Unlearn To Move On

Learning and unlearning, we spend our lives on it. Acquiring knowledge, experiences and also habits and customs. We have acquired ways of managing our thoughts and beliefs. We learn from our parents, from our family and social environment.

And all that experience influences, and a lot, what we finally are or think we are. The difference is important, since we normally work with the second and not with the first. In any case, change and learning form a circle that would not be possible to explain without unlearning ; In fact, on many occasions, people also “update” ourselves, just like operating programs: throwing the old into the trash to make way for the new.

There are moments in our life where we sense that something is not right / we do not finish seeing ourselves as we would like. Something is wrong, without understanding why. We “circulate” based on an error: we repeat the same strategies hoping that different results will be produced.

We ignore that we do not make decisions based on what we see or what we consider good or bad. We do it through the convictions or acquired codes that we carry with us. It is in those moments where we sense that we must make some changes … without knowing where to start.

Unlearn: reviewing our reality

Sometimes we work with rigid models that are structured based on “should” or “should” : self-imposed obligations, derived from our way of seeing reality, which despite being just mirages make us suffer much more than circumstances / situations objective or tangible.

A good part of these rigid models is usually built unconsciously, in the absence of critical thinking, by simple assimilation. In this sense, we all have a series of irrational beliefs that seem absolutely normal to us, but they are not.

Ellis’s irrational beliefs

Albert Ellis, the creator of Rational Emotional Therapy (RET), identified eleven irrational beliefs that we can get hooked on without knowing it. Ellis defends the idea that it is not events that generate emotional states, but rather the way we interpret them.

• “It is an extreme need for the adult human being to be loved and approved by practically every significant person in society”
• “To consider yourself valuable you must be very competent, sufficient and capable of achieving anything in every possible way.”
• “Certain class of people are vile, evil and infamous and they must be seriously blamed and punished for their evil.”

• “It is tremendous and catastrophic that things do not go the way one would like them to go.”
• “Human misfortune originates from external causes and people have little or no ability to control their pain and disturbance.”
• “If something is or can be dangerous or fearsome, you must feel terribly uneasy about it and constantly think about the possibility of this happening.”
• “It is easier to avoid than to face certain responsibilities and difficulties in life.”
• “You have to depend on others and you need someone stronger to trust.”
• “Your past history is a decisive determinant of your current behavior, and that something that once happened to you and shocked you must continue to affect you indefinitely.”
• “One should be very concerned about the problems and disturbances of others.”

• “Invariably there is a precise, correct and perfect solution to human problems, and that if this perfect solution is not found, catastrophe will ensue.”

We see how many times we work with preconceived ideas about ourselves or about others. Acquiring awareness of the power of this way of processing information is the first step to unlearning. Now, unlearning is not a simple or easy process, let’s think that it is about filters that we have very internalized, that we use automatically.

How the brain learns

It is just as easy to learn something positive as negative: repetition is a strategy that works with both natures. On the other hand, brain plasticity is a shaping of the nervous system that takes shape on the neurological substrate by modifying it. And it is a double-edged sword. A nervous system that has been changed by the practice of habits and repetition of ideas will have somehow “adapted” to them. In this sense, change occurs and remains when we remove the wrong (unlearn), and it occurs and withers at the same speed when we try to superimpose it.

The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge speaks of “the plastic paradox” to refer to negative neuroplasticity. Once a certain change has taken shape and is well established in the brain, inertia itself can prevent other changes from occurring.

On the other hand, without having experienced other environments and ideas, it is very difficult to become aware of the arbitrary nature of our beliefs. We can change our minds and habits, but our brain hates to change its habits. Learning leaves a trail in groups of neurons that interact with each other, thus leaving a trace on the neuronal substrate.

When faced with a series of new ideas, we can come to question those that until that moment we already accepted as true. This can lead us to a strong dissonance, according to these new ideas perhaps in the past we have made mistakes that until then we would not have considered as such. In other words, new ideas can compromise our self-concept and self-esteem.

In this case, the brain can inhibit a series of circuits in active areas of the cerebral neocortex so that the new information is discarded. It is as if our brain says: better to continue with ignorance and our self-concept than to take on the challenge of re-defining what we have already done (and what we thought we would do) based on these ideas .

Perception, imagination and memory

A fact: people tend to remember the meaning or meaning of an experience better than the details. Our memories are distorted (adapted to the self). Memory is necessary to remember the past, but it is also necessary to imagine the future. In fact, our ability to imagine the future is closely related to the richness of our past.

Also, many of the decisions we make are unconscious. Consciousness allows us to distinguish the past from the present and the future in order to locate ourselves in time. But the unconscious and intuition are based on heuristics, simple principles that ignore much of the information in exchange for speed. We acquire these heuristics through our social interaction, our culture, and our life experiences. They are “programmed” in our unconscious and we act automatically based on them.

Becoming aware

The process of unlearning, as we see, is not easy. We cannot just discard what we have learned in the same way that we erase a number written in pencil. But  we can be aware of these learnings and dispose of them in an intelligent way. We can stop identifying with them and wondering how much of us is actually in those beliefs or attitudes. After identifying them, this is the second step.

Unlearning is a process that requires time, patience and analytical skills. We are talking about an investment that always pays off: a result that we are going to enjoy, but also the people who love us.