Originally posted January 30, 2013 Michele Rosenthal

In regard to PTSD, I've heard so many times - from both survivors and clinicians - once you're broken you can't be fixed. Really? I find that hard to believe.

And now, there's proof that's all a bunch of baloney.

Your Brain Can Change and Recover From PTSD

In my own trauma recovery, I got to a day that things seemed so dire and destined never to change that I almost gave up. And then a little voice inside me said, Go dance.Ridiculous, right? Not really. Dancing made me feel free, transcendent, joyful and very in the present moment.

I listened to that little voice and signed up for dance classes every day of the week. Seven straight days of every week of every month, I danced every day for four months. I stopped working on my PTSD recovery and just chased after the good feelings that dance brought me.

I didn't know it, but I was doing something years ago that science today proves works: I was creating positive experiences for myself that trained my brain to rewire. And you know what? It was fun! Not only that, all of those good feelings became addictive. I couldn't get enough.

In addition to shocking me with the fact that I could actually feel joy (I had long suspected that would never be possible for me) all of that good feeling translated into a new strength and courage that allowed me to go back into the work of PTSD healing. This time, I finally and completely got the job done.

A few years after my PTSD recovery, I went to the annual trauma conference in Boston. The focus of the conference was heavily in the direction of the emerging neuroscience research. A lot of it proved how with MRIs and fMRIs we can actually see how PTSD impacts and changes the brain. Which got me to thinking....

If trauma impacts the brain in such a way that we develop PTSD, meaning the experience of trauma causes the brain to change, then can't a subsequent experience also cause the brain to change? Was that, in fact, what I had done with all those positive hours of dance experience? Maybe. I cornered a neuroscientist who had presented at the conference and asked him point blank:

If neurological PTSD symptoms come about in response to a powerful psychological experience, is it possible to reverse those neurological changes by engaging in an equally powerful opposite experience?

“You mean, instead of experiencing trauma, experiencing a powerful bliss?” David asked. I nodded. “Yes.”

David didn’t even hesitate: “Yes. Definitely. If you could induce an equally powerful inverse experience, it would impact the brain and cause neurological changes.”

Huh. What do you think about that? A scientist, someone hardcore and a stickler for proof, unequivocally said that the brain can change. In fact, what I came to learn later is that not only can the brain change, it is hardwired to change. You are genetically built for your brain to change again and again and again until the end of your life.

Now, doesn't all that just make you begin to think about recovery in a whole new way? You are perfectly fine. Your neuronal pathways and activity just needs to be changed. Work? Of course. Doable? Eminently.

Michele is the author of Your Life After Trauma: Powerful Practices to Reclaim Your Identity. Connect with her on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and her website, HealMyPTSD.com.

APA Reference
Rosenthal, M. (2013, January 30). Brain Change and PTSD: Proof Recovery is Possible, HealthyPlace. Retrieved on 2020, January 16 from https://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/traumaptsdblog/2013/01/brain-change-ptsd-proof-recovery-is-possible