inner state and making alterations to the stimuli, meaning you never wind up so overwhelmed that you can’t walk outside. You’ve been doing it every day. You feel amazing about it. You now understand that this fearful pattern of thinking or checking that horrifying news update will cause you to shut down and lock the front door. You feel good about your progress. You wonder if you’re “cured.”

One way to check.

If you withdraw the experimental condition and stop checking in on your ABC’s. If you stop making minute internal corrections or trying to alter the stimuli around you… will the anxious and agoraphobic behavior return to baseline levels?

If yes, you need to maintain the intervention.

If no, you might be ready to terminate treatment – at least, for now.

If “sometimes”… you might need to further generalize the behavior and/or have intermittent maintenance.

As in, some mornings internal or external stimulation is consistent with you behaving like a non-agoraphobe. Other mornings, there’s an antecedent condition that’s either sparking the unwanted agoraphobic behavior or NOT bringing up the “empowered to leave my apartment” behavior. This means the behavior has not been generalized to enough stimuli conditions to be a go-to automatic reaction.

Know what I’m saying?

How do you fix this? Keep practicing, unfortunately. You need to overcome that new impulse of Antecedent A leads to Behavior B of hiding inside. Generalize your behavioral response of leaving the front door to as many stimuli as possible with exposure and practice. Then, you won’t be at the mercy of the weather, world events, personal stress, environmental frustrations, or whatever it is that can push you off-kilter. Eventually, after making the correction a thousand times, you won’t care if someone else is in the room when you’re blowing your trumpet.

Another possible way to deal with “sometimes” successes after removing the intervention…

You also might need to have occasional intervention practices. As in, for two months you feel amazing and don’t notice any agoraphobic behaviors, so you don’t feel the need to integrate obnoxious worksheets into your life. And then one day, you’re suddenly not feeling so strong. You’re feeling upset and wanting to stay indoors. The neural network that causes you to shutdown and be unseen is extremely active and you don’t like it.

Welp, go back to the ABC’s. Restart your practice. Figure out if there’s new stimuli messing things up, or if you simply fell back onto old neurological infrastructures like a bad habit. Get your head back on track. Reinstitute your interventions. Keep at them until your desired behaviors are predictably demonstrated again at a steady reporting level. As in, you aren’t crippled by anxiety one day and fine the next – you’re functional across the board.

Get back to a good place where your wanted behavioral pattern feels easy as pie, and consider withdrawing your ABC treatment again.

Basically… you’re going to have to determine all of these things for yourself. How long to apply treatment? How often? You’ll need to experiment with yourself. If you find yourself living in a more cohesive and healthy way without worrying about your ABA practices, I would recommend that you try to go a few days without and see what happens. Make adjustments based on what you see.

And, please, don’t worry if you feel like this is a two steps forward, one step backwards process. Uh, everything in trauma recovery is – again, those heavily utilized brain connections are stubborn. It feels easy to get on the right track… until anything happens in our lives that brings up old memories, fears, or thought patterns. Suddenly your consciousness splits, you fall back on survival hormones, and start lighting up dysfunctional pathways in your head. Next thing you know, you haven’t left the house in a week and didn’t even realize it happened.

Don’t freak out. Don’t consider this a lifetime loss. Don’t think it’s a sign of incapacity to heal. It’s just normal trauma brain bullshit. Actually, it’s your dissociated identity parts switching, most likely. Which is coming at you SO HOT in the next few weeks.

But, long story short… I do think that any trauma recovery practice is probably a lifetime process. I don’t think you have to do them every day. But I do feel like old patterns will remerge when you least expect it, and I doubt some of our steadily programmed impulses ever fully go away. Like a pencil, you can erase the graphite, but the impression is still always there. You notice it when conditions are right (or, in our cases, wrong).

How long should you worry about ABA and ABCs? None days. Do not be concerned about them at all. They’re just a tool.

But how long should you keep those ideas in your back pocket? I recommend forever.

The excellent news being, again, that these processes become semi-automatic over time. So you won’t need to carry my dumb worksheets around.

You’ll just need to remember to practice checking in with yourself, noticing your inner and outer stimulation, and making alterations in the moment. Which, truly, as fucking dumb, abstract, and overall bullshitty as this sounds… is very possible and very necessary.

If you know that talking to your mom makes you afraid to leave the house from your ABC work… well, don’t forget that she’s a miserable influence when you’re not doing your ABC work. If you have a certain fluttery feeling that precedes your terror spiral, well, don’t forget to be on the lookout for that sensation before it takes over your world.

If you’ve practiced enough, you won’t. You’ll form the connections necessary to safely lead you away from the pathway that says “sit on the couch, it’s the only safe place” to the junction that tells you, “this is a feeling you have often, it doesn’t mean you need to be afraid, you’re catastrophizing right now.”

And that’s the end goal. Understanding your triggering stimuli. Creating new responses. New automatic programs. And a new level of detection system sensitivity.

Then get rid of this annoying ABA talk and just live. You’ve got the tools you need, you just needed a system for building them and knowing when they should be applied.

Does this answer anything? Or am I just telling you to figure it out yourself based on what does and doesn’t work after you find out the hard way? Unsure. But not saying that tough love answer is necessarily wrong. I don’t think there’s a single answer that’s right.

To comment really quickly on a piece of information that you included in the original question… As far as now knowing that these habits take place when you’re anxious or fatigued thanks to the ABA practice… Well that’s a great piece of information to have. Your will power is decreased, your impulsivity is increased, and you’re more likely to follow those ugly brick trails to destructive behavioral patterns.

Just knowing that, alone, can serve as an anchor. If you detect the exhaustion or anxiety rising up, you can train yourself to use that as an antecedent stimuli to ground yourself or engage in another healthy behavior. Hopefully, helping you to avoid whatever the bad habit is, either by recentering yourself in a better internal condition or literally blocking the behavior’s occurrence by putting yourself into a different environment, where it isn’t possible. (I’m thinking of myself smoking right now).

If I detect my usual trigger – being stressed or frustrated – and don’t want to follow the automatic habit of lighting up a cigarette, I can either ground myself to a less pissed off place or I can chuck my pack into the trunk of the moving vehicle and focus on singing, instead.

Right there, I didn’t need to run through all my ABC’s. I’ve done it before. I know what creates problems based on prior experience. I can just change my antecedents and behavioral options in the moment to keep the problem habit at bay.

Knowing how your inner states affect your outer actions and vice-versa is a powerful discovery, guys. Can’t recommend it highly enough. Even if you hate my ABA talk, you’ll need to forge the connection between your private world and the physical one around you someday. To keep harping on this… PARTS THEORY IS COMING. We’re going to be talking about this dual-noticing process a lot. Which is the fancy name for what I started telling you to do via ABA, it turns out.

I recommend you stop procrastinating and get started like Leanne. She’s a star Motherfucker. Top of the class. Love you Leanne! Thanks again for your question! And for all your super kind and supportive words. Seriously, you’re like my personal cheerleader.

Now, before I get too much further into this topic and ruin my own day by getting ahead of myself with overwhelming upcoming episode notes that make me respond with anxiously dysfunctional behaviors, I’m going to stop.