It seems like everywhere we look, someone is talking about trauma, how it affects us and how to get rid of it. But in order to take the first steps in your healing journey, you need to actually understand what trauma consists of.  

Unfortunately, my experience is that most people don’t really know what trauma is, tending to think it is not a big deal or that it is the new “it” thing when, in reality, its consequences are far from harmless! If left untreated or ignored, trauma can seriously hinder a person’s quality of life and mental health. 

SO, WHAT EXACTLY IS TRAUMA?

 

Let’s oversimplify things: trauma is when you get hurt. This can be physically hurt- by breaking a bone – or emotionally hurt. The kind of trauma we talk about here is the second type, which consists of an emotional response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event. 

What makes emotional trauma different from other types of trauma is that it is typically the result of an experience that overwhelms the individual’s capacity to cope. This then can lead to feelings of intense fear, helplessness, and even horror. 

Emotional trauma is often characterized by symptoms such as intrusive thoughts, nightmares, flashbacks, difficulty regulating emotions, and difficulty trusting others. It more often than not leads to post-traumatic stress disorder (commonly referred to PTSD). When the trauma took place in childhood, we talk about C -PTSD. Some signs of PTSD involve physical, psychological and emotional distress symptoms, which affect a person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviour.  

Traumatic events can be the death of a loved one, experiencing (emotional or physical) abuse, being in or witnessing a car crash, going through an extremely difficult relationship or breakup or even experiencing a natural disaster like an earthquake or hurricane. 

The trauma isn’t the experience of the event itself, but the way your body and mind respond to it. If you feel very anxious, overwhelmed, saddened or ongoing shock after going through one of the above scenarios, you may be experiencing trauma. One thing that makes it a whole more difficult to identify emotional trauma, is the fact that two people will experience the same event in different ways. In other words: what may be normal for one person, may be perceived as being extremely traumatic to another. 

Traumatic responses will create stress, which affects the brain and, if untreated, may have long-term effects. This is why it is crucial to take steps to heal your trauma. 

BUT HOW DOES TRAUMA ACTUALLY AFFECT THE BRAIN?

 

Ok, so now that we have the simple explanation out of the way, let’s get clinical and talk about the actual ways trauma can affect the brain!

In 2015, PLoS One published a study which shows different ways trauma impacts the brain, specifically five areas of it: the basal ganglia, the amygdala, the anterior cingulate cortex, the thalamus and the right temporal lobe. 

Trauma in the basal ganglia will make you overly anxious or tense, and can happen when someone jumps you or will get you to freeze when you experience true fear. The amygdala, as you probably know, is responsible for how you respond emotionally and can cause extreme anxiety if it is overactive. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is what allows your thoughts to go from one to the next. When trauma takes place here, it will make you more argumentative, hold grudges and worry about things more than you would normally do. The thalamus is in charge of how you process your emotions and, when it experiences trauma, can make you feel overwhelmed by normal sounds or images, making them too much to handle. Last, but not least, the right temporal lobe is the one responsible for your memory, learning, processing what you hear and see and for holding your mood stable. Trauma in this area can cause you to be unable to read facial expressions or body language, which means normal or even neutral expressions may make you feel the need to protect yourself. 

You can read the whole study here, but it is groundbreaking news, which can help us take steps into the right direction to heal your trauma and, quite literally, revert its effects on the brain. 

As you see, there is more to trauma – and its effects – than what meets the eye. It comes as no surprise that healing trauma isn’t as simple as putting a band-aid on a wound. Furthermore, emotional trauma often is the result of more than one event having taken place. Therefore it is only natural that it takes time, and a lot of work, to revert its effects. 

Keep this in mind next time someone tells you they have trauma or experienced trauma. After all, now that you know how serious its effects are, you can see things from a closer perspective and may even be able to lend a helping hand to that loved one who is going through something. Like we’ve said before, you don’t need to understand something, in order to be understanding towards someone.