Dr. Tabatha Barber explains how ruminating on trauma strengthens harmful neural pathways through neuroplasticity, making trauma responses more automatic. Recognizing this pattern is the first step to rewiring your brain with healthier responses and moving out of survival mode into intentional living.
One of the things that a lot of us do is when we think about that person that we lost, or we think about that assault we went through, or we think about the thing that happened to us, the only thing we allow ourselves to think about is that particular event and what we felt around it and the way that it affected us. And because of that, what we're doing is engaging neuroplasticity to continue to automate that abnormal response that we have habituated. And we're basically making that response more robust in our brain. And so then the physiology that happens out of it is going to become more robust. And so being aware of that is the first step to say, you know, what if that response isn't helping me, it's not the trauma that's writing the story of my future. It's my response to it. And so now I need to get any kind of help that I need to help myself develop some different responses so I can begin to leverage that automation process to my own benefit.
Yeah, that's so powerful. The fact is that we do have so much control over how we perceive what we just went through. And there's two ways to look at it. And I kept thinking of the scripture, Take every thought captive, because that is our downfall. If we're just on autopilot and falling prey to those patterns. Our brain has created those patterns, but it's in an effort to keep us in survival mode and keep us alive. Right. I'm sure you were in that for a while of just being in survival mode. That's how you go back to work. That's how you just kind of move forward a little bit. But then you do have to get to a point where it's like, I need to live again.
