Every human brain (however old) has the ability to learn new skills, behaviours, thoughts and emotions. This is the concept of ‘neuroplasticity‘ or ‘brain rewiring’. Eating disorder recovery necessitates changing a lot of behaviours and thought patterns that in the years or decades of illness have become deeply wired into the brain, such that you […]
Tag: brain rewiring
As some of you loyal, wonderful and regular readers on here might know, I am now working as an eating disorder recovery coach and for that I have a separate website, which is hellybarnes.com. This post is not a marketing ploy though. I am just popping this post up to let you know that I […]
When something stops being an option in your mind for long enough, you just stop seeing it. During my years of heavy restrictive eating, compulsive exercise and movement and painful isolation, my brain learnt and adapted to this being my new normal and stopped paying attention to the fact that anything else was a real […]
A human brain can only concentrate and pay attention to one thing at a time. This fact is a reality for us all… that even with the most accomplished or expert brain, focusing on more than one thing at a time is just not possible. Multi tasking is a myth…. I know all you female […]
In eating disorder recovery, we frequently refer to the concept of brain rewiring as a fundamental part of the process. Unless we use the plasticity our brains have to change our habits and make recovery focused behaviours, thoughts and ultimately beliefs our norm, we won’t attain a lasting recovery. Frequently though when people talk about […]
This post is called, ‘Words Matter In Eating Disorder Recovery’ but actually the words we use in day to day life matter in everything, all the time! So, although in this post, I will be relating how we use words and language to talk or think about ourselves or our lives in respect to eating […]
This is a slightly different post today. I don’t usually share things like this but I am currently studying neuroscience and part of the course is about brain plasticity which of course is very relevant to eating disorder recovery. With an eating disorder, we have a brain that is hard wired to perform disordered behaviours, […]
As humans, our brains are hardwired to dislike uncertainty in any aspect of our lives and I find this an interesting topic and particularly relevant here as the ability to tolerate uncertainty is key in eating disorder recovery. Every human brain loves certainty. Our basic survival brain perceives uncertainty as a danger and so it […]
They say rewiring the brain is like trying to write with your left hand if you are right handed. It feels wrong, takes immense concentration and is exhausting… … but slowly you develop the skill. Right now sitting, eating, rewiring to recover feels so wrong… takes more concentration than being a contestant on Mastermind and […]