Can The Brain Rewire After Trauma

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Dear listeners, have you ever wondered like if your brain can actually change after trauma? Not just heal, but rewire itself in ways that make you stronger than before. So today we are talking about something that sounds like science fiction but is deeply real. The brain's ability to reshape itself and why you don't have to do it alone. Yeah. So welcome to Healthy Man Healthy Life. I'm your host, Davik, and this is a podcast where we talk about mental health in ways that actually that actually makes sense for everyday life. No jargon, no quick fixes, just real conversations about what it takes to feel better and stay well. And today I'm joined by a very lovely guest. Please welcome Christy Walker. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. That was very well said, your introduction. I uh I'm very much in agreement.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Amazing. That's really great to hear from you, Christy. And dear listeners, like before we uh get into the discussion, I'll quickly love to introduce with Dr. Christy. So she is a board-certified emergency medicine physician, former psychotherapist, and the author of the Tao of Trauma Healing. So 12-step guide to overcoming anxiety and the depression. So she brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to understanding how we recover and grow after difficult chapters. Yeah. So I do not want to take much of a time, but let's get started. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Okay, okay.

What Counts As Trauma

SPEAKER_01 2:02

So Dr. Christy, like I think um a lot of people they hear this word trauma and assume that it only applies to extreme situations. So, what do you think is the kind of most common misconception that you have noticed about who trauma affects and how it shows up?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Sure, that's an excellent question. Trauma, I know that it is a misconception. People think it has to be some big, major, awful thing in order to be uh considered trauma. But trauma comes in all sizes: big trauma, capital T, little traumas, little T. And the thing about trauma is it changes the brain and it changes how you perceive the world around you. It changes the way you think, the way you feel, the way you behave. And uh trauma, for example, can be as simple as, or not so simple as a pet passing away, or being in a major car accident, uh being assaulted. Um it can be traumatic if you are overlooked for a sports team growing up. That can be a trauma in your life, or if some big plans you have fell apart. All those things can be considered trauma, and our response to it varies from mildly uh uh affected to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Why Triggers Feel So Immediate

SPEAKER_00 3:29

And what happens with trauma uh is traumatic memory is stored in a part of the brain called the amygdala. It's the emotional part of the brain, highly charged uh events, feelings get stored there. And so long as you are unable to process through the trauma, it remains in an ever-present state of now. So things in the environment that are similar to the event that happened can trigger a reaction. It can be as severe, like I said, as post-traumatic stress, where you're reliving the experience, having intrusive thoughts, uh, flashbacks in the event to operating in a way that is self-defeating and not even realizing where it's coming from. In order for trauma to be resolved, it has to shift from that emotional part of the brain to the left side of the brain where cognition can act upon it, where you can use your thoughts, your ability to think to reframe what has happened.

Shifting Memory Into Thought

SPEAKER_00 4:35

And I created a process that kind of combines a little bit of cognitive behavioral therapy, neurolinguistic program, uh uh cognitive processing theory, some trauma-related uh work. And I combined it into a way where you can actually uh walk through the trauma, where you face the trauma, you dip into the emotion just enough, pull out of the emotion, and you trace the feelings associated with the trauma. You then embrace the impact it's had on your life, you recognize that maybe you are constantly getting into relationships that are abusive or where you're not treated well as a result of your trauma. So you you embrace the impact it's had in your life, and then you replace the template with a new template. And that's where neuroplasticity comes in. The ability of the brain to actually change the pathways that it uses to uh conceptualize the world, the the pathways and how you respond to the environment and respond to your trauma.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Exactly. Exactly. And so I last like I mean when someone realizes their own experience uh might fit that broader definition. So what tends to shift for that?

Concrete Tools For Brain Retraining

SPEAKER_00 6:06

What tends so you have to reprogram the brain. And one of the things I find in standard therapy that is lacking is actual concrete tools that let you reprogram the brain. There's a lot of talking about what happened, talking about the trauma, reliving the trauma, having feelings about the trauma, but all that does is reinforce the neuropathway of the trauma. And I know personally I struggled for decades with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to the point where sometimes it was almost debilitating and it made it very difficult to perform my job. Um, and I remember asking at my therapist one time, when am I gonna get over this? When am I not going to be so easily triggered? And she says, Well, you know, when the time is right, when you've processed through it enough, I'm like, well, what does that actually mean to process through it? She's like, well, you gotta be able to talk about it and have it not be so emotionally charged. I'm like, yeah, but how do you do that? And there was never a really good answer to how to do that. It was just a lot of feelings and emotions and reliving, but no movement.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

So I knew there had to be a better way, you know. Uh, and so I sought, I sought it out. I spent a year and a half doing research, reading everything that I could get my hands on, and then coming up with actual exercises to help that process of reprogramming the brain. For example, let's say your trauma left you feeling worthless. You have this belief system that you're worthless. Well, your brain is going to reinforce that belief system. You're gonna have thoughts that reinforce that belief system. Those thoughts are gonna trigger feelings, those feelings are gonna trigger actions. You repeat those actions, they become habits. And if it's a negative belief system that you're carrying, pretty much you're gonna produce negative results. So you think you're worthless or you believe you're worthless, and you think, oh, I don't deserve to be treated well, or this is as good as it gets, you're gonna put up with a lot of things that otherwise you shouldn't put up with, you know, abusive behavior, for example, toward you, um being talked down to um not excelling in work because you think you're worthless and why try? Why bother? My premise is that when you change that belief system to I am worthy, for example, then your thoughts are going to start to change, your feelings are gonna change, your behaviors are gonna change. So she asks herself, well, how do you do that? Well, one technique I developed was uh a process where you um do a brain dump of all the negative stuff you're thinking about yourself, identify how you feel, and then select a feeling that you would prefer. So, for example, if you feel um sad and depressed, but you prefer to feel energized and happy, then you could pick an action that would lead you in that direction. So the action might be to walk around the block or to uh call a friend or to pick some flowers or something that moves you in a different direction and set that as your intention for the day. And then follow that with affirmations. So I have a whole exercise of affirmations, and you read them to yourself out loud, whether you believe it or not. So, for example, to replace that thought, that belief that you're not worthy, you would put in as an affirmation, I am worthy. And you were to read that to yourself every day. And the more you read that to yourself, the more the brain takes it in. It takes 28 days to create a new habit, but 90 days to create a new neuropathway. So it's gonna take about 90 days for those affirmations to start to take hold. But as they take hold, you're gonna find yourself operating in a whole different, different way, in a way that's self-affirming and productive and life-giving as opposed to the negative patterns that we often fall into. But it requires input because your brain operates on what it's told. And it doesn't know what's real or not real, it just knows what information you give it. So if you give it a new piece of information, it will incorporate it. And eventually over time, that neuropathway will become the default. And instead of thinking and feeling that you're worth uh unworthy, you'll start to believe, hey, I'm worthy, and I deserve to be treated well. And you won't put up with people who harm you or or treat you poorly. Um, but it requires retraining that that basic programming.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Exactly true. Yeah. So um okay. So I'll I'll just uh definitely ask you or I mean uh before that, obviously that it it makes so much of sense, like we spend so much time minimizing our own pain and thinking that it doesn't count when uh really that just keeps us stuck in it. So yeah.

Everyday Signs Healing Is Working

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Well, I think that sometimes we identify with our trauma and our pain, that becomes our identity, you know, and it it's very hard to want to shift from that into uh a a different way of seeing yourself, you know. You might see yourself always as a victim, or you know, I'm just a survivor. I I don't I don't think that serves you at all.

SPEAKER_01 12:15

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, true. And also uh I'd love to bring about our daily daily part, like in everyday life, what does trauma recovery actually look like? Like not the big big breakthroughs, but the small ordinary moments where someone might notice that they are responding differently.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

You you might begin to set boundaries where you allowed yourself to be walked on before. You know, suddenly you're not gonna tolerate somebody uh uh misusing you or treating you poorly. You'll be like, you know what? This is not okay. And it's not okay to treat me this way, it's not okay to talk to me this way. You'll start to get empowered enough to actually walk away from situations that are not life-affirming. You know, you don't have to surround yourself with people who drag you down. In fact, I would argue that, you know, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. If you surround yourself with people who criticize you, who don't respect you, you know, you're you're going to behave accordingly and and your future will not be bright. It will be full of pain and suffering.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

So um and and are there signs that people might miss because they are looking for something uh which are more dramatic? Like um, how people will get to understand? I mean, what are some of the signs that will help them?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

Well, they'll start believing their affirmations for one. And they'll they'll start realizing, you know, hey, I I am worthy, I am worthy of respect, I am empowered, I am smart, I am an achiever. Um and it won't just be words on a piece of paper anymore. They'll start to incorporate that into their new identity.

Connection And Community As Medicine

SPEAKER_01 14:27

So okay, and um also like you emphasize the importance of community in the healing. So why is connection so essential? Like, especially when trauma often makes us want to withdraw.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Well, we're social beings, we're made for social connection. Um, it's it's in community where people mirror uh us, um, reaffirm us, uh, accept us. And connecting just via social media alone really isn't sufficient. You don't get the physical cues that also go with being affirmed or accepted. Um, and the more you isolate, the harder it is to break out of that cycle of uh self-deprecation and feeling worthless and like nobody cares about me, nobody loves me. Uh, it's hard to feel loved when you're just connecting with people via social media. You know, you need that interaction, that one-on-one, or the the group to affirm you. And if you have a family where you came from an abusive family, that's probably not the place you're gonna get it. You know, you need to expand the social connections that you have. And if you have friends that bring you down, then you need new friends.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Exactly. Exactly. Uh so um like um what do you say to someone who uh you know wants to heary, but feels like they don't have that kind of support around them right now. Uh what do you say?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

You gotta start somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Changing the brain requires input and effort. Uh so you can at least start with some of the brain training. Uh-huh. And then you can look into community activities, perhaps, something that you and you're enjoying. Maybe it's pickleball and you develop a group of pickleball friends, or maybe it's uh church or uh some other kind of activity like that. Or maybe you take some classes, it's you know, not necessarily to get a degree, but take some classes at community college just to be around people and interact and make some friends that way. People who are going somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Got it.

Handling Setbacks Without Losing Hope

SPEAKER_01 17:03

And um, okay, so this one is something which is I feel uh much more important about the setbacks, right? So uh so suppose someone's doing the work, things are improving, and then they hit a rough patch and feel like they're back at square one. So, how do you help people navigate without losing the hope?

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah, you go back to the one in the beginning in my book, each each chapter kind of builds upon the one before. So you go back to the beginning, you go back to chapter one, chapter two, do some of the exercises there, and just pick up and start over. And your uh response to the intervention will be much quicker because you practiced it. We're all gonna have days where we slide back and aren't as far along as we thought we would be. You just pick up and start again.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Exactly. Exactly, bro. So so I mean, if you have to give one advice to the listeners today, what will it be?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Don't be afraid of change. Change can be good. And don't be afraid to do the work because it will produce results if you do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, I I totally agree with you. Change is always great because I mean I mean it's it's a belief, what I I believe is like whatever happens happens for something better. So yeah, so change is also something.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Yeah, you can't keep doing the same thing expecting different results. If you've gone around the the mountain uh for the tenth time, perhaps the things you're doing aren't working. Yeah. Half the will to try something different.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

Yeah, that is true. Yeah.

Where To Find Resources And Closing

SPEAKER_01 19:06

And uh if if listeners want to connect with you, how they can connect.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

So I do have a Facebook page. It's called The Tau of Trauma. It's T A The Tau of Trauma. And uh my materials are available on Amazon. I have a workbook that accompanies the book. And the book is The Tau of Trauma Healing, 12-step guide to overcoming anxiety and depression. And the author is listed as Dr. Christy Walter.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Amazing. So, um, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything in the show notes for you, easy reference. And um I'll just say like recovery is not about erasing what happened, but it is about building the new pathways forward, one small choice at a time. So, yeah, yeah. So definitely thank you so much, Dr. for sharing your uh perspectives, your knowledge, and the examples also you have shared. So thank you so much for being here. And for all the listeners, like if you're listening right now, or maybe you'll be listening later, I hope that this conversation reminded you that your brain is more adaptable than you think. And that healing doesn't have to happen in isolation. So you don't need to have it all figured out, you just need to take the next kind step towards yourself. So I'm your Hose Avik, and this is Healthy Man Healthy Life. So take care of your of that beautiful mind of yours, and I'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Thank you.