The Brain-Hack Café by Emotionally Rewired, LLC
Melissa Pickersgill M.S., LPC, NCC, BSP (Neurodivergent)
Clinical Mental Health Counselor and Mind-Body Psychotherapist
How new mind-body therapy approaches treat stress and prevent the pain of it from resurfacing again by another stressor later, which likely is self-sabotaging your work performance btw. By, msMISSYms
Brain-Hacks are a smashup of EMDR/BSP/Hypnosis/Color Therapy/IFS/ACT/etc Clinical Mental Health Counseling & Trauma/ Psychosomatic/NARM/Polyvagal Informed Interventions researched to treat/end PTSD
The treatment mind-body rewires I facilitate requires you to have a safe place to go unwind afterwards without the interruptions of a stressful job for at least a day, so your body has the time to do the energy draining physical changes in the body that the tool is designed to achieve. Some people notice nothing after the processing and for others it can be very uncomfortable mood wise for 24hrs due to the type of toxins that were present in their facia along the surface of the muscle tissues that are stored there over time but then quickly released during the therapy back into the bloodstream. The energy cost to your body to do this work on your behalf then also depletes the brain’s energy so it is possible for you to feel tired, sleepy, and fidgety following the treatments. Over time, these side effects do lessen, and you will find the process to be more useful to you to continue a self-applied treatment protocol at home for you to maintain your less triggered body and mindset.
There are other known enjoyable options available to the public that do help you to manage the body’s management of stress chemicals that cause the undesired symptoms of stress. These therapies are Yoga, Dance, MFR/Massage to name a few. Unlike the mind-body psychotherapy process I facilitate; these therapies achieve “over time” the calmer mindsets to help any person to develop the desired felt calm in the body for the reported longer timeframes the person desired to achieve to be felt, especially when they feel pressured by their environment stimuli and other people.
Note, a person who chooses not to engage in a body therapy weekly is unlikely to accept the idea that physical exercises and mindfulness programs help their body from instinctively priming itself to fight, run, or shut down when their mind is challenged by their ordinary daily issues/stressors. Remember the purpose to do this work is so you can, during the stressful times in your life, remain physically calmer and clearer minded. However, unless a cognitive psychotherapy is applied at the time or afterwords in collaboration with a mental health counselor’s treatment plan, the side effects post activity sometimes may likely be the reason behind what it is happening to impact negatively first a person’s mental health to continue with any recommended to them healthier lifestyle tip, especially if the person has an abuse history [emotional/physical/sexual trauma]. Therefore, in these cases, the desired outcomes are perceived to feel threatening in the beginning opposed to a process that must occur to redesign their body so the person can now quickly shift out from a mindset set in stress mode to one that is calmer and harmonized by a self-directed felt state of hemostasis, a feeling that the mind can hear itself say to oneself about the whatever “it is happening” is fine, manageable, etc.
However, once you get pass the first hurdles of the initial detoxing process, you can then safely seek a massage by a therapist who also specializes in MFR therapy to also help you to maintain your body’s storage of these chemicals to be released throughout your lifetime as a prevention measure that “supports your mental health”, and bonus, you can use the brain-hacks you played with during your mind-body psychotherapy session I taught to you to learn how to self-wire your ANS so the brain-hacks knowledge will re-surface in your mind automatically, when the stressful situation is identified by your brain for the brain to send to your mind a message reminder that this hack works. When the mind and body work together in real time situations, it means to the mind that when the brain/body is working on automatic pilot, the brain rewards the mind with the brain’s authority to redirect their behavior mindfully directed to shift itself back into a calmer mindset that reinforces a feeling felt within the body equivalent to the desired felt state the mind perceives as the right confidence level needed to be felt by that person’s mind in their body to satisfy their hope’s belief that yes it is true, it is possible now to perform well. [Hence, brain-hacks are designed to be self-wired by the mind so the brain surfaces the reminder to the mind, this will help you, when your stress producing situation occurs again in real-time.]
The person who does this work will notice their confidence increase because the holistic benefit to rewire the older trauma memories left over from their past shock events that later in life cause their ANS to misidentify the threat to define the problem of what is really happening to them is updated in the ANS to not react the same way in their future shocked again moments when they are left asking themselves again, “what is happening”. Please be kind to yourself to note how an involuntarily triggered individual has their ability to think first halted by their own brain. This is an evolutionary survival strategy that evolved over millions of years that the minds own will power alone cannot change it from occurring to them again. Involuntary triggers must be rewired in the body by the mind to whom the brain belongs. The more dissociation a person’s brain has adapted into their own worldview of their reality to protect its mind from resurfacing the painful memories, the more avoidant the person will be to therapy that changes it’s set in stone mindset to remain primed and ready at all times.
Why would the brain want the body to be involuntarily triggered? A brain that cannot trust its mind to not be pained again will heal it with a self-imposed amnesia trick called, dissociation, to blind itself from seeing all the symbology the eye scans in its environment daily that might identify known links to past events to the mind that resurfaces the pain. Hence, self-sabotages are reported often by people who try to change their behaviors with no other assistance then to self-shame themselves for their failures because they have been primed to be fearful of their society’s stigmas towards mental health diagnosed types of people as bad and unsafe to be around.
A mind AND body psychotherapist help their client to reframe their cognitive beliefs that send intentions to the nervous system to be identified, in this situation about therapy, as safe and something endured for a short period of time. Leave out this important step in the mind-body’s communication’s electrical messaging system, then it is to be expected that the person will at times be confused about their body therapy’s post experienced results that frighten the client. If the client becomes frightened and cannot find a suitable answer, this person’s ANS becomes determined to self-sabotage their mind’s willpower because it will convince the mind to stop with excuses or block the person’s mind from pondering about another try from re-surfacing. Therefore, any healthy person confused by what is “it” really that is happening to them, will struggle more to accept the weird symptoms of say some temporary brain fog or an overwhelm of emotions that easily can flood the body with sadness spontaneously, often without a known reason as to why the person was triggered in that manner that did not make sense to them. With hindsight, when the story’s details are related back in the mind to ponder the information within that person’s personal narrative, not another’s, in order for that person to relate to the information, it can be taken on as feeling personal to a person’s whose brain requires it must relate to the information in their worldview to comprehend another’s story’s meaning. [If your children get angry that whenever they tell you about something that you have to always make it about you, it is likely that you do not recognize that your sharing of your story is the only known way your brain developed to send to another person the message to how you understand what happened to the other person. It is called a communications learning disability]
Adults and children learn to communicate their thoughts using verbal language. Note: when words stop working for a person, behaviors that work better are often utilized instead to get a person’s meaning across to any person the mind identified or targeted to want that person to indeed (pressure them) into understanding their meaning. If the person’s behavior got their need met better in certain situations during their lived experiences, then it is likely for the mind’s purpose to be online in these situations is no longer identified by the brain as a practical strategy to surface first in the future to deal with these similar situations. The brain regions responsible to implement survival strategy are not hard wired to care about the mind’s happiness, intellectual ability, or morality by the way. Therefore, a person at the age expected to “use their words” but the person has a known or unknown learning disability, is more likely to be victimized with a consequence by their caregiver who can make the judgment to punish that person who is seen demonstrating “bad” behaviors. Our society does not have the training to recognize a hurt person in distress who is literally inept, brain-blocked, by their mind’s ability to utilize their verbal communication networks (at any age) to inform the people around them that they are being hurt, and at times by that person. People with strong communication skills receive the response they expect because they can properly explain their needs without accidently triggering someone (again) with their “way of communicating” their thoughts to ensure themselves that they explained themselves to that other person in a manner that person knew they understood them.
Therefore, if the cognitive shifts experienced in therapy are identified negatively by a frightened persons mind who found the process to be annoying to them or uncomfortable, their mind then is more likely than to have misidentified to their brain what occurred during their experience and judged it to be bad; therapy resurfaced the pain, so it is bad. Even a trained therapist can have their anxiety messengers’ surface after an unexpected experience had occurred to them that later cannot be reasoned accurately by their mind that then often can develop in the mind an aversion to the change process and promote thoughts that feel it necessary to end the treatment. If this occurs to a person, their body’s protectors are in play surfacing in the body to deliberately block the mind in the future from exposure to the threatening environment, even if the mind does want another chance to try again. [self-sabotage/mind-block/body-blocks]
Practicing mind-body psychotherapy life brain-hacks assist the mind and body to remain in solidarity with the person’s hoped for response [performance before peers, strangers, parents, friends, or any person the mind identifies as a “value” attached to their audience who observed their behavior and can apply a judgement about it] for how that person preferred to be triggered after their body sensed in the environment, dissociated or not, symbols of their past trauma threats. A mindset primed to think first then act can be also triggered by the brain, if wired to do so in situations the body survived in the past that hindsight deemed to be an over exaggerated response to the threat that the mind reasoned later a better solution to how that person scored themself to manage that threat(s), often only known to that person’s mind, could have been better remedied if the mind was not taken off line by similar types of threats the body’s senses interpreted harmful in their future life’s situations.
Note: consequences become valued post a poor performance but unless the mind knows the codes I call brain-hacks to get themselves primed-preferred to how to react different to their last reaction, so their brain understands their mind’s intentions better, the person is doomed to repeat their poor past behaviors. Unfortunately, if the brain chooses to utilize a fight, flight, freeze survival strategy, the resources are redirected to the part of the brain required to address the threat while the mind is stuck without control over its body’s behaviors because the brain self-set itself to act on autopilot. Exercise is known to increase energy in the body needed to get blood reserves up to the head so ample blood supplies energy to the executive functioning brain regions. The mind can stay online longer to instruct their brain triggered to be on autopilot to send signals of intention to not hurt others (personal to them/relationships) or even more importantly, at times, to not hurt themselves while in an “active behavior” mindset (damage their expensive personal items like their own tv or break their fist if they punched holes into their wall, while on autopilot survival mode). The brain-hacks hack past this learning experience often on display every day in the natural world; but clients who do this work to treat their severe trauma histories, report that they are often surprised when the dissociation clears so their mind is able to witness their body’s actions done or said by an inner voice while the person’s mind was provided permission by their brain to observe themselves while their mind was set to operate on autopilot. It is indeed a “surreal” experience.
Remember the phrase trauma experts love to say, “you got to name it to tame it” before the body will stop the emotions/chemicals, identified by the mind as anxiety, massagers the body uses to inform, send a message, to the mind to watch out and to remain hyper focused on high alert. Only the mind’s own brain can change these behaviors, but the person’s mind must be trusted by its own brain prior to permitting itself to resurface any memories that will trigger their pain to resurface too.
A mindset that has its body’s nerves primed to feel tolerant triggered to provide the mind the ample blood supply to keep it online to remain clear minded to ponder in real time a more likely probability is the therapy treatment outcomes that I focus on to achieve as the primary goal my client’s initiated to achieve when their interest to seek treatment was motivated by their minds. The emergence of exposure learning, trauma informed therapy, techniques/interventions in the mental health community is not the same type of talk therapy many people imagine. Therefore, please expect the mind-body psychotherapist to facilitate the interventions in talk therapy to be designed so the client can go into their body in a manner that is safe to safely face their fears. There are many cool brain-hacks designed by all scopes of practicing therapists, doctors, and educators to help their clients to engage with the necessary treatment options in a manner that is to be identified by their client as “safe to dip their toe into their feared to reexperience waters” to test out another way (try again) that is research based to manage/coach their client to a safe resolution within their client’s mind’s worldview reality but without their client required to do the experienced re-learning outside the safety of the therapy room. This is difficult to do if the client lives within a mindset set fixed by a belief or many beliefs that no other way then their current behavior, good or bad to whoever’s judgment, is safe to them to survive their life’s lived as threatening to them situations, within a relaxed body piloted by a calm mind.
Hence the mind-body psychotherapy approaches today are designed to help you to get past/hack your own brains primed to surface one’s fears protectors, so meaning to protect, the mind at “all costs” (dissociation) by resurfacing emotions or thoughts I call safety guardians (like anger, doubt, disconnection). Never underestimate a brain to not miscalculate the energy costs for a perceived to occur soon event so if the energy must be conserved for later, your mind might find itself in hindsight wondering why their body declined to support their present intended wish to try something new. To a brain that often lives in a home or school that is unsafe requiring daily the energy resources to survive it in addition to completing any task, the brain is likely to not provide the energy required to survive the therapy session that forces that person to resurface memories about “it” or worse to allow the mind to not ignore protecting the body from the memory resurfacing pain. [drugs will provide the mind the dissociation it wants when it wants to ignore/numb out painful memories, btw]
The rewire of any survival strategy the brain primes require the process most people report as their reason to end therapy, to relive the past memory for the brain to learn from it, or maybe this concept is unbeknown to the person, so therapy becomes reasoned mistakenly as not a practical solution to coach the person through the body and mind’s change process naturally. Comments like “it did not work for me” might be due to the negative side effects after the exercise or treatment as an excuse to avoid the resurfacing of pain caused by the treatment. It maybe the therapy’s language is not multiculturally appropriate for that individual’s worldview’s fears, so “the help” is instead mis-identified wired by the brain as the threat that caused harm to that person to avoid in their future situations. There are other possibilities; however, the brain-hacks I designed I did so conscious of these risk factors.
Autism and ADHD clients [Neurodi]
Both possibilities do affect us neurodivergents, even in therapy, to a degree that neurotypical people identify incorrectly our over-sensitivity, our over-exaggerated facts, our over-valued ideas, and etc, but worse, the people who we identified as the people most responsible to protect us from being forced again into living with a sensory intrusion painful experience often tend to re-offend, even post apology, and thus eventually are identified as untrustworthy companions (parents turn into threats so conduct disorders develop in children even with kind parenting along with oppositional behaviors). If another person cannot be trusted to understand the language cues a person with the inability to verbalize how you hurt them, eventually the person will use behaviors that often cause more confusion to the receiver and as such do not benefit the person’s outlook towards their goal achievement to get another person to care and understand their reality to them successfully. Often many so called “needs” a neurodi reason why to over exaggerate the events reality about how their body’s sensory sensitive nature was affected by the event is overlooked and dismissed. When a neurodivergent person is trying desperately to communicate their meaning in a manner to their audience in a way that neurodi believes will be validated by their listener as true for that person even, if the person did not have the same response to the same situla (rollercoaster, the neurodi say it was a 20 out of 10 and the neurotypicals roll their eyes saying it was really a 5 out of 10), it is often the neurodivergent reality not validated. To tell a person who expresses a different reaction to a similar experience than how another person experienced it as being something that makes that different person stupid, mentally ill or justified to be tease as a person for being too sensitive is harmful and leads to the neurodivergent and to a neurotypical person to over time develop a set-in negative self-narrative.
A neurotypical’s body’s sensory systems are not activating the anxiety triggers that hurt neurodi so they do not comprehend our reality to begin prior to the problem of how to relate then to them for them to understand us because they cannot relate it back into their own construct of reality, so we are labeled by the general public as people who have a mental health problem and intellectual disability. Hurtful, because even the best therapy will not change a brain matrix that differs from the neurotypical. How a neurodi rationalizes their reality within a body that is sensory sensitive in the environment(s) that have known historical threats to us but not to neurotypicals in the environment/s we cohabitate with where only we neurodi suffer annoying triggering sensory intrusion caused by for example the simple presence of a lightbulb humming, or an annoying air conditioner’s rumbling that are self-managed at the same time when we are often expected by others to focus to learn a new task. Hence, our mind’s attention to address the little things that most people are brain protected to endure is what prevents many of us from being fully present and is why we miss hearing or seeing important information/steps required for us to do another’s expected of us to complete task, and properly behaved to their expectations of good, only for their tolerance to it, behavior. [sit in the seat without fidgeting or daydreaming]
Due to our brain’s delayed development, not within our control yet we suffer much punishment regardless, our communication/language systems and working memory are development delayed thus we are impacted negatively if introduced/forced too early to the neurotypical way to learn how to read or to write. Our brain matrix is set up differently so the process of learning following a set instructions/strict agendas can be traumatic to us, thus we start our life journey already with a brain that processes the meanings of what others are saying to us slower along with a brain additionally damaged due to the PTSD we suffer daily now because we were forced/tough loved through it to learn things designed for a neurotypical brain way to learn and by good indented people whose only mistake was they were misinformed that all brains are the same.
Neurodi then must be provided alternatives to learn something in a manner our brain is not yet capable to do during the neurodevelopmental stages of the brain’s development at the ages of 0-9. As such, a neurodivergent often will test out many strategies in school to help them to communicate verbally to others in a manner the neurodi can understand they believe that their audience will get their meaning, which is why many neurodivergent behavior/s are often mislabeled. For example, a child manipulating a situation intentionally is seen as a behavioral deviant opposed to a person’s ptsd congruent appropriate behavior to be expected. If the intentional manipulation is the person’s believed to try way to hopefully get the people around them to better understand their intentions the neurodi becomes confused as to why they had to pay a consequence for behaviors a neurodi’s brain can observe in others, but neurotypical brains are not always capable of identifying so easily in people who do it sneakily, but we see it. [Interesting thought here about how a creative neurodivergent would take facts the mind provides the brain about their peer’s behaviors then ponder them in their own mind’s worldview of their reality the person is only to comprehend then try to share what the other person, create a solution then are willing to test it out in their reality nonetheless of the costs, at times…..and Interesting how this is the type of engineering requires to help design solutions to our reality’s problems type of thinking….so pause and think to encourage your neurodi to not test them out with their peers literally, but to journal them or draw them onto paper to share that way your ideas into your shared world reality.]
Many neurodi like myself report their lifelong failures to get their messages heard as also a failure of themselves as a person born stupid, mentally disabled with no hope of changing it for the rest of their lives, so neurodivergence is to be something we must learn to accept. We wonder why people don’t understand us and we struggle to keep healthy friendships, because all of our goals are at risk compromised to be completed, if we cannot satisfy our brain’s interpretation that we are safe after we were schooled to learn how to communicate with others is judged by our graders as being good enough, but if such judgement it is not a positive result, the ptsd cycles again.
Therefore, the first Brain-Hack I designed, The Neurodi-Way, was during the shutdown for my Autism and ADHD clients with PTSD to use safely without me in the room. Utilizing the science of how we Neurodi think about safety to not be primed to be self-triggered when our minds ponder what happened to us or something that we did that was judged as wrong to others but to us we mimicked someone else’ behavior because we thought what that person did got recognized by the society of the person we chosen to model and try what we see that person also do to be tested out in society as a good thing to do but were wrong. After the try fails, it is important for the neurodivrgent to be informed correctly about how that person applied their strategy, which I have found in my practice to likely relate to it being mistakenly applied at the time of its use if the neurodi forgot to factor into their reasoning the golden rules to all communication situations. These rules are applicable to all as outlined in our 1st Amendment right to free speech in the US Constitution: time, place, and manner restrictions. The Neurodi-Way hack then was designed as a quick fix to stop the body’s worry flooding the mind with what if questions to pause instead and feel okay to know that the truth to what really happened is situational, so it is somewhere in between a neurodi’s fixed black and white thinking.
The fear of resurfacing pain in the body and mind may also be a reason behind why a person stops midway any program that might cause their body’s memories to resurface unexpectedly (example, MFR and high impact aerobic exercise). Therefore, I welcome anyone who wants to learn the neuroscience of how their mind predicts and reacts to threats then changes them naturally to know: They can rewire themselves to perform better to achieve the outcomes one hopes to achieve by outsourcing the learning and rewiring work to their brain by playing around with the tools/interventions designed by research to help the mind be kinder to itself again.
People often are unaware if their body prefers to live in heightened states of stress, and it is due to the safety the mindset provides that person, again misidentified/wired. I designed my brain-hacks with proven clinical mental health counseling and psychotherapy techniques to bypass the body’s protectors/physical blocks/internal safety boundaries in a manner to be experienced self-directed; thus, the hack/intervention might be reasoned hopefully by the mind as safe to test out [dip your toe in the water to test the temperature first] so in other words, they work with your mind-body communication system’s natural process of learning and risk calculation to prepare the body how to behave in their many environments, so you can “more comfortably” transition out from the mindset of a body only safe when it is primed and ready into an unfamiliar world thought of as unsafe but survive it now in a body not primed ready for what could happen next.
So, now you know how you benefit when you to tell yourself your actions in therapy are an investment to your overall performance in all life situations, even good sleep, to learn and have fun playing around with brain-hacks and to adopt them into a self-designed stress management program you would do daily as a prevention tool to protect your mental health like why you brush your teeth. What you want is for your body to stop the process of chemicals flooding the body during each stressor event you “survived” because it is the evidence your ANS calculates its decision to choose a survival strategy in the future. Over time if your environment demands upon you to move faster the next time, hence, please do expect your body to store the chemicals closer to the muscle to be activated faster in the future. During any physical or mental transition, be kind to yourself because the ANS and the mind might calculate that a calmer body is too high risk at that moment for you to try safely to test out a think first strategy in your environment when xyz , to you, variables are visibly in play. In these types of life survival situations, the body’s protectors will intentionally hold your own body back, and easily can block your mind from doing something you want to do only because the protectors of the body do not trust what your mind prefers to make a connection to as a safe action to behave/act out yet in reality.
Interesting though how it always fascinates me how once you do the work to change into a physically felt as calmer mindset, the environment around you will change too simultaneously into a calmer slower paced space to live in but without all the efforts to get others to understand what is required for you to survive it. Meaning, a primed body daily is now calculated by the brain as a waste of your precious energy resources to continue to supply the energy the body’s defense system requires to keep the mindset, set on, active alert. 😉 Honestly, there is no need to challenge/pressure yourself to be perfect here, you just want to learn what it is you are doing mindfully so you can use the science of yourself to better manage yourself in accordance to your worldview, so your ANS can evolve/adapt to the newer less stressful environment, well newer “to you” but without the stress of getting there [remember reality is lived by you so felt by you so reasoned as what is right for your reality]. So, I invite you to try out a kinder softer newness to connect yourself to so maybe you do discover how another mindset can feel powerful also meaning identified as safe to your brain’s protectors of self.
As my thank you gift to my fellow neurodi and neurotypical friends, I have posted on my brain-hack cafe website a free video of me instructing anyone how to use a brain-hack technique I designed to send messages to the ANS not to prime itself because your mind knows what will happen next is not a threat, but the body is not on the same page and must be mind-rewired with a mindfulness practice tool to not prime itself for what that person is expecting to occur later, i.e. hence a physical blocks hack for your brain to bypass critical faculty, like self-hypnosis.
In the beginning of learning any of the hacks, follow the process like a recipe for how to get your mind and body to think/feel in agreement. Please note that the website is in the design process and still needs a ton of work so please ignore that part! I also have the video posted on the brain-hack cafe Facebook page. The video uses the pointer color that I recommend using for any stressor, the “cure color”. [if you have a brain primed to scan for threats then use research that says to include safety cues in your environment too to balance it, which was the purpose behind why I designed the hack to process only on the cure for whatever threatening means to “your” ANS symbolic triggers that are showing up in “your” environment. This way your brain will include a natural antidote like is done within all energy connected organisms on this planet. Okay, right, so please feel free here to use science to help you to be yourself better!
Here is the link to the video, scroll down closer to the bottom of the page to find it: