Lived Experience Forum

[Queenie]

Reading these posts with much interest! I became interested in the concept of neuroplasticity during my last hospital admission. There were quite a few inpatient therapy sessions surrounding the subject.

[OstaraAust]

Yes as you say what you practice you get better at. There is also another underlying capacity that can be strengthened and that is how efficiently your brain is at changing and adapting.

You can teach old dogs new tricks, but amoungst other things they need exercise, good diet, some love and affection and good sleep. Humans are the same, though now we would also ad in gut health, creativity, and whatever you can do to “wake your brain up”.

[Phoenix_Rising]

@OstaraAust So...how do I fix my brain enough so that I can safely function in a workplace and thus get on that two-way street? One of the incidents I had involved sensory overload where I went into such crisis that emergency services were called and there was a workcover investigation. I feel really despairing over whether the issue is actually fixable.

[OstaraAust]

Note sure if I am making this Post twice as it seems to have disapeared...

Yes as you say Briar what you practice you get better at. There is also another underlying capacity that can be strengthened and that is how efficiently your brain is at changing and adapting.

You can teach old dogs new tricks, but amount other things they need exercise, good diet, some love and affection and good sleep. Humans are the same, though now we would also ad in gut health, creativity, and whatever you can do to “wake your brain up”.

[OstaraAust]

Hi Queenie, Yes I agree we are all mad here, only some of us know it.... 😉 What I mean by that is that one thing mental health issues often teaches you is to is that the mind (in which I include thought, imagination and feeling) has areas in it that many people do not know about and never get to explore.

I am not trying to romanticise suffering, simply noting that people who have had experiences of mental illness are the ones who can most benefit from the positive channelling of neuroplasticity for they are the ones who have experienced the power of mind though often in ways that have not been fun (like sailors who have experienced storms at sea respect the ocean).    

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[OstaraAust]

Hi Phoenix_Rising. My view is that no brain is broken like a machine can be broken, at worst it may be stuck in a pattern that is not helpful (to itself). That is, we are more organic and the brain will self-repair (heal) or rewire itself, like the way the internet is set up to automatically re-rout a message if one channel is blocked.

The key question is what can we do to improve the ability of the brain to do this effectively. Now the answer to this is very much depends upon your individual circumstances, but as I said previously some general key findings are:

1. Good sleep – go see a sleep hygienist (don’t much around with this)
2. Diet and gut health
3. Moving the body (whatever works for you) – dancing in the dark is great, just don’t fall over the furniture
4. Mind training of any sort (mindfulness, brain training websites) –just keep it varied
5. Similarly being engaged in activities that use your brain (even doing the washing up is great if you stay in the here and now and pay attention to your senses in the present moment)
6. Spend time with others
7. Having techniques to shift your emotions in a more positive direction if you are too stuck is stress, fear, anger or despair.
8. Employment can cover off on 3, 4. 5 and 6 above if you have the right job

[OstaraAust]

Hi Phoenix_Rising Sensory overload is a common issue and a big one for many people. There is lots of stuff out there on the web about this (such as http://www.wikihow.com/Reduce-Sensory-Overload ) though I am not sure we really understand this. The ability to tune something out of awareness is what I would call a deep skill and takes time to strengthen as some of the brain systems that regulate that are very ancient (e.g. the thalamus).

My thoughts on the matter for what they are worth is that as well as seeking to reduce the input we should also practice being able to hold our attention on something we have deliberately chosen to focus our attention on and to seek to strengthen our capacity to tune what we don’t want to attend to out. 

[OstaraAust]

Hi all, it is starting to get a little late, so just checking if anyone has any last comments or input?

 

[OstaraAust]

Well good night all and thanks for participating. If you are still online and this animated image works (it should be spinning) you can pratice perceptual plasticity by seeing if you can see (or make youself see) the image spinning in one direction (e.g clockwise) and then the other (anti-clockwise). Try blinking and imagining it spinning in the opposite direction from which you are first seeing it go then opening your eyes.