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Thinking Patterns & Reflective Writing

The document discusses neural pathways in the brain and how they relate to thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It explains that neural pathways are connections between neurons that form patterns to represent thoughts, and that pathways can become reinforced through repetition, influencing how a person thinks and acts. The document also discusses how reflection can help identify existing neural pathways and make conscious efforts to change patterns of thinking in order to develop new pathways. Reflection involves examining one's thoughts, feelings, and actions using a cognitive model to gain self-awareness and potentially improve behaviors.

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Ammar Basharat
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
14 views

Thinking Patterns & Reflective Writing

The document discusses neural pathways in the brain and how they relate to thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It explains that neural pathways are connections between neurons that form patterns to represent thoughts, and that pathways can become reinforced through repetition, influencing how a person thinks and acts. The document also discusses how reflection can help identify existing neural pathways and make conscious efforts to change patterns of thinking in order to develop new pathways. Reflection involves examining one's thoughts, feelings, and actions using a cognitive model to gain self-awareness and potentially improve behaviors.

Uploaded by

Ammar Basharat
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Educational Resource Development Centre

Thinking Patterns & Reflective Writing

What are Neural Pathways?

Neural pathways are the connections that form between the neurons in your brain. And you can
think of them as a pattern that represents any thought about anything you’ve ever had – as simple
as an apple, as complicated as love and integrity, every thought is a neural pathway.

Now, we’re often taught to think of our brains as computers, a storeroom with boxes or ROM
that your brain can fetch (recall) when you need it. But that’s not accurate. Your thoughts are
more like patterns than boxes. Neural pathways are the connections between neurons that light
up when you think of something for the first time, and the connections form a pattern in your
brain. Your brain has now attached meaning to that specific pattern.

Neural Pathways and Your Habits

Now, neural pathways get really interesting when it comes to more complex things like emotions
tied to thoughts. If, for example, the first time you encountered an apple, it really scared you, a
neural pathway forms that links apples with fear. And if, for whatever silly reason, you keep
having a fear response to apples over and over again, you might grow up to be afraid of apples.

The Problem With Neural Pathways

We mentioned earlier that neural pathways can form negative associations, which can have a bad
influence on how you behave. For example, the first time I took a geography test, I failed,
therefore I will for the rest of my life believe I am bad at geography.

You can see how this can become a problem, right? Neural pathways are extremely powerful in
determining our behaviour. If I’m afraid to try new things or new ideas, it’s probably because
there’s a neural pathway in my brain that triggers a fear response when I receive new
information. And you can imagine how bad that can be if I’m an employee in your business,
right? I’d fight vehemently against every new change (system, policy, target etc.) you try to bring
about.

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Educational Resource Development Centre

Fortunately, though, we’re not stuck with our existing neural pathways. We can change them.

Source: Lifexchange, Neural Pathways: How Your Mind Stores the Info and Thoughts that Affect
Your Behaviour https://lifexchangesolutions.com/neural-pathways

The Cognitive Triad

Psychiatrist Aaron Beck founded cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of therapy that worked on
individuals’ belief systems to reprogram it. Aaron found that individuals suffering with
depression suffer from continuous spontaneous negative thoughts. He introduced the cognitive
triad; which include the following:

1. Views about yourself


2. Views about the world
3. Views about the future

In all the three instances, depressed individuals tend to have negative views. Thus, a depressed
individual would tend to think they are a worthless person living in a futile and unforgiving
world with a hopeless future.

Moreover, by searching for inconsistencies between these three views, a psychologist can find
out whether a person is being honest to himself and has clarity of thought.

How Reflection Can Help with Neural Pathways

This is where reflections come in. If you frequently write reflections, you are able to see for
yourself your neural pathways. Someone who does not write down their thoughts cannot see how
they think. As a result they can never change their thinking patterns or build new neural
pathways. They keep thinking along the same lines, only solidifying their previous thinking
patterns.

By reflecting often you can find out how you think, look for any faulty or negative ways of
thinking and thereafter make a conscious effort to change the way you think and act.

Cognitive Model

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Educational Resource Development Centre

Talking about thoughts and actions, another useful concept you can incorporate in your
reflections is the cognitive model; also introduced by Aaron Beck. The cognitive model of
psychology seeks to determine how an individual's thoughts and beliefs influence their feelings
and behaviors. You can think about it as a triangle of three things

thoughts

feelings actions

These three things are interrelated and you can use them to write reflections that can actually
help you become a better person. But how?

If you are reflecting on a concept, for example, you can write about what you think about it, how
you feel about and how do you plan to change your actions in view of these thoughts. Remember
to include personal references and anecdotes to this reflection so you can always relate to it.

You can also reflect on your behavior in a certain moment that you think was ideal, or not so
ideal, using this model. For this you will go back to the incident and write about what you were
thinking, how it made you feel and how it made you act. This will help you retain what you
deem to be healthy behavior and change what you deem is unfit.

Written by Azka Javeria

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