In this motivational monologue for the PCS Resilience Collective, David Brimacombe draws on his personal experience of seven concussions over two decades to explain why recovery often feels delayed. He introduces the concept of the “echoes of recovery,” describing how lifestyle changes—mindset shifts, breathwork, diet, sleep, and routines—produce effects only after weeks or months because the nervous system needs time to be retrained and the individual’s identity reshaped. Brimacombe emphasizes starting with very small, consistent actions (e.g., two minutes of breathwork) and gradually stacking them, not to achieve immediate symptom relief but to alter one’s self‑concept and convince the nervous system that previously threatening activities are safe. He outlines the “gap” period where protocols are in place but no noticeable improvement occurs, warning that many give up during this phase. By persisting through the gap and compounding small habits, a person raises their baseline functioning, builds resilience, and ultimately experiences a higher ceiling of recovery. The talk stresses that there is no silver bullet; recovery is a long‑term, identity‑driven process where the individual becomes an active change agent rather than a passive victim.
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If your recovery feels confusing right now, it's because you're reacting to results that were created months ago. 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 the echoes of recovery. What you do today might not be felt for a while. Let's begin. Let me know if this resonates. You're doing the right thing. You have the ideal routines in the morning. Your nighttime protocol is on point. You're eating right. You're sleeping right. You're doing everything you need to do, but you still don't feel the way you should. Now, now, why is that? Why does it take so long for the things that you apply, the things that you add into your life to actually have a say in your recovery? To actually show signs of life, reducing your symptoms, making you feel like yourself again. I call this the echoes of your recovery, because much like if you yell into a cave, that echo reverberates back after a few seconds. The same thing applies in your recovery. What you do today, everything you're doing, all the mindset reshifting, breathwork, altering of your diet, all those things are amazing. But to think that that's going to impact you in that moment, okay, is going to impact how your recovery trajectory goes. One of the hardest things to grasp in any kind of recovery from a chronic illness, a chronic condition, is that the things that you do that have negative effects will typically be felt in the moment and potentially in the long term. Whereas the things that you need to do, those foundational lifestyle adaptations, Again, changing your mindset, okay, adding some kind of morning and nighttime routine, your diet, your sleep, all those things that are foundational to creating a better person sometimes takes weeks, months, sometimes even longer to actually feel like they're taking hold, like they're making a difference. So why do all those things take so long? That's what I'm going to go through in this video today. Now, one of the reasons why this recovery window where you start and initiate a protocol until you actually feel the difference. That window that you have, that gap in the middle, okay? One of the reasons why that occurs is because a lot of times when you're starting a new routine, you lack the consistency, you lack the intensity for it to actually have any impact. Now, I've mentioned this many times on this channel, and I will spout this till the day I die, okay? Start small. Now, if I'm starting small in any kind of protocol or reshaping my diet, my sleep, okay, it's likely not going to have a significant impact on my recovery. Okay, if I'm adding 2 minutes of breathwork, I'm gonna do one thing as my pre-sleep and my first thing I do when I get up, that's great. But the point of that is not to reduce my symptoms. You're missing the point entirely. The point of these things, both starting small and stacking later, the point is to reshape Who you are, until you reshape who you are, you won't feel those symptoms lessen because your identity is the cap, is the ceiling on any kind of recovery that you're going to have. So when I add a new concept, when I add gratitude journaling, I add a new diet, whatever it is, okay, I'm starting small. I'm doing it in the most basic form. I would always say two minutes or less to start. I'm doing that. I'm not doing it to actually improve the symptoms in that moment. I'm playing the long game. I'm doing this to change my identity. I'm convincing myself that this is possible. And second to that, I'm convincing my nervous system that this thing that it thought was going to cause all the alarms to go, okay, by moving and walking to the mailbox or walking around the block, Previously was going to cause those alarms to flare. Now I'm telling it, I'm safe, I'm supported, I am okay. And by doing so, I'm teaching myself that this is okay. I'm teaching my nervous system, retraining it. I'm reassociating those concepts with safety instead of danger. And I'm reshaping who I am as a person. I'm no longer a person who's passive in my recovery. I am now active. I am actively pursuing the things that used to scare me, the things that were causing me symptoms, because I know the only way out of the symptoms is to actually go at them. Okay. Starting small and scaling later. Now understand, this is one of the most difficult things to grasp within your recovery. Most people fail in the gap. They have the protocols, they have the systems, And they wait. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. And they give up because they haven't yet created the structure. They haven't yet created the identity, the safety in the system where that has taken hold and they've actually been able to reap the benefits. So that gap is the hardest spot. So when you go from starting to feeling noticeably different, that gap is hard, but you have to trust the process. You have to understand that what you're doing today isn't going to necessarily impact tomorrow. Even next week, maybe not even till next month. But you have to know that you are shaping who you are as a person. Okay? We are looking at compounding your recovery by doing small things every single day. Okay? It is not going to be an easy road out. There is not one silver bullet that I know of. Okay? If there was, I would have taken it. What I had to do, I had to start small. I had to look at what were the things that I can change in my life. Okay, those are the lifestyle modifications. And the best part about making these lifestyle modifications, okay, regardless of how you feel after, is that you are becoming a better person. You are becoming a more tolerant, more resilient person, not even for your recovery, but for thereafter, because that gap exists. And I get To a lower baseline, a higher ceiling thereafter, a month, 2 months later. Okay. I'm going to continue to persist with these habits and that baseline is going to creep up and up and up. Okay. Again, this concept is difficult to grasp because again, all you want to do is feel better. Why would I do something if I don't have immediate gratification, immediate satisfaction from doing it? Because you have to understand your system has been dysregulated for a while. Okay? You are now trying to reshape who you are, reshape that nervous system. It takes time. Okay? You can do it. You have the power. The greatest thing I can instill in you by watching this channel is that you can be a change agent in your recovery. Don't let anyone tell you that this is a permanent disability. This is something that you cannot change. Okay. You need to think of how can I reframe it so that I will always know that I have the power to reshape my position in life. Okay. You can do it. I believe in you. Have yourself a great day.
