Can Your Brain Still Heal Years After a Concussion?

Have you ever wondered if that brain that you have post-concussion is the brain that you're going to have for the rest of your life? Have you ever felt that trepidation and anxiety around the fact that those symptoms might be permanent obstacles? I know I did. For the majority of my recovery, I was constantly asking questions like How am I going to keep this damaged brain from constantly reacting to the environment, to situations? It wasn't until I learned about the power of neuroplasticity to change my brain that I started changing those questions to things that are more proactive, like how do I change the experiences today so that I can create a more resilient brain Tomorrow. Hi, my name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions over 20 years, I learned that the experiences of the past shape my brain today, but my experiences today will shape my brain in the future. Let's begin. Many people with persistent post-concussion syndrome live a life of protection. Their whole goal is to limit symptoms, limit the things that are causing them stress, brain fog, that light and sound sensitivity. Now, on the surface, that might seem like the right thing to do. You're avoiding those things that are causing your body harm. But your brain changes through experience. If you are limiting what you're doing, if you are limiting the opportunities, you are telling your brain, this is my reality, this is the life I'm going to In this video, I want to talk about the 5 things that I found were the most impactful about the power of neuroplasticity and how you can apply them to your recovery to shrink that recovery gap from where you are to where you want to be. Okay, the very first concept I want to talk about with neuroplasticity is that— what is neuroplasticity? Is it your brain's ability to adapt and change, to create new neural pathways and create new Associations to various thoughts, experiences, and environments. If you've had post-concussion syndrome for a long time, you would understand this in the negative context. What you used to love, what you used to be able to do without those symptoms stirring, now might cause you great stress and strain. You might have been able to ride your bike and go visit your friends, go to work, And that was something that you just thought nothing of because it's something you've been doing forever. It wasn't necessarily going to cause you unnecessary stress. It wasn't going to create this cascade of symptoms. It was just something you did. Post-concussion, you had to think about it. You had to moderate how long you were going there, when you went, how much energy you had. And that new association is an example of neuroplasticity. See, neuroplasticity isn't inherently good or inherently bad. It essentially means that your brain is changing. It's changing the, the neural circuitry. It's changing the wiring and the associations we're making. So if we think about it this way, any and everything we do in our life is going to create neuroplasticity. This very second, by watching this video instead of doom scrolling on TikTok, you are enhancing in a positive way and creating a new neural pathway about the hope and the belief of your recovery. But all these things, everything that you do in your life, every boring Tuesday, every Monday night, the choices that you make are changing how your brain associates. Now, this could be scary. For me, this was empowering because it created hope. that the things that I do every single day could elicit change and create a quicker response in my recovery. The second thing I learned is that your brain responds to inputs. Now, I think about it this way. When I was kind of in the middle of my recovery, I would go to 2 or 3 specialist sessions a week. So each would be about an hour. Maybe I'd go to a chiropractor or physiotherapist, and they would perform their manipulations, and they would do tests, and they would have me work through some exercises, and which— it was fantastic. So I essentially think about that as a garden. They were laying the seeds of my recovery. But what about the other 166 or so hours in my week? What was I doing? How was I assisting my recovery? See, if we go back to that previous section talking about neuroplasticity is not inherently good or bad, It is completely neutral. So any and everything that I was doing in between those sessions was as impactful, if not more impactful, than what those specialists were doing. So if they had planted the seed and I neglected to water it, I neglected to fertilize it, it wasn't going to grow. So I think about that fertilizer and the water are the things that you do every single day, those inputs. Your thoughts, your actions, the environments you put yourself in. Your brain responds to that at any and every given moment. You are powerful in your recovery. This doesn't mean you need to be perfect. This doesn't mean you need to be spot on every second of the day. I was not anywhere near that. I go by the concept that 80 to 90% of the time I want to be spot on. I might have those days where I struggle. I might have those meals that I'm not exactly on point. But if a majority of time I am on point of what I need to do, I know I'm moving in the right direction. And I know that I'm making the difference, a difference in my recovery by watering and fertilizing those seeds so they can actually grow. Because again, your brain is always paying attention to what you're doing. That leads me into number 3. Your brain is constantly scanning your environment and paying attention to what you want to pay attention to. So we have what's called the reticular activating system. So your RAS is your brain's filter. At any given moment, there's millions of stimulus in your environment. So if I think of the things in my body, my thoughts, my feelings, the aches and pains, the light, the sound, the smells, those are all examples of those million stimuluses that my brain has to negotiate. Now, over 99% of them are not going to be— I'm not going to interact with. My brain is just going to block out. That reticular activating system is going to say that they are not relevant to me in this moment. What it is going to find relevance in are the things that I'm thinking about, the things that I have associated in the past. So if you're someone who ruminates, Who's constantly questioning, am I ever going to recover? Why do I feel this way always? You're constantly going to find the negativity. You're going to find the aches and pains, and your symptoms are— the spotlight's going to increase on those items. Whereas if you're someone who focuses on what small wins have I made this week, where have I come from? Think about where I was 2 or 3 weeks ago. I was sitting in bed. I couldn't get up. Now I'm able to at least function. I'm looking at the small wins. And again, your brain is focusing on what you pay attention to. This is the power of being grateful for the small things of life. It's not about being completely ignorant to your situation. You need to find small wins. Small wins today equals large victories tomorrow, because the more small wins you can think of, you can remind yourself of you can write down and share with other people, the more your brain is going to look for them and the more you're going to have. And you can see the compounding effect of that. It starts to build off itself. See, your brain is a prediction machine. It doesn't have the capacity to constantly interact with the environment. It is thinking about what you've done in the past, and what you've done in the past, it thinks you're going to do in the future. So if you are constantly thinking of danger, of threats, of your symptoms and how this is going to limit yourself in the future, your brain is going to live in a prediction model of fear and of danger, and that is what it's going to find. So the people that constantly ruminate on their symptoms and talk about how their life used to be good and how bad it is in the moment, it might be correct But it is not serving you. Your brain pays attention to what you pay attention to. The fourth thing I learned was about the power of visualization. Now, when I heard this phrase that I'm going to tell you, it blew me away because I did not believe it to be true. I looked up multiple studies which affirmed this quote: your brain cannot tell the difference between something that has actually happened And something that has been vividly imagined. So if I can visualize something, if I can close my eyes and I can think of a me, a me in the future, not limited by symptoms, not limited by this condition, and I can think about those sights, those sounds, those smells with enough detail that my brain thinks it's actually happened, I am now starting to walk down that path with without actually having to walk down it in reality. If you are at a state where you can't even take those small steps to get to where you want to be, you can't even initiate change, I'm hoping at least you can initiate in your mind. And by initiating, initiating this in your mind, you are allowing yourself to understand this is a safe situation, which will then lower your symptoms when you actually try to do it in reality. I like to think of your visualization as your rehearsal for reality. You are practicing what life is going to be like. You are giving yourself evidence. You're walking down the path before you actually walk down in reality. But the big thing here is that you need to provide enough detail. This isn't a matter of just thinking about yourself— in 5 years, I'm going to be healed— and that is that. I want you to think of the nuance of your, of your perfect day. What are you doing? How are you feeling? What are you thinking? Who are you talking to? What are the sights and smells? I want every single little detail. See, it won't feel real to the brain if you don't have all those details to make it specific enough. So be as specific as you possibly can. And if you need help with visualization, I want you to look in the description for the Belief Reset. It's a 10-minute audio It's a guided experience. It's going to help you start walking that path in your mind to that ideal self. So belief reset below. And the last thing I want to talk about is that giving your brain new experiences gives your brain something new to learn. So the more things you're doing that are walking towards that future self— doesn't matter how small, I don't care how minuscule it is. But what you're doing is you're creating safety in the self. You're changing how your brain associates with a situation. I'm going to give you an example. After my last concussion, which happened at a school— I was a teacher, got hit in the head with an overinflated football, knocked me out cold— I had stress build up as soon as I got in the car to drive to work, and it would build up the closer I got. When I got out of my car just to go into the school, it was so bad I sometimes had to go back into my car for a bit. I just felt like everything in my body was telling me, go home. And one of the biggest things I learned about this was that that environment that I had received multiple concussions in as a teacher wasn't inherently the problem. What the problem was, was that my brain had made an association, had made a connection that this environment has caused you harm in the past, and because it is a prediction model, this environment is going to cause an issue in the future. So it would try to do everything in its power, send off every single alarm bell to get me to go home, to get me to leave. But what I did is before I went in that school, I would remind myself that the thoughts that I have aren't necessarily The thoughts that I believe. My brain can trick me. So I would tell myself that I am safe. I would try to do a little bit of breathwork. I would step through that pain. Now, this might seem hard. I would just open that door and just go right through it. And over time, it slowly started to lessen. And again, it's not because I had a miracle cure, added an amazing supplement, or went to an amazing treatment. It's because I convinced my brain that that is a safe environment, that those experiences in the past weren't a prediction of the future. This needs to start small because it's going to take some time, but it is possible. For the longest time, I felt like a passenger in my concussion recovery. I felt like I was just at the whims of hope, of chance, of recovering with You know, something actually clicking. One of the biggest changes I found though was that power of neuroplasticity, of understanding that experiences that I'm having today are helping to reshape how my brain predicts the future. So I want to provide you with a 3-step takeaway that you can use in any situation that is causing you difficulty. The first thing you're going to do is ask the question, what is my brain trying to predict? When I go into this situation, when I go into this environment? Because again, this association has been made through neuroplasticity, has altered for the worse, but now you can change it for the better. So you've taken that first step, ask that question. Second thing you're going to do is, what is an experience that I can provide in the smallest dose that is going to start changing that association? So again, for me, it was Just walking into that school. I sometimes I'd have to open the door and go back to the car for a bit. It was a slow progression, but it did help over time. And the third thing you're going to do is what happens when those symptoms show up? Because they will show up at the beginning. How are you going to downregulate? Is it through breathwork? Is it through mental rehearsal? Is it through somatic exercises? Whatever it is, I want you to come up with something that consistently helps lower that heart rate, lowers that stress, makes you feel safe. But you need to do it consistently. You can heal. You can be the change agent in your recovery. That is the point of this channel, is to make you believe not only that recovery is possible, but you are the most important person in this recovery journey. You can make the change. I believe in you. Because I was at that same state as well. Thank you for listening. I hope you have yourself a fantastic day.