Page 50 - Advance Copy: Todd Kaufman, Author

TODD KAUFMAN
signaling. The neurotransmitter called dopamine is released into your nucleus accumbens (a lower part of your brain) and your hippocampus (a small organ in the middle of your brain), and your amygdala then stores information (memories) about what is happening. This powerful network gives you a powerful shortcut to know how to repeat the necessary actions in order to get the same pleasurable feeling again. (OK, that was really geeky and you science majors are probably giggling in glee! Don’t worry, these details aren’t really necessary for the ARP to work, that was just a nice little bonus for for us needy folks!)
Much of what we have learned about how the brain’s pleasure centre operates comes from addiction research. If you are familiar with addiction, you may have witnessed firsthand how someone who becomes addicted, be it to alcohol, drugs or a particular behaviour such as watching internet pornography, can very quickly replace or have them neglect their usual, healthy behaviour with behaviour that enables the addiction. In some unfortunate situations, individuals can lose everything in their lives in their quest to continue a particular action of substance abuse. This illustrates how plastic our brains are and how powerful the brain’s pleasure centre is in getting us to repeat behaviour, no matter how destructive.
The good news is, the incredible urge to repeat actions that light up the reward centre of the brain can be harnessed to achieve positive outcomes as effectively as it can be used to achieve negative outcomes. In ARP, the solution to end your panic attacks and manage your anxiety, you are going to use this capacity to encourage a positive outcome in your life. You are going to intentionally notice, with Reward/Gratitude, the pleasure a particular action brings you. You are going to intentionally do your best to encourage your brain to lay down a neuro network to begin to get you start intuitively repeating desired processes or actions.
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