NEUROPLASTICITY: The Way Out of Hell...




You have been through hell and back many times. There were times you felt utterly defeated, but somehow you pulled through and each success impacted and changed your brain through neuroplasticity, the hallmark of adaptation and resilience. 
Neuroplasticity: The brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment. LINK
The frontal neo-cortex of the human brain is an amazing product of adaptation and is the seat of "wisdom." Collectively, the frontal lobe is responsible for building entire civilizations and creating technological advances that put a man on the moon. 

Cognitive-behavioral repetition hard-wires neural pathways resulting in habit and custom and moving outside those repetitive boundaries, no matter how unhealthy and destructive those boundaries are, can be extremely difficult (try brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand and experience the dissatisfaction of attempting to disobey habituated brain circuitry). Even in your relationships, habituated scripts demanding repetitive responses become hard-wired and seeking to alter those interactions can result in a strange feeling of discomfort (cognitive dissonance) demanding the usual interactive patterns be resumed.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFEAT: Denying the capacity to change based on a surrender to habituated brain circuitry through the proclamation that "this is what I've always done," which locks the ego-self into fixed personal paradigm that denies even the possibility of change. 
PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE is defined as an individual's ability to properly adapt to stress and adversity. Stress and adversity can come in the shape of family or relationship problems, health problems, or workplace and financial worries, among others. Resilience is not a rare ability; in reality, it is found in the average individual and it can be learned and developed by virtually anyone. Resilience should be considered a process, rather than a trait to be had. LINK
Your brain functions through a trillion miles of neural networks based on inherited genetic coding and the expression of that coding through the impact of current experiences. Since birth, every experience that has impacted you as a biological organism, has shaped the contours of the grey matter between your ears and this has largely determined the basis of future thought and behavior, but always with the capacity to adapt to change called "neuroplasticity." Neuroplasticity allows you to cope with change and adversity and it is a process you can employ everyday simply by engaging positive behaviors that rewire the neuro-circuitry that directs habitual behaviors.


Because of the neuroplasticity of brain circuitry, the capacity to change, to extract oneself from the effects of trauma, to abstain from addictions, to overcome the most severe of adversities and to heal wounded relationships, is also genetically hardwired in your grey matter.

Through 200,000 years of human evolution you have become wired to view the world through a negativity bias, which was an adaptive function as a hunter-gatherer in tribes, but now has become an impediment to healthy functioning in a fast-pace modern world.

Cultivating Resilience

Cultivating resilience means finding ways to adapt to changing circumstances by overcoming habituated defeatist beliefs, and the associated negative thought processing demanded through the negativity bias, and vigilantly seeking to create more adaptive narratives that allow for change and adversity.


Responding to Stress


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