Download Understanding Trauma, Its Impact on brain and body and its Treatment

Understanding Trauma, Its Impact on brain and body and its Treatment:
Created by Viriri G: http://www.strl-psychotherapy.co.uk/
When we go through a traumatic experience it is not our conscious mind that helps us to
survive it, all humans unconsciously rely upon the primitive brain (the reptilian brain) for
survival instincts. When faced with a life threat, the Hippocampus part of the brain that
acts as the (security guard) using our five senses it scans and pick up signs of imminent
danger in our environment. Bear in mind that the hippocampus brain does not care whether
the threat is real or not, as long as it believes we are in danger it instantly sends the
danger signal to the Amygdala (the emotional brain), which is the brain’s emotional
memory centre. The amygdala triggers our emotions faster than our conscious brain. It has
a unique “speed dial circuits” that instantly ‘trigger the alarm system’ in the reptilian brain
as if we are in real danger. The reptilian brain reacts impulsively to the amygdala’s alarm,
preparing the body to fight or flee. Our heart rate and breathing increases to speed oxygen
to muscles, and our conscious brain is subdued as we are in our primitive animalistic brain.
The benefits of the reptilian brain is to survive the threat, the cost for survival is more
often than not, we are left with no clear recollection of the traumatic experience, because
we survived the experience without full conscious awareness of it, the memory of it is then
stored as unprocessed and fragmented in the form of emotions, feelings, sensations and
behaviours. When the traumatic experience is triggered, our prefrontal cortex (our
conscious brain) shuts down, the reptilian brain takes over, we won’t be able to tell the
difference between what is real and what is not. We get overwhelmed by feelings and
impulses or driven to action. These are the intense responses and symptoms that ‘tell the
story’ of our unprocessed traumatic experience without words and without our conscious
awareness, that we are reliving the past event (s) and its feelings. This means we
remember traumatic experiences less in words and more with your feelings and your
bodies.
How Trauma Affects The Nervous System: The nervous system, which is controlled by the
reptilian brain, is basically the body’s electrical wiring; it’s a complex collection of nerves
and specialised cells that communicate signals between different parts of the body. It
controls the heart rate, breathing and all body muscles. The hippocampus, the amygdala
and the reptilian brain do not operate independently of one another. They work as a team
and have established numerous interconnections through which they influence one another.
However overwhelming traumatic experiences can disrupt all that and creates chaos in our
brain. Following an overwhelming experience(s) the strong emotions remains stored in their
raw form unprocessed and can easily become a trigger to overreactions in our present lives.
When this happens the hippocampus, in particular, seems to be very sensitive to stress. It
loses the ability to distinguish between past and present experiences or interpret
environmental contexts correctly. It activates extreme stress responses when triggered
with environmental situations that only remotely resemble something from past traumatic
experiences. The amygdala could remain activated, and can become hypersensitive and
overreacts to normal triggers. The nervous system can remain aroused, stress hormones
such as the adrenaline and cortisol continue to be produced in high amounts.
When this happens our traumatic emotional memories can get out of hand. The memories
become "deep rooted" and inappropriately remembered. Since the ‘fight or flight failed to
shut done the consequences are we are in a permanent state of ‘fight or flight’ response.
By its very nature, the ‘fight or flight’ system overrides our conscious brain whereby we
lose the ability to think and reason effectively, because we are in a state of alert and
"attack" mode. In this state we tend to perceive almost everything in our world as a
possible threat to our survival. Small things begin to remind us of our bad memories and
cause great stress and at times the triggers don’t come to our conscious awareness. As
such, we become vulnerable and are more likely to be unpredictable, often display
outburst of anger and extreme behaviours. Like a hunter in the jungle, the hippocampus is
on the look out for every possible danger. We may overreact to the slightest thing or
comment. Our fear is exaggerated. Our thinking is distorted. We see everything through the
filter of possible danger. We narrow our focus to those things that can harm us. Fear
becomes the lens through which we see the world.
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When we have experienced an overwhelming traumatic event that leaves us in a state of
fear the mind is always "on"—scanning both our inner and outer world for possible threats to
our well-being—either real or imagined. This constant vigilance of the mind not only
distracts us with excessive worry but can keep our fight or flight response continuously
activated. People are often diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when the
mind is affected by traumatic experiences as described above. PTSD is as real as diabetes,
cancer, and heart attacks. Just because you don’t have a visible wound or have an arm or
leg missing doesn’t mean that your PTSD is not as real or painful or exhausting as any other
disease or physical ailment. PTSD is a brain injury that affects the whole body. Sufferers of
severe PTSD with no access to professional help they will often either take drugs, misuse
alcohol, abuse themselves, kill themselves or any combination of the four. Remember it is
possible to heal if you have PTSD
Treatment Considerations: It’s difficult for most psychotherapists using traditional talk
therapies that rely on conscious awareness to help trauma survivors, since, may be not all,
but most survivors do not have full conscious awareness of their traumatic experiences that
are the root cause of their symptoms. Trauma survivors require treatment methods that get
in touch with bodily memories as well as the conscious brain. As we can see from the above
explanation trauma memories are stored raw, fragmented and in emotional form. When
triggered the body often "remembers" things before the conscious brain does. Healing for a
traumatized person is possible however will have to start with core physiological and
emotional states, and then the mind will start changing. The treatment should help people
not become so aroused that they shut down physiologically, so they will be able to process
the trauma themselves.
Regardless of type of treatment, trauma therapists must help people to understand their
symptoms, be able to anticipate them and learn to regulate their emotional states first
(calming, grounding, breathing, soothing techniques). This will help a trauma survivor to
find the strength to face their traumatic materials and begin to move on and reclaim their
life’s back. Once survivors are in a position to manage distressing emotions the best way to
treat symptoms associated with traumatic memories is to use treatment methods that
access and process bodily memories and help the brain to return to the same state of
consciousness as when the memory was initiated. Eye Movement Desensitization and
Reprocessing (EMDR), is currently one of the most popular and well-researched methods of
trauma treatment developed in the 1980s. EMDR does not focus on narrative recall but on
reprocessing key elements of traumatic events stated above. The EMDR process itself seems
to allow access to the reptile brain. EMDR is shown to be more effective than narrative
therapies because it works with and through the brain and the body to resolve traumarelated mind and body responses. Those who have suffered for years from anxiety or
distressing memories, nightmares, insomnia, abuse or other traumatic events, and those
who have made slow progress in the past, or who have not benefited from more traditional
therapies can now gain relief from EMDR.
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Document Source:
1. Fisher J. http://www.janinafisher.com/tmodel.ph or
http://www.janinafisher.com/tmodel.php
2. Jovasevic V, Corcoran KA, Leaderbrand K, et al. GABAergic mechanisms regulated by miR33 encode state-dependent fear. Nature Neuroscience. 2015.
3. Neil F. Neimark, M.D. 5 Minute Stress Mastery
http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.html
4. Vizard D (2012). How to manage behaviour in further education. Sage
publications.
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