Narratives Are Neural Code, And Code Can Be Re-Written
How the Stories We Are Told About Ourselves Shape Our Brains and How Re-Writing Them Can Transform Us
We all operate psychologically within stories and sub-stories. Within narratives that we were told and internalised, within scripts that helped us survive bad conditions. However, when we leave the nest and outgrow our dependence on the original storytellers, or finally escape the bad conditions, for whatever reason, we find we cannot discard of the script, we uphold the narratives, and we relive the stories.
The child who watched his father leave one night and never come back now abandons every meaningful relationship the moment he falls in love. Better to leave than to be left.
The child who had to earn affection through performance & perfection (grades, sports, awards etc.) becomes the adult who is hypersensitive to criticism, constantly overachieving, perpetually burnt out, fearing that without accomplishment, they are nothing.
The daughter who learned to walk on eggshells seeking to impress a volatile parent becomes the woman who tolerates emotional abuse in relationships, mistaking familiar anxiety for love and loud chaos for passion.
The son who was shamed for crying after a fall becomes the man who is emotionally unavailable, unable to tolerate vulnerability in others or himself.
The child who was parentified, constantly meeting the emotional needs of the adults around them, becomes the adult who cannot ask for help, believing that their worth is tied to being needed and useful.
It is not actually our experiences in and of themselves that change us, it is our reflection and understanding of our experiences that change us. When a parent leaves, or violence erupts, or a class is failed, it is how that event is conveyed by those around the child that translates into how it shapes them. Events are not ‘traumatic’ in and of themselves (excluding those that are traumatic by clinical definition), but our understanding of them can be.
So, where are these rigid, persistent narratives stored? What does it take to override them? What happens to our brains when we ‘heal’? Does it look different?
Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to reorganise existing neural networks through behavioural and experiential interventions.
Narrative as Neurological Infrastructure
The human brain is not a static organ; it’s a web of neural connections that is constantly activating, deactivating, enlarging, shrinking, and reshaping itself in response to our interactions with reality. Within this framework, the stories we inherit and continue to tell ourselves function not only as psychological constructs but as neurological blueprints shaping how we perceive ourselves (our self-image), others, and the world.
John Bowlby’s (1980) attachment theory introduced the idea of internal working models: cognitive frameworks developed in early childhood that inform our expectations about relationships, trust, emotional safety, and self-worth. These models are based on the quality of our earliest attachments, especially with primary caregivers. Through repeated interactions, the brain encodes these experiences, and the resulting expectations become deeply embedded within the neural architecture of the individual. This process is not just psychological, it is neurological. Over time, encoded relational patterns crystallise into well-worn neural pathways. The brain, being an organ of absolute efficiency, defaults to these pathways when interpreting new relational data. This means that early narratives about love, abandonment, rejection, and worthiness become the unconscious scripts we replay in adult relationships, careers, and self-perception.
This is where things become seriously fascinating.
Research in social neuroscience has shown that the neural networks activated in early attachment relationships are the very same neural networks reactivated in romantic love. A study by Bartels and Zeki (2000) using fMRI imaging found that the same neural circuitry activated in infant-mother bonding (primarily involving the ventral tegmental area (VTA), caudate nucleus, and insula) is also activated during adult romantic attachment. This gives attachment theory a robust neurological basis. Whatever narrative and blueprint was written then is reactivated now. We are frequently tapping into ancient, deeply embedded circuits.
What this means is that the conditions that shaped our first attachments, whether secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganised, become neurologically coded. These conditions form what we, often unconsciously, recreate in future relationships. The familiarity of dysfunction, ironically, becomes neurologically comfortable. We repeat what we know, not necessarily what we want.
Reframing: Neuroplasticity in Action
However, embedded does not mean immutable. Neuroplasticity offers profound hope. When we engage in conscious reappraisal, when we interrogate our behaviour, impulses, intentions, and when we analyse our histories with guided curiosity, we begin to disrupt these old circuits and open the potential to forge new ones. Psychotherapy is, in essence, a designated intellectual space shared between two that does exactly that. Thoughts and impulses are explored in real-time, and the narratives and templates are exposed and laid out for dissection. Within the confines of the therapeutic relationship, the brain’s default mode network (DMN), involved in self-referential thinking and narrative construction, can be reshaped. Studies have shown measurable changes in brain activity and novel neural connectivity after reprocessing traumatic or limiting narratives.
When individuals begin to reframe their self-narratives, for instance, from “I am unlovable” to “I learned to believe that I’m unlovable as a child, but as an adult I now choose to believe a person when they tell me they love me” they are not merely shifting mindsets. They are altering the functional connectivity of neural networks, particularly between the prefrontal cortex (involved in higher order thinking and emotional regulation) and the limbic system (which governs fear and attachment).
Narrative as Neural Intervention
We are storytelling creatures. Our narratives are not trivial; they are strategies the brain uses to predict the future based on the past. But the brain can be taught new strategies. This is why narrative psychotherapy, psychoanalytic work, and attachment-focused interventions are so powerful: they allow the client to revisit and re-author the original “code” written during formative years.
For example, when someone recognizes that their role as “the fixer” or “the caretaker” in relationships was a survival strategy developed in a chaotic or emotionally unavailable family, they can begin to question the automaticity of that identity and consciously decide where and how it is useful for them and where it is clearly not. Each moment of insight, each decision to respond differently, activates and strengthens new neural pathways. Over time, these new responses become the brain’s new default.
We are wired by our stories, but we are not prisoners of them. The same brain that encoded a narrative of abandonment can learn to encode one of connection. The same circuits that once fired in the presence of fear can, through consistent healing and reframing, fire in the presence of safety and love. This is the promise and power of neuroplasticity.
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References
Bowlby, J., 1969. Attachment and Loss: Volume I. Attachment. London: Hogarth Press.
Bowlby, J., 1980. Attachment and Loss: Volume III. Loss: Sadness and Depression. London: Hogarth Press.
Bartels, A. and Zeki, S., 2000. The neural basis of romantic love. NeuroReport, 11(17), pp.3829–3834.
Siegel, D.J., 2012. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. 2nd ed. New York: Guilford Press.
Schore, A.N., 2003. Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self. New York: W.W. Norton.
Cozolino, L., 2014. The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton.
Perry, B.D. and Szalavitz, M., 2017. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook. 3rd ed. New York: Basic Books.
Kandel, E.R., 2006. In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. New York: W.W. Norton.
Doidge, N., 2007. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. New York: Penguin.
Beauregard, M., 2007. Mind does really matter: Evidence from neuroimaging studies of emotional self-regulation, psychotherapy, and placebo effect. Progress in Neurobiology, 81(4), pp.218–236.
Porges, S.W., 2011. The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. New York: W.W. Norton.
Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E.L. and Target, M., 2002. Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.
Neuroplasticity changed my life too. The brain is amazing and how we can use its power to rewrite, edit and amplify our thoughts and behaviors. I really enjoy how you reference research and books to incorporate in your pieces. Great writing!
The brain is continually fascinating, great article.