Metaphors shape how we suffer.
I've spent my adult life inside a body that doesn't obey simple commands. Dystonia—a movement disorder—means my muscles contract when I don't want them to, twist when I need stillness, rebel against the basic instructions most people never think about. I've had deep brain stimulation electrodes implanted and later removed. I've undergone surgeries that promised to "fix" what was broken. And through all of it, I've heard the word "rewiring" more times than I can count.
Doctors used it. Therapists used it. Well-meaning friends used it. The implication was always the same: your brain is a faulty circuit, and with the right intervention, we can swap out the bad wires for good ones.
It never felt true.
The Seduction of Engineering Language
Peter Lukacs, a retired neurologist, recently wrote something that stopped me mid-scroll. He argued that the phrase "rewire your brain" borrows confidence from engineering and smuggles it into biology, where change is "slower, messier and often incomplete".
That single sentence articulated what I'd felt for years but couldn't name.
The rewiring metaphor comes from a specific place. In 1912, a British surgeon compared the body's neural system to a house's electrical wiring . By the 1920s, Harvard psychologists were calling the visual system "an extremely intricate telegraphic system" . The language stuck. It spread. And now it's everywhere—in TED Talks, self-help books, meditation apps promising transformation in ten minutes a day.
I understand why. "Rewiring" sounds clean. It sounds achievable. It sounds like something you can control.
But here's what I've learned from living inside a body that resists control: the brain isn't a circuit board. It's more like a forest.
Forests Don't Follow Blueprints
Let me simplify a complex idea. Neuroplasticity—the brain's ability to change and form new neural connections throughout life—is real. It's one of the most hopeful discoveries in modern neuroscience. But it doesn't work the way the metaphor suggests.
When you rewire a house, you remove the old cables and install new ones. The old system is gone. The new system takes its place. Done.
When your brain adapts, something different happens. Synapses strengthen or weaken. Dendritic branches—those treelike extensions of neurons—grow or retract. Entire networks shift their activity over time, but only under the right conditions. And here's the part that matters: the old pathways don't disappear. They remain in the background, potentially reactivated under stress.
I think about this every time someone tells me to "just think positive" or "train my brain" out of pain patterns I've carried for decades.
The old trails are still there. I've built new ones around them. But the forest remembers.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like
During my years of treatment, I watched other patients in rehabilitation. Stroke survivors working to regain movement. People with traumatic brain injuries learning to speak again. The progress was never linear. It was never complete. And it was never fast.
Lukacs cites research showing that "much of what appears to be recovery is actually a compensatory substitution of new movements for lost movements" . In plain terms: the brain builds detours, not restorations.
This matches what I've seen. A stroke patient doesn't get their old arm back. They get a different arm—one that works through alternative circuits, recruited through months of targeted therapy. A person recovering from trauma doesn't erase the hypervigilance or emotional detachment that kept them safe. They build new pathways related to trust and emotional regulation that can, over time, become stronger than the old ones .
But "stronger than" isn't the same as "instead of."
The distinction matters. It's the difference between hope and false promise.
The Cruel Optimism of Quick Fixes
Here's where I get frustrated.
Apps now promise to "rewire your brain for lasting change". Books declare that readers can "feel calm and positive" and "enhance their relationships" through targeted strategies . TED speakers showcase emerging tools that allow people to "consciously shape" their plasticity.
The science underneath these claims is often sound. Neuroplasticity is real. The brain can change. But the popular reception strips away the conditions under which such change occurs.
Time. Repetition. Constraint.
Lukacs puts it bluntly: "When an app promises that a week of short audio lessons can 'rewire' the brain, it compresses the slow, cumulative processes of learning and adaptation into a quick-fix model" .
I've met people who blamed themselves when neuroplasticity didn't yield a cure. They'd done the exercises. They'd followed the programmes. They'd believed the metaphor. And when transformation wasn't instant or complete, they felt broken.
This thinking is cruel. It ignores the social, environmental, and genetic factors that shape and constrain neuroplasticity . It turns healing into a moral achievement and failure into a personal flaw.
I refuse to participate in that logic.
What My Body Taught Me About Change
I had deep brain stimulation surgery in 2011. Electrodes were implanted in my brain, connected to a device in my chest, designed to send electrical pulses that would calm the misfiring signals causing my dystonia.
For a while, it helped. Then it didn't. By 2018, the system was removed.
Was I "rewired"? Technically, yes—in the most literal sense. But my brain didn't snap back to normal. It adapted. It compensated. It found workarounds. Some days are better than others. The old patterns are still there, waiting.
What changed me wasn't the surgery. It was the years of learning to live with uncertainty. The slow accumulation of strategies—physical, emotional, cognitive—that helped me function. The relationships that held me when my body couldn't hold itself.
That's not rewiring. That's something messier and more human.
The Singers Who Stutter
One of the most beautiful examples in Lukacs's essay involves speech and song.
Elvis Presley stuttered when he spoke but not when he sang . Ed Sheeran stuttered as a child until, at age nine, he began rapping along to an Eminem album—and through repetition, his fluency improved . Mel Tillis spoke with a stutter but sang fluidly .
The explanation is neurological: speech and singing use different neural pathways. Fluency emerges not through repair but through recruitment of alternative circuits .
This is neuroplasticity in action. Not a quick fix. Not a mechanical swap. A slow, effortful process of finding detours.
I love this example because it honours both the brain's remarkable adaptability and its stubborn limits. Ed Sheeran didn't cure his stutter. He found another way to speak. The old pathway remains. The new one became strong enough to carry him.
That's what real change looks like.
A Better Metaphor
If not "rewiring," then what?
Lukacs suggests we think of neuroplasticity as erosion and regrowth: "some paths deepen, others fade, and change unfolds unevenly over time" .
I'd add another image. Think of a river finding its way around a boulder. The water doesn't remove the obstacle. It flows around it, carving new channels over years and decades. The boulder is still there. But the river has changed.
This metaphor doesn't promise control. It doesn't guarantee success. But it captures something true about how brains—and people—actually change.
What I Want You to Take Away
If you're reading this and hoping to change something about yourself—a habit, a pattern, a wound—I want you to know two things.
First: change is possible. The brain's capacity for adaptation is real and remarkable. Stroke survivors regain movement. Trauma survivors build new pathways. Children with dyslexia develop reading skills. The evidence is overwhelming .
Second: change is slow. It requires time, repetition, structure, and support . It doesn't happen through willpower alone. It doesn't happen in a week. And it doesn't erase the past.
The old trails remain. You build new ones around them.
Hope Without Illusion
I've spent my life learning to live with a body that doesn't work the way I want it to. I've had surgeries that promised transformation and delivered something more modest. I've built a career—FreeAstroScience, my work in science communication, my advocacy for people with disabilities—not despite my limitations but through them.
The metaphor of rewiring would have me believe that I failed. That I didn't try hard enough. That the right app or the right programme could have fixed me.
I reject that story.
What I've learned is that the brain's capacity for change is one of the most hopeful discoveries in modern science—but that hope must be tempered with honesty . Language matters. The words we use to describe our bodies shape how we experience them.
"Rewiring" promises engineering. Biology offers something different: a slow, uneven, profoundly human process of adaptation.
That's not a failure. That's life.
I'm Gerd Dani, President of FreeAstroScience. I write about science, disability, and the stubborn work of being human. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear that change doesn't have to be instant to be real.
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