He is 26, and has been in and out of jail.  He has used any substance he could get his hands on to try to numb the pain and anger.

So, we made a scale of 0-10 (on the bottom of graphic below), and he realized he could stay perfectly calm when he felt a “3,” and there was little threat. But, anything above that, he went instantly to an “8.”  No middle ground. No ability to think or reason. Anger, terrible exploding words, violence.  And then drugs to make it all go away. It was just his go to habit.

We started looking at how he had trained his brain to do that. Why would that amygdala in his limbic system, right behind his eyes and ears, not have a middle balancing ground? What triggers did the escalation?

He started looking at the first signs of his tension when his reactive scale was low. He could see that his frown was the sign of a trigger about to blow.  He started being curious about what could he accept in that situation, so that he could have more access to his cingulate gyrus system to balance between the inner brain limbic system REACT and the upper brain frontal lobe system of THINK.  When he started realizing this system could actually heal, he said “It’s a whole different playground.”  Being able to feel balanced was a new playground for his mind, and he liked looking at that picture.

We started working on memories flashing from his hippocampal replay system (the Big Ms in the drawing), and how they would connect to get that reactivity system amped up again.

He reported in the coming weeks that he was noticing his reactivity healing, and his top reactivity not happening as often. Brain training for brain healing.

If your reactivity scale response system could use some healing, come in, and let’s start your brain healing. It will change your life.

Do you know someone with reactivity and post-traumatic stress issues, and are you a person of faith? Check out the link at the top to my book Brain Prayers. We can pray for the healing playgrounds in the brain.