PTSD MYTH #1: It's impossible to heal PTSD, it changes your brain.

Hey everyone, Kailene here, and welcome to PTSD TV. Today is Tuesday, and today we're doing something pretty special. We're doing a myth marathon. So this will be the beginning of what we're calling a myth marathon, and we have a bunch of PTSD myths that we would like to debunk for you. So this episode of PTSD TV is sponsored by Broken to Unbreakable, which is my PTSD and CPTSD recovery program. So for those of you who don't know me, My name is Kayleen. I recovered from CPTSD after 15 years of suffering, and now I help people all over the world make that same transformation with my Broken to Unbreakable program. And this lovely man to my left here is Brad Schipke.

I am Kayleen's significant other. I get thrown off because it's usually to the right. I'm like, that's not me. And I had my— I went through every step of her recovery journey through PTSD and went through my own recovery journey, and I'm excited to To talk about the myths today. And how many myths do we have total, Kayleen?

I do not know, Brad.

An unknown amount, but I believe it's around 13. So there's going to be around 13 episodes, but it could be less or more.

It could be. So stay tuned.

So stay tuned.

But today is our first myth, and this is one of the biggest myths. And the myth is it's impossible to heal PTSD because PTSD changes your brain. And the tricky thing about this myth is half of it is actually true.

It's partially true.

It's partially true.

And that's what's dangerous.

Yeah. About a lot of these myths, but about this myth in particular is half of it is true.

Yeah.

Did you believe this myth when you were, um, when you were on your own recovery journey?

No, actually I didn't hear about this until we actually tried to start helping other people. I didn't even like, that wasn't even in my awareness. Cause like when we first started our journey, we didn't even know what PTSD was. To be honest. And then, so we were starting with pretty much no knowledge at all, and we didn't really connect with other people who had PTSD or anything like that. We kind of just went on our own individual journey from there. So this wasn't something that personally came into my awareness or something that I like struggled with or believed because it just— I didn't even hear it. You know, I didn't hear that it permanently changed your brain. Or Or I didn't hear that it changed your brain by anybody.

Yeah.

You know, um, even though it does, but it's something that we hear almost every single day.

We hear it a lot now. Of course, we like interact with a lot of people that— yeah, uh, we work with a lot of people and then we also just interact with a lot of people that have PTSD or have loved ones that have PTSD or, or help people treat PTSD and different things like that. And There's just one story that came to mind, actually. We were on a trip, like a hiking trip with some of our friends.

Oh yeah.

And this is just our personal friend group that we kind of, maybe not grew up with, but met in college and then stayed really close friends with. And we're really, really, really good friends with them still. But when we were there and there were a handful of us at this cabin, someone actually said this. And they were talking about teaching and they were talking about schools, and they were talking about, uh, districts where kids experience a lot of traumatic experiences when they're younger. And, and someone just kind of offhand threw out the comment, well, we know that trauma permanently changes your brain, so like, what, what can we do about it as teachers? And it was really interesting, and it actually made me— I don't know if you remember this— it made me audibly laugh.

Yeah.

Because it was just— I was like, why is this coming up in this situation? It was really strange. And, um, so we— this is something that we hear a lot, a lot. And again, the tricky thing is, is half of this myth is true. So it will— we'll debunk it right now. It is possible to heal PTSD. So it is possible. And PTSD does change your brain. Now, it doesn't permanently change your brain, but it does change your brain. Excuse me. But also, on the healing journey, that changes your brain as well. So the fact that you can change your brain one way, you can change it the other way. And a lot of people kind of get stuck on this one-sided Uh, you know, PTSD changes your brain, and they, they just get stuck with like, oh well, my brain has changed and I can't change it back. And there were— there was a long time— I know a lot has changed since like I've been in elementary school, because we were taught in elementary school that like George Washington's teeth were wooden, and now they're ivory. Okay, so, um, I know a lot, a lot changes all the time in regards to neuroscience, in regards to psychology. Like, these are all really new fields. And when I was growing up, part of the information that we got was you can't change your brain. Like, basically, once you— for, I think it was for a girl, once you reach like 18, and for a guy, once you reach like 24, like, your brain does not change. You— that's it. Like, you either stay the same or eventually, as you get older, you kind of get worse off. Yeah. And that's not the truth. And you can change your brain, and there are ways to grow new neurons. There are ways to literally physically grow your brain. So that's why people kind of believe it and they get stuck in that because of that just, just old belief. And because PTSD does change your brain, but healing PTSD also does change your brain.

Also, you know what else changes your brain?

What?

Thinking.

Thinking.

Listening to this podcast, everything. It's just that PTSD is a much, um, it's a much more extreme change in the brain, right? It's a traumatic event. something big, but just reading a book changes your brain. And there's been a ton of research on this that, I mean, Kayleen just said that, that your brain grows throughout your entire life. So, and they found that like people in their 80s can actually grow their brain, their prefrontal cortex, as much as somebody who's in their 20s by doing meditation, reading, different things like that. So like all those myths around like the brain, are you not being able to like change your brain are just myths. And it's pretty much not even relevant. It shouldn't even be in the conversation. That's the thing about a lot of these myths is just like, I don't even want to freaking talk about these because none of these really matter, at least to me, because I'm like, I'm not going to listen to these. I'm not going to listen to anything that tells me I can't do this. I'm just going to work at this until I achieve it. So I kind of just dedicated myself and committed myself to You say I can't do this. I'm going to do this. You know? And I took all of their options off the table, but it is really important to address all these myths because a lot of people get stuck and there's a lot of, a lot of people out there saying these things on social media, on everything else. And if you're someone who goes on social media a lot, those are the inputs that you're going to be getting. If you're going to all these other support groups, you're going to be getting all these myths. You're going to be getting all this, um, this false data that's going to really hinder your progress in recovery. So it's really important to question. these beliefs in your own mind and in other people's mind. When people say something's not possible, you have to question that and just be like, why do they say that? Is that true? And not just accept it for what it is. And that's a really, really important piece. And I think a reason why we kind of scooted around a lot of these myths is because we weren't on social media. We're not big social media people. I'm not at all. But It's, yeah, it's super important.

And, you know, I, I love what you're saying about like watch people on social media because one of the— and this, this is probably a reason that we, we were, we were blind to kind of everything that was going on in our recovery process. We just kind of kept our head down. We weren't inputs on social media. We weren't in support groups and things like that because we didn't find them helpful. And truth be told, they weren't helpful. Yeah. Uh, but one of the things I see a lot, and this is just something that you can watch out for in those Facebook groups that you're in and just wherever you're kind of getting advice and support and different things like that. Something that I see a lot is people post like a picture of the brain and it'll be something really complex and it'll have a lot of medical jargon on it and a lot of big words. And it— and, and then the caption, you know, like on a meme, there's like a caption will be like PTSD changes your brain. And when you see that it can almost be overwhelming, and it gives your brain this like reference of like, oh my gosh, that is unbelievably complex. Like, there's no way I could go to the other side. And so you take this like one-sided argument, so to speak, where you just like see something and you're like, wow, that, that looks hard, that looks complex, that looks true, because it's all this medical jargon and because it's this, this complex picture of the brain, or it's some MRI scan, or or it's someone in a lab coat saying that. But the truth is that you can change it one way and you can change it the other way as well. So just be careful looking out for those things and, and watch, uh, your inputs. We talk a lot about inputs. Anything that comes into your brain or into your body is an input.

Yeah.

And social media is one of the most dangerous. And that is why, like Brad was saying, we kind of skirted around a lot of these myths is because we didn't involve ourselves in the PTSD communities on Facebook and we We weren't big social media— we still aren't big social media people. So we kind of kept to ourselves in that regard. But even so, right, I just told that story at the beginning of the episode, going away with a bunch of friends hiking. Even so, that's actually a myth that we heard. And it's not something that we heard for a while, but it is something that eventually came out. So it's not just social media. Be careful of what advice people are giving you and think about where they're getting their advice, like Brad said.

Mm-hmm.

if you want to take that advice. You know, would you switch positions with them? Anyone who's giving advice on— you know, advice is free to give and very costly to take. And anyone that's giving advice on something that they know nothing about is being— putting themselves in a very dangerous— putting you in a very dangerous position because, you know, you don't want to take weight loss advice from someone who is very, very, very overweight. You don't want to take marriage advice from someone with 3 failed marriages. You really want to be careful about— where you get your advice. You don't want to take advice on, um, healing PTSD from someone who's never healed PTSD or helped others heal PTSD. So you really have to be careful about those inputs and about where you get that advice because they will feed these myths. They will make you believe these myths.

Yeah. And one question I want to ask everybody is, why does it matter if your brain changes at all? And how would somebody on the internet know if your brain's changing? That's the other thing. But why does it even matter if your brain changes or not? And honestly, that was something I asked myself. I'm like, because it's kind of like an irrelevant question. I don't care if my brain is changing. All I care about is if I can heal. And then I'm like, can I heal? I'm like, okay, that person healed. That person healed. I see that person heal. I see this person in history who went through all this hardship and then came out the other side and won. If they can do that, I can do that. And if you believe that you can overcome this thing, if you can heal, why does it matter if your brain has changed or not? It's kind of an irrelevant argument, right? Kayleen's healed. I've healed. We've helped a ton of people around the world healed. You look at people throughout history who have healed, and like Louis Zamperini is one of our favorite examples because he's a he's kind of a well-known guy. But um, it's at the end of the day, it's kind of an irrelevant. Dang, it's an irrelevant myth.

Yeah, try not to make everything so complex, you know, like just keep your head down and like take the steps you need to take each and every day and, and keep taking steps forward. And when you make something so complex like that and you're like, oh my gosh, now I need MRIs and I need doctors and I need scans and I need insurance and I need— it's just you make it this big, like this big, big mess. And humans have a really good way of complexifying Very, very simple things.

Mm.

So just, yeah, that's a really good point. Think about why, why does it matter? And a question that I wanna ask you, and I was gonna do this at the end of the episode, but there's one more thing I wanna talk about, but I wanna ask you this question, like, ask yourself if this myth comes into play in your own life. You know, do you believe this? Have you believed this? Has it stopped you from doing something before? Has it stopped you from continuing on the work that you're supposed to be doing? Have you, you know, been doing good for a while and then had a bad day and then you went on the internet and saw this And you were like, well, it is hopeless.

Yeah.

And given up. What has this myth cost you if it's something that you've believed or been believing for a long time? You really want to think about this and really challenge what this is and what this myth can cost. Because it can cost— I mean, for some people, it can cost your entire lives. But it can cost you decades. It can cost you years of your life believing that this is such a complex journey that is impossible. But, but that's not the truth, right? We see people all the time recover from PTSD, fully heal, uh, from all walks of life, all over the world, all backgrounds, all circumstances. So I just want you to ask yourself that and reflect on, does this myth come into play in my own life? And what is the cost of that? Has it ever stopped me before?

Yeah.

And now if you ever hit that roadblock again, you can say, well, that's, That's not the truth. I know people who have healed. You know us, we've both healed from CPTSD. We've been there, done it, right? And, and we've helped, again, hundreds of people all around the world do the same.

Yeah, and that's a really huge point. If you feel hopeless, it means that you have kind of like this belief system of a bunch of— or you have this, this system of beliefs that has a bunch of false beliefs, like this myth here and all of the other myths that we're going to be covering. In this series. Um, so if you feel hopeless, you have to question your beliefs. You have to question these things like this, things that make you feel hopeless. Ask, what makes me feel hopeless? What are the things? And what are those beliefs? What are those things that I'm believing and not questioning that make me feel hopeless about my situation? And then that questioning and that self-discovery is going to reveal so many answers to you that, like, you've been believing all of this false data and it's not anything on you. We know that this is a— I know this is a problem because this is something that I did. And I'm always kind of constantly questioning my beliefs and like seeing like, why am I believing this? And how is this affecting me? How is this affecting my emotions? And all of these myths are just false beliefs that will just make you feel hopeless. So if you feel hopeless, definitely tune into the rest of the series and get all these myths so you can start to shift those beliefs because we're going to give you a radically different perspective than the rest of The internet.

Than the rest of the PTSD community, because we've been there, done it, right? We're not still stuck in that dark place of this is hopeless and we'll never be able to heal and different things like that.

Oh, and trust me, we've been there. We've— we— I used to feel hopeless, man, and I wouldn't want you to take advice from me when I was back there. I'd be like, yeah, man, it is— I don't know what to do. You're screwed. Pretty much you're screwed. I'm screwed. Everybody's screwed.

And what did you used to do? You used to— what'd you used to have for breakfast?

Grab a tub of ice cream. You make me say this every time. I'm not gonna make you. Because, no, I used to say it every time and I stopped, and now it's kind of a running joke. I used to eat ice cream all day, right? Breakfast, lunch, ice cream. Run upstairs, grab a tub of ice cream, run downstairs. Dinner, ice cream. Midnight snack if I slept. Actually, it's— I guess it's still a midnight snack even if you don't sleep. Ice cream.

All right, so the one last thing that we want to talk about is— and this is important with all the myths— is seeing life after PTSD. So this is something that was really, really impactful for both Brad and myself. And this is something that actually Brad really tremendously helped me with, was to see life after PTSD and see like, okay, when this is over what is life gonna be like? But also, when this is over, who are you gonna be growing through this entire journey? And this is something Brad helped me see, like the after PTSD, and then like, you know, what would it be like if you could sleep through the night and if we didn't fight and if, if you weren't anxious and like you're not supposed to feel like that? Um, that's not what, what a normal life is supposed to be like. Uh, and he really held this belief that it absolutely was possible, and that helped me a tremendous amount. And then when you were struggling, what I helped you with, I think a lot was, well, think about the skills that you develop on this journey.

Mm-hmm.

And think about all these dark moments that you have to overcome and all the hardships and all the challenges and the skills that you have to develop to actually overcome them. And every argument and every time we were up until 2 in the morning fighting with each other or trying to resolve something, every time You know, we fell and we failed and we fell down and got ourselves back up. We were developing these incredible skills. And something I would always say to Brad is like, think about who we're gonna be on the other side of this. Think about how strong our relationship is gonna be. Think about how strong you're gonna be as an individual. And, you know, we kind of had this seesaw where, again, like when I was really, really hurting, Brad helped me see like, you know, you can do this. Think about life after. And when he was really, really hurting, it was like, Think about all the skills you're developing at this moment that will serve your— serve you for life. And PTSD really does give you a superpower. So it's really important to think about not only— Yes, it's— yes, it's possible. That doesn't make it this fairy tale journey. It's really, really hard. Okay, it is really, really challenging. It's not this fairy tale. We have this kind of fairy tale relationship now, but that's because, you know, when you look back over a year, right, it's— it's— or over years that we went through that. It's like, oh well, that wasn't so bad. But it was unbelievably painful when we were in those times and in those years and in those, um, arguments and, and dealing with all of that. So it's, it's really important to try to understand that there is life after PTSD. You can heal PTSD. It's possible to heal, and you develop this amazing skill set on your recovery journey.

Yeah, and if you have trouble seeing the future, just work on expanding how far you can see. So we actually talked about this yesterday, yesterday on our client Q&A, um, about seeing a future, about like this, this person was having trouble, um, just, just seeing any future really, you know, like seeing a future without PTSD, without anything, and then definitely couldn't see anything beyond healing PTSD. And our advice was like, just, well, look as far as you can, but set the intention to always be striving to look farther. And then as you achieve and as you heal and get better on your journey, you are going to expand. Your belief is going to expand. But it's really important to set that intention, be like, I'm going to expand my belief. I'm going to constantly try to look a bit, a little bit further ahead. If you can only see tomorrow, that's okay. Start where you are, but then keep working. Be like, okay, I'm gonna try to look 2 days ahead. I'm gonna try to look 3 days ahead, and then 4 days, and then a month, and then 2 months, and then 3 months, and then 4 months, and then keep like pushing pushing the front further and further ahead. So you just keep expanding that vision. And that's kind of what it was for us gradually. It's always challenging it with, I guess, just imagining what it could be like. But at first, you're like, OK, I try to imagine what it's like to have no anxiety, no nightmares, no flashbacks, and I sleep through the night every night. That's hard to feel. That's hard to believe. But you can still imagine it. You can still keep going to that place in your mind and asking yourself, what would that be like? And that keeps expanding your vision more and more and more. So even if you don't believe it, keep exploring further, keep exploring further and further and further beyond full recovery as well. And in time, you will be able to see to recovery and then way beyond it to your life's mission and your life's purpose. Which is really like the— I don't know if there is an end goal, but that's a good goal.

Yeah. Yeah. And start where you are. And that's the most important thing. Like Brad said, we didn't start at the point where we could think 5, 10 years out. We started at the point where it was hard to see to the end of the day sometimes. And that's OK. So you want to start where you are, but with the intention that you're always kind of looking to like, how can I see a little bit further? How can I see a little bit further? And what is kind of next on the journey? And making sure that you have a journey in place, that you're not kind of flying blind and you're not saying, well, like, I'm just, I'm stumbling through the days, which is okay. That's okay. But you want to make sure that you have some semblance of a plan, some semblance of a process to heal and to actually get to full recovery.

Yeah. And this is incredibly, incredibly important. Sorry, I had a sneeze come up.

Bless you.

Excuse me. Um, thank you. Um, but this is like incredibly important because like Kayleen said, if you don't have that vision, if you don't have a goal, if you're not trying to push that goal further, like you're just gonna be kind of flying blind, right? Like you're gonna be going in— like if you don't have direction, where are you gonna go, you know? Or if you don't have a goal, if you don't have a destination, how are you gonna get there?

Well, even if you have a destination, if you don't have a path to get there, yeah, how are you gonna get there, right?

Right.

So it is important to kind of remember that recovery is action-based. And you want to make sure that you're taking the right actions day in and day out. So you're not kind of going off track and not straying too far off track. So you're not like, you know, running 100 miles to the left and being like, wait a minute, that's not it. And then running 100 miles or 200 miles to the right and being like, well, that's not it. When you really want to be kind of running straight down the middle. So it's important to have some semblance of a process and some semblance of a kind of an overview of what the journey looks like.

Hmm. Great.

Yeah, so that is, is really what we have for you today. We wanted to cover that first myth, and we did debunk that myth. It is possible to heal PTSD, but PTSD does change your brain, but so does the recovery journey.

Yeah.

And I do want to just mention, just because we talked about the process, every time I think about, you know, steps to, to full recovery, if they could be broken down, and I see these as like, you know, if you're like crossing a a pond or a stream and there's like 3 little stones. Um, and they're much, much bigger than this, but what I talk about is the pillars of recovery. So going through what we went through and helping people, what, um, kind of go through their own recovery journey, I always talk about the pillars of recovery. And I, I'm running a training on that talking about basically how I was able to— not my story, but my journey of how I was able to go from rock bottom to fully healed following that kind of process and following those pillars. And it's, it's a pretty cool training because I, I talk about those pillars and I talk about why they're important. Um, and if you haven't seen it yet, you can see it and we'll put the link in the description below. And that's overcomingptsd.info/go. So you can go to overcomingptsd.info/go to see that training where I talk about those 3 pillars. So at least, at the very least, you have some semblance of kind of how the recovery process look and what those— again, it's not as easy as a 3-step process, but what those steps should look like and how you should be kind of structuring your journey to actually get to full recovery.

Yeah. It simplifies it really, really well. And if you have been kind of listening and saying to yourself, yeah, I do have kind of a problem with these beliefs or believing these myths, Definitely check that out because in there Kayleen talks about something called the belief cycle. So how these beliefs work and how to actually change them. So if there's something that you struggled with and you enjoyed the episode, go check it out because you will definitely get a lot more value out of that.

Yeah, it's great training. Yeah, it's a lot more like step by step and it's less off the cuff. We are just sitting on our couch talking and there's none of that.

There's none of this. What is that? I don't know. I just did that. There's none of that. Whatever that is, there's none of it.

It doesn't make sense visually either. But, um, that's what we have for you all. Uh, we're here for you. We believe in you. We love you at the very, very highest level. We're here to support you throughout this time and throughout this journey. We want you to know it is possible to heal. And every day I see people make huge strides on their recovery journey. I see people go back to work even in this time, right, with everything that the world is going through right now. Well, there's someone yesterday go back to work and do all these amazing things, and it is so, so cool to, to be kind of a part of that journey, but to, to watch people go from like sometimes rock bottom— and a lot of people start with me at rock bottom, some people start just at a plateau in their recovery journey— and to go from that plateau of like, my life is good, but like it's still consuming and I can work, but it's still, it's still consuming. And to go from either a place of rock bottom or that plateau in recovery and to see them either go back to work or get their dream job or start their business or, um, create the relationship that they truly deserve and want with their, with their partner, with their spouse or with their kids or all these super, super amazing things. So I just wanted to share that little tidbit there. Um, but. it is possible to heal and you can heal and you can change your brain the other way. We, we work on changing our brain every single day. We, you know, we read and we still grow. And like Brad said, like, we don't— there's no like really end goal, like past recovery. Of course recovery is a goal, full recovery, but then past that, um, there's no more— there's no obvious marker. And you just always want to be growing and developing and, and being your best self every day.

Yeah.

And working to kind of reach your potential, which of course you never reach because once you reach what you thought was your potential, more is being revealed to you. So yeah, um, that's what we have for you all. I don't, I don't know if you have any final words.

Nope, that's it.

Okay, we will see you all tomorrow for our next myth.

Hope you enjoyed today's myth, and we will see you for the rest of the myth marathon.

All right, bye-bye.