How To Make Therapy Effective

This something essential: the fact that our inner life — our moods, fears, and capacity for change — can’t be understood in isolation from the body that sustains it.

 While therapy often emphasizes psychological mechanisms like fear extinction and neuroplasticity, that work can be hamstrung if we ignore the biological substrate on which it depends.

Consider the following:

Hormones: Dysregulation of cortisol, thyroid hormones, sex hormones, or neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine can destabilize mood and cognitive function. They can make it far harder to unlearn fear, or even to engage in therapy effectively.

Nutrients: Deficiencies in B vitamins, vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, or omega-3 fatty acids compromise neurotransmitter production, brain plasticity, and can drive inflammation. These deficiencies don’t just make us feel worse — they reduce the brain’s capacity to change.

Methylation: This is a basic cellular process, constantly at work, governing DNA repair, detoxification, and gene expression. Impaired methylation, whether from nutrient gaps or common genetic variants like MTHFR, can cascade into altered stress responses, impaired neurotransmitter balance, and maladaptive epigenetic changes.

Why does this matter for fear, trauma, and therapy? Because neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to rewire itself — is not a given. It depends on the right physiological conditions.

Chronic inflammation, for example, can blunt emotional resilience. Persistently high cortisol can degrade hippocampal function and prefrontal control, making it harder to regulate emotions or form new, non-fearful associations. Without the building blocks for neurotransmitters or the proper hormonal environment, even the most sophisticated psychological tools will fail to stick.

Epigenetics sits at the crossroads of these factors. Stress and trauma can lock in maladaptive gene expression — for instance, altering how we respond to cortisol. Adequate methylation and nutrient support can help “reset” some of these patterns, allowing healthier responses to emerge over time.

This perspective also helps explain why therapy outcomes vary so widely. One person may thrive with purely psychological interventions, while another — burdened by deficiencies, hormonal imbalances, or impaired methylation — may struggle to make lasting progress. In such cases, therapy is like trying to build on sand.

The way forward isn’t to abandon therapy, but to integrate it with a more comprehensive approach:

Test for and correct hormonal, nutrient, and inflammatory imbalances.

Support the gut-brain axis, given its direct role in mood regulation.

Understand genetic predispositions to guide personalized interventions.

Optimize nutrition, sleep, and stress management as the biological foundation for psychological change.

The mind and body aren’t two systems running in parallel — they’re one system viewed from different angles. If we want to undo “lifelong” fear responses, especially those reinforced by generations of trauma or stress, the most rational path is to address both the software (our thoughts and behaviors) and the hardware (the physiology and genetics that sustain them). Ignoring either is why failure happens.

Mouse Phobia - used to illustrate how a phobia starts- in your dna! Here (if link won't load- find the post on Medium) 

https://tinyurl.com/Mouse-Phobia-Truth

Another good article is "everything you need to know about methylation"

https://www.biocare.co.uk/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-methylation.html

Liz Lucy Robillard, 27/07/25