From Bullied Brain to Embodied Brain

Learn Techniques to Realign your Mind-Brain-Body

By Jennifer Fraser, PhD

Have you been bullied or abused? Do you struggle with relationship challenges, or an eating disorder, perhaps bouts of anxiety or depression? Have you ever thought about how returning your brain to organic health may restore your holistic wellbeing? Many of us have been raised ignoring our brains. While our teeth were checked once every six months, while our eyes and ears are checked, few of us have anyone checking in on our brain health.

Not long ago, we did not believe a concussion was an injury. In fact, we saw it as a badge of honor for an athlete to go back into competition and show his team and coach what he was made of. We now know that concussions are actually serious brain injuries and must be recovered and repaired before an athlete returns to play.

Scientists now know that all forms of bullying and abuse can do serious harm to the brain. This includes: neglecting, ignoring, refusing feedback, walking out on someone, ghosting, excluding, shaming, blaming, using put downs, humiliating, berating, threatening, yelling, swearing, assaulting and all forms of cyber, sexual, and physical abuse. We have myriad ways in which we can suffer abuse. Scientists now know a host of strategies for returning our brains to normal organic health.

My new book The Bullied Brain: Heal Your Scars and Restore Your Health shares the evidence-based, practical ways in which we can recover if bullied or abused. In a new course I am offering in September online at the Haven, I take learners through the dynamic lessons in how we can heal our neurological scars and restore our Mind-Brain-Body alignment. Brain science offers a complementary model to the present-day Haven models. It uses another language, the language of neuroscience, to support us in discovering how to optimize our health and happiness.

Before we jump to repair and recovery, it’s important to unpack what bullying and abuse do to brains. The fix is not an easy one. Like getting in physical shape, it requires motivation and commitment to repair the brain. In the course, we spend time learning what neuroscientists see on brain scans of those who have been bullied and abused in order to recognize the serious impact. Once we understand the impact of invisible neurological scars, we are better positioned to give full effort to repair and healing.

We cannot see these brain injuries with the naked eye, just like we cannot see the traumatic brain injury of a concussion. Likewise, we cannot see the tarring of lungs when individuals smoke. We need a brain scan to make visible the harm to the brain and we need an x-ray to make visible the harm to the lungs. Now that non-invasive technology has revealed to us just how deadly all bullying behaviors are to our brains, we need to get informed, and then put a healing program into motion.

What’s empowering is to learn that we can make a significant change to our brain fitness, just like we can with our body fitness. It’s not a quick fix. It takes work and time, but we can make our brains stronger, more resilient, healthier and higher performing. On Saturday afternoons from September to November, I teach evidence-based techniques to support you in committing to and training a healthier, happier Mind-Brain-Body.