Bottom-up Healing for Trauma & Addiction: "Neurological De-Armoring" + Brainstem Relaxation
Now including various relevant lessons from trauma psychologists
When people tell me they have trauma, I generally recommend they follow my Mindset advice, including therapy, breathwork, and meditation instructions. To help people engage with the mindset practices, I have advised the use of my Ultimate Psychedelic protocol. But recently, I learned that there’s some more basic biological, physiological, and sociological interventions we need to implement before getting to those levels.
If you’re ready to create and adapt to a less stressful environment and take your armor off, use this protocol that I developed with Gemini, using my Heterodox Research Protocol, combined with insights I gleaned from various books on trauma psychology.
The “Biological Resilience” Protocol: v4
A Complete Guide to Bio-De-Armoring
⚠️ CRITICAL MEDICAL DISCLAIMER:
DMSO Safety: You must use 99.9% Pharmaceutical Grade DMSO. Industrial grades contain heavy metals that this solvent will drive directly into your bloodstream and brain. Ensure hands and nose are clean before handling. See my full DMSO reference here.
Electrolytes: Consult a doctor if you have kidney disease or heart conditions.
Ethnobotanicals: Iboga and Psilocybin are illegal in many jurisdictions and carry risks. Never combine Iboga with most medications (especially heart & psych meds). See full iboga guide here, and microdosing protocol here.
Behavioral Warning (The Isolation Trap): While this protocol demands starving the brain of “Phasic” Dopamine (excitement, novelty, the chase), do not isolate completely. Total social isolation spikes Cortisol, which sensitizes the brain to Glutamate and effectively locks the armor in place even without the addiction. You need “Oxytocinergic Anchoring” to lower the cortisol floor.
The Rule: Seek “Boring Love” (parallel play, reading next to someone, safe touch). Avoid “Exciting Love” (romance, high-stakes drama), as this spikes Phasic Dopamine and resets the armor.
Cognitive Warning: As you de-armor, you will feel naked and exposed. You will assume everyone can see your anxiety. Dr. Nicholas Epley, Mindwise, calls this the “Illusion of Transparency.”
The armored brain projects its own internal threat level onto neutral faces. You will think people are judging you; in reality, they are just thinking about themselves. Rule: During this protocol, do not trust your social intuition. It is calibrated to “Threat,” not “Truth.” Assume you are misreading every room until your heart rate is below 90 BPM.
Psychology is the Software; Biology is the Hardware.
Standard therapy attempts to rewrite the “code” (thoughts/behaviors) while the “motherboard” (the brain’s physical structure and chemical environment) is often overheating or damaged. The science behind this protocol focuses on four specific neuro-biological mechanisms that must be addressed before psychological tools can be effective.
The “Underpinning” Principle Dr. Bruce Perry compares treating trauma to building a house. Standard therapy attempts to “decorate” the house (changing thoughts/behaviors in the Cortex) while the foundation (the Brainstem) is crumbling. You cannot hang curtains in a collapsing house.
The Modern “Role-Self” vs. The Ancient “True-Self”
Why does the brain build this armor? Psychologist Lindsay Gibson explains that Adult children of emotionally immature parents survive by creating a “Role-Self”—a defensive personality designed to please others and manage the parent’s emotions.
But we can’t just blame our immature parents for this Role Self. It really is true what they say: “It takes a village to raise a child.” The modern large society with only one or two people caring for the children is vastly insufficient. As Dr. Bruce Perry explains, our brains evolved in hunter-gatherer bands with a ratio of 4 developmentally mature adults to 1 child. Today, our “enriched” environments offer 1 immature adult to 4 children.
We are operating on less than 1/16th of the relational density our biology requires. The “Void” you feel is real. Once you have de-armored, you cannot simply return to a lonely life. You must aggressively engineer a “High-Density” social environment (A Tribe), or the brain will eventually reach for the armor again just to survive the cold.
As we grow up, our “Role-Self” becomes calcified by Dopamine and DeltaFosB. It becomes a prison. Your addiction is often just the fuel required to keep the “Role-Self” running. This protocol dissolves the chemical glue holding that false persona together, allowing your “True-Self”—the person you were before the trauma—to finally re-emerge.
Neurological De-Armoring is underpinning (not redecorating). This protocol acts as a metabolic solvent—an HDAC inhibitor—that softens the neural concrete of the brainstem by modulating Glutamate and introducing Ketones (BHB). We are digging underneath the house to pour a new foundation so that, eventually, the psychological “software” updates upstairs will actually install.
The Anti-Breakthrough (Micro-Dosing) As Dr. Perry explains, we need to temporarily abandon the therapy ideal of the “hour-long breakthrough.” A sensitized, armored nervous system cannot metabolize sixty minutes of trauma processing; that is a flood, not a fix. Dr. Perry’s data indicates the “therapeutic window” for a dysregulated brain is often only seconds long.
Your goal is Micro-Dosing Safety: 30 seconds of regulated breathing, twenty times a day. We are not running a marathon; we are doing physical therapy for a broken nervous system. Frequency beats intensity.
Part 1: THE SCIENCE (Why We Do This)
Before applying the tools, you must understand the specific “Hardware Failures” that occur during trauma, withdrawal, or chronic stress.
A. The Metabolic Red Line (>120 BPM)
We often assume we can “think” our way out of a trigger, but data proves that anatomy overrides intellect. Dr. Perry identifies a “Metabolic Red Line” for the traumatized brain: when the resting heart rate climbs above 120 BPM (a state of “Fear”), the brain physically shunts blood flow away from the Cortex (Logic/Reason) and down to the Brainstem (Survival).
In this state, functional IQ drops by 20–40 points. More importantly, this state floods the Nucleus Accumbens with the exact cocktail of catecholamines that transcribes new DeltaFosB proteins (the “armor”). The Takeaway: If you attempt to process trauma while living above this red line, you are not de-armoring; you are actively re-enforcing the armor.
B. The “Overheating” CPU: Glutamate Excitotoxicity
The Problem: Glutamate is the brain’s primary excitatory neurotransmitter. In states of stress, the brain floods with Glutamate. This is the “voltage spike”—the engine is redlining.
The Metabolic Red Line: We often assume we can ‘think’ our way out of trauma, but Dr. Bruce Perry’s data proves that anatomy overrides intellect. He identifies a ‘Metabolic Red Line’ for the traumatized brain: when the resting heart rate climbs above 120 BPM (a state of ‘Fear’), the brain physically shunts blood flow away from the Cortex (Reason) and down to the Brainstem (Survival).
In this state, functional IQ drops by 20–40 points. You literally lose the biological capacity to reason. More importantly, this state floods the Nucleus Accumbens with the exact cocktail of catecholamines that transcribes new DeltaFosB proteins. If you are living above this red line, you are not healing; you are actively re-armoring
The Mechanism: Excess Glutamate over-activates NMDA receptors, acting like a key stuck in the “On” position. This causes “excitotoxicity”—literally vibrating cells to death. Subjectively, this feels like anxiety, rage, or an “itchy brain.”
The Signal Dial (GluD Receptors): Beyond the "voltage spike" of NMDA, Johns Hopkins researchers have recently discovered the brain uses GluD receptors as a master volume knob. While NMDA is the spark, GluD manages the baseline "hum" of the synapse. In an armored state, this dial is often jammed in the "High" position (Cerebellar Ataxia/Hyper-vigilance) or "Low" (Apathy/Schizotypy). We use D-Serine as the specific key to re-calibrate this dial.
The Fix (”Lock, Stock, and Barrel”):
The Vacuum (NAC): Clears the flood by exchanging glutamate for cystine.
The Lock (Zinc/Magnesium): Physically blocks the receptor channel to stop the voltage.
The Repair (Leucine/L-Serine): L-Serine acts as a precursor to D-Serine to recalibrate the GluD 'Volume Dial.' Leucine facilitates structural repair while simultaneously tuning synaptic gain to reduce the 'itchy brain' sensation
C. The “Hardened” Circuit: Dynorphin & DeltaFosB
The Problem: To protect itself from the Glutamate storm, the brain eventually releases Dynorphin, a chemical blanket that suppresses dopamine. This creates the “Void”—a state of apathy, grayness, and an inability to feel pleasure.
Why Standard Meds Failed You If you have tried SSRIs (antidepressants) and failed, you are not crazy. Dr. Van der Kolk, in The Body Keeps the Score, showed that while Prozac helped civilians with mild trauma, it had zero effect on combat veterans with calcified PTSD.
Why? Because standard serotonin drugs treat the “software” (mood), but they cannot penetrate the “hardware” (the structural changes in the amygdala caused by severe trauma). This protocol uses Ketones and HDAC Inhibitors to remodel the physical structure of the brain that resists standard medication.
The Hardening: Chronic cycles lead to the accumulation of DeltaFosB, a protein switch that permanently alters gene expression to maintain the trauma circuitry.
The Fix (The Unlock): You cannot “wait” for this to pass. We use “System Reformats” (Shrooms/Iboga) to stimulate GDNF, which physically rewires the brain around these hardened loops.
D. The “Lagging” System: Toxicity & Hypometabolism (The Fog)
The Problem: “Brain Fog” is often a fuel crisis. Trauma causes cerebral insulin resistance—your neurons are swimming in glucose (sugar) but cannot burn it. The engine is flooded.
The Fix: If the brain cannot burn sugar, we switch fuels. We use PQQ to boost ATP, and Ketones, which bypass the broken glucose pathways and enter the mitochondria directly. This turns the lights back on immediately. We alternate hot and cold showers to boost p131 and heat shock proteins and reduce inflammation.
E. The “Save Button”: Memory Reconsolidation
The Problem: Every time you have a flashback, your brain attempts to “save” the memory again, often reinforcing the emotional trauma loop.
The Fix (”The Jammer”): Memories require visual processing power to be restored. If you occupy the Visual-Spatial Working Memory (e.g., playing Tetris) during the critical window after a flashback, the brain fails to “save” the visual details. The memory is restored, but the emotional “sting” is permanently reduced.
Instead of Tetris (which requires app/phone), you can use the “Color-Path Connect” method. This is more effective than simple counting because it forces your brain to map 3D space, which directly competes with the visual “saving” of a traumatic memory.
How to play:
Pick a color (e.g., Blue).
Trace a Path: Find every blue object in the room and mentally draw a line connecting them from left to right.
Add Complexity: Now, mentally “rotate” those objects in your mind or imagine them changing into a different shape (e.g., “That blue chair is now a blue cube”).
The Goal: You must do this for 10–20 minutes immediately after a trigger to “jam” the memory reconsolidation.
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Part 2: Brain Energy Boosting Reduces Anxiety & Depression
Recent neuroscience (Tian-Ming Gao, et al, 2025) has shown that anxiety and depression are a result of low levels of ATP in the brain (low brain energy levels). We can fix this with a morning dose of 20mg of PQQ and ketones.
KETONE DECISION: You must choose your fuel strategy. This determines your electrolyte protocol.
Strategy A: The “Crisis Mode” (BHB, Beta-hydroxybutyrate Salts)
Method: You eat a standard low-sugar diet but drink Ketones (BHB Salts) to clear the fog.
Strategy B: The “Resilience Mode” (Keto Diet)
Method: You restrict carbs (<20g/day) to force your liver to produce Ketones.
Fat: EAT FAT TO SATIETY. This is your new energy source. Do not rely on lean protein alone (chicken breast), or your body will convert the protein to sugar (Gluconeogenesis), keeping you out of ketosis.
To avoid side effects, refer to the Keto Adaptation Guide.
Part 3: THE SHIELD (Flu-Proofing & Voltage Control)
Goal: Stabilize voltage to prevent the “Biological Crash” (Headaches/Panic).
1. Electrolytes (Choose Your Path)
If on Quick Fix, Strategy A (BHB Salts / Standard Diet):
Sodium: Standard intake. DO NOT load extra salt (Risk of High Blood Pressure).
Potassium: Eat potassium-rich foods (Avocado, Potato).
If on Deep Fix, Strategy B (Keto Diet): See my Keto Adaptation Guide for electrolytes.
2. The Glutamate Shield (Anxiety):
Sulforaphane from 1 cup of broccoli sprouts (which also contain the myrosinase needed).
Function: It acts as a “Guardian of the Proteasome,” preventing the premature degradation of the cleanup machinery you are working so hard to build. Sulforaphane is also a potent Nrf2 activator; if you are in a “Glutamate Storm,” it helps clear oxidative stress.
NAC: 1.8g – 2.4g (divided doses). Mops up glutamate.
Agmatine Sulfate: 1g/day. Stabilizes NMDA receptors.
Magnesium Glycinate: 400mg (Night). The “Plug” for the anxiety channel.
The Dynorphin Bridge (Apathy):
Cordyceps mushrooms / Uridine: Upregulates Dopamine receptors without burning them out.
3. The “Nuclear Option” (Ethnobotanical)
The Stack: Microdose Iboga Nasal Spray (Bypasses digestion, quicker effect). Read my iboga microdosing guide to keep safe. While shrooms are often better for a functional mood brightener effect, iboga is its own kind of therapist that shows you what you need to see in a non-threatening way.
Female Iboga: For “Numbness/Fog” (Anima).
Male Iboga: For “Helplessness/Relapse” (Animus).
Shrooms: Hillbilly or Mazatapec strains are some of the best (0.1g - 0.2g).
Part 4: THE JAMMER (Acute Symptom Management)
Instructions: When the symptom wave hits, identify the Type and apply the Fix.
Scenario A: The “Glutamate Storm”
Symptoms: Anxiety, Rage, “Itchy” Brain, Racing Thoughts, Flashbacks.
Mechanism: The brain is firing too hot. You need to cool the system and jam the reconsolidation.
The Perry-Sequence (Rhythmic First, Visual Second)
Anatomy overrides intellect. If your heart rate is above 110-120 BPM, your “Reasoning Brain” is offline.
Step 1: Rhythmic Regulation (Brainstem): Perform 5 minutes of rhythmic, repetitive sensory input—walking, drumming on your thighs, or rhythmic “Therapeutic Sighing”.
Step 2: Check Your Baseline: Once your heart rate is below 90-100 BPM, your Cortex is receptive.
Step 3: Apply the Jammer: Now use Tetris or the “Color-Path Connect” game to overwrite the visual memory
Advanced tactic: The D-Isomer Shift. While L-Serine provides the building blocks for myelin, taking D-Serine (700mg–1400mg) on an empty stomach 45 minutes before a de-armoring session acts as a “Direct Signal Dial.”
* Use L-Serine for daily maintenance and background hardware support.
Use D-Serine for acute sessions where you need to “force” the synaptic volume down to access the brainstem. Best price from LifeLab. You should take it 45 minutes or so after taking PQQ & Ketones so that your brain is fueled when the GluD dial is turned down.
Warning: Direct D-Serine carries a higher renal (kidney) load than L-Serine. Do not exceed 30mg/kg and ensure high water intake.
Scenario B: The “Fog”
Symptoms: Confusion, Disassociation, Low Energy, “Lagging.”
Mechanism: Hypometabolism (Low Fuel) or Toxicity (Static).
Scenario C: The “Void”
Symptoms: Numbness, Boredom, “I want to Relapse.”
Mechanism: The Dynorphin block is active. You feel “dead.” You need to force a spark.
We will utilize the science of hot and cold showers as a vascular pump, and plant medicine as needed:
Hot (3 Minutes): As hot as you can safely handle. This relaxes muscles and induces mild hyperthermia, signaling the body to start producing repair proteins (HSPs/PI31).
The Metabolic Red Line: If your resting heart rate is already above 120 BPM, do NOT use high heat yet. Heat mimics exercise and will raise your heart rate further, which can re-enforce your “armor”. Stick to lukewarm-to-cold until your baseline heart rate is below 90 BPM.
Cold (1 Minute): Turn it to max cold. This provides the acute stress spike needed to activate the transport motors (p38 MAPK).
Repeat: Do this 3 times. Always end on cold.
Fun with fungi: If the showers aren’t enough, you can microdose Hillbilly or Mazatapec (balanced, happy, spiritual) shroom strains (100-300mg daily). This stimulates 5-HT2A receptors to bypass the “numb” receptors.
Activate the “Inner Father”: If you are lacking discipline, try a male iboga nasal spray micro-dose. 1 spray (equal to about 150mg of bark) in the morning, as it lasts 12 hours. Make sure to check all the dangerous iboga drug interactions. Full iboga guide here.
Part 5: THE TIMELINE (The 8-Week Path)
Weeks 1–2: The Glutamate Storm (Anxiety Phase)
Protocol:
Self-care: Hot & cold showers, alternating, ending on cold. No hot showers if heart rate > 120BPM.
Supplement daily: 1 cup broccoli sprouts, Magnesium Glycinate (400mg) + NAC (2.4g) + Agmatine (1g).
Fuel: Start with BHB Salts (Strategy A) to manage initial fog.
Rescue: “The Fire” + Chantress Seba or other music + The Repair Stack (Zn/Leu/Ser) + Tetris/Color Path for acute attacks.
Weeks 3–5: The Dynorphin Void (Depression Phase)
State: The anxiety stops, but the world turns gray/boring.
Protocol: Hot & cold showers, alternating, ending on cold). No hot showers if heart rate > 120BPM. Micro-dose Male Iboga (if heart is ok).
Transition: Consider moving to Strategy B (Keto Diet) for long-term repair (Autophagy) now that the acute storm has passed.
Rescue:
If Foggy: Inhale DMSO + Drink BHB.
If Numb: Micro-dose Male Iboga and/or Hillybilly/Mazatapec shrooms.
Week 8+: The Baseline
State: DeltaFosB degraded. Hardware reset complete.
Maintenance: Cycle off NAC. Maintain metabolic flexibility (Low Carb/Seasonally Keto).
The Aftermath: The Relational Vacuum
As the armor decays, you will experience a frightening but beautiful side effect: Interoception. Van der Kolk describes this as the ability to “feel” your own body again. For years, you have likely been numb—living in your head to avoid the pain in your chest.
As the dopamine armor fades, you will feel your heart beat. You will feel your gut churn. You will feel the wind on your skin. Do not mistake this sensitivity for anxiety. It is not a symptom of sickness; it is the symptom of coming back to life. Welcome it.
Why shrooms, there are other kind of médecine