Exploring Neuroplasticity: Renewing Your Mind Through Thought Patterns

On this episode, Teri asks listeners to notice the inner voice that appears when things go wrong and explains how repeated thoughts carve “grooves” in the brain, shaped by experiences, relationships, and safety. Using metaphors of wagon ruts, a scratched lens, remodeling a house, and tending a garden, the episode shows how distorted thinking can cause people to interpret the present through painful past patterns.

00:00 Meet Your Inner Voice
03:10 Thought Grooves Explained
05:23 Beliefs Shaped by Survival
08:22 The Scratched Lens
12:20 Neuroplasticity and Renewal
15:54 Garden Mindset Practices
17:36 Four Steps to Rewire
23:40 When Change Feels Stuck
24:43 Trauma and Support Systems
27:51 Closing 

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• Teri@stillwaterslife.com
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome back to the Still Waters podcast. Today is June 4th, 2026. And I would like to start today by asking you a question to think about. What does the voice inside your head say to you when something goes wrong? So I'm not asking you to respond with the voice that says, I'm fine, everything's fine. I want you to think about the one that shows up, the voice that shows up, you know, if you're like me at 2 o'clock in the morning when you can't sleep. Or maybe when you're having a rough day and you're reflecting on all the things that are running through your head. Or maybe it's when you make a mistake of some sort, and you think you probably should have known better than to make that mistake. But, you know, what are the thoughts and the things that that you're hearing in your head? For a lot of us, and and I include myself in this, that voice isn't always kind. And what I have come to understand as a coach and someone who's also done my own work on this is that that voice didn't just appear. It just didn't, you know, poof, and magically it was there, right? It was shaped by experiences, by relationships, uh, by things that were never said and things that were said. It was shaped by environments that may or may not have been safe. So today we're gonna explore the mind as a tool. I don't want us to look at our mind as an enemy, not as something that is broken and can't be repaired, okay? But as a tool. Something that can be understood, something that can be worked with, uh, something that over time can be renewed. So we're gonna look at some of the science behind this, and we're gonna look at a little bit at what scripture has to say. Um, but most importantly, we're gonna move from understanding into action. That's the hope. So whether you're a person from a very deep faith background, or maybe you're a person that loves research, maybe you're another helping professional, or maybe you're just someone who woke up this morning and found this podcast, and you you woke up and you've you felt like you were just stuck because of something that has happened. I'm really glad that no matter where you're coming from, that you're here today for this episode. Okay, so let me share something with you that I really think is fascinating about the human brain. So every time you think a thought, especially one that you think repeatedly, you know, over and over and over in your head, your brain is literally carving a pathway. So are the neuroscientists, and I am not a neuroscientist, but I have done some study in this a little bit, but I do not profess to be an expert by any means. But neuroscientists, you know, they sometimes describe this like it's a groove worn into the earth. I've heard people explain it like if you think about a horse-drawn carriage that is driving, you know, through a forest or, you know, some ground somewhere. What the first time that carriage goes through that area, it just, you know, it's not nothing, it's not a big deal. It kind of just carves its way through, right? But then the second time that same horse-drawn carriage goes that same way, it follows the same path, right? And then it, if it does it over and over and over again, by the time you get to the hundredth time that that carriage has gone through, it doesn't, it doesn't even pause. It knows exactly where to go because there's like an outline of the grooves of where the wheels have gone through. So it just naturally just flows through that, through those grooves automatically. So that's that's the same way your brain is working, and it's exactly how it's designed to do in order to become efficient. It's basically creating shortcuts, it's running familiar patterns without you know burning a whole bunch of extra energy. It's it really is brilliant if you think about it. Um God is brilliant because he's the one that created all this. So, so what if those grooves that are running automatically in your mind? Um, the ones that are like just so worn into you that you barely notice them anymore, they were carved, let's say, during a season of your life where things weren't okay. Maybe you were going through some really tough struggles. Maybe you were just trying to survive something and you were not what we would say thriving. You know, you were just trying to get through the next day because of whatever your circumstance was. The beliefs that that run our lives most powerfully are rarely the ones that we've consciously chosen. Let me repeat that. The beliefs that run our lives most powerfully are rarely the ones that we have consciously chosen. They're the ones that were handed to us. They may have been the ones that were written into us before we even had language to question them. And this is especially important for those of you who've been through hard things. And I guess that would really be all of us, because all of us have experienced something in life that's hard. The grooves that cause you pain now, they weren't failures of character. They were your adaptive brain doing the best it could with what it had at the time. So our brain kept us safe. It learned, it protected you. And so what we have to do is now kind of shift our thinking and start to ask ourselves, does this groove that's in my brain, does this still serve me? Does it take me where I want to go now? You know, in Proverbs we can read that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. So, you know, what strikes me about that verse is its gentleness as much as its profound weight, okay? It doesn't say as a man should think or as a man is told to think. It speaks to what's actually happening in his heart. The real inner world, not the one that we're putting a face on for. So that tells me that God has always known that that inner narrative shapes the outer life. So I bring that up not to cause shame if for anybody, but to bring awareness. So we have to ask ourselves what's actually taking root in our hearts or in our minds. So let's think about this with another image that I think is very helpful, in addition to our image of the horse and wagon and the grooves. Think of your mind like a lens. And everything you experience, and this would be, you know, from childhood to adulthood, every conversation, every decision, relationship, every moment that you get some feedback of some sort, you see it through the lens that you have. So most of us go through life assuming that our lens is crystal clear, that we're seeing things as they actually are. But you know what? Here's the thing about lenses. And if you wear glasses, you know this, right? They get scratched, they get smudged with fingerprints. And when they do that, you can't see properly through the lens. Especially if they get scratched, then it because it bends the light, right? And so there's this distortion from what you're seeing. So when you've been looking through a scratched lens long enough, the distortion starts to feel like a reality. Let me give you some everyday examples of what this looks like. And as I share these, notice which ones feel familiar to you. Your manager asks to speak with you at the end of the day, and before you know anything more, your stomach starts getting tight, and you're not feeling too comfortable. The story your brain has already written in to your head is that something's wrong, and you've done something wrong, and this is gonna be bad. Or here's another example. How about a friend takes a few hours to reply to a message? We live in this world of instant gratification with text messages. And if you are texting a friend and they don't respond right away, what is that inner narrative that you are um whispering to yourself? Are you thinking, oh, they're they're pulling away from me? They're oh, they're tired of me. That's why they're not responding. Uh, maybe you're criticizing yourself, saying, I always push people away eventually. I I don't know why I do that. Or let's look in a different perspective or a different example. What's someone offers you ten pieces of feedback, encouraging feedback, in one area for growth? Which one of those ten do you lie awake at night thinking about? Which one do you sit there and worry and catastrophize over? So when your lens is disorder, you're not seeing clearly, you're seeing historically. You're reading the present through the past that you've experienced. And that past may have been a genuinely difficult place to be. So your brain learned to scan for danger and get ready for rejection and prepare for the worst possible scenario. Now, what we're asking is the question, is this actually what's happening right now? Or is this what happened before? So we've talked about how grooves are formed in our thinking, in our minds. We've talked about what that scratched lens looks like in real life. And I'm just guessing that some of you that are listening out there are nodding along, you know, now that there's some recognition and awareness, um, maybe that that you've experienced something like this. Because you start to see patterns. And it can get to where it feels a little bit overwhelming. So I want to turn the discussion in a different direction because the science that tells us how these grooves form, it also tells us something about what's possible. Our brains can change at any age in response to new experiences, new thinking, maybe new relationships that we form with others, maybe new practices that we put into place in our life. The scientific term is neuroplasticity, and we've talked about that on the podcast before. And all it means is that the brain is not fixed, it's not a finished product, it's a living, responsive organ of the body. It's a responsive system that keeps reshaping itself based on what you feed it. So research has come out about this. Um, there's a lot of reading you could do on it about how the neural pathways can change in response to deliberate practices. But the principle behind it all is one of the oldest ideas in neuroscience that, and it's just absolutely beautiful, neurons that fire together, wire together. Maybe you've heard that before. The pathways you activate repeatedly become stronger, which means that new grooves are possible. Now, that doesn't mean that you erase the old ones, but you build new ones that are eventually more traveled than the old ones were. Think of it like remodeling a house, not a demolition. You're not completely tearing down all the walls of the house, you're not completely tearing down who you are and starting from scratch, but you're moving into the house that you already live in. The one with all the marks on the walls and the nails, the rooms that don't quite work the way you'd like them to. And you're beginning slowly and intentionally to remodel the home, one room at a time, at a pace that feels safe and sustainable. So it's the same way with the mind. Because I want you to think about what we learn in Romans 12.2, where it says, do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is a metamorphosis that's taking place. It's a process that you're going through. It's not just like a one-and-done event. And for those of us that are doing trauma-informed work, um, or for maybe somebody who's in the middle of their own healing, this change doesn't require you to be any further along than you are. You don't have to have it all figured out at the beginning. Um, just like when you're remodeling your house, you're doing it one room at a time and you're learning as you go. One wall at a time, one room at a time, you know, that sort of thing. Now let's talk about what this looks like in everyday life because understanding the neuroscience is wonderful, but understanding without the next step doesn't do a whole lot for us. So for the last time today, I want you to think of it another metaphor, basically. I love metaphors, you probably figured that out by now. Um thinking about your mind as if it's a garden. And the important thing to know about gardens is that they are they're always growing something, there's no neutral. Um left unattended, what happens? It just defaults to a bunch of weeds. Not necessarily because you're bad at gardening, but because that's just what happens when the ground is left alone. I know this very clear in my mind. Last year I had some surgery and I was not capable of working in the garden the way I normally do. Um and the weeds just took over. It was absolutely horrendous. When spring came, my neglect of the garden didn't uh prevent some growth. It just wasn't the growth that I liked, right? The pretty flowers. It instead it was weeds. So the question isn't whether something is growing in your mind, it's whether you're making, you know, the choices about what you're giving your attention and your time and your energy to. So let's look at four different things that I hope will be helpful to you in this process of tending the garden. Number one, become the observer. Before you can change any kind of thought pattern, you have to be able to see it. And most of us are so inside our own heads and our own thinking that we never step outside long enough to notice what's actually happening. So when you feel a sudden emotional shift of some sort, let's say uh there's some sort of drop in in your mood, um, there's a spike of anxiety, uh, there's a flash of shame. What you need to do is just pause just for a moment and ask yourself, what did I just tell myself? Now you're not doing that to fix it yet, okay? You're just trying to name it. Because the moment you can name a thought, you've created a tiny bit of distance from it. So here's an idea. For the next few days, why don't you try to notice when you have a strong emotional reaction to something? And and if you notice it or when you notice it, write it down. Write down the event, write down the emotion you experience and the thought that it created in your mind. Okay, so once again, you're not fixing anything yet. You're just getting to a point where you're noticing these types of things. What patterns do you start to notice? So you've become an observer. You've you've you started noticing in step one, you're noticing and observing when these things happen. Okay, number two, become curious, not critical. This is really hard for some of us. Once you've named that thought, you've got to move into what we can call like the curiosity phase, not judgment. Don't tell yourself, I I can't believe I think it is, you know, but but genuine, compassionate curiosity. Where did this thought come from? How old is this thought or this belief? Is this actually true right now in my life? Or is it a story from another season of my life? And another really practical way to do this is ask yourself, what would I say to someone I love if they were thinking this thought about themselves? You know, because most of us extend tons of grace to other people, but that we never ever offer that same grace to ourselves. So that that's a gap, right? That gap between how you would speak to a friend and how you actually speak to yourself is an important uh step in personal development. Okay, number three, plant something that's true. And for those of us that are of a faith perspective, this is where scripture becomes one of the powerful tools in our remodeling. Not as a way of covering pain or bypassing what's hard, but as a way of introducing a new thought that's true into that groove that we've been talking about. And being deliberate about it and consistent about it to run in that direction instead. So there is a neurological basis for this. A repeated intentional focus on a different thought literally strengthens those new pathways. The old groove, it's not going to disappear overnight, but over time, the new one becomes more heavily traveled. This is how our brain works. Number four, the final encouragement is to build consistency. So think about it this way. Have you ever been to Like a retreat for the weekend, or maybe you read a life-changing book, or maybe you go to coaching and you have a really profound conversation with a coach, okay? And then you wait for that feeling to change your life, but it doesn't. Because that's not how the brain works. What actually builds those new grooves is not intensity but consistency. So small repeated practices over time, that's what's important. That walk you take three times a week, or the five minutes of journaling before the day starts, or the prayer that becomes consistent, the question you ask yourself every night before you go to bed, these are not small things. These over time, they are everything. They're habits that you're putting in place. And if you're sitting there listening to this thinking, well, I've tried this before and I couldn't sustain it, I want to suggest that that's not evidence that you can't change. It may be evidence that you've been trying to change alone or at a pace that wasn't sustainable, or without the support your nervous system actually needs to feel safe enough for that growth to take place. Okay, so before we finish up here, um, because this conversation about the mind, about change, about the patterns of the mind can land very differently depending on what you've been through. I want to move in a different direction. Because if you've been listening and thinking, I've tried all of this, I know the tools, I've read the books, I've prayed the prayers, something is still feels immovable. I want to say something directly. That immobility is not failure on your part. It's it's basically information that's being communicated to you. It's it may be telling you that the work needed here is deeper than what you've had so far, that those grooves were carved in places that require more than just coaching questions and journal prompts to reach. Okay. So this moves into this whole idea of trauma, and I mean the full spectrum of trauma from um from the smallest, you know, sometimes we talk about trauma and we call it big T's and little T's. Big T's are trauma that require you to call 911, and little T's might be trauma that don't necessarily require you to call 911, but maybe you need to call a counselor or a coach. So look at the full spectrum of it, from the dramatic to the chronic. All right. It all of that, all of that trauma lives in your nervous system, in the body. It lives in the places that talking about it doesn't always reach. And for that kind of work, professional support isn't a sign that you have failed. It's a sign that you understand what the work actually requires. Proverbs 11:14 tells us there is safety in an abundance of counselors. That word abundance matters because there's not one source of support. There's an abundance of support. So it that could look like therapy or coaching, it could look like spiritual guidance, it could look like trusted relationships. So you need a body of support around you, not a single lifeline to save you. I always like to compare this to a cancer patient. When a person is diagnosed with cancer and they are going through treatment, they don't have just their oncologist, their, you know, the one doctor. They have a primary care physician, they have their oncologist, they have the person that gives them their chemo if they're doing that kind of treatment. They they have to go to the lab and get their blood drawn. Then there's multiple nurses that work with them while they're going through the healing process. And so when our mind has been affected by trauma, it's the same way. Sometimes you need a coach, sometimes you need a counselor, sometimes you need a psychiatrist, sometimes you need several of those, sometimes you need things like medication. Um, sometimes you need all of that. All right. So for people that are like helping professionals, coaches, educators, even biblical mentors, uh, the most trauma-informed thing you can do is stay in your lane and to know the edges of your lane. In other words, you want to hold space for that person without overreaching and refer them with care to some other people? Help them in the way that you are designed to help them or you are educated to help them, but then refer them out when they need some of those other helpers. This is what I want you to think about as we conclude this podcast. What kind of support do you need right now that you haven't yet allowed yourself to ask for? And what would it mean to ask for it? Your mind is a tool, it's shaped by your history, those running grooves that are carved long before you had any say or choice, looking through a lens that's been scratched by things that happened to you, not because of you, but it is possible to remodel and renovate. It's possible to tend that garden with more intention, to plant something that's true where the weeds have been growing, to build new grooves slowly, consistently with the right support around you. This is not a quick fix, it's not a formula, it's a direction. And direction is everything. You don't have to be fully healed to take the next step. You just have to be willing to take it. So thank you for tuning in to the Stillwaters podcast today. And as we close, I want to ask you what is one thought that you've been believing about yourself that you'd like to begin to question. You're doing the work just by listening to this episode. It's a starting place for you. If there's anything that the Stillwaters team can do to help you, please feel free to reach out to us. And until next time, maybe you find healing and wellness at the Stillwaters.