In my practice I expect to see a marked change in my client’s lived experience within a few months. Stable long-term change in 6-12 months. This will always be unique to the person and their goals, especially with complex and childhood trauma which may take longer. However Neuro-Somatic Intelligence tools continue to work throughout the journey and offer a great deal agency to continue the healing process outside of session or even independently of professional support.
Healing mental health through Neuro-Somatic Intelligence is largely habit building for unconscious parts of the brain and habits can be created in a relatively short period of time. For any brain pathway, the more it is used, the stronger it becomes, and the stronger it becomes, the easier it is to use making it more likely to be activated. This is why “old habits die hard.” But we can use this to our advantage because the brain is naturally neuroplastic at all ages (meaning it can change its function and structure in response to new stimulus). In healing trauma the goal is to create and strengthen pathways that facilitate safety and nervous system regulation (the ability to remain in a state of higher brain function instead of entering into a survival response like Fight or Flight. For more details on this see my post on Why can’t we think our way through mental blocks?). This process is both about creating new pathways and changing old ones that define what the unconscious brain perceives as threatening. The old brain (the parts of the brain located closer to the base of the skull) is in charge of survival responses and it operates on a fairly binary spectrum of “is it safe or unsafe,” and though it takes time because the old brain is not rational, it is possible to change its mind so it is not perceiving threat in everyday situations.
I would be remiss not to mention that the answer to this question also depends on the definition of what it means to be healed. There is no right answer to this, so from the perspective of my practice, being healed is about quality of life. To be healed is to have the ability to choose how to respond to an experience, be it an internal experience or external. Professional support can be valuable when we find ourselves frequently reacting automatically in a way that is disproportionate to the situation and/or negatively impacts our quality of life. These unintentional reactions can look like any number of mental health symptoms and coping mechanisms from depression and anxiety, to rage, to addiction, unhealthy lifestyle patterns and the list is as nuanced as the human experience.
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