Are You Ready to Use Neuroplasticity to Find Healing?

Using neuroplasticity to find healing involves practice and specific techniques to change the neural pathways in your brain. You need to be open to the idea that changing neural pathways in your brain will be healing for you. You need to be willing to do the work to change those neural pathways.

What is Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to create new pathways and neurons. It encompasses how nerve cells adapt to circumstances—responding to stimulation by generating new connections to other nerve cells, called synapses, and responding to deprivation by weakening connections.

How Does Our Brain Change Over Time?

There are around 100 billion neurons in the brain. At one point, scientists thought that the creation of new neurons stopped soon after birth. We now know that our brains adapt and change as we learn and grow. We have more synapses to a neuron at age three than an adult because the brain eliminates unused connections and strengthens others in synaptic pruning, which helps people adapt to their environments. Our brains can also create new pathways, neurons, and connections throughout life.

Neuroplasticity is Behind Our Ability to Learn and Remember

Neuroplasticity supports our capacity for learning and memory and enables mental and behavioural flexibility. Your brain is dynamic and can change throughout life by responding to experience by creating, deleting, and reorganizing connections through “wiring” and “rewiring.”

This means that it is possible to change dysfunctional thinking and behaviour patterns. You can also develop new mindsets, memories, skills, and abilities.

Neuroplasticity Can Be Positive, Neutral, or Negative

Neuroplasticity can happen in positive, neutral, and negative directions. Emotional neglect, traumatic brain injuries, stressful experiences, substance use, and traumatic experiences can cause detrimental changes. The detrimental changes that can develop are things that your brain uses to protect you, ways it tries to warn you, or mistakes it makes in interpreting things. Fortunately, when neuroplasticity goes wrong, we can correct it with brain re-training and neuroplasticity in the right direction.

Types of Neuroplasticity

There are two types of neuroplasticity: structural plasticity and functional plasticity.

Structural plasticity is the brain’s ability to change its structure due to learning and experiencing new things. Structural plasticity can be in either a negative, neutral, or positive direction. An example of negative structural plasticity is nociplastic pain, where your body learns to feel pain without structural reason.

Functional plasticity is the brain’s ability to move functions from damaged areas to undamaged areas. An example of functional plasticity is the healing people can experience after a stroke.

The Issue You Are Dealing with Can Be Addressed with Brain Re-training/Neuroplasticity

The problems or challenges that can be addressed with neuroplasticity can come on quickly, such as with single-incident trauma or a stroke, or gradually, such as with childhood neglect or developmental trauma.

Default Mode Network (DMN)

The Default mode Network (DMN) is an intricate web of interconnected brain regions that play a pivotal role in supporting self-referential thinking, introspection, and daydreaming. When operating optimally, it facilitates moments of reflection and self-awareness that contribute to overall well-being.

However, disruptions within the DMN can have profound effects. When the DMN becomes fraught with turbulence, these detrimental effects include excessive rumination, negative thought patterns, and impaired emotional regulation as individuals struggle to find balance amidst the chaos.

Fortunately, pathways exist to restore harmony within the troubled DMN. Mindfulness can help to restore harmony within the DMN. It takes practice, and it can be challenging for people with anxiety and depression to practice consistently.

Physical activity can stimulate neuroplasticity and foster healthier connections within the brain. As individuals engage in movement, they forge new pathways for positive thought patterns to emerge, gradually reshaping the landscape of the DMN towards greater resilience and well-being. Unfortunately, individuals with depression and other mental health disorders find it hard to motivate themselves to do things in general and, in particular, to exercise regularly.

Sensitization

Central sensitization is a type of nociplastic pain in which the signalling within the central nervous system is amplified, causing hypersensitivity to pain or other symptoms, such as hives or nausea. In central sensitization, the central nervous system, often in the spinal cord, amplifies the pain rather than somewhere in the periphery, such as in the limbs.

Peripheral sensitization is similar to central sensitization, except the pain or symptoms are restricted in one area because the sensitization happens in the periphery rather than the central nervous system.

Learned Association

We learn many associations and expectations as we go about with life. Learned associations are often referred to as classical conditioning. Classical conditioning refers to learning that occurs when a neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone) becomes associated with a stimulus (e.g., food) that naturally produces a behaviour. After the association is learned, the previously neutral stimulus is sufficient to produce the behaviour. An example of how this can impact you negatively is if you have hip pain from an injury when sitting; sometimes, you can develop an association in your brain that sitting a certain length of time or on a particular surface causes pain, even after the injury has healed.

Generalization is the tendency to respond to stimuli that resemble the original conditioned stimulus. It has crucial evolutionary significance. If we eat something that makes us sick, we may want to think twice before we eat something similar because they may have similar negative consequences. In the example of sitting causing pain, even though the pain association started with hard surfaces, your brain may also generalize the pain with sitting to other surfaces.

The opposite of generalization is discrimination, which is the tendency to respond differently to similar but not identical stimuli. It discriminates that something similar but not identical will give a different result. For example, you may respond to your specific ringtone but not something similar because it is probably someone’s phone. In the example of sitting causing pain, you may find that the couch in the living room does not cause pain, so you will learn that softer surfaces don’t cause pain.

Trauma

How Trauma Changes Your Brain

When someone experiences trauma, it creates changes in their brain. Trauma can have a profound impact on your emotions and cognition. It can affect memory, anxiety, depression, reasoning, language, problem-solving, focus, attention, vigilance, awareness, cognitive processing, reading comprehension, concentration, planning, and decision-making.

When you experience a traumatic event, your brain may go into a state of shock, which can lead to a range of emotional and cognitive effects. You may feel overwhelmed, anxious, or depressed, and you may have trouble focusing or making decisions. Trauma can also affect your memory, making it difficult to recall details of the event or other important information.

In some cases, trauma can lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which can cause persistent feelings of anxiety, fear, and avoidance. PTSD can also affect your ability to function in daily life, making it difficult to work, socialize, or engage in other activities.

The Influence of Childhood Trauma on Your Brain

Childhood trauma can have a significant impact on brain development. When a child experiences trauma, their brain’s stress response system is activated, which can lead to the release of stress hormones such as cortisol. Eventually, this prolonged activation of the stress response system can lead to changes in the brain’s structure and function, including the development of smaller brain regions such as the amygdala and hippocampus.

These changes can affect a child’s ability to learn, remember information, regulate emotions, and respond to stress. Children who have experienced trauma may also be more likely to develop mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety later in life.

How Neuroplasticity Can Heal the Damage By Trauma

In trauma recovery, neuroplasticity can form new neural pathways to rewire the brain. This rewiring can help you regain lost abilities, change patterns and behaviours, and develop new coping mechanisms. Neuroplasticity also plays a role in rehabilitation after brain injury, as the brain can reorganize itself to resume regular functions like speaking and controlling limb movements.

With the proper support and treatment, individuals who have experienced childhood trauma can learn to rewire their brains, learn new skills and develop healthier patterns of thought and behaviour.

Some effective treatments for childhood trauma include therapy, such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and mindfulness practices. These treatments can help individuals process traumatic experiences and develop new coping skills to manage stress and regulate their emotions.

Faulty Interpretations

Our brains can make faulty interpretations of the signals and stimuli it is receiving. It may interpret neural stimuli as threatening due to your past experiences or other information it is receiving simultaneously. It can be stuck in its interpretation because it has yet to receive information that contradicts it.

After a limb is amputated or lost, some people continue to feel sensations in that body part even though it’s no longer there. This is because neurons continue transmitting sensory information about the body part they previously controlled.

What Cannot be Addressed with Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity cannot heal damage to your body or your brain. It can help you bypass damaged areas or relearn skills lost to damage, but it can’t heal the structural damage.

What Indicates That You Are Ready to Use Neuroplasticity to Find Healing?

Open to the Idea that Making Changes in Your Brain Can Help You With the Issues You are Facing.

If you aren’t open to the idea that you can make changes in your brain, it is less likely that you will be able to practice what is needed to achieve the goals you want to achieve. This is especially true for pain and mental conditions. Suppose you are trying to calm or heal your nervous system yet introducing threats with your self-talk and anxiety-provoking emotions. In that case, it will be harder for your brain to make the positive changes you want. This is because your nervous system interprets threats, and it will want to protect you and have you take action against those perceived threats.

Not Looking for Someone to Fix You, But Willing to Do the Work Yourself

Suppose you are planning to attend counselling sessions to use neuroplasticity to find healing but are not willing to do work in between sessions. In that case, you will not likely achieve the desired results. Neuroplasticity is not like getting surgery, where someone else fixes what is wrong with you.

Engaging in brain re-training or using neuroplasticity to find healing requires doing work yourself. There is no magic pill. Just like learning to play a musical instrument, it requires practice. You may seek a practitioner to help guide you or give directions on moving forward, but you are willing to do the work between the sessions.

What are Some of the Techniques that Use Neuroplasticity to Find Healing?

Several techniques are focused on techniques that use neuroplasticity to find healing, such as:

• Pain Reprocessing Therapy
• Mindfulness
• Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)
• Cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) and similar therapies like DBT and Cognitive Processing Therapy

When seeking a practitioner who will use neuroplasticity to guide you, it is advisable to look for someone who has training in neuroplasticity techniques and knowledge of your particular condition.

Conclusion

Your readiness for using neuroplasticity to find healing depends on your openness and commitment to doing the work that will create the changes you desire. You can use neuroplasticity to benefit yourself and your healing journey. You can find profound changes that improve your life with the right techniques and strategies.