I find M. Ted's analysis excellent.

My own experience like yours was grounded strongly in a rote cycle of bass and treble interlaced.

Finding the notes to a tune in segments of chords was one thing that made it possible to move away from that mechanism, and return to it and a different moment in a song. There a lot of two-fingered couplet scales that can be used to provide melody, and you naturally learn not to strike the discordant strings. For example, you can hit a pair as the first note of your finger picking cycle instead of just the bass single string note, and then leap back to a full "C" or "G" chord formation for the rest of that cycle.

As you experiment with adding runs of couplets in midstream you can break the habituation to droning.

Arbeggios and reverse arpeggios (high-to-low) can also be interhjected at various points. You keep that eighth note sense of rhythm, but you learn that there's no harm if some of those eight notes are eighth rests instead.

A