A neurosurgeon who survived 100 mortar attacks in Iraq and performed 200 brain surgeries in a tent hospital describes how he rebuilt his mind after years of PTSD. He connects neuroscience to the biblical idea of renewing your mind, showing how intentional thought can reshape the brain.
We start to feel stuck when we're unaware of the incredible agency and power that we actually have to sort of write a new brain for ourselves from thought to thought.
Oh, my gosh, that's so powerful. And can you share with my listeners how you even came to understand this on, like, a faith based level of renewing our minds, as Roman 12:2 tells us to do? Because it's one thing to be a neurosurgeon and understand, like, how physically the brain works the computer, but to understand, like, we can change the software, we can renew our mind and create new thought patterns and behaviors. Like, I know that was. That came out of trauma, and I just want you to share that with women because they, they think that you're just this academic, like, you know, he couldn't possibly understand, but, like, there's some humanity there, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I'll share the story with you. You and I talked before I went to the Iraq war and I was deployed as a neurosurgeon. I went through 100 mortar attacks. I did 200 brain surgeries in a tent hospital. And so I delivered a lot of high intensity trauma care there, but also went through a lot of bombings and rocket attacks and a lot of traumatic things and saw people bleed to death and all that. And I came home from that and was pretty beat up, as you might imagine. I went through several years of dealing with PTSD and struggling to regain my own sort of sanity and sense of control and figuring out where my faith was and all of that.
