BWRT Defined. The Fine Details for the Curious of Mind

BWRT® – BrainWorking Recursive Therapy®  is a new therapeutic model that is achieving wonderful results every bit as fast as the modern need for an ‘instant fix’ requires. The outline given here of the process scarcely does it justice, nor does it convey the excitement with which many therapists are greeting it.  You can see more at BWRT.org

BWRT (BrainWorking Recursive Therapy), developed by Terence Watts, is a powerful approach to addressing fears, unwanted habits, stress, and anxiety.

Explaining the BWRT Process

The process begins with a brief discussion about how the specific fear or stressor affects the client’s life, behaviors, and emotions. Next, the BWRT practitioner helps the client identify how they would prefer to feel instead. This desired state—often called the preferred response—replaces the automatic reactions linked to old, painful memories, thoughts, or experiences.

Using a specialized technique, we then place the painful memory into an emotional “deep freeze,” neutralizing its impact. In this state, the unwanted emotional response is rapidly replaced with the new, better feeling the client has chosen. Think of it as an ultimate copy-and-paste: we “copy” the preferred emotional state and “paste” it over the old, unwanted response.

The process is fast, effective, and does not require discussing the problem at length. For basic concerns, clients typically see results in just a few sessions, while more complex issues may require additional preparation and guidance.

Benjamin Libet

In 1983, the scientist Benjamin Libet made a startling discovery – all decisions are made by the physical brain around 1/3 of a second before we become aware of them. This means that we do not have free will – this is not guesswork, not an assumption, but a scientifically proven fact. There’s nothing mysterious or spooky about it and no assertion that everything in life is ‘pre-ordained’. The truth is actually far simpler than that. The truth is that the physical brain responds to input from the world and from our own senses, and instantly starts to assess previous experience for an associated response pattern. This happens at colossal speed and far below the level of conscious awareness and so it’s likely that what we consider to be the subconscious is just the physical brain process. There’s no value judgment being made, no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ course of action, just a pattern being matched. It’s no more selective than a computer keyboard – every key is as valid as every other key, and it’s only much later when what we have typed appears on the screen, that a value judgment occurs as we assess whether what we have typed was what we wanted or not. The brain does not and cannot care, simply activating a pattern that has been activated before in response to similar stimuli.

A stimulus – data input – received by the brain covers around 50 meters of neural pathways in the 1/3 of a second before it reaches awareness, during which time it goes through thousands upon thousands of tests that check for a continued pattern match. Some of the neurons are as small as 1 mm long and the data input, which is traveling at around 200 mph or more, is tested up to 1000 times at each end of the neuron. For reference, the brain has around 85 bn neurons (some say 100 bn.)

Some people disbelieve the absence of free will, stating that they can easily change their mind about anything… And of course, they can. But the decision to change their mind was formed by the brain up to 1/3 a second before they are consciously aware of it. Every thought we have has come from the brain’s continual monitoring process simply triggering a new ‘suitable’ response. Have you ever said something like: “What on earth did I say that for?” or: “I simply cannot believe I did that!” The reason is simple – the non-reasoning brain beats your conscious mind to the punch! Thoughts are slow and have to be considered. The brain has no such restriction. It just assesses whether or not an input has a ‘registered response’ and if it has, activates it.

The Therapy Itself

You might already be able to see that many ‘symptoms’ are the result of a behavior or thought pattern ‘firing up’ that has been activated before. It might have been suitable or effective at one time but the fact that it isn’t now is of no consequence to the non-reasoning brain. If there’s already a pattern associated with the stimulus, activate it immediately before there’s any conscious interference. This now provides a clear and understandable answer to the old question of ‘Why does my subconscious do stuff I don’t want it to?’

BWRT® makes it possible, via a simple technique, to create a new response pattern to any stimulus so that the action the brain triggers is one that we want. It’s totally content-free, too, so the client doesn’t have to tell the therapist about deeply sensitive or intimate issues, making therapy far easier to conduct in a great many situations. The other great thing about it is that we don’t need to find the originating cause of a problem, only the worst conscious memory of it that the client can consciously find.

The title ‘BrainWorking Recursive Therapy® comes from the recursive looping process that we use to cement and strengthen the new behavioral response and two years of testing experience shows that the changes we make appear to be permanent and there is no evidence of symptom substitution.

For more information and to learn about Terence Watts, the creator of BWRT® visit www.BWRT.org