Human as a system - simplified functional model

Incredibly complex world? We are so used to our system working that we do not even notice complexity. We go to the bus stop, and everything is “just as always.”

We don’t usually see it, but every situation is actually completely new and everything changes constantly. There are no “trees” and “roads” out there — those are categories built by the mind. Each thing is different, new, and there is a lot of it. There are sounds, and smells, and colors, and people talking, flowers and trash that were not there yesterday, and you need to know how to get a bus, and that if there are clouds it might rain, and to answer differently to a neighbor than to a policeman.

We do not see it because the system is doing its job.

This model goes through each layer one by one. The layers are separated and named by what their function is for navigating the world, not by what they match to in the brain or body.

The point of this model is to understand how the parts work so it becomes clear what makes it possible for a person to change.

The Architecture

The Architecture lays out nine layers, each defined by what it does for navigating the very complex world (not by what it maps to in the brain or body):

1. Body keeps the human alive without needing conscious decision-making.
2. Senses collect information from the world and pass it on.
3. Nervous system carries signal between body and mind, in both directions.
4. Brain builds the picture of the world a person actually experiences.
5. Emotions give an instant read of the situation that aligns every other layer at once.
6. Operating System builds the models, beliefs, and patterns that make an overwhelming reality workable.
7. Thinking works out what to do when no existing model covers the situation.
8. Meaning and understanding layer instantly grasps what a situation means as a whole, and keeps a continuous sense of self over time.
9. The subject receives what every other layer produces and decides what to do with it.

1. Body - the “hardware”

Main function: keeping the human alive without conscious decision-making (breathing, digesting, healing, temperature regulation etc.)

Works like the physical machinery of a computer. The functioning happens automatically and does not require any decisions.

When the hardware changes — illness, injury, aging, substances — the other layers get affected (nervous system, emotions, thoughts).

2. Senses — the input devices

Main function: collecting information from the world.

Light, sound, temperature, smell, taste — senses gather the signal but don’t make sense of any of it. They just pass it along.

Each sense can only detect what it’s built to detect — human ears don’t hear what a bat’s ears hear, human smell works differently than a dog’s. So the brain never gets the full picture of the outside world — only what the senses were able to pick up.

Example: Colorblind people, because of an anomaly in their retina, see the world in different shades than non-colorblind people. Their brain gets the picture of the world in the colors their eyes are able to detect.

3. Nervous system (NS) — the interface

Main function: communication between body and mind.

How it works:

It transmits and transforms signals from the senses. Sound is a vibration on the eardrum, not really a sound until it reaches the brain. The nervous system transforms it, and transmits it to the brain to turn into “a bird singing.”

Connection to other layers:

NS is bidirectional — it communicates signals from body to mind (a person knows they just burnt a finger on a stove), but also from mind to body (when a person thinks about something scary, their palms start sweating).

Anything that affects the nervous system changes what gets delivered in both directions — substances, trauma, chronic stress, disease, meditation, movement.

Examples: A drug can cause a person to see the world in completely different colors and shapes, even though the senses did not change. People with trauma can hear quiet noises as far louder than they actually are.

4. Brain*—the organ that renders

*“Brain in this model does not mean the whole set of processes neuroscience studies under that name. It refers only to the part that turns incoming signals into lived experience — the way a TV turns a signal into a movie.”

Main function: building the picture of the world a person experiences.

How it works:

Brain receives signals from senses through what the nervous system transmits, and then converts it into what we experience as “reality”. This works similar to a television — the TV receives a transmission signal and converts it into millions of tiny points of light. The result looks like a moving picture.

This is not a precise recording of “how things are out there” - what gets to the brain is already filtered by what senses can catch, and then transformed by the nervous system.

The “movie” can differ between people. We have no access to how other people see the same places or situations. We do know that the same temperature can feel warm to one person and cold to another or that “a big, lovely place” can be “a small, stuffy hole-in-the-ground” for another.

5. Emotions - recognition system

Main function: instant read of any situation, making all layers align.

How it works:

Emotions work across all layers — from body, through nervous system to thoughts. They tag every experience with a basic value: safe or unsafe, good or bad, approach or avoid.

Early, fast and broad — emotions read situations almost instantly, from very early in life. Within milliseconds, the entire system aligns: body, nervous system, operating system, thoughts, beliefs, identity all shift together.

Felt in the body, bot not reducible to bodily signals —stomach and throat can tighten from fear, but also excitement, or uncertainty. A person experiencing emotions do experience the read of the situation (this is scary, exciting or uncertain) without needing to neither localize it in the body, nor to name the emotion.

Relation to other layers:

Emotions can influence every layer, and be influenced by them. For example a bodily state like a sickness can cause emotional reaction, and an emotions cause obvious changes in body and nervous system.

Emotions can strongly influence thoughts. Thoughts can affect emotions just as strongly. A single thought like “I’ll always be alone” can trigger anxiety, sadness or fear within seconds. Physical anxiety can cause “I’ll always be alone” thoughts to appear.

Emotions also influence models, and models influence emotions - which will be discussed later in the document.

Limitations:

This system is very fast and broad, but not very accurate. This means that emotions do not always match the actual situation. Thinking about money can trigger anxiety even when money is fine. Traumatic memories can trigger fear in a completely safe situation.

6. Operating System

Main function: making very complex reality workable by building models (simplified representations of something) and patterns (ready responses to situations).

The hierarchy is as follows:

models (representations of the world and self) -> beliefs (specific kind of models that set what is allowed or not) -> patterns (behavioral scripts)

Building models:

To function well, a person cannot see each dog as something entirely new just because every dog is slightly different. They need to recognize “a dog” as a category and know what to do if they meet one on the road.

OS and the models:

The OS turns the overwhelming complexity into simple, workable models:

It works on the same principle as language. The word “dog” covers every dog, so there is no need for a different word for each one. The OS groups experiences into categories, so it can respond as quickly as possible.

Model building starts at birth. The OS learns from early experiences and builds rules about how the world works. This happens unconsciously, before the child can use language. These early rules are built from a tiny sample — mostly parents — but get applied as if they’re facts about the entire world.

At the same time, the OS builds a self-identity from the same experiences. A child who keeps hearing they’re smart starts to see themselves as “an intelligent person.” A child who gets sick often starts seeing themselves as sickly.

The end result are two large, fixed models — “how the world works” and “who I am in it.” These models make it possible to react automatically and properly to almost any situation. Those models are not permanently fixed — day-to-day updating happens — but the core idea of oneself and the world stays stable.

Why do we need models?

The OS builds models to make life easier. Three rules govern everything it does:

Predictability: An easy world is one that’s mapped in advance. The OS doesn’t optimize for good outcomes — it optimizes for knowing what to do. It will choose a known bad situation over an unknown one that might, or might not be good.

Avoiding uncertainty: If there is no model for a situation, everything has to be computed, thought through and worked out from scratch. This is an expensive process. The OS treats “unknown” as risky and costly, so it automatically avoids situations it cannot make sense of.

Comfort: Comfort is the system’s “goal met” signal. It appears when things are predictable, uncertainty is low, and emotions signal satisfaction. The OS actively works to create those conditions.

How the OS builds its models?

Four mechanisms work together to build models — and to keep them in place once built:

Observation and extrapolation: In childhood, when models are built, the OS registers what happens, finds an explanation, and turns it into a rule. Example: I cry → mother gets angry → she hits me. After a few repetitions the OS concludes: “She hit me because I cried. She feeds me and I need her, so I must be the problem. Drawing attention is dangerous.” All of this happens below awareness.

Emotional charge: When emotions around an experience are strong, this signals to the system that this is important and there should be a model to handle similar situations in the future. The stronger the emotion when a model forms, the harder it is to change the model later. The bigger the feeling, the more proof it will need before it considers updating anything.

Repetition: When a similar situation repeats, the OS starts treating it as “this always happens”. Something that happened dozens of times becomes a rule, even if this rule is neither accurate, healthy, nor beneficial.

Logical coherence: New models follow the older ones logically. If the world is a dangerous place, then people cannot be trusted, and then one better not trust anyone else. This logic can be circular and does not need to make much sense from the outside: “The world is dangerous because everyone knows it is” is an example of logic that makes sense to an OS but none from the outside.

The Role of Emotions in Models:

Emotions are the first way to make sense out of the world a child has. Parents fighting make a baby scared, and this scared feeling means that the situation is not safe. So emotions are the simplest “situation reading” system, but also the broadest one - there is no situation emotions don’t have a response to, even when the situation is completely new.

Those tags do not have to make sense in general. Someone who has eaten a lot of tomatoes during parents divorce can have a “this is bad” tag on tomatoes and not understand it as an adult.

Later we say that “models are defended by emotions”. A person asked about why they do not like tomatoes can get angry, anxious, sad or irritated. If the models was built before they started talking and before they remember, they might not know at all why they do not like tomatoes or why they get emotional talking about it.

Models can equally influence emotions. A model of a dangerous world will produce emotions such as fear, worry or uncertainty.

Identity — the most defended model

Main function: making it easier to know how to act and what reactions to expect from others.

If parents are often annoyed when a child wants something, the result is “I am a burden” identity.

This does not need to be true (parents can be annoyed about something else) and a child at this stage has no way to question the model. The more often a child gets a message about who they are, the more fixed the identity model becomes.

Trauma - experiences with very strong negative emotions involved create negative identity models that are very defended and hard to change (“the sinner”, “the unlovable one”, the “defective one”). Symmetrically, positive early experiences create more flexible and easier to update models.

The identity model needs a world model that matches it. The system can build this model in three ways:

• Complementary model: the world model explains the identity. If the identity is “the wronged one,” the world model is “the rigged game.”
• Matching model: the world model mirrors the identity. If the identity is “the kind one,” the world model is “a kind place.”
• Exemption model: the world model excludes the person from a general rule. If the identity is “the unlovable one,” the world model is “full of love for everyone but me.”

The identity model is essential for the system. Identity tells the OS what to expect, what to do and what to avoid. A “sickly person” identity means being careful with health, avoiding germs, and expecting others to see you as weak. An adult who was often sick as a child might keep the “sickly person” identity later in life, even once they’re completely healthy, because keeping the identity is easier for the system than changing it. To update an identity, every other model (of the world, of other people, of specific situations ) has to change too.

Stability Over Accuracy: The OS defends a negative identity just as hard as a positive one, and can hold onto an identity that isn’t accurate or healthy. Since changing identity means changing every model built on it, it’s easier for the OS to keep “I am unlovable” from childhood than to build “I am lovable” from scratch.

Belief System - a model and a set of rules

Main function: simplifying reality into rules about what is right, wrong, safe, dangerous, possible, or unacceptable.

Examples: The world is a dangerous place so one should be careful. All X people are thieves so you should never do any business with them. All men are liars so you should never trust them.

The rules set what is right and wrong, what one can and should do, and what one should absolutely not do. Those rules often carry strong emotions and might be so strict, that following them becomes a top priority for the OS. Example: John keeps losing jobs because of conflicts with people. He says keeping a job is his priority. But he also believes kind people are “doormats.” That belief makes not-being-a-doormat matter more to his OS than keeping stable work. Without changing that belief, the change he says he wants is impossible.

Beliefs are not fully conscious, nor fully unconscious. A person holds a stable set of beliefs but is not necessarily aware of them or able to put them into words. Examples: The world is a dangerous place, rich people are liars and thieves, kind people are weak, being gay is unacceptable

How beliefs form:

Beliefs are passed on from parents. A child learns from how the parents act and what they say, even indirectly: “Be careful,” “Never go out at night,” “That was reckless” all lead to a conclusion that the world is dangerous and one should be careful.

Belief can also form later, particularly around difficult experiences: “All men are liars and cheaters” can form after disappointments in adulthood.

Strong emotions can make a belief stick, whether they happen to the person or to someone close to them. A person can believe that “all people from X country are thieves” just because a friend of theirs got robbed there.

Usually, people do not treat their beliefs as assumptions but rather as a truth about how reality works. They are also often not aware they have them. Naming and examining beliefs requires effort and often starts with seeing that other people have their own version of “truth about reality” or that the belief does not hold logically.

Beliefs require models to be built first, so they are downstream from those models. Beliefs are upstream from patterns, because they determine which patterns can form. Example: Mary has a model of the world in which social approval is the single most important thing. The belief that follows from this is that expressing herself will cause people to reject her. The resulting pattern is to always be agreeable, so people do not reject her and she can get the social approval she values. As long as she has this belief, she will not be able to learn to express freely.

Patterns — automatic templates

Main function: avoiding expensive decision-making by reusing a response that already worked.

A pattern is a successful transaction that got encoded. A child’s OS sees that doing something gets a certain result and encodes it as: do this, get that. Once encoded, the OS deploys the solution automatically.

Example: John, as a kid, watches his father get whiny to get his mother to do things for him, and sees that it works. John encodes: acting emotional is how you get others to do things for you. Once this pattern is established, John automatically deploys whiny behavior whenever he wants his partner to do something for him.

A child watches what works and repeats it, without thinking about what they are learning. Later, an adult does not think through the pattern when using it either. This is why patterns are mostly unconscious. The gain is often not obvious. If John acts whiny only to get attention, rather than to get something more obvious, he might completely miss the whole process.

Patterns always serve a function. They serve a person to either get something (example above) or avoid something (a pattern of lying can help avoid consequences). By adulthood, a person has multiple patterns running. Each pattern answers: what do I do to get what I want or need in this setting? Different situations and needs require different patterns.

Patterns are not only about behavior. They can also determine how a person thinks (this way of analyzing gets me the result I want), reacts emotionally (this way of reacting gets me the result I want), or communicates (this way of speaking gets me the result I want).

Patterns do not need to make logical sense. If they seem to work, the OS takes that as confirmation that the pattern is useful. Example: Mary had a long relationship with a narcissistic partner. Her needs often annoyed him, and were ignored anyway. Mary learned that she could avoid feeling like a problem by ignoring her own needs. The pattern then confirms itself: none of Mary’s friends find her annoying, so the pattern works, even if no one would find her annoying without the pattern either.

7. Thinking - the cognitive layer

Main function: navigating new situations that have no pre-existing models.

Full list of functions:

• Logical reasoning: work out what to do from available information rather than automatic response. The decision process can then take many factors into account and take some time instead of being instant.
• Learning: figure out the best response from what happened before, and then apply it to new situations. Learning can provide data to update the old models or create new ones.
• Following sequences: examine what already happened and imagine what can happen next.
• Following cause and effect: see how and why one event leads to another, rather than just noticing that two things happen together.
• Examining experience: make experiences something the person can think about.
• Communicating experience: make it possible to share experiences with others.
• Handling step-by-step tasks: calculate, read, and work out how things work.
• Processing information from other layers: turn what happens in other layers into something that can be thought about, explained, and used to update models.
• Examining other layers and models: think about how the system works and examine the models it uses.

Thinking is partly determined by the hardware (neurochemistry, connectivity, neurodivergence, etc.) and partly shaped by experience. The hardware itself changes little, but training can change how it works to some extent — like a shepherd dog that will always want to chase animals but can eventually learn to stay by the handler’s leg.

Encoding: Most thinking patterns start in childhood, as children learn from parents and other people around them. They continue to develop as new experiences reinforce or change what was learned earlier.

Example: A child sees a parent writing down every errand so nothing is forgotten. The child may learn that writing things down is necessary to remember them.

• Thinking patterns become part of the OS and run automatically.

Properties:

Not fully conscious: some processing is conscious, some is not. Not fully controllable: thinking can be directed, but it can also keep going on its own (rumination, intrusive thoughts, or constant inner chatter). Less automatic than the lower layers: thinking is slower, so it often relies on existing patterns and models.

Limitations:

Thinking can be influenced by things already believed or expected, make logical mistakes, and be too confident in its own conclusions. A person can hear a few words and conclude people are conspiring against them, when they are actually talking about a movie.

Thinking can mistake its interpretation for what is actually happening. A person can think about a trip, imagine what could go wrong, and start planning for a train crash they imagined as if it were real.

Thinking feels both internal and external. When John thinks, his thoughts say “I am,” as if they are John. But when John tries to stop thinking and his thoughts continue, they no longer feel like John.

Relation to other layers:

Can affect emotions fast — one thought can make someone anxious in a second.

Can be bypassed by the lower layers. In high-stakes situations, instincts and emotions can take over and produce a fast response while ignoring what thinking says.

Feeds new information into models, especially identity and belief models, so they can be updated and used automatically by the OS. This is not the same as examining the models. For example, repeatedly thinking about bad news on TV can produce a “dangerous world” model.

Thinking can help examine a model and help changing it by working through it logically, but rarely produces a change on its own.

8. Meaning and understanding layer

Main function: instantly understand what a situation means as a whole. Keep a continuous sense of self and experience over time.

Introduction:

The other layers have relatively clear functions so they do not need an example to start. Senses collect information. The nervous system processes signals. Emotions register what an experience does to the person. The OS builds patterns and models. Thinking works with information and reasons about it.

But there is another function the system needs: the person has to have a continuous sense of who they are and what their experience means.

Science examines things through thinking. Thinking works step by step, with separate elements. It is slow and expensive. The meaning layer is the opposite: it does not break things into separate elements or work them out step by step. It understands the whole at once.

This is easier to see with an example: A person wakes up in the morning. They immediately know who they are, where they are, what their life is, what has been happening, what matters to them, and how they feel about it.

And if this understanding were made of separate pieces of information, all those pieces would have to be kept available all the time. That would mean keeping an enormous amount of information active just to function normally. We don’t do that. We don’t carry our entire history, relationships, experiences, and knowledge in our working mind. Yet the whole meaning of our lives is immediately there when we need it.

This is not a type of memory, either. It is a general understanding of the current situation. It does not contain all the details. If the exact details are needed — “What exactly did John tell me last night?” — the cognitive system has to go back to that memory, just like loading a movie mentioned earlier.

The meaning layer registers the structure of what happened, how, where, what followed what - without needing models, concepts, or language to do so. This registration is pre-model — it happens before the OS interprets, labels, or builds stories about it.

The meaning is then extracted as a whole. This means the layer does not work like language or mathematics — it does not use element-then-element-then-element linear processing. It extracts the meaning from the whole, the relations between all the elements. This is why meaning is difficult to study, talk about, or think about: language is linear, so meaning inevitably gets distorted when put into words.

Full list of functions:

Instantly sees what a complex situation means as a whole, without using existing beliefs, stories, or models to interpret it. This “what this situation is as a whole” is what will be later described as the meaning.

Combines a whole life of experience into a general sense of what it means, available at once instead of rebuilding it from individual memories each time.

Uses dream consolidation to extract that general meaning. The meaning is played in form of movies full of meaning (called “dream symbolism). This replay can be read by the person to understand the connections that understanding layer extracted, but the consolidation runs regardless of whether the person pays attention to their dreams or not. Example: A. repeatedly dreams of trying to get to New York, but something goes wrong every time at the last minute. Sometimes A. overpacks and is late to the airport. Sometimes A. does not get the visa. Sometimes A. forgets the ticket. The meaning layer communicates the bigger picture: A. feels that she is not good enough as she is and needs to optimize herself more before she can reach her “dream life.”

Allows completely new situations to make sense, such as unfamiliar surroundings, dreams, or psychedelic experiences. Example: A person takes a psychedelic drug that changes their whole perception, sounds, colors, time experience, how they think, how they experience themselves. Even though everything in them and around them changes, the person still has a sense of being “same me”.

Keeps a sense of being “me” even for people with complete memory loss.

Gives a sense that life and experiences form one continuous story with meaning.

Because it registers events, rather than interpreting them through beliefs or models, it keeps the system from being entirely controlled by its own beliefs and stories. It allows those beliefs and stories to change when they do not match what actually happened. Example: Someone who believed, “This person was attacking me in that situation!” can later look back at how the situation unfolded and see, “Oh, this is what really happened.”

Properties:

Works differently than language or normal thinking. The meaning is like an “aha!” moment, rather than analysis - the whole scene is recognized at once, rather than worked out piece by piece. Example: A person walks into a room and understands directly what kind of event is going on there. They do not need to slowly process each element — “here is an ashtray, here is a knife, here is a bizarre suitcase, people here wear black clothes, therefore this is a gang meeting rather than a party.”

It is not cognitive pattern detection either. It works similarly to pattern recognition, but recognizes the whole shape at once rather than pattern-matching individual elements, and does not need a similar configuration to have already happened to understand it or extract the meaning. Example: A person who has never taken drugs gets LSD dropped into their drink in a café. “This was surely acid” is pattern detection (I saw movies about it, people mentioned those effects, therefore this must be it). Understanding means rather: “even without knowing anything about the details of this, I get the felt sense of what-how-why these things are happening to me.”

Meaning does not build up piece by piece. It comes all at once, as the feeling that “everything makes sense.” Once someone gets this meaning, they do not need to try to get it again - it stays.

Meaning is extracted without OS models and thoughts skewing the view. The cognitive system already has beliefs and models that affect how it understands a situation. The meaning layer does not use those beliefs to decide what happened. It looks at the whole situation and sees what happened, what caused what, and what the result was.

Examples:

1. A woman has a secret romance with a married professor. She arrives at his class. He notices a dirty desk, mentions it, glances her way almost automatically, corrects himself quickly. She goes to his desk, finds dirty washcloths, discards them, finds a clean one. Cleans the desk very thoroughly and carefully. Leaves.

What the professor knows instantaneously:

• it was a big mistake to suggest she does it
• she is done with him
• this mattered to him more than he thought
• this is a humiliation
• she is leaving for good

As we can see, nothing in her gesture directly conveys this message.

2. A person has a long standing toxic pattern they are aware of and incapable of changing. They read a vast amount of books on the subject, yet nothing changes. Then they read a book where the author explains how babies acquire this kind of pattern, using a “beaten puppy” metaphor. Something clicks - the person understands their patterns, and their approach changes. They start feeling self-compassion, and get an idea to treat themselves as they would treat an animal that was mistreated before.

Relation to other layers:

It can align the whole system - emotions, thoughts, nervous system, beliefs - in an instant.

The meaning layer uses the emotional response to an event to understand what that event means for the person. (example: every time Family Christmas happened, it caused anxiety and distress for this person. The meaning of Christmas became ‘a special period of stress.’)

It can see what the person thinks and believes without seeing the situation through those thoughts and beliefs. This means the layer could be considered “more objective”.

9. The subject - a layer that sees and acts

This part is separated from the others because it does not produce its own output. Instead, the subject receives what the other parts produce — thoughts, feelings, and understanding — and decides what to do with them. This does not mean that the subject is literally a separate physical system. It is grouped separately because it has a different role: it receives the results of the other processes and acts on them.

Main function: receive what the other layers produce, experience it, and act on it.

Full list of functions:

• It can receive and observe what all the other layers are producing - bodily states, emotions, thoughts. It is the only part that can recognize that it is receiving information from all the other layers.
• It can generate motivation for actions that are not automatic.
• It can make decisions and act.
• It is the unified capacity for having experience itself — the part that actually experiences what is happening.

Properties:

It remains the same kind of “subject” even though the contents of experience constantly change.

It is difficult to examine or think of, as it is the part that watches examining and thinking.

It is “the watcher, the hearer, the taster” - it receives and experiences the render.

It can shift attention, changing the render and the information received from the environment.

It is not identical with any particular content and because of that it can receive the content from thoughts, body etc. If it were a thought, it would not be able to see the thoughts. If it was a feeling, it would not see the feelings.

It is like a witness, or a receiver, or an observer, to both internal and external processes.

At the same time it is a “doer”, a mover and a decision-maker based on what was received.

Example: John has a pattern of always being helpful because he learned that being useful gets him approval. The subject can choose not to follow it and refuse to help. But if John identifies with the pattern, he sees being helpful as simply “who I am”, so there is no choice to make at all.

Most everyday decisions are not really made by the subject. They come from models and patterns, and the subject carries them out automatically.

Relation to other layers:

It can affect every other layer, while every other layer can communicate to it.

It acts based on information it receives from the other layers.

It can intentionally change other parts of the system by working through them.

Layers and Change

Why change is so difficult?

The Operating System is strongly self-reinforcing

This does not mean that the system does not update at all, but rather than deep models (who I am, how the world works, how one should behave) are resistant to change. OS architecture makes this resistance structural:

The OS builds models from experience, then uses those models to interpret new information in ways that confirm those exact models.

Every time the model runs and no catastrophe happens, the OS takes that as proof. the absence of catastrophe is sufficient proof for the system to see the model as accurate.

By age thirty, forty, or fifty, the OS has decades of experiences that seem to confirm its current models.

From the system’s own perspective, challenging working models makes little sense. Why would the OS discard a map supported by fifty years of “successful” data for an untested alternative?

The OS resists change for three reasons that reinforce each other:

• Logical evidence base: Decades of experience support the way things currently work. Any proposed change is judged against it.
• Unpredictability: The OS has no model for the new situation. Without predictability, there is no comfort. The sudden, drastic change is seen as a threat, even when it is objectively positive.
• Core models cannot be changed by thoughts alone. Thoughts are mostly produced by the OS. On their own, they are not treated as important input. If the OS has fifty years of emotional evidence that says the opposite, “I am lovable” has little effect on the model. It is the subject that decides, but the gap between the input it receives—thoughts, models, and other signals—and the decision is so small that everyday decisions are almost always automatic.

What actually produces change?

The change we are talking about here is not just any change. For a human system, change can mean anything from getting healthy or sick to changing its environment. The psychological change discussed in the next part is mostly a change in models and patterns.

Why? Because models and patterns are the main reason why human behavior is rigid, automatic, repeatable, and difficult to change. How to stop drinking or lying, how to trust people more, and how to keep jobs or relationships are all questions of changing the automated way of relating to the world.

The change and the layers

Which layers produce change?

1. Lower layers

Hardware, nervous system, senses, and brain are largely outside human conscious control.

• Obviously, therapies involving body work, nervous system work and senses do work and make sense, but they change the general functioning of the system rather than its models.

2. Cognitive layer

Cognitive Layer seems like a good candidate for producing change because it allows for many kinds of operations: read about it, talk about it, think about it, write it down, etc.

But cognitive operations are rarely enough. A person can think about the same problem for years without anything changing. Example: A person spends 10 years reading about their avoidance, writing about it in a diary, and discussing it with friends and specialists, but they are still just as avoidant as when they started.

Therapies working on that level:

• Classic CBT (cognitive restructuring, Socratic questioning)
• Psychoeducation
• Reading scientific psychological books / articles
• Journaling/self-reflection
• Discussion groups, talking etc.

3. Emotions

Emotions are another obvious place to look.

We already mentioned that emotions act like tags on experience. They help align the whole system and “protect models” by appearing when a model is questioned. Strong emotions connected to models make them harder to change and keep them in place.

Most psychological approaches either work mainly with emotions or combine intellectual understanding with emotions because of how emotions form, protect and reinforce models.

A new emotional experience can change the “flavor” a person gives to a situation—from awful to okay, or from terrifying to slightly uncomfortable—making it possible for protected models to change. Example: John normally experiences intense shame around romance. He works on it through a therapy. The shame gradually becomes weaker and is eventually replaced by a calmer feeling. This allows John to start dating again.

Therapies working on that level:

• Most talk therapies involve working on the emotional layer mixed with cognitive layer (EFT, psychodynamic, gestalt, psychodrama, psychoanalysis) to different extent.
• Exposure therapy
• Emotional Freedom Techniques
• Inner child healing
• Emotional and somatic release

4. The subject

The subject is the doer, so it is the next obvious candidate to cause change.

The problem is that the subject decides based on the information available to it. Much of that information comes from existing models and patterns. So when the subject acts, it tends to act in ways that fit those models and patterns, which makes change unlikely.

Moreover, in many people, the subject is tangled up with other systems. A person does not see a clear difference between their thoughts and the layer that observes them and decides what to do.

There are two levels of working with the subject layer in order to change:

1. Reinforcing and separating the subject
2. Changing a stance

Separating and reinforcing the subject

When a person’s behavior is mostly driven by models and patterns, decisions happen without the subject noticing them — automatically. Example: Whenever Z sees a neighbor, he looks away and pretends not to see them. Z is not aware of doing this—the whole process is automatic. Then one day, a neighbor points it out. Z thinks about it, understands what is happening, and decides to change the pattern. To do this, Z has to strengthen the subject, so it can observe thoughts and behaviors that normally happen automatically. He also has to separate the subject from those behaviors. Otherwise, the same reaction will happen again. Simply put, Z has to “observe himself” when walking past acquaintances, notice when the old pattern starts, and override it by choosing to do the opposite of what he has always done.

How separating and reinforcing the subject works:

1. Recognize the subject
   The person needs to know and recognize the part that observes thoughts, emotions, and automatic reactions. This part is not the thoughts or emotions themselves.

2. Separate the subject from thoughts and emotions
   The person learns this distinction in practice. “I am stupid” is a thought, not a fact. “Everyone is laughing at me” is a thought, not proof that everyone is laughing. Fear is an emotion, not an instruction.

3. Build the habit of noticing
   The person practices noticing thoughts, emotions, and automatic reactions as they appear, especially when the pattern starts firing.

4. Build the habit of acting from the subject
   The person notices the reaction in a moment, separates it from the decision, and acts anyway: “I’m scared, but I’ll do it.” “I think they’re laughing at me, but I’m going inside anyway.” Repeating this reinforces the subject.

Therapies working on that level:

• ACT and Metacognitive Therapy
• Mindfulness-based practices
• IFS to some extent (in relation to parts)
• Pattern Analysis and Training
• Contemplative witness practice (Dzogchen-style resting as awareness, Vipassana)

Stance

-Stance is not a thought, not a belief, and not an ordinary intention or plan. It is a decision the subject has firmly made about a situation, an outcome, or itself, that then organizes the rest of the system.

It can be put into words, but is not merely thinking or a cognitive process.

Stance can override models and patterns and deliberately act against them. Thinking can go against models and patterns but does not produce action on itself. This is why stance can produce effects that thinking alone can’t. Example: John is struggling with smoking for years. One day he wakes up and suddenly decides: I am doing it now. And quits the same day for good. The stance change must have happened, although for an outside observer it is invisible. John already tried quitting countless times, and gave up everything. This time, in order to actually quit, he had to take three separate stances: 1. I CAN stance 2. I WILL stance 3. and nothing will stop me (PERSEVERANCE stance).

Said simply, John had to allow himself the possibility of succeeding, then decide not to try but to actually do it, and then decide that he will retake this decision over and over again, knowing that there will be difficulties. These are exactly the stances taken.

A common default stance is “I can’t”. This stance is often rooted in logic (I can’t fly), common sense (I can’t become a pope), models and patterns (I know I can’t), lack of willingness (I just can’t).

A person with an “I can’t” stance will either not try at all (I can’t ever be rich so no sense in trying), or will try without conviction, motivation and perseverance required (I think I can’t lose weight but let’s try another New Year’s resolution)

However logical the “I can’t” default stance is, the large part of the most impressive achievements is made by those who completely override “I can’t” (I can finish an Ironman with my disabled son, I can become a musician without arms).

The list of stances allowing change:

I CAN (allow possibility). This stance has two orientations: external possibility vs. internal capacity. For some outcomes, both have to be allowed: “I can win at the Olympics” means both “this is possible in the world” and “I have the capacity to do it.” For others, only the internal capacity matters: “I can leave this toxic relationship” does not require the world to make something possible; it requires the person to allow themselves to do it.

I WILL (commit) - turns possibility into a firm decision to act. “I WILL” does not mean “I will try.” It means “I am going to do it, starting now.”

I WILL NOT (refuse) - is a firm decision against a proposal, option, possibility, or course of action. It does not mean “I don’t want to” or “I probably won’t.” It means “this is not something I will do or accept.”

THAT’S ENOUGH (cut, close) - is a firm decision to cut something off, close something, stop doing something, or stop allowing something. It marks a tipping point: the point at which the current situation can no longer continue as it has for a person. It is the “straw that broke the camel’s back” — after this point, a turn happens.

PERSEVERANCE (retake I WILL indefinitely). This is the most complex of the stances. It takes into account the slips, the hard moments, and the bumps on the road that will inevitably happen. It is a decision to retake the “I WILL” stance through all of them, without allowing a detour to change the initial “I WILL” stance. It can be expressed simply as: “Nothing will stop me.”

RELEASE (let go). A decision to stop reopening, pursuing, thinking about, or holding on to something. It is an internal act of loosening the grip and deliberately leaving something behind, without looking back.

Therapies working on that level:

• Some addiction therapies, like 12 steps, where participants move towards a stance of “I can, I will, and nothing will stop me”
• Pattern analysis and training is designed to work on the stance level
• Stance change might be one reason affirmations and spells work. If an “I can’t” stance is what prevents change, an affirmation that introduces and reinforces an “I can” stance can be a very effective solution. Repeating the affirmation can strengthen the new stance until it becomes the position from which the person acts.

Stance is dependent on understanding

Because stance can directly produce change, it might seem that stance is enough and no understanding is necessary.

But the affirmation example, as well as any other stance change, shows that understanding needs to come first. A person needs to understand the situation well enough to know what stance needs to be taken before a stance change can happen. Example 1: To stop drinking, a person needs to take two stances: I CAN and I WILL. But what makes these stances possible in the first place for a person in a drinking pattern? The only way to adopt these stances is for the person to understand that drinking is their problem and that their default “I can’t do it” stance is what needs to change.

An affirmation can help change a stance only when the underlying conditions are right: the problem needs to come from the default incapacity stance (“I can’t”), and the person needs to understand that this default stance is what is blocking them. The affirmation then needs to introduce the opposite stance — “I can” — and reinforce it through repetition. Example 2: John, who is very stressed about flying, spends a few nights before the flight repeating, “I am fearless and unstoppable.” By the day of the flight, he is much less stressed. Scientifically, this kind of affirmation should not work because it conflicts with what John knows about himself. But in John’s case, it can work because he understood that his default “I can’t” stance was the problem and changed it to “I CAN,” with an extra ritual of affirmation.

5. Meaning and understanding layer

This is the only layer in the model that can influence all the other systems (including emotions) and instantly reconfigure patterns and models, including the model of self. This is the mechanism behind breakthroughs, insights, “it hit me,” and the experience of everything suddenly falling into place.

Intellectual insight (“I know I should feel safe”) stays at the cognitive layer and has little effect on the other layers by itself. A change at the meaning layer can suddenly re-arrange the emotions, the Operating System, and identity layers at once. Example: John is repeatedly told by his friends and family that he is too hard on himself. He responds, “I know, I know.” His therapist has explained it to him, and John has also read several articles about negative self-talk. He already knows that he talks to himself this way, and nothing changes. Then he reads an article that describes what would happen if the same things were said to a dog. While reading, John realizes that saying these things to a dog would be animal abuse. The dog would become severely depressed. Something clicks. John suddenly sees his own self-talk in a completely different way. He realizes he is treating himself in a way he would never treat any other being.

Cognitive work that produces change does so because it leads to understanding. In other words, change happens when thinking leads to understanding, not simply because a person has thought about something a lot. Understanding can work together with thinking, but thinking is not required for understanding.

Example: Mary is walking down the street when she sees a mother violently shaking a toddler and shouting insults at them. Mary suddenly recognizes herself in the toddler. In that moment, her whole childhood, her troubles as a teenager, her difficulty in relationships, and her current depression suddenly make sense as one connected picture. Everything “clicks”.

How does understanding reconfigure the system? (on Mary’s example)

Understanding is hard to explain without falling into the trap of cognitive, linear processing: this happened → that happened → caused that → and then that. Understanding is instantaneous, not linear.

Example: Mary had a troubled adolescence and adulthood. She had spent years trying to understand what was going on through therapy, reading, and thinking. She knew her mother was difficult and was aware of her own struggles. She had many ideas and hypotheses, but they came from her existing models and did not make much sense as a whole. What she saw was the mother’s aggression, but most importantly the toddler’s reaction: full terror and pain, yet reaching for the mother, who then hit the tiny hands. This was the moment that shook her and explained the patterns: being the “forgiving and kind one,” chasing unavailable men, power dynamics with her aging mother, irrational fear of confrontation, and other things she had struggled to explain. This was not concluded through thinking. The meaning arrived as a whole. Later, Mary can think about other patterns and check how they fit the new understanding, but the original understanding did not require a single thought.

Therapies working on that level:

• Effective therapies, including the above ones, work once they produce understanding. Because meaning “arrives” rather than is produced, any kind of therapy, or any kind of experience in fact, can produce sudden whole-system understanding. Yet it rarely happens on its own.
• Gestalt is an example of a therapy where cognitive, emotional and to some extent meaning layers are worked on simultaneously.
• Focusing (Gendlin) mixes emotional layer with meaning layer.
• Metaphors, stories, and myths work (as in Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ work).
• Pattern analysis and training focuses on meaning layer and cognitive layer through using personalized metaphor-like keywords for models and patterns.
• Contemplative practice — Zen Koan practice, Dzogchen pointing-out instructions — deliberately exhausts or bypasses the cognitive layer to let recognition arrive directly.

Hierarchy of how each layer influences change:

1. Understanding — necessary element. No change is possible without some form of understanding.
2. Reinforcing and separating the subject/stance — downstream from understanding. This allows the new understanding to be put into action and applied repeatedly. A default stance and automatic behaviors can block change even when the understanding is already there.
3. Emotions — can reinforce or block change. Strong emotions, especially negative ones, can reinforce existing models and make change harder. Strong emotions do not make change impossible. Someone can be terrified and still do the thing they are trying to learn to do. But a more positive and less intense emotional reaction makes change easier.
4. Cognitive work — useful but not necessary. Some people need to put their understanding into words so they can work with it consciously. Cognitive work by itself is rarely enough to produce change.
5. Background conditions — can support or obstruct change. Calming the nervous system, physical therapies, and similar work may not produce change by themselves. But physical problems, a highly activated nervous system, sensory problems such as tinnitus, and similar factors can make change much harder. Sometimes these background problems need to be addressed before change is possible.

Pattern Analysis and Training works on several layers at once, but its main focus is producing understanding. It uses cognitive work mainly for this purpose. It treats emotions as hypotheses about situations rather than facts, which can change both the emotional response and the person’s relationship to their emotions. It reinforces the subject and builds capability stances. It also uses humor, which signals safety and ease to the nervous system.