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The Brain is Resilient, Too

Growth and Healing

Copyright 2009, Pamela Woll

The good news is that the brain is programmed to keep us alive and functioning.  The even better news is that the brain is also programmed to keep itself alive and functioning.

It’s true that experiences of stress, threat, and trauma can change the way the brain makes and uses certain chemicals, and the way some of the brain parts react and talk to one another.  And if we ignore these changes and keep on doing things the way we’ve been doing them, our challenges can get worse over time instead of better, and harder to deal with as time passes.

But if we take steps to build our resilience, those steps can also repair much of the trouble that our experiences have “written” on the brain.  Three of the brain’s many magic tricks are particularly powerful:
  • “Neurogenesis” is the brain’s ability to repair some neurons (brain cells) that have been damaged, and in some cases actually make new neurons.
  • “Neuroplasticity” is the brain’s ability to “rewire” and find new ways to do things when the old ways have been blocked by damage, or when repeated bad experiences have worn negative thought and feeling patterns in the brain like grooves on an old record album.
  • “Learning” sounds a lot less glamorous than those other two, but it’s a huge strength.  Just as post-trauma effects are written in the brain through a learning process, so are hope and joy and resilience.





There are dramatic examples of all these, like the fact that some antidepressants make the brain replace cells that have been lost, or the cases in which people who have lost their brains’ hearing centers have learned to “hear” through their visual centers.

But there are many more lives in which slow, steady, quiet effort has simply improved and even healed the way people’s bodies and brains work and respond to stress.  Here are a few of the many things that help the brain find and use its natural resilience:

  • Getting enough sleep
  • Getting the right kinds of food and drink and avoiding the wrong kinds
  • Getting enough exercise
  • Walking
  • Dancing
  • Listening to music
  • Looking at beautiful things
  • Using your creativity
  • Using your logic
  • Practicing empathy for others, and for yourself
  • Noticing your experience without judging it
  • Noticing when you’re going on and on about what’s wrong with you, your situation, or somebody else, and turning your attention away from that and toward something more positive
  • Participating in positive rituals
  • Naming things you appreciate or are grateful for
  • Saying positive affirmations, prayers, mantras, etc.
  • Doing meditation, yoga, etc.
  • Being mindful
  • Learning
  • Surrounding yourself with things you want to learn
  • Looking in the eyes of someone you trust

It might be hard to imagine how some of those things can affect the brain, but there are good reasons—actual physical reasons—for that.  If they happen to be good for the rest of the human being, so much the better.

The fact remains that we are resilient.  That’s what we’re built to be, and there are more resources for resilience within us and around us than we can ever imagine.  Our job is to look for and use those resources, and never stop believing in ourselves, no matter how hard it is.

Survival is much, much more than just staying alive.  And the power of survival is written into us—all of us—down to the smallest cell.


(Page taken from The Power and Price of Survival:  Understanding Resilience, Stress, and Trauma, Copyright 2009, Pamela Woll.)