Why Calmness Alone Doesn't Rewire Our Brains

(benzos, supplements, probiotics, gut health, Vagus nerve, etc.)

Every week in the benzo community, I hear versions of the same hope: "If I could just feel calm for long enough, maybe my nervous system would heal on its own." And it’s a fair hope that makes sense. If the brain learns through neuroplasticity, then if the fear dies down long enough, won’t the brain return to normal? Won't calmness rewire?

This frames the issue as if it were a chronically tense muscle: if we can just keep the muscle relaxed long enough, it will learn to stay relaxed. While this is poetic and would be amazing if true, the brain simply doesn’t work this way, at least not at a meaningful enough level.

The Myth of Calm = Healing

You see, while calm is necessary, in itself it’s not fully sufficient. If calm alone rewires the brain, then benzos, probiotics, magnesium, CBD, chamomile tea, L-theanine, and the perfect diet would all lead to permanent emotional healing. But they don’t. Think about it. Do you know anyone in your life who can honestly say their mental illness disappeared because of any of the things mentioned above?

In all my years, unfortunately, I haven’t.

But before we go any further, I want to highlight that a healthy diet, micronutrients, and gut biome are very impactful for our mental health. This article is in no way meant to diminish these things, as I champion them entirely. Deficiencies in vitamins and micronutrients can have substantial negative effects on the brain and body. Conditions such as chronically low vitamin D, iron deficiency, or B12 deficiency can significantly affect mental health.

And while it is true that psychobiotics (something I’ll be teaching on soon) can help send some calming signals up the Vagus nerve, they don’t directly and meaningfully rewire our brains. At best, they behave like a cup of chamomile tea. GABA in the gut primarily works by helping to regulate the gut, thereby reducing the distress signals that the brain negatively reacts to.

This is a function of interoception, not GABA crossing the blood-brain barrier and behaving like a benzo on our nervous system. Nor does the Vagus nerve itself rewire the brain.

So, while gut health and biome support are incredibly important, they are not in themselves enough to treat mental illness. And if you’ve been following my work closely, you likely have a suspicion why. But let me break it down further.

Simply put, plasticity doesn't really happen during calm. It happens during learning.

Think of calmness as the soil, and rewiring as what you plant in that soil.

The nervous system can only change when it is calm enough to safely process, reframe, and rehearse new responses. But change doesn't come from calm alone. It comes from what you do with the calm.

Now, don’t misunderstand. This doesn’t mean you need to feel calm and safe all the time in benzo withdrawal to build neuroplasticity. You don’t. All we are looking for is right behavior, right thoughts and reactions, right symbolism, and right rhythm. In doing this, we create moments of calm that are meaningful enough to elicit profound changes in the brain.

This is no different than someone who never took a benzo, but had crippling anxiety and then found tremendous relief after working with a CBT or trauma-informed therapist. It’s not about what’s happening as much as how we perceive and symbolize what is happening, and then what we do next.

This is why people in our Benzo Recovery School often show remarkable improvement even while tapering. That doesn’t happen by accident. And while a window can be powerful if you take advantage of it,

the truth is, my friends, the real growth and rewiring actually take place on the tougher days, not the good ones. Think about that.

Recovery from benzo injury, OCD, trauma, or chronic anxiety requires:

• New interpretations of old symptoms

• New actions in the presence of fear

• A new symbolic meaning is given to discomfort

• New behaviors practiced under internal threat

• Consistent rhythm and non-resistance

That's where the rewiring happens. Not when symptoms vanish, but when the old response (panic, avoidance, despair) is replaced with a new one (observation, movement, reframing, exposure).

Why Sedation Isn’t Rewiring

Now, let’s come back to the original question: why isn’t sedation healing?

Benzos work because they suppress fear circuits.

Students often say, "When I’m on a benzo, I don’t act like an anxious person."

That’s true. But it’s not because the brain has healed. It’s because the alarm system is chemically paused. The fear loop hasn't been interrupted. It's just been silenced. Please take a moment to let that really sink in.

And when the benzo lifts? The old wiring returns. Often louder. Because no new pattern was rehearsed in its absence, we didn’t have to. I was on benzos for a decade, and in that time, I didn’t have to do scary things. If I felt fear or anxiety, I took my valium. Hell, I took the valium in the morning just to avoid even the risk of experiencing those things.

Sure, as my brain began to adapt to the benzo, its effects wore off, interdose withdrawal began, and I had more interdose anxiety. But that’s beside the point. That doesn’t matter in the context of what we’re discussing.

I can hear some of you asking, "But Coach, what about probiotics and GABAergic supplements?"

It’s true. Some gut bacteria can produce GABA. Some supplements can send calming signals up the Vagus nerve. But even the best probiotic or supplement won't lead to deep nervous system healing unless the brain learns something new while in that calmer state. And as of now, in 2025, no supplement or probiotic can create enough modulation or calmness to be truly meaningful, no more than drinking a cup of chamomile tea.

Perhaps in the future, scientists will create a powerful enough psychobiotic that can act more like a benzo. But even then, it alone won’t rewire the brain or change our relationship with fear.

So, can a calming supplement be helpful to our mental health? Sure!

For example, if the supplement calms you just enough to face the mailbox, take a walk, or sit with discomfort, then yes, it's a helpful support. But if it calms you so much that you no longer engage with fear, discomfort, or exposure, then it becomes another numbing tool.

Calm is only useful if it leads to contact & correction.

This is why I truly champion the work we do in this school. Because we don’t chase calm. We retrain the system to stop interpreting normal signals as threats.

We teach:

• Structured exposure (pushing)

• Ritualized safety (lulling)

• Interoceptive reinterpretation

• Narrative reframing

• Recovery metaphors that restore meaning (change symbolism)

• Neuroplasticity building & rewiring

• Changing our relationship with fear

• Restoring hope & trauma repair

This is not symptom suppression, but repair. It's identity repair through consistent, gradual, and active practice, along with co-regulation. It's about learning how to quiet old, negative pathways while creating new, healthier ones.

Co-Regulation vs. Gut Modulation

Now, let’s pause one more time for anyone thinking: “Okay, Coach. You just mentioned co-regulation. That can help calm a person, but in a similar way as gut GABA, right? It doesn’t have a lasting impact on our mental health?”

Yes and no. While co-regulation does help calm a person by reducing arousal, and that by itself isn’t enough to rewire the system, that isn’t all co-regulation does.

You see, co-regulation goes a step further than any gut bacteria, GABA, or GABAergic supplement can. When you co-regulate with another person, you’re not only calming via modeling or mirroring the other person’s calmness. You’re practicing safety in connection. You’re consciously engaging in a social nervous system loop in a way that can build trust, and that can lead to challenging faulty assertions, thoughts, and even exposure therapy.

In this way, co-regulation creates a bridge to autonomy and self-agency.

When we merely ingest probiotics or stimulate vagal GABA, we are only receiving a passive safety signal, and an extremely mild one at that. Many people will not even notice it. The same is true for people who try chamomile tea.

A probiotic or even a benzo doesn’t lead to relational learning or symbolic change to powerful stressors or perceptions. Nor are there any behavioral rehearsals. Co-regulation is an emotional relationship that can lead to behavioral change, whereas gut modulation is a physiological influence that may support change, but can’t initiate it.

This is very important to understand when considering the bigger picture and assessing our work in the school.

So yes, anything that can help calm us can be helpful. But it doesn't rewire us without the work. Hence, why no one gets on a benzo for a year or two, feels amazing, and then gets off the benzo with their brain rewired. Simply put, the rewiring needs to happen in the pathways associated with fear. And while on a benzo, we simply tranquilize those pathways. So while it may feel great to get on a benzo, tranquilize our fears, and get back to life, that doesn’t allow us to meaningfully rewire the fear pathways.

That said, there is still an argument for positive growth here.

Because the benzo or calming supplement can help us form positive memories, engage socially, and participate in environments we used to avoid. Those experiences still provide new sensory, cognitive, and emotional data, and that can influence neural circuits over time. Some rewiring can occur.

In other words, the brain still learns from calm experiences. It doesn’t always need activation.

However, while this is true and meaningful, that’s still not rewiring fear. That’s forming new associations in parallel, not deconstructing the old ones.

In this example, our avoidance patterns are still intact, just not activated. So while those new experiences may feel good, they don’t replace the threat stored in the amygdala, hippocampus, or insula (areas associated with survival, fear response, or trauma).

While there may be some gray area here, the bulk of rewiring happens in the face of fear, not by tranquilizing it. Also, most people who start taking a benzodiazepine don’t immediately change their lifestyles. The benzo helps, but it usually doesn’t lead to massive neuroplasticity-building lifestyle changes.

This, however, poses a great argument for the original intention of benzos: to be used as a crutch alongside therapy and the harder work. Benzos were meant to be a supplement, and assistance, not a cure.

How do we ultimately rewire our brains?

You rewire yourself by doing the work while your system is still whispering, "What if it's not safe?" And responding, "We're safe, and I’ll guide you with leadership and show you."

Example: Imagine two people walk into a crowded room. One of them is on a benzo and feels great, calm, smooth, functional, no anxiety at all. He’s free to be the life of the party. The other person feels the wave of fear, but he doesn’t retreat. Instead, he breathes, reframes, stays, and makes it through.

Only one of these two people is rewiring, and it isn’t the one who feels “fine.”

Rewiring is about resolution, not performance.

Final thoughts:

While benzos (or any other supplement or drug for that matter) may help us act like someone who’s recovered and without anxiety, they don’t give our brain a chance to actually become that person. Because healing isn’t about what you do in the calm, it’s about what you learn in the face of fear, and how you behave. The ideal situation is to use something like a benzodiazepine, probiotic, or supplement to help inspire a sense of calm, so that we can then do the necessary work to truly drive home neuroplasticity.

If you don’t do the real work, then even taking a benzo, probiotic, or supplement will likely be minimal and its positive impact fleeting at best. The future of mental health will see a merging of multiple dimensions of health, one that treats the whole individual. It’s also worth noting that if you are going to explore taking probiotics, they can sometimes have an adverse effect, and in some people, spike anxiety or depressive symptoms through interoception and GI distress via shifts in microbial populations. Go slow, and gradually introduce new things to the system so the Bear can acclimate.