A short YouTube interview featuring Dr. Don Wood and another speaker explaining how unresolved trauma blocks neuroplasticity and healing. They argue that trauma prevents the brain from rewiring, limiting resilience, and that resolving trauma substantially increases measurable neuroplasticity. The speakers cite a study (participants aged 15–63) showing an average 45.6% change in neuroplasticity after trauma resolution; participants had severe, treatment-resistant conditions including anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, and panic attacks. The conversation uses therapeutic metaphors (e.g., anxiety as an unresolved email; fight-or-flight as preventing healing) and emphasizes presence and shifting negative thought patterns.
Questions this video answers
Youngest 15; oldest 63.
45.6% average change in neuroplasticity.
Anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, and panic attacks.
June 9, 2025.
Chapters
That's why neuroplasticity is so beautiful, because that is wired in that we can rewire our minds and we can have these new patterns that we adopt and we can really learn how to become present as we heal ourselves. As you help people heal, then as we take steps forward to create this next chapter of our life and let the old chapter behind we create this new beautiful chapter, we can now have these new patterns that we adopt where we're aware of the what are we thinking about? And are we thinking about. Are we thinking about abundant thoughts or are we negative? Are we criticizing ourself or others? And if we become aware of them, then we can shift them. And so many of us, in this fast pace of life that we live, we're not even. We're not taking time to be present. We don't even think about what we're thinking about. So I really help. Help my clients get more present and really change those thoughts because we allow those thoughts to get in our way. I mean, after the healing.
Yeah, and the mind's, you know, again, running through its resources, trying to protect you. So that's why unresolved trauma has such a major effect. So if you're trying to rewire your brain to do something new, right. And your mind looks at anything that had been bothering you or any kind of emotional concussion or trauma, it won't rewire. But if it's something that you've never done before and there doesn't seem to be any kind of a threat to it, it can rewire. So if you don't resolve the trauma, you're limiting the ne plasticity and the resilience that you could build. Getting rid of that will allow your resilience to maximize, allow your neuroplasticity to maximize. And that's why we're publishing this study now showing our youngest in the study was 15, our oldest was 63. And they were dealing with. Some had anxiety, post traumatic stress, depression and panic attacks. So really severe cases. And they gave us cases that were not responsive to traditional treatment. So they really gave us some tough ones. And our 45.6% was the average change in neuroplasticity after resolving their trauma, which is phenomenal. So they may have had 5% or 10% before that. Now they've got 45. Imagine how life changing that's gonna be for them.
No, that's, that's step one. You've gotta figure out what's in there that's holding you back. No question. If you have unresolved Trauma, you've gotta figure out what that is because it's always going to stand in your way.
Yeah. And you see it in so many things. You know, people afraid to fly, people afraid to get in new relationships. They'll just say, you know, this is, you know, the way my mind works. It's just the way I've always been. And when I started doing all my research to figure out how to save my daughter, I came in as an entrepreneur and my. As entrepreneurs, we know, what do we do? We challenge everything. Exactly. I was like, why would you be anxious? What made you anxious? Your mind doesn't get anxious for no reason. And so I. So I talk about anxiety. As I said, think of anxiety as the email that keeps coming into your inbox and you ignore it or you delete it, or you put in antivirus software to block the emails.
Don't shoot the messenger.
The email may be a message from your bank that you're there's suspicious activity on your account and it wants you to look at it and resolve it. Is there or isn't there? And so if you don't resolve it, the email keeps coming, the anxiety keeps coming. And so the question is, is what is creating it? Because as you know, you and I are both, you know, pretty spiritual. We know that our minds and bodies are designed to heal. So what's interfering with the healing? We're in fight or flight. The mind doesn't want to do healing as long as there's a threat because the focus is on survival. Maintenance will take care of itself after we get away from the lion.
