In this video, David Brimacombe, host of the PCS Resilience Collective, explains how cultivating gratitude can dramatically improve recovery from post‑concussion syndrome (PCS). He argues that gratitude and anger cannot coexist because they activate opposing neural pathways, and that a regular gratitude practice shifts the autonomic nervous system from a sympathetic (stress‑dominant) state to a parasympathetic, safety‑oriented state. This physiological shift reduces heart rate, sympathetic tone, and inflammation, creating a sense of safety that fuels motivation and courage for trial‑and‑error rehabilitation. Brimacombe shares concrete, low‑effort gratitude habits—sticky‑note reminders on a mirror, micro‑moments of breathwork in everyday queues, and brief reflective pauses—emphasizing that small, consistent actions can rewire neural pathways over time. He also describes how moving from a victim mindset to a “change‑agent” identity, powered by gratitude and belief, helped him reclaim agency in his recovery. The video concludes with an invitation to viewers to start simple gratitude practices, persist, and subscribe for more resilience content.
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All right, welcome to the PCS Resilience Collective channel. For those new, thanks for coming. For those coming around for another video, thanks again for showing up. The point of this channel is to provide simple ways that you can change your recovery trajectory. Now, for me, most of my recovery came from things I figured out on my own through watching YouTube and then trial and error. Now, I can't say that I didn't use chiropractors and physiotherapists and did have the help of some physicians, but most of the things that changed in my life were from things— hey, Sally— that I made. I decided that it was time to change, and here on this channel, I'm hoping to help you do the same. Hey, buddy, can you say hi? Hi. Today I want to talk about why you can't be grateful and angry at the same time and what makes Someone who is grateful all the more likely to heal. The one reason why you can't be grateful and angry at the same time is because, because they activate competing neural pathways. When one has a sense of gratitude, they are not able to have sense of anger in the same moment. So a lot of times people will say the attitude of gratitude. Now that holds true because that attitude pervades in every facet of their life. Now, I'm not saying that if someone does one line on a gratitude journal every day, that they'll be grateful for the rest of the day. But that concept, the belief that comes from laying down that pen to paper and putting those positive thoughts down, starts the process. And all I'm here to tell you is we just need to start the process. You're not going to become a yogi overnight. You're not going to become Zen by the time morning comes. But It's taking that first step that lays that neural pathway. It's going to give you the opportunity to be a better person tomorrow, which will layer up as time goes on. Number 2, gratitude shifts your nervous system. As I've mentioned before on this channel, one of the biggest things that gets dysregulated in someone with PCS is their autonomic nervous system. Their body gets stuck in the sympathetic state, and when you're stuck in the sympathetic state your body feels stressed. Any and every inconvenience becomes monumental. Anything that someone says or does, will do to you, makes you feel like the world is against you. I felt for the longest time that I was just a victim of my circumstances. I felt like I was destined to be this way for the rest of my life and that I had no say in the outcome. Well, once I started practicing gratitude and looking at the small things of life For example, a day in November without snow. Okay, then I was able to shift my nervous system. I decreased my heart rate, I decreased my sympathetic tone, and I decreased my overall inflammation. I just felt better. I started to feel like me again. So starting with something simple, I, I started my first few sessions into gratitude was just taking a sticky and putting that sticky on the mirror every morning. Okay, I would walk by that sticky 3, 4 times a day and it would remind me, okay, what I'm grateful for. It could be the sunshine, it could be breath, it could be a Saturday without pain. Whatever the case may be, start simple and scale up from there. Next thing, gratitude opens the door to safety. Now we talked about how your body is either going to feel like it's threatened or it's feeling safe. When you are in a state of gratitude, your body feels safe, and that safety opens the door for you to be more courageous, for you to have the motivation to do things you might not normally do. When you feel safe, you feel motivated. When you feel motivated, you try stuff that you might normally not. And again, the biggest thing I learned from my PCS recovery was that trial and error was critical. When the symptoms flared, I knew I did— I had done something wrong. It wasn't permanent. It wasn't like it wasn't going to go away, but it was a sign. Now, I had to go through that trial and error, and the only way I was able to was because I had that door of safety that had opened up through gratitude. The 4th thing I want to talk about is micro-moments. These don't have to be large-scale changes. You don't have to sit down for an hour and meditate and think about all the things that are amazing in your life. Okay, I would— that's not possible, it's not plausible, and it's not something that I've ever done. What I will tell you are that micro moments make the difference. So when you are, let's say, in a checkout line and there's 20 people in front of you, you can take one of two stances. This is terrible, I'm gonna be late for this, I have no time to do my laundry when I get home. Or take the second stance. This is a time for me to relax. I can do some breathwork here. I can think, I can talk to someone, I can— You have that opportunity. You have the choice. To run down that negative path or the positive path, to have gratitude or to have anger. And again, life is all about choices. No one is going to tell you what you have to do. It's all about how are you going to react in a situation, and therefore, how is that going to influence your recovery? And the last thing, as I've alluded to before already, okay, that victim mindset is something that is not going to help you. Okay, again, as someone who's had multiple concussions, I felt like the world was against me at one point. I felt like it was just my destiny to be a shriveled-up human sitting in the corner of a dark room for the rest of my life. I felt like my impact on society was going to be limited because I was just an ordinary old— going to be an ordinary old man by the time I aged. Okay, that changed. Okay, that changed partly because of gratitude and belief. And what that did was that created me, turned me into a change agent. I decided that I had the power to change my situation. I had the power to learn things like nervous system regulation, like belief, and I had the power to implement those and become a change agent in my life. This is not simple. I, I'm completely empathetic for the struggles, the toils that come with this recovery. But understand this, you do have power in your situation. I want to end by thanking you for watching this video. If you like this content, please like and subscribe and continue watching. Till next time, thank you.
