Neuroplasticity
What Is Neuroplasticity
To explain neuroplasticity, I’m going to share a strange, yet effective metaphor to help understand the concept.
Think of your brain as a balloon filled with sand. Now, imagine that every time you have a thought, learn something new, or are rewarded/punished, a marble rolls through the sand and makes a pathway. After this, every time that thought, new learned skill, or reward/punishment is repeated the marble rolls and makes that pathway even deeper. This makes it easier for your brain to quickly go to the deepest, most traveled pathways to help navigate life. This is a picture representing your brain’s ability to adapt and change over time by creating new neurons (marbles), and building new networks (pathways in the sand).
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to learn and grow in response to life experiences.
These pathways become your “default mode” and can provide helpful and protective responses. However, due to multiple causes, sometimes these patterns can become toxically negative and anxiety riddled.
Our minds are incredible. Another metaphor for you- our brains are more sophisticated than computers, which are built with unchanging hardware and receive software updates periodically. Our brains can actually receive software and hardware updates. This means that neuroplasticity actually changes the physical structure of our brains, not just our thoughts. These structural changes are also part of how neuoplasticity helps heal brain injuries, such as concussions and physical damage.
Neuroplasticity and Psychotherapy
Neuroplasticity in psychotherapy is paramount. It means that it is possible to change dysfunctional patterns of thinking and behaving. One can develop new mindsets, new memories, new skills, and new abilities.
Basically, neuroplasticity can be a tool to help manage, treat, and reduce depression, anxiety, and other difficult mental health concerns- but it takes some intentional work! These more permanent brain changes can be achieved through cognitive behavioral therapy interventions. In other words, adopting techniques and concepts aimed at bringing awareness to maladaptive thought patterns, in order to challenge them.
When we learn something new, we create new connections between our neurons. We rewire our brains to adapt to new circumstances. This happens on a daily basis, but it’s also something that we can encourage and stimulate.
Returning to the ballon/sand/marble example- therapy can help identify those harmful marbles, stop them in their tracks, and replace them with more helpful marbles. Over time, the new and helpful marbles will create deep pathways, and the harmful ones will fill back in with sand and disappear.
Psychotherapy sessions are a time to grow resilience. The goal is to help people examine distressing feelings and experiences, and redirect them into more functional patterns, restoring cognitive and behavioral flexibility.
Spending time identifying your “marbles” and choosing new ones is one of many ways therapy is incredible for mental health. Although time in session may feel a lot less scientific and way more emotional, at the end of the day the process is empirically supported as a good way to manage mental health concerns.
More Resources
Adult Neuroplasticity: More Than 40 Years of Researchhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026979/Neuroplasticity Ted Talk
https://youtu.be/LNHBMFCzznE
What is Neuroplasticity? A Psychologist Explains [+14 Exercises]
https://positivepsychology.com/neuroplasticity/