4.8 Neuronal Gating

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Disconnection from your feelings is a way to cope with toxic shame. Some people have repressed all their emotions to such an extent that they feel nothing. They become hyper-rational robots as a way to cope. Unfortunately, this leads to bad consequences, particularly a lack of empathy for others which leads to poor social skills and a lack of meaningful friendships. This is a guaranteed way to make subconscious inadequacy far worse! The disconnection from their own emotions is a source of many psychological problems.

Other people make claims like ‘I don’t get angry’ or ‘I don’t get sad’ and some people are always angry or always sad.

Emotional repression is extremely common in men, and I hear from many men who believe they’re borderline autistic because of their emotional ineptitude. They feel like sociopaths at times, (or ‘antisocial personality disorder’, as it’s technically called – and this has been found to correlate with fetishes). Cutting off emotions is another side-effect of toxic shame; not just through social conditioning, but through the brain’s way of dealing with childhood pain.

One way of conceptualizing how this works is by thinking of the brain in two separate parts: a rational thinking brain (the neocortex), and an emotional brain (the amygdala and limbic system). The neocortex is responsible for thinking, analyzing, reasoning, and processing, and the limbic system is responsible for emotions, senses, memories, and fears.

A process known as ‘neuronal gating’ acts as an adaptive biological response for inhibiting pain. The interconnecting fibers between the two separate brain systems can either facilitate or inhibit communication. Inhibiting the communication – neuronal gating – is essentially shutting a gate between the two brains, so the information doesn’t pass. The signals from the limbic system containing the information of emotional life are blocked from entering the neocortex and being consciously recognized.

When the emotional pain in the limbic system is overwhelming, an automatic mechanism closes the gate so that it can’t get to the neocortex. The neocortex takes over, and our life becomes dominated by rationalizing, thinking, analyzing, explaining, dissecting, learning, but never feeling.

Once this gate is closed, we block out our emotional past so that the neocortex can function unhindered. However, these emotional imprints don’t go away. They stay there as unresolved emotional energy, subtly affecting your life for years to come.

Ego defenses act to keep the gate from opening; they stop us from feeling any pain and to retrospectively justify our actions to ourselves. This may take the form of disconnection from ourselves, or something else which makes healing incredible hard, such as intellectualization.

How do we open the gate? We do this by letting go of ego defenses – anything that prevents us from feeling – and actively trying to feel. Opening the neuronal gate means allowing yourself to feel the pain of your past trauma. You do this by consciously letting yourself feel. Instead of thinking and rationalizing, you empty your mind, and let the emotions flow through. Grieving is healing, and the way to get rid of these unconscious emotions is to let them out. Not doing so in a rational, analytical way, but rather by opening the gate and letting them flood through.

One of the most successful treatments for phobias is ‘exposure therapy’. In this treatment, the patient is exposed to their phobia in very small steps, starting out by simply imagining their phobia (spiders, for example) until they can do so comfortably, then getting a little closer to their phobia but only if they can do so without fear (like knowing there’s a spider in the next room), then taking another step closer (being in the same room as the spider, but far away), then closer (unless they feel fear, where they should take a step back to where they were comfortable and build back up), then closer, until eventually they are directly confronting their phobia in a situation where they are calm and collected. By doing so, they remove their mental association between the phobia and feeling scared, and essentially remove their phobia.

A similar concept is used for toxic shame and fetishes. The best way out is through; to confront those painful concepts until they no longer cause pain. In the 12-step program – one of the leading treatments for addictions which also serves to heal toxic shame and fetishes – the participant is first humbled by admitting they are addicted and powerless. This is popularized by the customs of alcoholics anonymous, who open their meetings by stating ‘My name is x, and I am an alcoholic’. This serves to break down the ego defenses and confront their deepest fears.

By admitting powerlessness, they have nothing left to fear. They are no longer trying to uphold false standards or maintain a false image. They are no longer trying to control and be perfect. They have stopped trying to justify their actions and create excuses. They embrace healthy, human shame, and admit that they are imperfect. They are humbled to the core, and this means they have nothing left to lose, and thus nothing left to fear. By feeling the pain they’re trying to avoid, they free themselves from the menacing grasp of all actions they do to deal with the pain. They embrace it, and by doing so, they find freedom from it.

For toxic shame, this means admitting you’re imperfect and never will be perfect. It means admitting you’re flawed, like every other human.

By living their lives in that humbled state, they learn that actually, there’s nothing painful about it. Their fears about not being good enough and being imperfect are completely irrational. They start to break down their associations between imperfection/inadequacy and pain. After spending some time like this, they no longer feel that fear. They no longer feel the paralyzing doubts of inadequacy.

If you can do this too, you will also no longer feel the emotional pain and fears of inadequacy. Admitting imperfections and human limits is confronting the problem and learning that nothing changes. This is particularly important in the social realm; become comfortable showing your flaws to others in a normal, healthy way.

Confronting the painful feelings and fears head-on is how to remove your arousal to this fetish. Once you’ve investigated your life analytically, all that’s left is to let these feelings out, emotionally. Allowing yourself to grieve those emotions makes you feel the full force of them.

This does two things: first, it heals them by letting them go. Finally, the unresolved emotional energy can be let out, and resolved. Second, by opening yourself to these emotions, you open yourself to them in porn. Next time you view cuckold porn, you’ll feel the painful aspects over the arousing ones, and be repulsed instead of turned on. When you open the neuronal gate to your emotions, you’re more sensitive to the pain contained within this fetish, and understand why most people find it repulsive. Every time you view cuckold porn from then on, it seems horrible, abusive, and cruel – and you feel that.

You can only get here by allowing yourself to grieve your past experiences and pent-up pain. You do this by sitting down without distractions, and consciously allowing yourself to feel those emotions without your thinking brain getting in the way with rational excuses and obstacles. Let go of any thoughts, and allow yourself to feel. Using your insights from the previous videos as a guide, explore your past experiences on an emotional level. Let those emotions out.

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Author(s) || Connor McGonigal

Website || howtostopbeingacuckold.com

Article || 4.8 Neuronal Gating

Date || June 2nd, 2019

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contributors: ["Connor McGonigal"]

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