How Your Mind Can Heal Itself

There is a model in psychology called Adaptive Information Processing (AIP). It explains that the mind, like the body, can naturally heal itself under the right conditions. Part of the model involves how our brains process and store information, integrating new experiences into existing neural memory networks. Memory networks can include every form of experience, including thoughts, beliefs, emotions, physical experiences, etc.

Let's say that, as a child, your parents told you that the stove can be hot or maybe you actually touched a hot stove. Your brain stores that information and, now, whenever you see a stove, you tend to avoid touching it. This is an example of AIP working properly. The information stored is an accurate and helpful representation of reality.

Traumatic or distressing events, however, can cause the brain to store all of the information as it was originally experienced, including distorted perceptions, beliefs, and expectations.

For example, a toddler is left at a hospital in the middle of the night due to a medical crisis. Her parents' leaving was confusing and frightening, like overwhelming abandonment. That child's brain stores the information in such a way that she fears the possibility of another unexpected abandonment. Over time, this creates an expectation for frightening abandonment and aloneness. When things happen that remind her of the disturbing memory, her brain accesses the entire related neural network, reinforcing and expanding catastrophic expectations and fears. If left unaddressed, she may grow to carry this fear of abandonment and feeling of aloneness into all of her close relationships.

Once resourced to regulate those stress reactions, those neural networks can be corrected by carefully activating (remembering) the associated distressing memories and creating an opportunity for them to interact with experiences and memories that provide helpful, corrective information. The brain then integrates this new information, creating a more accurate and adaptive representation of reality, thus healing itself.

It can be a bit of a process to develop the resources needed to create these corrective opportunities. Once ready, however, they can give individuals experience significant positive change, often very quickly.