Trauma and the body

Remember that bear? While I was using it as an example of the human fear response, we can probably agree that had the bear actually attacked, a survivor of such an attack might experience fairly profound post-traumatic stress. The sudden fear for one’s life can trigger the adrenaline/cortisol release discussed previously.

In an attempt to ready the body for physical confrontation, readily available fuel and oxygen are pumped to the muscles, while adrenaline gives us greater-than-usual strength and agility. But doing so necessarily does things like raise the body’s blood pressure, and it requires a bit of a cognitive trade-off. In order to prepare you for split-second decision making, the brain powers down several key sections of the brain that we otherwise rely on quite heavily in our day to day lives. For the technically minded, you might think of this as “booting into safe mode”.

While during the day our sensory input is processed by the brain first into short-term memory, and ultimately into long-term storage in the hippocampus, during traumatic events this encoding is disrupted. While the brain continues to keep something of a record for what happened, the necessary changes that happen during the “fight or flight” response turns off parts of our brain like the basal ganglia, which plays an essential role in regulating speech. In fact, one of the most common signs that someone has just experienced a traumatic event might be the inability to make words. But articulation isn’t the only thing that suffers.

Think for a minute about that beach. How does that memory surface for you? For many people, it’s like tugging on a string: the more you pull, the more comes out. For some memories, you can watch and re-experience them like hitting “play” on a movie. All it takes is a reminder of the original event. Memories stored in the hippocampus can be retrieved almost like searching a library index. One thing makes you think of another thing until you’ve arrived at that specific memory, which you can then retrieve at your leisure.

But traumatic memories aren’t stored the same way, and they’re not stored together. When our limbic systems are overwhelmed, memories can be stored in fragments. This is why many people find it nearly impossible to remember terrifying events in sequence, and why people may find themselves suddenly upset at a certain smell or an otherwise benign sight. These things tug at our traumatic memories in pieces, and they often come out disjointed.

Finally, the other region of the brain that’s affected is something called the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is responsible for decision-making. The PFC is one of the last parts of the brain to develop, and is actually one of the arguments for higher ages of consent or licit substance use. In fact, for some people the PFC doesn’t completely grow until age 26. Traumatic events that happen prior to the full development of our brains can have more lasting impacts on our development and can make it harder to make decisions. The brain shuts off the PFC during the “fight or flight” reaction to reduce the time needed to make decisions. Instead of weighing the risks and choosing the next most appropriate steps, our brains often go on autopilot, working entirely off of instinct. These “power downs” of brain activity in certain regions are most notable, however, in memory.

Does this sound familiar?

You are not alone.

While it can be terrifying to experience the things described above, most people can find relief in proper therapy. A good therapist will help you feel safe, help you find ways to self-soothe after hard sessions (or unexpected bouts of anxiety) and if you wish, find a safe way to re-tell the experience. While there are many schools of thought on why trauma narratives are beneficial to survivors, it is also true that increasingly research is looking into the ways that we may be able to treat trauma without having to revisit memories that are otherwise too painful. The important part is that you don’t have to feel the way you do right now for the rest of your life. If you’re having trouble finding a therapist, I would encourage you to look on a referral source like Zencare, which vets therapists before listing them. I will also be posting community-generated lists later, with permission of the list owners.