Healing: Rewiring the Brain

Before puberty, the brain lacks much of certain important chemicals needed for decision making: serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. When the child reaches puberty and the growth hormone begins to be released, these chemicals begin to be released. The brain then begins to function as an adult brain. The difference is that before puberty the child is simply responding behaviorally to the perceptions given to it and extracting these projected perceptions as reality. After these chemicals begin to be released, the child can begin to reason as an adult and can choose to shape their own view of reality.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child. I understood as a child. I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”1 Corinthians 13:11

If the father speaks into the pre-puberty child, the father’s message is accepted as truth and becomes the lens through which the child sees the world – reality. If the father tells his son or daughter that they are not worth anything, the child assumes he or she is not worth anything as reality. Reality becomes seeing themselves as a failure and behaviorally they try to be a better failure. If they accidentally do something successfully, they learn from that to be a better failure next time. Realty and “Truth”, to them, is this failure image.If the child does not the proper messages of reality during those pre-puberty years, the wounding is there and the adrenaline level rises. By puberty the adrenaline is there all the time and may override the proper release of the normal chemicals (serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine ) that need to emerge then. Very little of these chemicals are released. This can lead to serious damage in the adult life. The adult may seem to function at a constant elevated adrenaline level and show distorted forms of behavior, such as ADD or ADHD and other types of agoraphobia (anxiety disorder). Physically you see an adult; the reality is that the wounded adult is stuck as a child at the point where the wound occurred. And it is not just a moment in time that the brain remembers. The brain remembers patterns, so the wounded adult is acting against unresolved patterns and plays those patterns over and over again. There is a pseudo-personality.The wounded adult acts to please the message given to them as a child. You see multiple personality faults – difficulty in building intimacy, an authority to itself (can’t come under another authority, even God’s.), and failure to be any kind of team player. The wounded adult may turn to drugs to resolve the adrenaline overload, even turning to prescription drugs such as Valium or Prozac. Eventually even these drugs may not stop the overload.The good news is that the adult does not need to stay there. Dr. Paul Hegstrom has shown that it is possible to break out of those bindings. Seeing and embracing reality is a part of the healing process. Illusionary perceptions create reactive behavior. With the healing process, we take on active behavior. The Bible tells us that, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can take an active part in this healing process.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”Romans 12:2

It not just that the missing chemicals start flowing, They do; but it is more than that. The entire brain is rewired. I’ve seen it happen. A key part in the process is for the wounded person has to start speaking the Word of God, or rhema, out loud. The mind believes what you speak. This spoken Word with the power of the Holy Spirit then becomes the authority and power for the necessary transformation.Order Hegstrom’s bookGet more info free – an internet interview with Hegstrom