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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. 1 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. 2 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. 3