How receptive are our brains to change?

Dealing with change can be a significant challenge for even the healthiest individual. When you want to make lifestyle changes, break habits, or reroute your life, the process can feel excruciatingly difficult. It’s enough to make you feel like change is impossible, but a look at neuroscience reveals that hope is plentiful. Even deep into adulthood, the human brain is receptive to change. You have to know how to do it. Reach out to Women’s Recovery today at 833.754.0554 for assistance.

The old line of thinking is that change only gets harder as you age. What is easy for a five-year-old is a little harder for a 20-year-old. By the time you pass 40, change is a lost cause.

The good news is that science completely disagrees with this notion. Research shows that the brain becomes increasingly capable of learning and changing as you age. While old age is associated with cognitive decline, the new study makes it clear that in many cases, people over 40 have an easier time learning new things than their younger counterparts.

This research does not mean that dealing with change is impossible for the young. Instead, it demonstrates that the capacity for remapping the brain and changing doesn’t decline as quickly as we thought. Change is achievable for just about anyone who is seeking substance abuse treatment.

It’s great that change is possible regardless of age, but that hardly solves the challenges you face when dealing with change. For instance, there is a range of mental techniques that can improve your reception to change. A good mental health treatment program will incorporate the best strategies, but some of the easiest and most useful options are easy to try for yourself.

A study by the University of Pennsylvania showed that self-affirmation is all that it takes to help you deal with change. It works by stimulating activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. This increased activity makes people more receptive to advice that can help them change.

Using this trick for dealing with change is simple. Before receiving advice, spend a few minutes focusing on your core values. When you think about what means the most to you, it becomes psychologically easier to accept help and new ideas.

This strategy is a common technique used in clinics, substance abuse treatment centers, psychologist offices, gyms, and elsewhere where people work on inner change. The idea is that dealing with change can be broken into steps. You start by relabeling the thoughts you don’t like. You can think of these thoughts as a misfire in your brain.

Once you commit to this idea, you can self-analyze and reflect on why the “misfire” thoughts reoccur. Once you recognize the patterns, you can transition from the old habit and recognize when you can insert the new behavior or practices. As you carry through the process, old habits become less enticing, and the new behavior completely replaces them. Mental health and recovery changes are often built on this idea of following a process. The process allows you to find ways around natural resistance to change and empowers you to be the person you hope to be.

If you desire a significant change in your life, you can get there. It all starts with a single step. You’ve thought about it plenty of times. Now, a single action can get you going, and you will look back on this as the moment when you made it happen. Just make one phone call to 833.754.0554. Women’s Recovery is located in Colorado, and we will talk with you and help you start down the path to change.