Why You Need to Engage Your Story to Heal Your Brain

Why You Need to Engage Your Story to Heal Your Brain

Inspired by the excellent work of Adam Young and Dr. Dan Allender

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When Insight Isn’t Enough

Many people come to therapy saying some version of this:

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‍“I’ve read all the books. I understand why I do what I do. So why hasn’t it changed?”

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The truth is, information doesn’t heal the heart. Insight can help us understand why we feel stuck, but it rarely helps us feel unstuck.

That’s because healing isn’t just a matter of learning something new—it’s about engaging the story that made you who you are.

This approach draws deeply from the work of Adam Young and Dr. Dan Allender, who both teach that real transformation happens when we enter the particular stories of our lives with kindness and curiosity. Neuroscience now confirms what they’ve been saying for years: our brains are shaped by our lived stories (Siegel, 2020; van der Kolk, 2014).

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Why Story Matters for Healing

Many of us feel tired, stuck, or numb—not just from today’s pressures, but from the ways we’ve been running from our own stories. The past doesn’t stay in the past; it lives in our nervous system, in our relationships, and even in the way we talk to ourselves.

You may have grown up in a family that didn’t know how to name pain or delight. Maybe love came with conditions, or silence became the language of survival. These experiences wired your brain to expect the world to be a certain way.

Your story isn’t just a narrative—it’s a neural network. Each memory, emotion, and interaction has literally shaped the pathways in your brain. Research on neuroplasticity shows that these pattern scan change - but only when we safely revisit and integrate the stories that created them (Davidson & McEwen, 2012).

So when you engage your story, you’re not just reminiscing—you’re rewiring.

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What It Feels Like to Engage Your Story

Engaging your story isn’t about rehashing old pain for its own sake. It’s about entering the sacred terrain of your life with someone who helps you stay curious, not critical.

In the therapy room, this work often begins quietly. It might sound like slowing down long enough to notice the parts of you that still feel twelve years old and waiting to be chosen. It might look like remembering a moment of joy that once felt impossible—and realizing your body can still hold that goodness.

Sometimes we explore the people who shaped you - those who loved you well, and those who didn’t know how. We trace the plotlines that keep repeating, the desires that have gone unmet, the disappointments that taught you to protect your heart.

As you share, patterns start to emerge—belonging and loss, power and vulnerability, fear and hope weaving through your story. And with time, what once felt like shame or confusion begins to reveal meaning.

This is the work: to be seen, to be known, and to find freedom inside your own story.

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Why This Matters for the Brain

Every new experience - every moment of curiosity or compassion - creates new neural connections. When you bring awareness and gentleness to the memories that once felt unbearable, your brain begins to reorganize itself toward safety and integration (Porges, 2011).

In other words, when you allow your story to be told and tended, your brain heals.

It’s not magic. It’s physiology, relationship, and the mysterious capacity of the human heart to transform through connection.

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Why This Work Matters Now

The world tells us to move on. But healing asks us to slow down—to turn toward the stories we’ve avoided and listen to what they’re still trying to teach us.

You cannot change your past, but you can change your relationship with it. And in doing so, you change your brain, your body, and your capacity to love and be loved.

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Thresholds Counseling

Thresholds Counseling offers a space of warmth, curiosity, and respect—a place to engage your past with compassion, help your brain and body find new pathways of safety, and rediscover what it means to belong.

Story work here is not about fixing what’s broken, but about honoring what has endured, grieved, and grown along the way. Your story is sacred. Let it be heard.

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“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
- Maya Angelou

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Further Resources

• Adam Young: The Place We Find Ourselves Podcast
• Dr. Dan Allender: The Allender Center
• Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (2014)
• Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind (2020)
• Richard J. Davidson & Bruce McEwen (2012). Social     influences on neuroplasticity. Nature Neuroscience.
• Stephen Porges (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Frontiers     in Human Neuroscience.

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