05/10/2026
Really neuroplasticity is at the root of psychotherapeutic theory. It is how and why we become who we are; how we survive by learning what is required in the conditions to which we are exposed in early life. It’s how we evolved, dressed, walked, talked, hunted and created as we kept ourselves and our babies physiologically safe.
It’s also how we shut down our needs, people pleased, became belligerent and defensive and narcissistic. How we disguised our emotions as tiredness, lost our voices and autonomy and kept ourselves psychologically safe in emotionally difficult environments. It is how we lost our connection to our physical body, our central axis, developed pain and physical and mental health conditions related to suppressed emotions. Neuroplasticity is how the brain lays down neural pathways that protect us. Until they don’t. The problem is we have phases in childhood and adolescence where our brain is extremely plastic and then it becomes less so - it gets much harder to unlearn pathways than it was to lay them down.
And so therapy exists. There are ways to increase neural plasticity and change the story but it’s not just about thoughts, it’s about changing the story and meeting the needs of the holistic Self - physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically.
And it’s why indigenous cosmology is so influential on the way I work, because it is only in this expanded sense of our holistic Self that we can truly lay down neural pathways centred around connection and coherence. With ourselves, each other and the planet.
