In this solo presentation, David Brimacombe draws on his personal experience of seven concussions over two decades to explain how neuroplasticity can be harnessed to recover from post‑concussion syndrome (PCS). He defines neuroplasticity as the brain’s ability to strengthen used connections and prune unused ones through repetition, emphasizing that thoughts and repeated exposures shape neural pathways and ultimately one’s identity. Brimacombe argues that even long‑standing negative thought patterns that sustain PCS symptoms can be unlearned and replaced with positive associations. He introduces a practical, incremental exposure protocol: identify symptom‑triggering environments (e.g., a grocery store), determine the current tolerance threshold (how long one can stay without symptoms), and then repeatedly expose oneself to 70‑80 % of that capacity, gradually extending duration as tolerance builds. Each successful exposure is celebrated to reinforce positive connections. He illustrates the rewiring process with a relatable analogy of teaching children to ride a bike—removing training wheels, providing support, and celebrating successes to shift fear into confidence. Throughout, Brimacombe stresses the importance of small, consistent wins, a hopeful mindset, and the belief that recovery is possible regardless of time needed. He invites viewers to share their exposure goals, offering to work with them toward greater resilience.
Chapters
Your symptoms are real and they are changeable. Neuroplasticity means that your brain adapts to what you repeat, and what you practice becomes wired, and what becomes wired becomes your new identity. Hi and welcome to the PCS Resilience Collective. My name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions over 20 years, I learned a lot about how my thoughts were predictive of how my recovery journey trajectory would go. Let's begin. What is neuroplasticity? Now, for starters, neuroplasticity is your brain's ability to strengthen connections, to prune unused connections. Now, this comes through repetition. If you constantly tell yourself that you are a terrible person, guess what your brain believes? Okay, now here's the thing about PCS recovery. If you've been in recovery for a while, 6 months, a year, a year plus, those thoughts have probably come through your mind 10, 20, 30, maybe even hundreds of times. Okay, and because of that, it does become a little bit harder to change them, but anything that was created can be uncreated, can be changed, can be altered. We can change those paths. We can change those thoughts that are going through your mind. Okay? Because neuroplasticity has been found— hey, this is new research— to be relevant and to be accessible to anyone. It used to be that only children, only the healthy could change the brain, but new research has come out stating that if you're alive, healthy, unhealthy, well, unwell, it doesn't matter. You have the power to rewire your mind. And if you can rewire your mind, You can rebuild your confidence, rebuild your confidence and reclaim the life that you want. Now, I want to give you a simple example for what this looks like. Now, I think everyone can relate. I've had to train 3 of my kids how to ride a bike. Now, the first few times you let them go without training wheels, they wobble and fall, they wobble and fall. And at that point, they might stand up and say, I don't want to do this anymore. This is, this is silly. Why would I continue to do something that I'm failing at? Now they have then started the rewiring process where before riding their bike with training wheels was fun because guess what? They couldn't fall. Now you've taken those training wheels off, they're riding, and that connection they are now making is one of anxiety, of apprehension, of fear of falling. Now what if For the next few times, I'm going to hold the back of their seat, let them get some confidence, and eventually let them go. If they're successful, guess what? They've now rewired again. They love it. This is now— riding a 2-wheeler is now a sign of independence. I can do this. I can grow. I can learn. You see how that pathway has shifted. It's gone from one of excitement when you were young with the training wheels To fear, and now back to independence and fun. Because your brain can rewire. Neuroplasticity is that malleability of your mind for good or bad. Now, a lot of times in PCS, it's a lot of negativity. We're trying to prune those negative thoughts and insert the positive, but that is fully possible. Okay, the biggest thing is rewiring does not need to be dramatic. Like everything else I talk about on this channel, small scales, small wins today equals big victories tomorrow. We're not trying to make massive wholesale changes with what you're doing, okay? The first thing you need to do though is gradually expose yourself to the things that are causing your symptoms. Now, the first time I'm going to go somewhere, if I don't know already, let's say it's the grocery store, I go into the grocery store typically I start to feel nauseous. I start to feel dizzy, light sensitive, whatever it is. Okay? How long does it take? 10 minutes, 12 minutes, 15 minutes? Once you know how long you can stand in a given environment, that is your threshold. Okay? We are not going to try to butt up to that threshold because that's going to be— we're going to become symptomatic. And the most important part is that we're going to tell our mind, tell our body, That this environment is danger because we're always symptomatic. Now, if we can go into that environment and go for 70 to 80% of our capacity, meaning instead of 10 minutes, it's now 7 minutes, and meaning I'm going to go in and I'm likely not going to become symptomatic. So I leave that grocery store. Guess what? That's a success. And success is huge for your nervous system. It's a small step. You've now slowly started to change that association. Neuroplasticity is working here. You're rewiring that connection. The grocery store doesn't have to be dangerous. It can be safe as well. So like anything else, this is small. You're going to have to do this many times. If you've gone to the grocery store 100 times and been symptomatic every time, you can imagine how long it's going to take. To rewire that thought, rewire that association. But it is possible. I always thought the greatest knowledge I have in my PCS recovery journey was that something was possible. I didn't care if it was going to take me a month, a year, 2 years, 3 years. I just wanted to know that recovery was possible. So stuff like this, it tells you, yes, I have hope, I have belief. But it also more importantly tells your nervous system that that environment doesn't always have to be dangerous. And slowly over time, your symptoms will slowly start to scale down, okay, as your threshold starts to increase. Now, what you need to do when you get out of that store is give yourself a reminder. So tell yourself, I'm safe, I'm supported. Look at me, I did it. See, celebrate. Give yourself a high five in the mirror. Yell and scream, it doesn't matter. But you are celebrating. You are increasing that positive connection that you're now making with that environment. Again, this is all about retraining your brain, retraining your nervous system. Okay, neuroplasticity is changing our association. The grocery store used to be negative. I'm going to slowly make it more positive. And maybe next it's going to be the mall, my workplace, my children's school, but I'm slowly starting to pick off all those environments that are causing me stress. Now, what if one day you go in and you go for too long, or your symptoms come early because maybe you had some stress build up in your life? That's okay, because you have that experience that you're building of success. That one-off day that doesn't go the way you like, that's okay. That's fine because you know you have some belief. You're going to go in the next time and maybe go for a few minutes less and be successful. Now, over time, you're going to find that maybe now it's 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes that you can go into these stores. That is what you're looking for. Much like if I'm working out, one week I'm going to lift 100 pounds, the next it might be 110, 115, 120, but I'm progressively overloading. In that case, the resistance, or in this case, the complexity or the time that I spend in these locations. Your body needs to slowly build up its tolerance. With tolerance becomes an increased safety in those spaces. The biggest thing I want you to get out of this is neuroplasticity is real, and it's real for everyone. You have the power to rewire your thoughts. If you rewire your thoughts, you can rebuild those positive connections, rebuild your trust in your system, the sense of safety to go in those environments, and therefore reclaim your life. Now, this isn't going to happen overnight. It does take some time. It is worth it. The biggest thing I wanted to know in my recovery journey was that it was possible. I didn't care how long. I just needed to know, can I heal? Can I be a change agent? Can I have power in my recovery? And doing these exposure trainings, we're slowly reintroducing yourself to the stresses that were causing your symptoms. It's convincing yourself of that, that you can make the changes that changes your recovery trajectory. It just might take some time. I want you to put in the comments What you are looking to expose yourself to. What are you trying to expand your tolerance to? Okay, I can work with you. We can work together to try to progress and become a more resilient self. Thanks for your time. I hope you have a great day.
