Brains are Like Trees... Kind Of.

The human brain functions in an associative fashion.  It has millions of tiny "branches" which interconnect via the synapses and store information in tree-like structures.  When we experience life, each instance is compared to prior experiences and the associative process begins.

Thunderstorms of thought begin to spark in the recesses of the brain as the event we are contemplating or experiencing is quickly passed along the associative chain.  Someone may experience a momentary feeling of connection to a person, verging on love, and when the brain processes this input it may associate love with a specific person.  That person in turn calls up associated memories also of the break-up one may have gone through, so a negative association is apparent.

The association continues:  Thoughts of love have led to the former lover who is associated with a painful break-up, which is an association of his abusive verbalizations when angry, which is associated with the abusive father, connected strongly to the beatings and possibly rapes, and suddenly the prospect of falling in love with the perfectly benign (or perhaps equally abusive), new lover is now slightly soured by these subconscious but highly present emotions of pain and trauma.

Hard-Wiring the Brain

This kind of associative process is one which causes a closer synchronization of those synapses the more it is called upon. As stated in several sources "Neurons that fire together, wire together."  That is, the more we repeat an experience, the more adapted the brain's thought highways will cement into place.

Conversely, the better we become at disciplining our thought process to break those connections, the less connected those "neural networks" become.  Each time we make the effort to not react to our associations, to not automatically assume their validity and respond as we "instinctually" or "usually" do, the more likely we can free the mind to think in different ways, to rewire our thought process and experience new and different reactions, ideas and memories free from the overlay of our pasts.

How the Body Experiences Emotions

Of particular interest is the release of special protein strands within the hypothalamus when emotive response is called for by the firing of these neural networks. Neuropeptides (nerve proteins) are essentially the communicating sequences which tell cells what to do and how to grow.  They are responsible for emotional responses within the system, but also directly relate to the progression of psychological reaction and cellular evolution within the individual.

As cells are bombarded with particular Neuropeptides during specific emotional experiences, the more frequently a cell receives those Neuropeptides, the more likely that, when it splits and reproduces, it will produce a child or sister cell with more receptors designed specifically for those proteins it most encounters.  So a cell which has been repeatedly flooded with some protein for say, rage, over and over, will be more likely to adapt when it splits by generating a new cell with more receptors designed to receive the specific Neuropeptide for the rage emotion.  If a cell is not replenished with that specific strain in a timely enough fashion, the body reacts with sensations of discomfort, irritability and frustration.  Withdrawal.

Addiction

Hard-wiring our neurons and synapses, steadily mutating cells to receive more and more of the specific emotional protein strands... this is addiction.  Psychological and physiological addiction to emotional states.

Essentially, the body will experience emotional states which it has been subjected to on a regular basis more readily as a result of greater instances of that emotion.  The more you have that emotion, the more you physically and psychologically want to experience those emotions again.

Anger, excitement, dissatisfaction, joy, fear, passion, victimization, elation... every emotional state excites the manufacture of Neuropeptides to enact and sustain that emotional state.  The more that emotion is experienced, the more cells will be ready to receive the instruction to undergo that emotional state again.  This is precisely the reaction the cells have when receiving narcotic substances such as cocaine or heroine.  Those drugs act upon the body via those exact same protein receptors on the cell membrane as are used by Neuropeptides.

Summary

The associative properties of the mind mean that we will probably always have our past influence our current experiences.  So long as we are able to break the chains of repeating our pasts, when we stop allowing the same neural networks to be wired together and begin breaking those clumps of associated memories apart, replacing them with new ideas and experiences, allowing ourselves to experience life unfettered by the restriction of victimization, we overcome our trappings and can live fuller, more meaningful lives.

Further, refusing to become trapped by our negative memories--absorbing and accepting them, rather than allowing them to dictate our responses--opens the doorway to vast potentials of emotional experience.

When we constantly bombard our cells with the Neuropeptides of a specific emotional state, they become more and more likely to reproduce/split into cells more and more receptive to those proteins that are the fuel of those emotions.  Anger, pain, victim-syndrome, frustration, melancholy, can all become our addictions and we can often find ourselves the plaything of our biochemical responses feeding the addictions.

The mind continues to find more memories to correlate to our painful past (hard-wiring the reaction process, making it easier and easier to react with the same call for suffering) and the body becomes more and more addicted to the emotional bath of nerve proteins powering the emotional state.  The brain begins to seek out ways to fulfill our emotional addictions and manufactures situations to attain the desired fix.

But we are all fortunate to have the frontal cortex.  The center of higher reason and intellectual thought.  With proper consideration, observation of ourselves, and the conscientious choices to no longer decide we are a victim or that we are afraid, we can stop the cycle of feeding our addiction, so the process of expanding our experiences, of become more whole, self-determined masters of our own fate, can progress.

You are not your past.  You are an immeasurably powerful entity in the universe with the potential for infinite chances to make a choice.  Each choice is your opportunity to alter your nature and make yourself into that which you most wish to become.  We are the result of our own devices.  If we do not find happiness in who we are, where we have led ourselves, we have the responsibility for that.  But we also have the power to change it.

That's my two pennies, with hay-pennies contributed by "What the Bleep?"