Trauma in the Brain
Are you experiencing feelings of shame and worthlessness? A loss of a sense of future or hopelessness? High anxiety? Nightmares or flashbacks? Hypervigilance or mistrust? Feeling disconnected from your body or like you are watching yourself from a distance?
Are you having a hard time concentrating? Trouble recalling memories? Experiencing increased irritability? Depression? Numbness? Do you feel overwhelmed emotionally?
These can all be symptoms of trauma. Anyone can experience trauma and it can impact individuals differently. For example, two people involved in a car accident can have vastly different responses. One person can quickly recover from the accident while the other internalizes this experience as a traumatic event and may go on to develop symptoms as described above.
Even symptom development can look different for different individuals. One person can experience immediate symptoms, often known as “acute” symptoms, while another can experience delayed symptoms that last for a long time, typically referred to as “chronic” symptoms.
My hope for this blog is to share with you a little about how experiencing traumatic events impacts and changes the brain. Trauma responses can be confusing and can impact many aspects of an individual’s life, sometimes in ways that the person themself is unaware of.
To begin, let’s start with discussing some key parts of the brain that are impacted by traumatic events. The brainstem, often referred to as the “reptilian brain” is the first part of our brains to develop. This area is responsible for controlling automatic and instinctive body responses such as breathing, heart rate, and basic bodily functions. It is also responsible for the “fight and flight” reactions that keep us alive. For example, a deer being stalked by a lion may have the instinct to run away which is controlled by the brainstem and does not require conscious effort or thought.
The next part, the Limbic system is often referred to as the “mammalian brain” which controls non-verbal, emotional, and relational experiences. This includes our memories, habits, and emotions we experience in our day-to-day life. This is often understood as what allows us to make decisions based on past experiences. This part of the brain includes the amygdala which is our “emotional memory center” or “alarm” telling us whether or not we are in danger which then communicates to the brainstem whether to take action or not.
Finally, we have our frontal lobes, known as the “thinking brain” that sets humans apart from most other animals. This includes reasoning, problem-solving, and verbal expression. This allows us to use language, have abstract thoughts, and use imagination. When we are actively experiencing a traumatic event or feeling triggered by a past traumatic event, research on brain scans shows us that this part of the brain goes “offline”.
So what happens when a person experiences a potentially traumatic event?
When someone experiences an event that is potentially life-threatening the frontal lobe goes offline, overwhelmed typically by feelings and impulses, the amygdala in the limbic system turns on the alarm, and the brainstem reacts in order to help the body survive. The brainstem does this by turning on our sympathetic nervous system which results in increasing our heart rate, stopping or dramatically increasing breathing, stopping digestion, and tensing our muscles to either fight, run, or shut down completely (typically referred to as “freezing”).
Once the life-threatening event is over and we have either run to safety, fought off the attacker, or frozen in place (if needed), then our parasympathetic nervous system activates which allows us to breath more fully, return to a calm state, and returns us to normal body functions such as digestion and our baseline heart rate.
In some situations, especially with todays increasing complexity of new threats such as relational conflicts and stress, we end up being stuck in a heightened state where we are constantly searching for danger or reading our environment in a way that feels as though the danger is still present. This can occur when we were unable to run or fight off the danger, or in situations where we are experiencing “complex trauma” such as when we are constantly faced with potential danger. This happens often for women stuck in abusive relationships or in children and teens who experience abuse in their homes. If you are interested in learning more about how trauma impacts the brain check out this video.
As I mentioned previously, trauma is very complex in itself and there can be many factors that go into determining if someone struggles with symptoms following a traumatic event. Trauma can happen to anyone and it can feel isolating and leave the person filled with shame and self-doubt.
If you have experienced an event or situation that you feel may have been traumatic for you (which I like to define as “anything experienced or witnessed that felt so overwhelming you could not cope with it at the time”) hopefully this blog has allowed you to begin understanding what may be occurring in your brain. If you or someone you know has experienced a traumatic event, it is very important to seek out support in order to achieve healing. Please contact me today to get started!
If you are interested in learning more about how trauma impacts the body, stay tuned to check out my next blog, Trauma in the Body.
