God Has Designed Us For Healing: The Gift of Neuroplasticity
“Will I always feel this way?”
This is a common question I hear from clients who are suffering from the side-effects of domestic abuse and betrayal trauma. They’re afraid that their current feelings of hypervigilance, distrust, anxiety, anger or terror will become a permanent part of themselves, and they wonder how they can possibly heal. It feels as if their entire brain has been altered, shifted and changed in ways they never wanted.
There’s truth to that belief—trauma does change the internal structure of the brain. Patrick Carnes, Ph.D, points out that “When people are profoundly frightened, trauma creates a biological alteration of the brain.”
Yet God has designed our bodies in such amazing ways. He not only desires us to heal from the trauma of this fallen world, but He longs for it—so much so that He created our bodies as self-healing machines.
Neuroplasticity
Previous scientific thought was that after the developmental stages of childhood, the brain was fixed and couldn’t be changed or healed in its structure. Thankfully, continued advances in science have allowed mankind to understand more fully the mystery of God’s amazing creation—our human bodies. We now know that the brain can and does change all throughout our lives—which is both good and bad news. When we experience prolonged and/or intense trauma, the structure of our brain physically alters. Yet so, too, when we actively and consciously engage in healing, we can change the neuropathways of our brain to form healthy, God-willed behaviors, perspectives, and attitudes.
Neuro: referring to the nervous system
Plasticity: the ability to be malleable, flexible, and able to change; “the quality of being soft enough to be changed into a new shape” (Cambridge Dictionary)
Neuroplasticity means that our brains have the ability to change in response to experiences or intentional behaviors.