Are you sometimes surprised by yourself? Do you sometimes act in ways you don’t expect? Do emotions sometimes take over, and in hindsight you wonder where they came from? Do you aspire to be better, more motivated, or happier than you are? Welcome to the club. We all struggle in some way or another with our “programming”, the mostly subconscious thought patterns set into our brains.
?? I’m not a robot
OK, you’re not a robot. You’re human. What does that mean? One inescapable fact is that being human means you have been absorbing both conscious and (especially) subconscious programming since your life began. Some of that programming came from stressful experiences that you may not even remember. No one goes through childhood without some trauma. Your early life experiences shape you more than experiences at any other time of your life, because they occur during the time that you are going from no knowledge to setting the foundation for the rest of your life.
BIOS and OS
Computers come from the manufacturer with the operating system loaded. But there is something even more fundamental to the computer than the operating system. The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), also known as firmware, is the software that tells the computer how to interface with the outside world. When you were born, you had such programming built in. Your heart pumps, your breathing starts, and you get input from your senses — all before you learn anything. So you start out with a form of BIOS when you are being formed in the womb. Without this BIOS, you could not start life. But you are essentially a blank slate, able now to build understanding of your environment.
So just being born, you have a flood of information coming in. You now build your operating system. From the environment around you — your parents, home surroundings, and experiences — you build comprehension. You put together the pieces of information surrounding you. As this process continues, your fledgling operating system joins with your BIOS to give you greater ability to interact with your environment. Now you don’t just hear words, but you start to understand them. You learn how certain words and actions can help you get what you want. This accelerates your learning, because you become interactive with your environment.
Not everything that you learn is good. You may learn that you can yell and scream to get attention. You might learn that you can get away with some bad behavior by some cute words or actions. Those become part of your operating system, because they are part of the foundational knowledge of how to interact with your environment. Unlearning these things when you are older is hard because they were integrated into your early life programming. However, as every parent knows, they do have to be unlearned for the child to develop in harmony with society, so they work on changing the programming. But other things might be learned (experienced) that the parents don’t see happen. Perhaps you got bit by a spider, and the painful event gave you a strong, unreasoning phobia abut spiders. You may tell yourself later on in life that spiders are mostly harmless and easily dealt with, but your foundational programming says otherwise.
When very young, did your parents ever argue where you could hear them? Did they ever scare you, even accidentally? Did you ever get really sick and worry that you might die? There are so many ways that early life trauma occurs, that you certainly were marked by some, even in the best of families. This operating system programming colors your reactions.
As the environment is, so are you
You are a product of your programming. Your foundation was set largely by age 6. There is no other way you can live, because you need a solid foundation of subconscious programming; otherwise, you would have to think consciously about every action that you take, and before you had thought through one action, many other things that demand your taking action would have passed you by. Your subconscious brain is very busy processing subconscious thoughts, and you act a lot “on instinct”. You may find it impossible to figure out why you take certain actions, because you have to act instinctively. Without so much being relegated to your subconscious, you would not be a functional adult.
This early life programming has major implications for your entire life. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, published a review study in Neuron, which examines how long-term consequences of childhood stress affect brain development. “(1) At the molecular level, early-life stress can substantially alter neuronal gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms. These changes may lead to long-term modifications in how the brain responds to subsequent experiences. At the circuit level, early stress can disrupt the maturation of brain networks by interfering with crucial developmental processes, including neuronal oscillations and synaptic pruning.” Neuronal oscillations is a fancy term for brainwaves — that early life stress makes long term changes in brainwaves, which brain scans can detect. Synaptic pruning refers to the process of the brain removing connections between neurons that aren’t needed — in essence pruning junk connections from the brain, especially during adolescence. So this early stress is changing brainwaves, which are communicating with the whole body, and hampering the process of removing junk out of the brain.
Stress changes structure
According to another review study, published in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, structural changes can occur to “stress-sensitive” areas of the brain, particularly the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and the amygdala.(2) The job of the hippocampus is to take perceived information from the senses, match it with contextual information (under what circumstances am I receiving this information, such as when and where I am receiving it), then the PFC adds attributes to the information for future recollection (why it is worth retention). The amygdala processes emotions, and can reinforce memory of emotionally-charged events. The researchers note that repeated childhood stress, especially stress that invokes fear, later leads to heightened activation of the physiological stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, altering the regulation of glucocorticoids, such as cortisol. That means that the early life stress is carrying forward into increased tendency towards fearful reactions in adulthood. Interestingly, they also note that chronic stress diminishes capacity to consciously control recollections of the stressful events and moderating fear response when they are recollected. This is a form of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), which is an acute form of stress reaction where the events come to mind at seemingly random times and paralyze the victim with fear. Many of us have some of this reaction, even though it is not full-blown PTSD. Cortisol levels are chronically higher, leading to systemic health issues.
Your brain rules your body. If you have negative foundational programming running around your brain, it is broadcasting the negativity throughout your body. You could say that your early life experiences program your entire body through your brain.
?? Maybe I am a robot
With the emergence of AI (artificial intelligence), we are once again questioning if computers can ever become effectively human. Can they develop consciousness? How about emotions? If AI is our future and will in many ways be running the world, what happens of these computers decide they are more important than humans? The lines appear to be blurring — what’s the difference, other than one being organic, between humans and computers? If computers can become like us, and we are like computers, what’s the difference?
Consciousness is often defined as being self-aware. That is a weak definition: with enough sensors and programming, computers and robots can be “self-aware” now. But we have significant programming that might be said to be a lot like computers, yet we are conscious and robots are not. Emotions are considered to be another difference, yet we have emotional reactions that are strongly shaped by our early life experiences. Emotional responses are largely programmed into our brains.
?? —> <|°_°|>
One famous, though fictional, “robot” is the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. OK, he might not exactly qualify as a robot, but he was made of metal — close enough. Anyway, what he wanted was to feel emotions and to love like a human being. He wanted a heart.
The spirit within us is the differentiating factor — the reason AI will never be human, no matter how intelligent it becomes, and the reason we are unique. It’s our heart — not our physical heart, but the invisible spirit which we call “heart”. We don’t know how our thoughts develop, but our brains are the computers, and something in our minds cause the machine which is the brain to fire neurons that physically enact the thoughts. We have the spark of life which computers simply don’t have, no matter how complex and intelligent they become. Consciousness is mysterious, but it is unachievable without that spark. We have spirit/heart that was given to us outside of our doing. It’s not something that we can replicate.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
According to the Neuron published research:
…”early stress can disrupt the maturation of brain networks by interfering with crucial developmental processes, including neuronal oscillations and synaptic pruning.”
Restated:
Fear perceived anytime from conception to age 6 disrupts brain development and sends brain wave messages of fear to every cell in the body continuously and grows neural pathways to support a fear response.
Stress is a form of fear
Research from The Journal of Clinical Psychology:
…repeated childhood stress, especially stress that invokes fear, later leads to heightened activation of the physiological stress response system, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, altering the regulation of glucocorticoids, such as cortisol. That means that the early life stress is carrying forward into increased tendency towards fearful reactions in adulthood.”
The early environment is an environment of survival. This is one of the reasons why the body easily can get subconsciously programmed with fear.
In utero
As you develop inside your mother, you were receiving all the messages from her environment, and that is being transmitted to you and your developing nervous system via:
- the brain waves (frequencies) of your mother,
- the sound frequencies from the environment that your mother’s been exposed to and speaking,
- the biochemistry your mother is secreting, including cortisol stress hormones.
As you can, see all this early environment writes the subconscious programming for survival.
Earliest is most important
When it comes to developing the nervous system, the first information it receives is the most powerful in commanding writing of the neural programs in the brain and neural pathways. So the most important programming is from conception to birth, then the next most important is from birth to age 3, the last stage of subconscious intense programming is from age 3 to 6. So as you can see the majority of your subconscious programming came from your mother and then first three years of life.
Who is out of balance?
Everyone, just to different degrees.
Since we are a product of our early environment, this has been passed down the generations. So you were a product of your mother’s environment, in utero and then especially the first years of your life in the world — this is also how your mother and father developed, how their mother and father developed, and how their mother and father developed, so we all are products of the environment.
What is the answer?
Find the imbalance and correct it. Find the altered brain wave, the subconscious stress program and correct it — or we should say rewrite it. As the Neuron study showed, early stress alters the communication between the brain and the body and inhibits neural pruning, which means it prevents incorrect programming, seen as neuron pathways, from being removed.
Brain window
The brain is a window to the mind and body. With advanced 3-D brain imaging, you can see these patterns in different areas of the brain. And with specialized protocols and therapies, you can rewrite these programs and see the balance in the brain. More importantly the person sees a tremendous change in their life. It is almost like a weight has been lifted from their shoulders, and they feel free: if they don’t consciously know what has happened they just feel lighter, more peaceful, more joyful, more thankful. This has been our protocol at Revolution Health & Fitness for many years because we understood that the brain controls the body, so to balance the body you would have to balance the brain, and to balance the brain you would have to send messages to the brain from the right place.
Brain listens to…
Your brain is the translator of messages from either your mind or your heart.
Your mind is the dominant force that has shaped most of your neural programming, especially from conception to age 6. But there is another voice that can rewrite programs in your brain and your neural pathways. This is your spiritual heart — referred to your spirit or your heart. The messages from your heart are much stronger than the messages from your mind and they have the ability to rewrite your programming, but they first have to be manifested. This is done with specialized therapy. As you train yourself to be more heart dominant anything is possible in rewriting neural programs. But remember the issue is: the subconscious blockages are far superior to the conscious blockages.
Reprogram in me a pure heart — meaning one that is not influenced by a subconscious or conscious mind programming, but one that is only programmed with truth and true identity.
You will know the truth in your heart, in your spirit, and the truth will set you free from subconscious and conscious stress programming.
(1) Birnie MT, Baram TZ. The evolving neurobiology of early-life stress. Neuron. 2025 May 21;113(10):1474-1490. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2025.02.016. Epub 2025 Mar 17. PMID: 40101719. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40101719/
(2) Cross D, Fani N, Powers A, Bradley B. Neurobiological Development in the Context of Childhood Trauma. Clin Psychol (New York). 2017 Jun;24(2):111-124. doi: 10.1111/cpsp.12198. Epub 2017 May 20. PMID: 30906116; PMCID: PMC6428430. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6428430/
