The Science of Healing in Waves
The Science of Healing in Waves
One of the biggest misunderstandings in benzo withdrawal is the belief that healing happens during the windows, the calm stretches where our symptoms calm, the storm clouds part, and the sun briefly returns. People imagine that when they’re feeling good, the brain is doing its best repair work, and when they’re in a wave, they’re simply “waiting it out.”
But neuroscience tells us something very different.
Healing doesn’t happen when things are quiet.
Healing happens when the system is activated.
It happens in the wave.
This can feel counterintuitive, even frustrating. But once you understand the biology, everything clicks into place. The waves stop feeling like failures or setbacks and start feeling like the moments your brain is actually doing the work.
Let’s explore the science behind this.
Why Waves Create Change: The Plasticity Principle
For decades, neuroscience has shown that the brain rewires not in calm, but in activation.
Donald Hebb famously stated: “Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Researchers like McGaugh, Cahill, and Turrigiano have further demonstrated that emotional arousal enhances synaptic plasticity. In other words, your brain changes most when your system is lit up.
Withdrawal waves are nothing but neural activation: The amygdala is firing. The insula is signaling. Interoceptive circuits are heightened, and GABA and glutamate are recalibrating.
All the ingredients for neuroplastic change are present.
Whereas a window is integration.
A wave is reconstruction!
Fear Circuits Only Learn When Fear Is Present
Another key thing to remember in exploring the science of recovery in waves is that fear circuits only update when fear is active. Fear needs to be present to truly rewire the system and lay calmer circuits. Researchers Joseph LeDoux and Daniel Pine showed this in 2016. Others, such as Craske, Milad, and Quirk, demonstrated it repeatedly in research on extinction learning.
When you feel fear, panic, or discomfort, and you meet it without collapsing into avoidance, the brain performs what is called prediction-error updating.
It learns:
“I felt danger… and nothing bad actually happened.”
“I felt symptoms… and I survived.”
“I felt a surge… and I stayed present.”
That single learning moment rewires circuits more than a dozen calm days ever could. This is the foundation of exposure therapy, trauma recovery, and autonomic retraining. It is also the foundation of benzo recovery.
While waves turn the Bear on, it is our response that teaches the Bear safety.
However, this does not mean we go looking for waves. We need not manufacture them. They are simply a natural part of the nervous system recalibration process. They’re a sign that the system is adjusting, updating, and reorganizing itself.
Waves serve a purpose only because they occur spontaneously, not because they are “good” or because they’re “necessary.”
The purpose is because:
They’re an opportunity for prediction error
A chance to contradict the Bear’s old expectations
A moment when survival circuits are temporarily open to rewiring
A natural activation that allows new inhibitory pathways to form
But the keyword here is natural!
Trying to force a wave is still the Bear.
It’s still control and still fear disguised as strategy.
However, what we want to do is:
Gentle activation
Gradual exposure
Building our lives again
And showing the nervous system it is safe in small, consistent ways.
Never chase or avoid a wave, and certainly do your best not to spiral inside one.
Learn to gradually change your relationship with them.
Learning to separate from fear and observe, and lead.
Healing happens not by trying to feel worse or better, but by learning to stop fighting what arrives, and allowing the nervous system to learn what it couldn't learn before.
“I can feel this… and I am still safe.”
Why Biology Recalibrates During Waves
Benzo withdrawal disrupts the balance between GABA (calming) and glutamate (activating). Research by Ashton, Bateson, Lader, and Nutt consistently shows that receptor normalization happens over months, and it happens nonlinearly — it surges, rests, surges again. Indeed, this feels like a wonky process!
Think in terms of homeostasis:
A system cannot correct itself when it’s at baseline.
It corrects itself during deviation.
The deviation is the wave.
When your nervous system becomes dysregulated, the brain begins adjusting receptor sensitivity, recalibrating inhibitory tone, and resetting autonomic thresholds. Turrigiano’s work on homeostatic plasticity shows that this recalibration only activates when the system is thrown off balance.
Waves = imbalance
Imbalance = biological signal
Signal = repair
Windows show up after recalibration, not before.
Waves Mirror How Trauma Actually Heals
Trauma research tells the same story.
Bessel van der Kolk taught us that trauma is resolved not by avoidance, but by safely experiencing activation. Stephen Porges showed that the vagus nerve resets through oscillation, not constant stillness. Craske, Foa, and Bouton showed that emotional activation is required to update old threat memories, not numbness, avoidance, or distraction.
Withdrawal hits the same neural circuits trauma does: the amygdala, insula, ACC, vagus, locus coeruleus.
This means the healing principles are the same. You must feel the activation for the brain to revise the story.
Simply put, my friends, windows don’t revise the story. Waves do.
Why People Improve Even When Symptoms Feel Terrible
This is the paradox:
People tell you they get worse, then get better, then get worse again.
But if you look closely, the “worst” moments often come right before a major shift.
That’s because the wave is the recalibration event.
The window is the result of that recalibration.
Research on fear learning shows that safety memories are strongest immediately after intense activation (Schiller et al., 2010). Memory consolidation studies show that the brain reorganizes after peaks in emotional arousal. Emotional processing studies show that meaning-making happens after activation, not before.
Your lived experience matches this science:
You suffer → you endure → something shifts → you feel clearer.
The “something” that shifted did not happen in the window.
It happened in the wave!
Are you with me here?
What This Means for Recovery
This reframes everything:
Your waves are not failures.
Your waves are not proof you’re broken.
Your waves are not a sign you’re going backward.
Your waves are the engine of neuroplastic healing.
Withdrawal waves are your brain’s recalibration phases. They are the moments when the Bear wakes, and the moments when the Bear learns.
When you stop fighting the wave and stop trying to “fix” the wave and instead let the wave be the wave…
You reduce limbic resistance.
You stop reinforcing fear pathways.
You create the optimal internal conditions for healing.
Waves teach the Bear safety.
Windows prove the Bear learned.
References
Neuroplasticity & Activation-Based Learning
Hebb, D. O. (1949). The Organization of Behavior. New York: Wiley.
— Origin of “neurons that fire together wire together.”
McGaugh, J. L. (2004). “The amygdala modulates the consolidation of memories of emotionally arousing experiences.” Annual Review of Neuroscience.
— Shows that emotional arousal enhances memory consolidation.
Turrigiano, G. (2012). “Homeostatic synaptic plasticity: local and global mechanisms for stabilizing neuronal function.” Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology.
— Demonstrates that the brain recalibrates during deviations from baseline.
Fear Learning, Exposure, and Prediction Error
LeDoux, J. E., & Pine, D. S. (2016). “Using neuroscience to help understand fear and anxiety: a two-system framework.” American Journal of Psychiatry.
— Fear circuits update only when fear is active.
Craske, M. G., Treanor, M., Conway, C. C., et al. (2014). “Maximizing exposure therapy: an inhibitory learning approach.” Behaviour Research and Therapy.
— Exposure learning requires emotional activation and prediction error.
Quirk, G. J., & Mueller, D. (2008). “Neural mechanisms of fear extinction.” Biological Psychiatry.
— Extinction learning relies on activation of fear circuits.
Bouton, M. E. (2004). “Context and behavioral processes in extinction.” Learning & Memory.
— Fear networks only update through mismatches between expectation and outcome.
Neurobiology & GABA/Glutamate Recalibration
Ashton, H. (2002). Benzodiazepines: How They Work and How to Withdraw (The Ashton Manual).
— Describes receptor adaptation and withdrawal phenomena.
Nutt, D. J., & Malizia, A. L. (2001). “New insights into the role of the GABA(A)-benzodiazepine receptor in psychiatric disorder.” British Journal of Psychiatry.
— Explains receptor sensitivity and compensatory excitation.
Lader, M. (2011). “Benzodiazepines revisited—will we ever learn?” Addiction.
— Reviews long-term receptor changes and withdrawal patterns.
Bateson, A. (2002). “Basic pharmacologic mechanisms involved in benzodiazepine tolerance and withdrawal.” Current Pharmaceutical Design.
— Details receptor downregulation and network-level adaptations.
Trauma, Autonomic Arousal, and Healing Through Activation
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. Trauma healing requires activating the emotional system in safe contexts.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory.
— Nervous system resets occur through oscillation between activation and safety.
Schiller, D., Monfils, M.-H., Raio, C. M., et al. (2010). “Preventing the return of fear in humans using reconsolidation update mechanisms.” Nature.
— Shows fear memories are updated after activation peaks.
Emotional Arousal & Memory Integration
Cahill, L., & McGaugh, J. L. (1998). “Mechanisms of emotional arousal and lasting declarative memory.” Trends in Neurosciences.
— Emotion-driven arousal enhances neural change.
Roozendaal, B., McEwen, B. S., & Chattarji, S. (2009). “Stress, memory and the amygdala.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
— Stress activation leads to synaptic remodeling and later recovery.