The NeuroChange Pathway to Transformation
Many people long for genuine and lasting change in their lives; however, the guidance they receive from counselors, coaches, the church, self-help books, and friends is often ineffective because it is based on an outdated understanding of how the brain changes. As a result, this advice leads to short-lived change that addresses limited aspects of their lives.
The Makin Institute for NeuroChange has introduced a groundbreaking framework to address problems at their core and experience genuine change: The NeuroChange Pathway to Transformation. The framework synthesizes current research from more than 50 disciplines, models, and areas of study in neuroscience, counseling, executive coaching, leadership, business, and theology.
With the NeuroChange Pathway strategies, skills, and techniques, those in the helping professions—counseling, coaching, social work, ministry, and leadership—can accelerate and deepen lasting change in the people they serve.
Core Emotional Learnings & Core Character Traits
As we journey through life, our relational encounters shape Core Emotional Learnings in four fundamental aspects of our personality called Core Character Traits:
- Attachment – our ability to bond with others, trusting relationships as a secure place to process emotion and have needs met.
- Separation – how we differentiate ourselves from others, enjoying our individuality and maintaining boundaries.
- Integration – how we deal with negative realities like failure, weakness, sin, and hurtful experiences.
- Authority – our agency and confidence to handle challenging situations, our passion and expertise in our work, and our mutuality in relationships.
The Core Emotional Learnings expressed through the Core Character Traits become the lens through which we experience ourselves and others and interact with the world. We are rarely aware of these learnings on a cognitive level, but we feel them intensely, and they drive our thoughts, behaviors, and daily decisions.
When our relational encounters are positive—especially early memories and significant life events—our Core Emotional Learnings are healthy. They produce strong attachment, separation, integration, and authority, resulting in healthy, well-adjusted thoughts, behaviors, and interactions with other people. However, sometimes our relational experiences are painful or damaging, leading to distorted Core Emotional Learnings and deficits in our attachment, separation, integration, and authority. Consequently, we may experience agonizing emotions, distorted thoughts, or exhibit maladaptive behaviors. These can all be the symptoms we try to address and change.
Yet, the problem is never the problem. These symptoms merely point to underlying deficits in our Core Character Traits. Once they are strengthened, the symptoms decrease. Our Core Emotional Learnings heal or rewire the same way they formed originally: in the context of emotional, relational experiences.
Neuroplasticity & Memory Reconsolidation
The NeuroChange Pathway to Transformation harnesses the brain’s power to rewire itself, called neuroplasticity, through Memory Reconsolidation. Memory reconsolidation is the mechanism for grace God designed in our brains.
When we recall emotionally distressing relational experiences, our brains enter a pliable state making change possible (this is called neuroplasticity). If we have a Corrective Relational Experience, where we share the emotion with someone but experience it in different way in this new relational context, our brain update the original affective memory and begin to replace it with this new relational experience. In other words, it reconsolidates the original memory, changing the neural pathway. This experience strengthens the deficit Core Character Traits, thereby alleviating painful symptoms. Our brains are physically rewired at the synaptic level. The original memory is still there, but the accompanying emotions, cognitive schemas, and adaptive behaviors are now different. It’s akin to updating the software that optimizes your computer’s performance.
6 NeuroChange Strategies for Real Transformation
The NeuroChange Pathway creates profound change by sequentially implementing these six strategies that maximize emotional experiences in the context of safe relationships. They result in new and different ways of being and doing in the world.
- Establish a safe relationship – a sacred place where change happens. You grow the fastest when you are with someone in a real relationship, so you are not alone and experience their care and enjoyment of you.
- Recognize that the problem is not the problem – painful symptoms are warning lights that something deeper in your core character traits needs to be adjusted.
- Replace your painful memories – rewire your brain at the deepest level through Corrective Relational Experiences, strengthening your core character traits and decreasing symptoms.
- Develop your new narrative – begin putting words to your new experiences
- Put it in action – practice and implement new ways of being and doing in other parts of your life to deepen the new neural pathways and narrative.
- Belong in community – increase intimacy with God and others and grow your community. You’re better together!
5 NeuroRelational Skills for Guides
These five NeuroRelational skills are essential for guides—those who help others to change and grow—to effectively facilitate the above six steps.
- Attunement: the ability to empathize deeply, allowing another person to feel seen, soothed, safe, and secure so they can deeply explore the underlying causes to the symptoms they are experiencing.
- Co-Created Relational Experiences & Self-Insight: the ability to help the other person identify their deficit micro-abilities in the Core Character Traits, then co-create new relational experiences that strengthen them.
- Confrontation: the ability to say directly the obstacles and defenses the person is demonstrating that work against change.
- Dyadic Affect Regulation: the ability to utilize the relational bond to de-escalate overwhelming emotions.
- Deepening the Narrative: the ability to deepen, broaden, and celebrate the emerging narrative and connect the person to a healthy community.
4 NeuroDynamic Tools for Targeted Interventions
By utilizing NeuroDynamic tools, guides can gain insight into the individual’s uniqueness, enabling them to apply general change concepts in a highly tailored manner. Through targeted interventions, guides can expedite and enhance change.
- Identify the Deficits in Core Character Traits and Micro-Abilities to determine your focus.
- Identify the Interpersonal Coping Style to further focus you interventions to address the correct dynamics.
- Identify the Core Emotional Learnings to determine how they are driving the symptoms and the needed Corrective Relational Experiences.
- Identify the Dynamics of Early Relationships to determine the deepest areas to create transformational change.
Ways to Experience and Learn The NeuroChange Pathway
The Makin Institute offers several ways to learn parts of the NeuroChange Pathway — our NeuroChange Community, Campfires, Blog, and Workshops — but if you are ready to experience the complete NeuroChange Pathway for profound change, consider joining a Process Growth Group. This small group of people will provide the safe relational context you need to create corrective relational experiences that impact your Core Emotional Learnings and strengthen your Core Character Traits.
For those in the helping professions, consider joining an Immersive Training Group or Certification Courses to become a Certified NeuroChange Professional. Both opportunities offer a process group with your cohort so you can experience change within yourself while training to implement the NeuroChange Pathway in your practice and see tremendous growth in the people you serve.