The Path through the Field

CBT techniques can help us to rewire our brains, to forge new neural pathways. In this way, we create new, more healthy, helpful and beneficial habits and can replace habits and thought patterns that don't serve us. Strong neural pathways in the brain are forged over time by repetition; the longer and more often you repeat something, the stronger the neural pathway becomes.

Imagine two villages separated by a large field full of tall grasses. Between these two villages is a well trodden pathway made by the people travelling from one village to the other.  One day you realise that the current pathway is not the best path through the field, that another path would be more direct, or more pretty, or more useful in some way. So you begin to create a new path through the tall grass. At first you have to wade through the grasses, trampling them down and it takes much energy and effort. But the more you travel along the pathway, the easier, more natural and more effortless it becomes. In time and with repetition, the new pathway becomes as natural as the original one, and the former pathway becomes overgrown through disuse and eventually fades from memory. In this way, by repeatedly using CBT techniques, we can create new pathways: new habits, thoughts and behaviours, that genuinely support us in life.