Mad in America ran a Webinar in 2024 on Neuroplasticity as a way to manage one of our greatest challenges – Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome. The presenters, as described by Mad in America, included: Ben Ahrens, a chronic illness recovery expert, TEDx Speaker, and CEO of a brain retraining program Re-Origin.

This program stemmed from his use of neuroplasticity concepts to manage protracted benzodiazepine and antidepressant withdrawal and severe Lyme disease.

Kay Loveland, PhD, a Clinical Psychologist in Asheville, NC, who has personal and professional experience with protracted withdrawal. Gustav F who after being inappropriate psychiatrized and being five years in protracted withdrawal sensations and chronic pain turned to a mind-body approach originated by Dr. John Sarno and cured himself… Read more here 

I’ve engaged with neuroplasticity ‘techniques’ and practices since my own diagnosis of dementia, and believe it has not only changed my brain, it has helped to heal it to some degree. Instead of my more mathematical and scientific brain, I often think / view things in pictures, as people with autism have descried to me, and written about. I’d have to say, now that I’m used to this change, it is a handy ability, as the last few years we’ve been renovating our home, and it is so much easier to select colours, tiles, new fabrics, etc, when you can visualise the proposed changes.

My introduction to neuroplasticy was through reading the first book written by Dr Norman Doidge on neuroplasticy and its impact on the brain, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, which by the way, was not well received by the western scientific community as it was full of mostly anecdotal evidence! Go figure, these would have likely been the same people who believed the earth was flat…

Doidge’s second book, The Brain’s Way of Healing: Stories of Remarkable Recoveries and Discoveries, includes a lot of evidence based research, so if you are not a proponent of neuroplasticcity, it is worth updating your knowledge and revisiting your views.

As one of my mentors and gurus, the late Dr Wayne Dyer said:

You’ll see it when you believe it…