Scientific Research Validates The Linden Method's Science (A revolution in neuroscience: reprogramming the subconscious mind)

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By Charles Linden, CEO, The Linden Centers

"Science has focused on brain function more than any other aspect of human life for centuries and we would be lying if we said that we understand how the brain works; some things we understand, others we don't have any clue about. The brain is, simply put, plumbing. It consists of an incredible number of pipe-work systems which are pruned and added to in order to store or render obsolete memories, behaviors and learning.

We are the products of our environments and every second we are alive causes constant and infinite changes to occur in our minds. Neural pathways are built and pruned as our life experiences grow. Subconscious decisions are made whether to retain or discard learning… we don't even have to become involved consciously with this decision making process, it all happens outside of our consciousness, deep within our brains. We presume that we are totally in control with every aspect of our lives and bodies, but, the truth is that we are not. Sure, we can decide what we do and where we go, but we are never in command of what happens 'behind the scenes' in the subconscious mind… or are we?

Your anxiety disorder has been caused by an initial catalyst which provided you with a 'fight or flight' response and this was consciously evident… you may remember it. Once you made the conscious connection between this anxious reaction and your perception of fear and danger… from this point on, your subconscious mind started doing all the decision making for you.

Your subconscious mind decided to rewire your brain to create a connection between your high anxiety and your perception of that behavior and once you reacted with fear of the fear, neural pathways began 'knitting' new behaviors into your subconscious mind… autonomic behaviors of fear.

This behavior is called Operant Conditioning, a process discovered and studied by Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Skinner was an American psychologist who pioneered research and advocated behaviorism which concentrates on understanding how behavior is the manifestation of environmental history with regard to the experience of consequences. In a nutshell, Skinner showed how carrying out certain behaviors followed by a reinforcing stimuli would 'etch' that behavior into the mind as neural pathways of memory and habit are constructed.

What is the Amygdala and what does it have to do with anxiety?

The Amygdalae are actually a pair of organs in the brain. They perform an integral role in the production, processing and storage of emotional reactions.

I liken the Amygdala to the body's anxiety thermostat. Thermostats typically control temperature, but the Amygdalae regulate anxiety emotion in humans. When confronted with something which could represent a danger, the sensory organs send nerve impulses to the Amygdalae in order to have it make a split second decision as to whether the anxiety reaction, often called the 'fight or flight response' would be appropriate. Once the decision is made to react with anxiety, a surge of adrenalin causes a raft of physiological changes within the body and mind which prepares us for either fighting or fleeing from the danger present. In humans, the amygdalae perform primary roles in the formation and storage of memories associated with emotional events. Research indicates that, during fear conditioning, sensory stimuli reach the amygdalae, where they form associations with memories of the stimuli. The association between the anxious catalyst and the anxiety reaction causes the memory to become fixed in the brain.

The amygdalae also are involved in the modulation of memory creation. It appears that emotional arousal following the learning event influences the strength of the subsequent memory for that event. Greater emotional arousal following a learning event enhances a person's retention of that event. Experiments have shown that administration of stress hormones to mice immediately after they learn something enhances their retention when they are tested two days later.

This means that if you experience an event and react with anxiety, that connection becomes ingrained into the mind much more effectively… this is what causes an anxiety disorder.

The amygdalae, especially the basolateral nuclei, are involved in mediating the effects of emotional arousal on the strength of the memory for the event, as shown by many laboratories including that of James McGaugh. These laboratories have trained animals on a variety of learning tasks and found that drugs injected into the amygdala after training affect the animals' subsequent retention of the task. These tasks include basic classical conditioning tasks such as inhibitory avoidance, where a rat learns to associate a mild footshock with a particular compartment of an apparatus, and more complex tasks such as spatial or cued water maze, where a rat learns to swim to a platform to escape the water. If a drug that activates the amygdalae is injected into the amygdalae, the animals had better memory for the training in the task. If a drug that inactivates the amygdalae is injected, the animals had impaired memory for the task.

With advances in neuroimaging technology such as MRI, neuroscientists have made significant findings concerning the amygdala in the human brain. Consensus of data shows the amygdala has a substantial role in mental states, and is related to many psychological disorders such as anxiety disorders. In 2006, researchers observed hyperactivity in the amygdala when patients were shown threatening faces or confronted with frightening situations. Patients with more severe social phobia showed a correlation with increased response in the amygdala. Similarly, depressed patients showed exaggerated left amygdala activity when interpreting emotions for all faces, and especially for fearful faces Studies in 2004 and 2006 showed that normal subjects exposed to images of frightened faces or faces of people from another race will show increased activity of the amygdala, even if that exposure is subliminal.

So, you will understand that the Amygdalae play a vital role in the formation and perpetuation of anxiety conditions. That being the case, we can say that by changing the reaction of the Amygdalae in anxiety disorder, we can eliminate the inappropriate anxious reaction.

The Amygdalae only respond to sensory input, which means that any curative device MUST, without question, de-program the anxious response in the Amygdalae and replace it with a more appropriate response by reprogramming that response through behavior.

So reversing the process which causes the formation of an anxiety disorder in the Amygdalae will also render obsolete and destroy the stored, anxious response.

But how can this be done effectively?

How? In the EXACT same way that your anxiety condition was 'learned' in the first place.

Through a constantly executed group of simple rules, the sensory organs can be manipulated to send messages to the Amygdalae which remove the anxious reaction completely.

THIS IS THE CURE FOR ANXIETY DISORDER

Let's look at other techniques for anxiety management/elimination and compare them with this scientifically proven method.

Therapy – Therapy exposes the original catalyst for the anxiety as the 'cause' and discusses ways to address that event through talking about it. This only serves to reinforce the anxious habit in the Amygdala by consciously 'reminding' the subconscious mind that it is anxious.

Medication – medication is chemical. Chemical changes which enter via the bloodstream or short lived, untargeted and inappropriate. How can medication reach the specific neural pathways in the brain nd amygdala, selecting them amongst billions of others accurately and somehow, presumably with the help of a miracle, eliminate those and only those behaviors? Describing this as a possibility is ludicrous, I am sure you will agree.

Direct Amygdala reprogramming – as explained above. Targets the Amygdalae directly. Reverses the formation of the anxiety response and replaces the inappropriate anxious response with appropriate responses to permanently eliminate anxiety, panic, phobias and obsessive behaviors and all of the physical and psychological manifestations of those conditions."

Charles Linden
Author of The Linden Method^® and
CEO of The Linden Centers