What Is "Neuroplasticity", Actually?: A story about coconut water, chronic symptoms, and how the brain learns what feels safe.

Guest Blog by Vanessa Blackstone, MSW, ASW

People in the chronic pain and mind-body world throw the word neuroplasticity around a lot, and if you are new to this work, it can start to feel like one of those words everyone assumes you already understand.

People say things like, “Your symptoms are neuroplastic,” or “The brain can change,” or “The brain can learn and unlearn.” And while all of that is true, it can also start to sound a little abstract, especially if you are the one living inside a body that feels like it is reacting to everything.

Because if you are dealing with back pain, migraines, IBS symptoms, tinnitus, fatigue, pelvic pain, dizziness, light sensitivity, food fear, bladder symptoms, or symptoms that seem to have taken over your life, “your brain can change” can sound a little too simple. Maybe even annoying.

Like, yes, thank you, but I cannot even think about eating certain foods without my bowels reacting. I cannot walk outside when the sunlight is at its peak without feeling like it is piercing my eyeballs and bringing on a migraine. I cannot sit for more than fifteen minutes without my back tensing so badly that getting up feels like a whole event. I cannot sit on a plane without having to get up every five minutes, disrupting my whole row, just to go to the bathroom yet again. I cannot make it through the day without fatigue hitting so hard it feels like my body has pulled the emergency brake.

So when people hear “your brain is involved,” it does not always land as hopeful. Sometimes it sounds like someone is minimizing something that has completely disrupted your life. But neuroplasticity is not a cute little brain trick. It is not a mindset hack. It is not “just think differently, and your symptoms will go away.” It is a real learning process in the brain and nervous system, and sometimes that learning process gets stuck in a protective setting that keeps sounding the alarm.

Your symptoms are real. Your body is involved. Your nervous system is involved. Your history, your fear, your conditioning, your lived experience, and your brain are involved. And that is exactly why neuroplasticity matters.

One of the most commonly shared stories in pain education is about a construction worker who landed on a nail. The nail appeared to have gone straight through his boot, and he was in excruciating pain. He was rushed to the hospital, given strong medication, and treated like someone who had experienced a serious injury. But when the boot was removed, they discovered that the nail had gone between his toes. His foot was not punctured.

The pain was still real.

His brain saw the nail through the boot, understood the context, registered danger, and created pain to protect him. The point of the story is not, “ha ha, silly man, he imagined it.” The point is that pain is not a direct measurement of tissue damage. Pain is an output from the brain based on perceived threat.

That story is useful. It is also the kind of story that can make people roll their eyes if they are living with chronic symptoms, because most people are not walking around thinking they have a nail through their foot. They are walking around with symptoms that have been reinforced over time, symptoms that show up around food, light, movement, stress, hormones, screens, sitting, exercise, rest, weather, and the mysterious Tuesday afternoon.

So instead of trying to make chronic symptoms make sense through one dramatic pain story, I want to back up and talk about neuroplasticity in a non-pain way first.

Neuroplasticity is your brain and nervous system’s ability to change based on experience. It means your brain is not fixed. It learns, links things together, creates associations, and updates based on what feels dangerous, what feels safe, what feels rewarding, what feels disgusting, what feels familiar, what feels relieving, and what helps you get through a moment.

Sometimes those associations are practical. You take one sip of tequila after a regrettable college night out, and years later your body still says, absolutely not. You hear a song from a specific time in your life, and suddenly you are emotionally transported. You smell a certain perfume, walk into a certain room, see a certain kind of lighting, or hear a certain tone in someone’s voice, and your body responds before your thoughts have even caught up.

Your brain is constantly learning from your life. Sometimes those lessons are helpful. Sometimes they become outdated. Sometimes they become overprotective. And sometimes they are just very, very funny.

Which brings me to coconut water.

I swear to you, I hated coconut water. I thought it smelled like an armpit. I thought it tasted like an armpit. I thought it was one of the most disgusting beverages on this planet, and I stayed as far away from it as possible.

Then in 2019, I went to New York for my cousin’s wedding. It was my first time in New York, and I was so excited, but it was July. And if you know anything about New York in July, you know that the heat and humidity are not playing around.

I am a California girl through and through. I like to act like I am rough and tough and can handle various climates, but I have been humbled. I was humbled by Toronto in January when I went to teach workshops with Dr. Andrea Furlan, who is well known in the chronic pain community and has an incredible YouTube channel for pain education. And I was humbled again by New York in July.

The humidity, the heat, the subway air, the swollen feet, the cute, tight strappy shoes that suddenly looked like I was about to bust out of them. It was not cute.

At one point, it was something like 99 degrees with what felt like 99% humidity at 1:00 p.m., and somehow it felt exactly the same when my sister and I stepped out of a bar at 4:00 a.m. Yes, 4:00 a.m. We went out way too late, and we paid for it the next day.

A few days later, my family and I were visiting the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. One of my parents was adopted into a big, giant Jewish family from the Lower East Side, and my grandfather’s family was actually featured in the museum. Since we were all in town for my cousin’s wedding, everyone went together.

My grandfather was so happy to have his kids and grandkids walking around his old stomping grounds. He loved showing us around, even in the heat. Honestly, he seemed to enjoy the heat. His house used to be hotter than the middle of the city in the summer, so he was thriving. The rest of us were suffering.

I was low on sleep, jet lagged, overheated, underfed, and already feeling a little faint earlier in the day. I had been doing all the little things you do when you are trying to convince yourself you are fine. Deep breaths. Rearranging my outfit. Moving my hair off my neck. Trying to cool off. Trying to stay vertical.

Then we left the Tenement Museum gift shop to start our tour, and I stepped out of this cold, air-conditioned room into a wall of heat and humidity. It was like the final thread my body was hanging on by snapped.

I was walking next to my cousin Anna, who is not technically a New York native but might as well be because she lived there for years, and I just grabbed her and mumbled, “I’m falling.”

She looked at me like, “What?” And then I collapsed.

My knees buckled, my body gave up, and I fainted right there outside the museum. My poor grandfather darted over, deeply worried, while people tried to give me room, fan me off, get me water, and help me up. I almost started laughing because it was kind of funny, but I was also kind of terrified.

My sister or cousin said, “She needs water,” and for some reason I was immediately like, “I can’t.” I did not want water. I could not explain it. Then my cousin said, “I’m going to get you coconut water.”

And my first thought was, That will absolutely make me throw up.

Because again, coconut water tasted like an armpit.

But she came back with one of those tall, squared-off cartons of coconut water, handed it to me, and I drank it.

And I kid you not, the moment that cold coconut water touched my lips and tongue, it was like my body and brain registered: We are being saved.

It was cold. It was refreshing. It had electrolytes. It was exactly what my body wanted, even though my conscious opinion of coconut water had been very much no thank you, never again, please remove this from my presence.

From that moment on, something changed. I drank the entire carton during the museum tour. I asked my cousin where she bought it because I wanted more. I started looking for coconut drinks everywhere. I wanted coconut water, coconut body oil, coconut lotion, coconut candy, coconut air freshener, coconut mocktails, coconut anything. Even if the product did not actually smell like real coconut, the word coconut started to feel safe to me.

Nothing magical happened. I did not get bitten by a spider and wake up with coconut-based superpowers. I did not fall into a nuclear power plant and have my body chemistry permanently altered. I had one intense experience where I felt awful, overwhelmed, overheated, and like my body had completely buckled under the fatigue of East Coast humidity. Then I had a powerful moment of relief, and my brain updated the association.

Coconut water did not gradually become tolerable over time. It went from disgusting to deeply comforting in one very specific, very dramatic, very dehydrated moment outside the Tenement Museum.

That is the part I want you to pay attention to.

Not because your back pain is the same thing as my dramatic coconut water conversion. Your IBS symptoms, migraines, tinnitus, fatigue, pelvic pain, dizziness, or light sensitivity are not the same thing as me suddenly becoming a coconut girlie in Manhattan.

But the learning mechanism matters.

The same brain that can learn, “Coconut water is disgusting,” can also learn, “Coconut water helped me.” The same nervous system that can pair a smell, food, song, place, movement, posture, time of day, or sensation with danger can also update that association when it has new information.

This is not about pretending symptoms are not real. It is about understanding that symptoms can be real and learned, real and amplified, real and protective, and still reversible.

Neuroplasticity is not a slogan. It is the reason your brain can form associations in the first place. It is why a food can become threatening. It is why a movement can become scary. It is why sitting, walking, light, sound, certain environments, certain relationships, or even certain times of day can start to feel like danger cues.

And it is also why change is possible.

Not always instantly. Not always dramatically. Not always because one carton of coconut water touches your lips and suddenly your brain has a life-changing rebrand.

But because the brain is constantly listening. It is constantly learning.It is constantly predicting what is safe and what is dangerous based on past experience.

Pain Reprocessing Therapy works with this learning system. It helps the brain update its interpretation of bodily signals so that sensations that have been categorized as dangerous can gradually be experienced as safe. This is why we do not just tell people, “You’re fine.” That usually does not work, because the protective part of the brain does not care about a pep talk.

We have to show the brain safety in a way it can actually register.

Sometimes that happens through somatic tracking. Sometimes it happens through reducing fear around symptoms. Sometimes it happens through building evidence. Sometimes it happens through emotional work, parts work, nervous system regulation, or slowly approaching things the brain has been avoiding.

The goal is not to force your body to trust something it does not trust yet. The goal is to create enough new experiences that the brain can begin to update.

Because if the brain can learn danger, it can also learn safety. And if my brain can go from “coconut water tastes like an armpit” to “please make sure there are always two cartons in the fridge,” then your brain may be more changeable than it feels right now.

Not because you are making it up. Not because your symptoms are imaginary. Not because you should be able to logic your way out of them. Because your brain and nervous system are built to learn, and that means they are also built to update.