The Importance of Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity... it's a big word, it's fun to say, and it's one of the coolest things I've ever learned about.

I remember hearing about it for the first time when I was 14 years old. I was an out-patient in a hospital in my home town at the time with both anorexia and bulimia nervosa. I was in all kinds of therapy - family therapy, group therapy, personal therapy, and a dietician on top of all that. I was learning a lot about myself.

My various psychotherapists were trying to teach us kids about our problematic thought patterns. The explanation they used was like walking through a field of knee high grass. If you look at the field initially, there is no defined path. No likelihood that any one direction will be walked more frequently than another. Then you walk across it once. Still, not a very clear path, but maybe there is some evidence that someone walked there. Next time you arrive at that field, you take the same route across. And the time after that, you take it again. And again. Now there is an obvious path beginning to form in the long grass. You're taking it every time you get to that field now, because it's become the easiest and fastest way to reach your destination. You're now taking that path without even considering that there might be a different route available. Maybe this one isn't even a very good one, but you're so accustomed to taking it you can't help yourself.

In this analogy, the field is your brain and the repeated route is a neural pathway. In my example, they were trying to explain how harmful the thought "I am fat" was having on our brains. If we continually were thinking those negative and harmful thoughts about ourselves, those neural pathways were going to be very strong. This is part of the reason we were struggling to see ourselves as anything but "fat". This detrimental thought pattern also led many of us to body dysmorphia, where we were fixated on something that was "wrong" with us. We were literally unable to see anything other than the version of that body part we had created in our minds. This exemplifies the extent of damage you can do just with your thoughts.

Now for the good part.

Those neural pathways are not permanent. If you are conscious about what you're thinking, you can actually change the wiring of your brain - hence the term neuroplasticity. If you wake up one day, and you realize that there might be a better route through that field than the one you've been taking every day... you can take a new one. It's going to be kind of hard. It won't come naturally at first. But if you decide to put the effort in, you can walk all over that field until you find the route that is the quickest, safest, healthiest, and most enjoyable one for you.

If you actively decide to stop enforcing that neural pathway, it will fall into disuse and fade away.

This means you can actually control the thoughts you understood to be automatic. If you participate in your thought patterns, you can change them. As it is your thoughts that create your feelings, this is a very handy skill to have to control your overall level of happiness.

This is definitely not all to say that you should just replace all your bad thoughts with good thoughts. That's a whole other topic that deserves a whole other post, and probably some sessions with a therapist.

Since I was 14, I have learned a great deal more about neuroscience and how important and cool it is to think intentionally. You can change your experience in incredibly positive ways using your thoughts. This is some of the most inspiring and fun work I see people do as a wellness coach.

The beauty of knowing that your brain is elastic is knowing that it's not broken. Just because you've had some problematic thought patterns, or habits, for a long time does not mean that they are there forever. Just because you've always done something a certain way, doesn't mean you have to keep doing it like that.

You have a whole big field to play in. Try a different route.

Try a new path.