This Is Going Well // DNRS review

{This is going W E L L}

 Brian gave me this mug for Christmas, and it's my favorite.❤

 All the work I've been doing to retrain my brain and heal my body has been going very well, and I am so excited and optimistic about the future!

 I mentioned previously that I would be starting the Dynamic Neural Retraining System, (DNRS), which works with neuroplasticity based techniques to heal an impaired limbic system, which is essentially a brain injury that results from trauma and causes your brain to process and store information as if you are in a constant state of "fight or flight", or emergency response. 

Trauma is relative to every individual, and there are different types of trauma; obvious things like death, war, victim of a crime, major accidents, and those sort of things are Traumas with a capital 'T'. Things like illness, chronic stress, unstable family life, negative relationships, and many others, are  traumas with a little 't'; on the surface they might not be as easily recognized as trauma, but really it comes down to how your body is processing and storing these experiences.

 The effect of this maladapted stress response is multifaceted, but basically it causes your brain to see certain things as dangerous when they are not, and the "trickle down effect" on all your systems ultimately ends up affecting, and impairing or inhibiting, everything from hormones to digestion to cell turnover...which leads to discomfort and dis-ease. 

 This wholistic effect explains why a person can have such a wide range of symptoms that are hard to connect to a root cause.

 It also makes sense that someone's emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical states all need to be addressed and balanced, since all of these aspects need to be in harmony for homeostasis and healing to happen. What you think, how you feel, what you believe, and how you act all influence the way your brain processes things and stores that information for future reference.

 If something is interpreted and stored as danger in the brain, it becomes a trigger for reactions in the future. God's amazing design of our brain to learn and remember everything can become impaired, and what is meant to help protect us can become a hinderance to health and vitality when we subconciously start interpreting situations, people, foods, or whatever else your triggers might be, as a threat when they inherently are not.

Thankfully, God has also blessed us with understanding of our bodies and provided tools for us to restore proper function in many cases.

 Neuroplasticity is what we call the brain's ability to change and build new pathways and connections. This is a lifelong process; every day we are having experiences and either reinforcing old pathways, or neural synapses, or building new ones. Neuroplasticity is basically the reason that we can learn and remember things.

 I started the DNRS program on December 9th, so I've been retraining my brain for about 2 and a half months now. Honestly, I was skeptical about this program. I had tried SO many different treatments and approaches, and while everything helped to some degree, eventually there would be this bounce back and I'd have a lot of symptoms return, or get new ones. It was exhausting and frustrating, expensive and heartbreaking.

 Thankfully, God sustained me, and my husband was so wonderful and supportive, and I have seen so many blessings that came through the pain. Satan wants you to believe that all your efforts are for nothing, but that is not true. Don't ever give up. Even if you don't find complete healing, your journey is happening for a reason, and whether you are healthy or sick,  there are still blessings and joys to be found every day.

 Now, I have only been doing this DNRS for a relatively short time, so technically there is still the possibility that I would experience a bounce back and symptom return as usual. But I do not believe that will happen. What I have been able to do so far, in the last few weeks, is extraordinary, and I know things are different this time.

 After the completing the first day of DVD seminar training, and doing my homework, I already felt a difference. In my experience, just knowing that your brain is stuck in a trauma loop helps to facilitate healing. After the first day of seminars, homework, and running through the retraining script, motions, and visualizations, I felt like someone had turned off my "stress switch".

 Seriously. For years, I had been living with this feeling inside that caused me to immediately respond at the highest level during stressful situations. I knew that I was over-reacting, meaning that my response level was too intense for the actual threat level, but I didn't know how to stop that from happening. I learned about "fight or flight" mode, which is your sympathetic nervous system's response, and that I needed to get my body into parasympathetic mode, or "rest and digest and heal" mode, and deep breathing and visualizations and meditation or hypnosis type exercises all helped. But nothing would 'stick" for very long. And I would not get back to normal; normal meaning the way I felt and functioned before all my symptoms started. 

 Since starting DNRS, as I said, my stress level and response has been way down. I feel like it has "turned on" a couple times, but it has gone back "off", and I can feel the difference. I feel happier and calmer, and more peaceful. In the past, things like large family parties, disagreements/arguments, or a stressful evening where the kids keep getting out of bed again and again, would have had me in tears, feeling jittery and anxious, or feeling actually sick to my stomach and needing a day or two to recover from it. I have been so much more stable and calm and able to do things like a normal person...it's amazing what a difference normal brain function and response makes!

 I have also been able to eat things I haven't eaten for a long time:

Carbs in general, pad thai, peanuts, corn, peas, oatmeal, chia seeds, taco salad, sour cream, potatoes, sugar, tortilla chips, GF pancakes from a restaurant, cookies, ground beef, cheddar cheese, broccoli, cauliflower, onion, lasagna...and more! It's mind-blowing. I am gaining confidence with every successful meal, but it takes self awareness and intention to teach my brain and body that these things are safe and I can digest them, and not let my mind picture myself in pain in a few hours.

But it gets easier and easier. 

 When you first hear that DNRS requires you to practice a hour a day for six months, it feels impossible. "How on earth am I gonna find time and energy to do that?!" When you have health challenges, you are already struggling to just do normal life, and for me, having kids here needing to be fed and homeschooled, and having to make all my food from scratch, and a lot of times I'd have to make different food for myself than I made my family, so that's two meals, plus housework and errands and appointments... "I don't have a free hour!" But I did find time to do it. You will probably have to shift around your priorities, but listen, if everything you are doing really amounts to running in circles, it's time to break out of that cycle, and try a different approach. In my experience, it was totally worth it.

I can do hard things. And it really became very enjoyable once I got the hang out of it. I look forward to my practice. It leaves me feeling amazingly well and vibrant. I definitely have time for that!

 I am truly amazed at how well this program worked for me. And how fast it worked! Everyone needs to go at their own pace, but I was able to start adding foods back in almost immediately. And I started responding to stressors "normally" right away. I'm not perfect of course; still a work in progress. But this really was life-changing on many levels for me. I think it partly worked so well for me because for one, I had always believed that trauma was what had set off this cascade of health challenges to begin with, and also, I knew that self-awareness based techniques had worked for me to some extent in the past. I respond really well to things like meditation, hypno-therapy, and deep breathing, and I felt that re-training my brain made total sense. Pulling my awareness out of reacting and into my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual states, and sort of checking in with myself, let me see things from a different perspective and made me able to question the reactions. It made complete sense to me that that my brain was automatically reacting to stimuli and that this reaction was based on protection mechanisms misinterpreting information, causing my symptoms. 

This would explain why, for example, I had grown up eating potatoes, and everyone else I know could eat potatoes, but I couldn't. They were a nightshade, they were starch and carbohydrates, all things I reacted to. And yet, I also knew, they were just potatoes, not poison. And I had eaten them my whole life and felt fine before. It didn't make sense. Until I learned about how my brain worked, and the safety system that's built into us, and how that can malfunction. 

I can eat potatoes now. Totally fine with them. And lots of other foods that were off limits for years are ok now.

When people tell someone suffering from anxiety that's "it's all in your head", they aren't technically wrong, but what they mean is probably not that you are suffering from a limbic system impairment and there's ways to heal that.☺ They mean stop thinking about it, stop psyching yourself out. And again, the way your brain works is very efficient and it wants to take the most direct path and so the pathways that are used the most get used the most, and not using those pathways and creating new ones is the secret to recreating your health in this case. But that's probably not what they meant when they told you to stop thinking about it. ☺

Understanding how your brain works is key to healing. I am so glad I tried DNRS. God has used it to facilitate deep, lasting healing in me. The Dynamic Neural Retraining System is worth looking into if you feel stuck in your health challenges, or anxiety. There is hope for you! I am not affiliated or compensated in any way with this program, I am just sharing my personal story and experience in hopes that it will help others. ❤ Feel free to comment with any questions.