Angie is an accomplished gamer with an advanced degree in Education with two young adult children. Her neuroplastic symptoms began with childhood pains, and progressed through early motherhood experience of severe back pain and a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, post-concussive syndrome from head injuries, and migraine headache.

Her path towards relief began with the distraction of building a game to ‘slay’ her concussion
symptoms, eventually sold under the name ‘Super Better’. Her game collaborator’s statement: ‘I believe in you’, provided a big emotional change for her after she had been told she would never work again.

A huge surprise along the way was waking after an unrelated surgery to realize her two-year-long migraine had ended. She asked: ‘Can I get anesthetic again to let my brain rest in the future?’

Her neuroplastic symptoms included complex regional pain syndrome with a feverish swollen arm. She sought the care of many physical therapists, and one began asking her questions about her life. Noticing patterns with stages of progress and regression she became curious, which led to discovering central sensitization and the neuroscience of how fear and feedback loops in her brain related to her symptoms.

She realized that pain was an output of her brain and that her brain was predictive in using symptoms to communicate its sense of physical or emotional threats to her. It was selective in its protective efforts, but she could rewire her brain to calm it and reduce over-protective threats. She learned to choose to be physically active, despite symptoms of discomfort.

Graded motor imagery, the Curable app, somatic tracking and Virtual Reality were beneficial. She felt safe in VR, able to physically move beyond the limits she perceived in the real world, realizing her parts worked and were not broken.

She began to rewire her brain and developed plans for managing her symptom flare-ups. Then she started a program for young adults to use social media to help their peers understand the essence of neuroplastic symptoms . The work they did to teach their peers became her intervention in their lives.