Neuroplasticity and the Critical Period: Why Early Relationships Shape the Brain
Early relational experiences can shape the voices and expectations we carry into adulthood, but learned patterns are not fixed. This essay explains neuroplasticity in accessible terms and offers a practical path for noticing harsh self-talk, practicing a kinder alternative, finding supportive models, and staying with the awkwardness of change.
Speaking More Kindly to Yourself Is Critical. Because, Neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity describes the brain’s capacity to reorganize neural pathways through repeated experiences, learning, and practice.
In plain terms: The ways you speak to yourself are patterns that can be noticed and practiced differently over time.
Why speak more kindly to yourself? In a word: neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, describes how different life experiences create and reorganize neural pathways in our brain. These neural connections, for better or worse, are what form our thought and behavior patterns as we move through our day-to-day lives.
If you're ready for the full healing arc, not a single piece of it, my signature program Fixing the Foundations is the structured path your relational trauma recovery has been missing.
Now, the bad news is that, for many of us who came from less than loving, attuned, and safe childhood households, the neural pathways we may have developed may include deeply ingrained patterns of negative self-talk, self-doubt, future-doubt, other-doubt, and world-doubt, etc..
But the good news is this: the brain is plastic and can change up until the day we die if we learn new skills, memorize new information, or provide ourselves with new experiences.
Each time you have a repeated experience, whether negative or positive be they thoughts or words about yourself, you deepen the neural grooves in your brain. When you unintentionally or intentionally create a different experience for yourself, you create new neural pathways. New positive experiences and different kinds of self-talk create new, perhaps more functional neural pathways.
This is the science of re-parenting yourself. This is why speaking kindly to yourself is so critical. This is the goal: To provide ourselves with a new set of experiences designed to actually create long lasting, functional changes in our brain that can lead to more effective, satisfying behavior and, ultimately, better outcomes in our lives.
That’s why actually practicing speaking kindly and lovingly to yourself is so critical. It’s not just some pop-psychology-personal-growth-movement advice; it’s at attempt at harnessing the neuroplasticity of your brain to help you create change in your world.
And, as a psychotherapist, I truly think that this longed-for life change can begin when we change the way we speak to ourselves, interrupting the unconscious or conscious critical, derogatory voices we’ve introjected and embodied as habit, and instead try on new, more supportive ways of speaking to ourselves.
So You Know You Have To Speak More Kindly To Yourself. Now What?
Reparenting is a therapeutic idea that involves offering yourself forms of care, structure, support, and language that may have been missing earlier in life.
In plain terms: When a critical voice appears, you can practice responding in the steady, kind way you may have needed to be spoken to.
- Bring awareness to what is.
- Interrupt your negative self talk with kinder self-talk.
- Cultivate kinder re-parenting voices to achieve that better self-talk.
- Channeling those kinder voices, say these kinds of things to yourself when you’re tired/crabby/sad/mad/scared.
- And note, this will all feel uncomfortable at first.
1. Bring your awareness to what is.
The first step in any process of change is bringing our awareness to what’s actually happening. In this case, it’s the way you’re currently talking to yourself. So as a first step in this process, I want you to begin tracking yourself very, very closely.
What do you say to yourself when you catch yourself in the mirror first thing in the morning? What do you say to yourself when you make a mistake at work? What do you say to yourself when that date of last weekend hasn’t called you back?
Notice the messages and the tone of voice that you’re currently speaking to yourself with: Is it kind, loving, patient, gentle, unfailingly supportive? Or is it critical, demanding, aggressive, shaming, blaming, and downright cruel? If this voice had a body, a form, what would it look like? What caricature or archetype might it embody?
Really get to know who’s piping up in your mind and emotional body as a default. If it’s an unkind, critical voice, don’t despair. Like with most patterns and behaviors, you come by this voice honestly and we can imagine that at some point it was probably trying to serve you. Now it’s time to try and interrupt that voice.
2. Interrupt your negative self talk with kinder self-talk.
As you bring your awareness of the ways you talk to yourself closer and closer to the moment it actually happens in, your next task will be catching yourself, pausing, and substituting a kinder, more loving form of self-talk.
Simple, but not always easy.
It’s particularly challenging if you’re not sure how and what to say to yourself as a kinder, more loving alternative. So read on…
3. Cultivate kinder re-parenting voices to achieve that better self-talk.
If speaking to yourself kindly and lovingly is foreign for you, it’s your task to begin to internalize some different kinds of voices. If we have those supportive, nurturing voices surrounding us in childhood, that’s great. But if we didn’t, it’s never too late!
I want to invite you to scan through your life and take note of who speaks to you and others really kindly. Is it your best friend? Your partner? A mentor? Your therapist? Someone you know of from afar?
If there’s no one in your immediate life who can provide a good model for kind self-talk, think about some fictional, real life, or pen and paper models and mentors you might know of.
Practicing a Different Voice
4. Channeling those kinder voices, say these kinds of things to yourself when you’re tired/crabby/sad/mad/scared.
Below is a list of sample phrases you could imagine practicing saying to yourself as you begin the neuroplasticity-critical work of re-parenting and speaking more kindly to yourself. And please know that this list isn’t exhaustive; it’s simply meant to jog your own creativity and loving, self-kindness in a way that works for you in the nitty-gritty-real-life of your day-to-day:
- “I’m so proud of myself for being brave and stretching myself today in that work meeting today. That wasn’t easy but I did it.”
- “It makes sense that I’d be tired and crabby, it was a hard day! It’s okay that I’m in a bad mood.”
- “It’s not fair or realistic to compare myself to those other people on Facebook. I don’t know their story and they probably didn’t have to deal with what I do. From where I’ve come from, I’m doing just fine.”
- “No matter what happens, I’ll be okay, I trust myself to start over again.”
- “I made a mistake today and that’s okay. That makes me human. I did the best I could and I’ll try again tomorrow.”
- “It’s okay that I’m jealous of people taking fancy vacations on Instagram. It just means this is something I’m longing for, too. I’ll get there. It’s just not now.”
- “True, I’m exhausted but all those years of study are paying off and I’m proud of myself for being so hardworking.”
5. And note, this will all feel uncomfortable at first.
Look, I want to acknowledge that, as you begin to practice speaking more kindly to yourself, it’ll perhaps feel awkward and possibly forced. That’s okay. That’s actually perfectly normal and natural.
Like how most of us have one intuitive way of clasping our fingers when we hold our hands together when you consciously attempt to clasp your fingers the other way it will feel a bit awkward and weird, right? You’re changing your patterning and it’s going to feel awkward.
The same thing is true with practicing a different way of speaking to yourself. So be patient, know that it will be awkward at first, but continue practicing until it feels easier and more normative to speak kindly and lovingly towards yourself.
In doing so, you’ll be re-wiring your brain and creating new, more functional neural pathways for yourself and this, in turn, can have a beneficial impact on the rest of your life.
Wrapping this up.
Q: What is neuroplasticity?
A: The essay describes it as the brain’s ability to create and reorganize neural pathways through new experiences, learning, and repeated practice.
Q: Why can self-talk feel hard to change?
A: Critical self-talk can be an ingrained pattern. The essay notes that a different way of speaking to yourself may initially feel awkward or forced.
Q: How do I begin noticing my self-talk?
A: The first suggested step is close attention to what you say to yourself after mistakes, in the mirror, or when something does not go as hoped.
Q: Where can I find models for kinder self-talk?
A: The essay suggests looking to a friend, partner, mentor, therapist, or even a fictional or pen-and-paper model whose voice feels kind and steady.
Q: What should I do if kinder language feels unnatural?
A: Keep practicing patiently. The essay compares it to changing a familiar hand-clasping pattern: unfamiliar at first, but easier with repetition.
EMDR-trained, trauma-informed therapy for driven women healing relational and developmental trauma.
Trauma-informed coaching for driven women navigating leadership, burnout, and identity.
Annie’s signature course for relational trauma recovery. The framework, in your own time.
Annie Wright, LMFT
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
“Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.”
Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist with 15,000+ clinical hours since 2013 and an EMDRIA Certified Therapist. She’s the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she successfully exited. She’s currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). Her expert commentary has appeared in Psychology Today, Forbes, Business Insider, NBC News, and The Information.
CA LMFT95719 · CO MFT.0003236 (telehealth only) · CT 003806 · DC LMFT200001447 · FL TPMF356 (out-of-state telehealth registration) · IL 166.012270 · ME MF8600 · MD LCM1206 · NH 1030 · NJ 37FI00254800 · NY 002805 · TX 206391 · UT 14300323-3902 · VA 0717002589 · WA MFT.LF.70098096
Annie Wright, LMFT
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton Author
Helping driven women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
Annie Wright is an EMDR-certified licensed psychotherapist and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, and she's been in practice since 2013. Trained in EMDR, psychodynamic, and somatic modalities, she is licensed in 14 U.S. jurisdictions and registered to provide telehealth in Florida (California, Colorado (telehealth only), Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington). Annie works with driven and ambitious women from relational trauma backgrounds, and everything she writes about is field-tested across thousands of clinical sessions. She is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited, and is currently writing her first book, The Everything Years: Navigating the Pressure and Promise of Your Thirties, with W.W. Norton (2027). A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in USA Today, Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information.
Work With Annie