Why DNRS?
Here's the thing: your brain controls everything you do and works together with every other part of your body. So even if you are dealing with an illness or symptoms that don't at first glance seem to have anything to do with your brain, or you've been doing all kinds of treatment for years that has had nothing to do specifically with your brain, it's probably time to give the brain some thought.
While being clear that I am not a doctor and so anything I say about DNRS and the limbic system is going to be filtered into the most simplified of concepts that make sense to me, I want to share why you might consider doing DNRS and what the brain could possibly have to do with symptoms and illness.
Who should give DNRS a try
In a future post, I'll explain more about why I firmly believe anyone would benefit from learning the DNRS program, even though it is intended and designed for people dealing with any number of chronic health issues, from POTS to anxiety to Fibromyalgia. In my opinion, while the program can technically help anyone, I find that the people who seem to be most "perfect" for the program are those who have been chronically ill for a while, have tried all the things, and just cannot quite seem to improve or reach the level of improvement they're looking for. That was me: slow improvement but something was missing still. But as I said, I think anyone should give the program a try.
I will add this here: brain retraining and neuroplasticity are not concepts unique to DNRS. They are simple scientific fact. Anyone can change their brain with no outside guidance--we do it all the time without even trying--and there are other brain retraining programs out there. But as DNRS is the one I did, it is the one I will gladly sing the praises of and the one I have so much to share more specifically about.
Why a limbic system impairment happens
Our brains are listening to everything we do and say and think, 24-7. It is picking up on every bit of information, mood, and experience and crafting how it will operate in the future based on all of that input. Once the brain learns how to handle a certain situation, for better or worse, it stores up that blueprint until convinced otherwise and whips it out at a moment's notice. And if the situation involved strong emotions of any variety, the brain picked up on that game plan for any possibly similar future events even harder than usual. It literally wires new pathways and makes new associations all. day. long.
Our brains can be shocked into a limbic system impairment, a kind of brain trauma, in any number of ways, from an illness to an accident to a toxin to a heartbreak to a highly emotional event. When that happens, our brains go into fight or flight emergency mode, but then they basically stay there. We go into high alert, and nonessential bodily functions and processes fall to the wayside of priority because our brains inaccurately perceive that it is time for survival mode. In this state of high alert, our neural pathways start cross-wiring safe things with danger, which brings about symptoms.
What a limbic system impairment can look like
Over time, if unaddressed, this state can exacerbate and compound itself into more and more tangles of emergency-mode-fueled cross-wiring. And then, because the brain is now on high alert for any learned hints that there is an emergency happening, when it picks up on any such perceived hints, the sirens go off even louder. This state of neural chaos can easily lead to symptoms and chronic illness: for example, mild anxiety growing over time to crippling anxiety, or lack of energy to leave the house to complete inability to leave it at all. Basically, our brains decide, based on the input received at one big event or over time, that life is now one big emergency at all times and what we must do is put things like memory, digestion, productivity, clarity, and normal living on the back burner in the interest of surviving, we must avoid all learned triggers at all costs, and when any trigger is encountered, the body acts accordingly. That is an over-firing, overprotective limbic system.
Additionally, when your brain thinks there is an emergency, not only does it shut down the non-essentials, it ramps up whatever it needs to get your attention and get the job of survival done. Oh, you're in a loud room? *insert siren here* Danger! Oh, you need to make a phone call? Danger! Oh, you need to go to church? Danger! Oh, you want to eat that perfectly fine vegetable? Danger! Oh, you need to dust the apartment? Sorry, no can do--we're in danger, people.
Sometimes you can feel the spiked adrenaline rush and notice clearly what sets off your brain; but sometimes it
is so subtle and has become so second-nature to your brain that you can't even
tell, to the point that you think that's just how you are (example: thinking
you're unable to eat peppers because you're just weird, when your brain
has just added that to its long list of danger zones).
The problem here is this: your brain is now lying to you, even though it is doing the best it can with the information it has been given so far.
In my case, I didn't have one big event that caused the limbic system impairment. I had infections and toxins and a sick gut building up for years, the high stress of a negative college experience, the unexpected loss of a family member, and heartbreak, and I came out the other side with chronic illness. And even though over the course of a few years I healed all the things that added up to that state, my brain was not following. It had to be retrained into health, because it was still operating on the self-preservation, deeply wired, best-it-knew-how auto-pilot of 6 years: too sick and unable to do much of anything at all.
Why DNRS works
When you begin retraining your brain out of emergency mode to normal mode, those cross-wired connections begin to fall away. It takes time and perseverance, but as the brain learns these new pathways and also learns to abandon the old, overprotective, inaccurate ones, the symptoms it's used to pulling out regularly out of this perpetual state lessen more and more. The brain learns through daily repetition that its usual state of over-vigilance is no longer necessary or accurate and that it is safe to live freely again.
Your brain changes according to what you tell it, and how you feel naturally follows what your brain tells it. That makes you in charge.
And the best part is this: your brain has no choice but to listen.
It has no choice but to change as it is told and shown to over time--that is the beauty of neuroplasticity. God lovingly designed our brains this way, knowing we would need this tool for life.
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More to see:
My DNRS FAQs | all my DNRS posts | the DNRS website
What else I did to heal first, which is why I think DNRS helped me so quickly.