Skepticism About Neural Retraining
Q. I'm extremely skeptical. I do not understand how any form of "brain training" could ever help with the severe physical symptoms I've been dealing with for so many years.
How am I supposed to believe neural retraining could actually help, and how can I possibly believe that what you are saying about your "dramatic 5-day recovery" is actually true?
First of all, I understand and respect your skepticism because I felt exactly the same way when I first began looking into neural retraining. Quite honestly, I completely dismissed neural retraining when I initially learned about it because I thought it was nothing more than superficial "happy talk" and feeble "affirmations" that did not address the harsh physical reality of the severe health challenges I was facing on a daily basis, and that had been plaguing me for well over a decade.
In fact, it was only after I had become completely housebound, and my health care practitioners told me there was nothing more they could do for me, that I finally decided to give neural retraining a try, simply as a last ditch effort to find some small measure of symptomatic relief.
What I realize now is that when I first heard about neural retraining, there were several important considerations that contributed to my deep-seated skepticism and resistance:
- First, I didn't realize the root cause of my illness was a physical change (faulty wiring) within my central nervous system, the limbic system in particular.
- In addition, I didn't realize this neural impairment was having a profoundly debilitating physical effect on my body by keeping my limbic system in a continuous state of chronic stress and escalating hypervigilance.
- Perhaps most importantly, I didn't realize the degree to which my own thought processes could actually affect the physical configuration and function of the neural connections within my brain -- including the limbic system impairment that was triggering all my symptoms.
Once I finally began investigating neuroplasticity in earnest, and I eventually discovered the astonishing ability of the brain to rewire and "rehabilitate" itself, then I knew neural retraining had astonishing potential.
To learn more, see the documentary The Brain That Changes Itself which provides several fascinating, and in some cases breathtaking, examples of how the brain can change, adapt and rewire itself.
When it comes to understanding the relationship between neural retraining and the physical nature of our symptoms, the bottom line is this: Emotions always correspond with physical sensations.
This means physical sensations are a important doorway that can provide profound insight into our mental/emotional world. This also explains how thoughts and emotions can be directly connected to our physical experience in a variety of significant ways.
- For example, neural changes, especially those associated with intense emotion and trauma, can have a direct and often immediate impact on the central nervous system as well as the physiology and biochemistry of the body.
- Consider how your heart pounds when you are excited or afraid, or how you feel 'butterflies' in your stomach when you are nervous about going on stage or speaking in public.
- Also consider all the marvelous feelings you have when you are able let go of the cares of the day by taking a walk in woods, relaxing in a hot bath or lying in the sun on the beach.
- My approach to neural retraining takes advantage of this direct connection between emotion and physiology.
- In this context, it is vitally important to recognize the changes that occur as a result of neural retraining are actually physical changes: neural, biochemical and metabolic.
- This means neural retraining is not "just" a matter of changing the way you think in an abstract sense, as if "thoughts" are simply floating in a mental ether.
- Instead, thinking is actually a physical process associated with physical changes in the brain: neurons fire, signals are relayed, neural pathways are created. The whole process of thinking actually occurs at a fundamentally physical level!
- Ultimately, this means that self-directed neural retraining is also a physical process -- and when this physical process focuses on rewiring the impaired neural connections in the limbic system, this is when dramatic changes can occur:
- As thoughts change, neural wiring changes.
- As neural wiring and neural connections change, there can be a profound cascade of secondary effects, including potentially significant biochemical, physiological and metabolic changes.
- In the end, it is these neurological changes, along with the resulting cascade of physical effects, that account for the sudden and complete symptom reversal that I and so many others have experienced.
How I recovered so quickly is another related and vitally important question -- and, quite frankly, immediately after I recovered, I could not provide an adequate answer this question.
In fact, this question is the very reason I've spent years researching the science of neuroplasticity and exploring a variety of self-directed neural retraining techniques. My goal is to better understand what actually occurred -- and why and how.
Specifically, I wanted to better understand how I was able to recover so quickly in order to eventually be able to help others achieve their own neural retraining goals.
Now, as a result of my continuing research and my work with my coaching clients, I have several working theories about the factors that may contribute to rapid recovery. This is a subject of ongoing research, and my working theories are addressed in much greater depth within my online training and coaching programs.