The Mindset for Neuro Recovery and Don’t Let Your Diagnosis Define You – Part 1
Updated: 12 hours ago
Shawnee Harkins is a neuroperformance strategist and neurofitness trainer specializing in neuroplasticity-driven TBI recovery, stroke rehabilitation, and brain health prevention. She is the creator of The Harkins Method™, a neuroscience-based framework integrating cognitive performance, rehabilitation fitness, and immersive innovation.
What surviving multiple traumatic brain injuries taught me about identity, neuroplasticity, personalized rehabilitation, and the role survivors and caregivers can play in creating the conditions for change. I wrote words years ago that I never imagined anyone else would read. They were not written for an article, a book, a keynote, or The Harkins Method™.
They were written privately, during one of the most challenging chapters of my life, when traumatic brain injury had changed nearly everything I recognized about myself.
I knew what it felt like to live with pain that followed me from morning into night. I knew the frustration of struggling with speech, writing, executive function, balance, anxiety, fine and gross motor function, going to the bathroom, dressing myself, eating independently, taking a bath or shower on my own, insomnia, walking, school, work, and the ordinary tasks that once required no thought at all.
Most painfully, I knew what it felt like to grieve the person I had been while trying to understand and have faith in the person I might become.
I recently returned to journal entries from that season of my life. Reading them now, as a woman who went on to make a full recovery and eventually build her life's work around helping others navigate neurological recovery, I met an earlier version of myself again.
I reconnected with a younger Shawnee who very much had a long road ahead of her. One line stood out, “Don’t let my diagnosis define me or what I want to become.” That sentence captures something I did not yet have the neuroscience to explain.
My diagnosis mattered. My injuries were real. My limitations were real. The pain was real. Yet somewhere inside me, I was beginning to separate what had happened to me from what I believed might still be possible in my recovery.
That distinction would eventually become foundational to how I think about working in neurorehabilitation in the clinical setting and supporting individuals and their caregivers throughout their overall neuro recovery journey.
The words I wrote when I was still inside the struggle
On December 20, I wrote, “I am finally feeling bitter and pissed about my diagnosis, condition, my dreams that were happening, the goals that were happening, and I was on the right track…”
I wrote about doctors telling me I would never be the same person I had been before my injuries. I described the emotional weight of living with relentless pain, anxiety, and uncertainty, “It’s like a volcano erupted in my body, and I am trying to run from it.”
Six days later, I went to the beach and attempted my first jog following a neck and back procedure. I walked some of it. I ran some of it. My head and neck hurt, and I was angry and agitated.
That same day, I wrote something very different, “This is when you realize how strong you are. You must pull your inner strength from within and combine it with courage.”
I reminded myself to breathe, pace myself, and keep climbing. Then another fear cut even deeper than physical function.
I had built part of my identity around motivating other people. Suddenly, I wondered, “What happens if the ‘motivator’ loses her motivation?” I remember the grief underneath that question.
Those entries matter to me today because recovery stories are often told backward. We see someone after the breakthrough, after the progress, and after they have reconstructed their life, and the finished story can make healing look much cleaner than it actually was.
Mine wasn't clean. There was anger and grief. There were injections, medication, pain, exhaustion, anxiety, fear, and days when motivation felt very far away.
When you become desperate just to feel better, you look back on a journal entry such as this. Two days later, I wrote:
December 28: “I am so desperate to feel better, I will allow needles in my face. Yes. Dr. Newman, the kindest man who causes me the most pain. Head. Cheeks. Neck. Shoulders. All injections. My insides cry every time. I'm in bed going through the usual routine. Hell.”
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living in neurological pain day after day. Eventually, you stop asking for your old life back. You simply want relief.
You want one morning when your head does not hurt. One night when your body lets you sleep. One conversation where the words come easily. One day when thinking, moving, concentrating, remembering, and simply functioning do not require so much effort.
I remember that desperation. I remember being willing to endure more pain in the hope that it might lead to less pain. I remember lying in bed after treatments, wondering how many more times I could repeat the same cycle. I remember what it felt like when recovery became my full-time job while the rest of the world seemed to continue moving forward without me.
This is also where I want to speak directly to the caregiver
The person you love may not always have the words to explain what is happening inside of them. Irritability may be exhaustion. Withdrawal may follow sensory overload or pain. Fear may show up as resistance. Grief may sit underneath anger. Sometimes the person fighting hardest to recover may also be deeply tired of having to fight.
That doesn't mean every survivor experiences recovery the same way. It means neurological recovery asks us to look beyond what we can see right away.
Survivor, if you recognize yourself in these words, I want you to know why I am sharing mine.
I have been there.
The young woman writing those journal entries could not see the life I am living today. She could not see The Harkins Method™. She could not see the people she would one day coach. She could not know that the very experiences breaking her heart would eventually become part of how she would help another survivor understand theirs.
But somewhere inside that pain, I had already written another sentence that would ultimately become one of the foundations of my recovery, “Don’t let my diagnosis define me or what I want to become.”
I am sharing that exact quote with you several times throughout this article for a reason. Because for me, it became my mantra, my lifeline to keeping my head forward and my eyes on the prize of recovery, and I want you to do the same for yours.
That did not mean denying my diagnosis. It did not mean pretending I wasn't injured, ignoring medical guidance, or believing mindset alone could heal a brain injury.
It meant refusing to let a diagnosis become the entire definition of my future. That mindset and distinction matter. Because this is where my story stops being only a story about what happened to me, and becomes a conversation about what we can do with what remains possible.
Today, after my own recovery and years spent working alongside survivors and caregivers, I understand something I did not yet have the language for when I wrote those journal entries:
The brain can change
That capacity is called neuroplasticity.
Understanding how to create meaningful, individualized opportunities for the brain and body to adapt can change how we approach neuro recovery. Another process was quietly taking place: I was learning how to participate in my own recovery.
Years later, that lived experience, combined with medical and applied neuroscience and my work training people navigating neurological injuries and conditions, became part of the foundation for The Harkins Method™.
Today, if I were sitting across from a survivor or caregiver navigating neuro recovery, there are five things I would want them to understand about neuroplasticity; however, understanding neuroplasticity is only the beginning.
Learning how to intentionally apply it to your own recovery is where the work becomes personal.
In Part 2, I’ll share five principles I would want every survivor and caregiver to understand about neuroplasticity and neuro recovery, from personalized, meaningful repetition and progressive challenge to mindset, movement, autonomy, and recognizing progress beyond the obvious milestones.
My goal is to help you move from simply understanding that the brain can change to creating purposeful opportunities for change within your own recovery journey.
Continue to Part 2, The Mindset for Neuro Recovery and 5 Lessons in Neuroplasticity for Survivors and Caregivers, where I’ll take you deeper into the science of neuroplasticity and share five practical lessons to help survivors and caregivers turn possibility into purposeful action throughout the neuro recovery journey.
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Read more from Shawnee Harkins
Shawnee Harkins, Neuroperformance & Brain Health Strategist
Shawnee Harkins is a neuroperformance strategist, neurofitness trainer, and creator of The Harkins Method™, Neural Network of Change, a neuroplasticity-based framework for TBI recovery, stroke rehabilitation, and brain health prevention. After overcoming multiple traumatic brain injuries, she transformed her recovery into a scalable system now used in clinical and performance settings. As Founder and CEO of The Harkins Project VRX, she develops patent-pending immersive neuroplasticity therapies integrating neuroscience, rehabilitation fitness, and emerging technology. She is a recognized NeuroTech Pioneer and co-author of Think Like a Champion, advancing the science of mindset, healing, and human performance.
