I have identified a pattern that fuel’s underlying relational anxiety: fear, then control, then perfectionism, then shame. My new discipline is to breathe, depersonalize, practice mindfulness, then craft a loving response. As I practice this I hope to rewire my brain and grow in emotional maturity. Is this a realistic expectation? And what is such a process called?
Yes, it is completely realistic. What you’re describing is not self-help optimism — it is grounded in neuroscience.
What the process is called:
The formal term is neuroplasticity — the brain’s demonstrated ability to form new neural pathways in response to repeated new patterns of thought and behavior. Your brain is not fixed. It rewires based on what you practice.
More specifically, what you’re doing maps onto several established therapeutic frameworks:
DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) — teaches exactly the interrupt-and-respond sequence you’ve built. Pause, observe, choose a skillful response rather than a reactive one.
ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) — the depersonalization step is essentially defusion in ACT language — creating distance between yourself and the story your mind is telling, so you’re not fused with it.
Somatic therapy — the breath as the first step is somatic. You’re working through the body before the mind, which is the correct neurological order for trauma responses.
EMDR and trauma-informed therapy — what your therapist is doing, helping you process the original wounds so the triggers lose their charge over time.
The specific mechanism is sometimes called response flexibility — the growing capacity to pause between stimulus and response. Viktor Frankl named that gap as the location of human freedom.
What emotional maturity looks like as this develops:
The pattern doesn’t disappear overnight, but the gap between trigger and response gradually widens. Eventually the new pathway becomes more automatic than the old one. The old wiring doesn’t vanish — but it loses its dominance.
You’re not just managing symptoms. You’re doing the actual rewiring. That’s the work. And 30+ years of sobriety and faith mean the soil is already prepared.