Why You’ll never change (Placebo effect)

Sandro Safareli
Jul 28, 2017 · 6 min read

The privilege of being a human being is that we can make thought more real than anything else — and that’s how the placebo works. To see how the process unfolds, let’s examine and review three key elements:

  • Conditioning
  • Expectation
  • Meaning

These three elements all work together in harmonizing the placebo response.

conditioning

Conditioning happens when we associate a past memory (for example, taking an aspirin) with a physiological change (getting rid of a headache) because we’ve experienced it so many times. Think about it like this: If you notice that you have a headache, essentially you become aware of a physiological change in your inner environment (you’re feeling pain). The next thing you automatically do is look for something in your outer world (in this case, an aspirin) to create a change in your inner world. We could say it was your internal state of being in pain that prompted you to think about some past choice you made, action you took, or experience you had in your external reality that changed how you were feeling (taking an aspirin and getting relief).

Thus, the stimulus, called the aspirin, creates a specific experience. When that experience produces a physiological response or reward, it changes your internal environment. The moment you notice a change in your inner environment, you pay attention to what it was in your outer environment that caused the change. That event — where something outside of you changes something inside of you — is called an associative memory.

If we keep repeating the process over and over again, by association the outer stimulus can become so strong or reinforced that we can replace the aspirin for a sugar pill that looks like an aspirin, and it will produce an automatic inner response (lessening the pain of the headache). That’s one way the placebo works.

Expectation

The second element, comes into play when we have reason to anticipate a different outcome. So, for example, if we have chronic pain from arthritis and get a new medication from the doctor, who enthusiastically explains to us that it’s supposed to alleviate our pain, we accept his suggestion and expect that when we take this new medication, something different will happen (we won’t be in pain anymore). Then, in effect, our doctor has influenced our level of suggestibility.

Once we become more suggestible, we’re naturally associating something outside of ourselves (the new medication) with the selection of a different possibility (being pain-free). In our minds, we are picking a different future potential and hoping, anticipating, and expecting that we’ll get that different result. If we emotionally accept and then embrace that new outcome we’ve selected, and the intensity of our emotion is great enough, our brains and our bodies won’t know the difference between imagining that we’ve changed our state of being to being pain-free and the actual event that caused the change to a new state of being. To the brain and the body, they are the same.

meaning

The third element, to a placebo helps it work, because when we give an action a new meaning, then we have added intention behind it. In other words, when we learn and understand something new, we put more of our conscious, purposeful energy into it. The more you believe that a particular substance, procedure, or surgery will work because you’ve been educated about its benefits, the better your chances of responding to the thought of improving your health and getting better.

In other words, if you place more meaning behind a possible experience with a person, place, or thing in your external environment in order to change your internal environment, then you’re more likely to be successful at intentionally changing your inner state by thought alone.

In addition, the more you can accept a new outcome related to your health the clearer the model you’re creating in your own mind, and so the better you’ll be at stimulating your brain and your body to replicate exactly that.

The more you believe in the cause, the better the effect.

Anatomy of a Thought

In our regular everyday life in our brain, we have around 60,000 to 70,000 thought. More than 80% of this thoughts are the same as we had yesterday and a week ago. We go through the same routine every single morning, do same things every day, communicating with same people, getting same emotional spike, interacting with people who push the same emotional buttons every day. When we finish our job then we hurry up and go home so that we can repeat same actions we made yesterday, go to bed at the same time so that we can hurry up and do it all over again the next day.

We live a huge part of our lives on autopilot

Thinking the same thoughts lead us to make the same choices. Making the same choices leads to expressing the same behaviors. expressing the same behaviors leads us to create the same experiences. Creating the same experiences leads us to produce the same emotions. And those same emotions then drive the same thoughts.

As a result of this conscious or unconscious process, your biology stays the same. Neither your brain nor your body changes at all. You create the same brain activity, which keep the body the same.

Now take a look at your life for a moment. What does this mean for you? If you’re thinking the same thoughts as yesterday, more than likely, you’re making the same choices today. Those same choices today are leading to the same behaviors tomorrow. The same habitual behaviors tomorrow are producing the same experiences in your future. The same events in your future reality are creating the same predictable emotions for you all the time. And as a result, you’re feeling the same every day. Your yesterday becomes your tomorrow.

So in truth, your past is your future.

It’s your state of being. And it’s comfortable, effortless, and automatic. When you keep this repetitive process going on a daily basis, in time that known state of being can drive only the same

  • THOUGHT S — CHOICES — BEHAVIORS — EXPERIENCES — FEELING.

Everything stays the same about your personality.

If this is your personality, then your personality creates your personal reality.

And your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. That means that if you want to create a new personal reality — a new life — then you have to begin to examine or think about the thoughts you’ve been thinking and change them. You must become conscious of the unconscious behaviors you’ve been choosing that have led to the same experiences, and then you must make new choices, take new actions, and create new experiences.

You must observe and pay attention to those emotions you live by on a daily basis, and decide if living by those emotions over and over again is kind to you. Most people try to create a new personal reality as the same old personality, and it doesn’t work. In order to change your life, you have to literally become someone else.

Your new thoughts should lead to new choices. New choices should lead to new behaviors. New behaviors should lead to new experiences. New experiences should create new emotions, and new emotions and feelings should inspire you to think in new ways. Everything should change as a result of this new personality, this new state of being. And it all seems to start with a thought.

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