Healing Fear 5 Of : Building Resilience And Creating Possibilities
Did you know our brain is capable of growing and changing across the course of your life? This concept is called neuroplasticity. We have the ability to actually train our brain into an empowered and resilient state.
In this video Dr. Kate teaches a new protocol for harnessing the power of Neuroplasticity to create new neural pathways and build your resilient brain. Happy Brain Building!
Reoccuring Trauma Symptoms: Nightmares Memories Flashbacks
Most of the trauma symptoms are intrusive, but possibly the worst offenders are nightmares, memories, and flashbacks. These are exciting and disturbing memories of traumatic events, and when triggered, its like our bodies are there.
When this happens, your blood pressure spikes, and stress hormones are released as if it is really happening again, which merely adds to the mounting stress you feel. While this is happening, you have irrational thoughts because, as mentioned before, that part of your brain shuts off. So, when triggered, a person will act without understanding the consequences.
One concept that is relatively new regarding this trauma symptom is that the brain is lazy. This means that your brain is trying to heal and process through these nightmares, and within flashbacks, youre brain stops and says, lets work on this.
The laziness part comes from now wanting to reopen and examine these memories unless its convenient, and oddly enough, these moments are the most suitable.
After the Flashback
To be sure, flashbacks are draining. It can take a lot of time afterward for a person to regain their mental balance, and it takes a lot more energy than someone who hasnt experienced trauma, for example. Another way to look at this is to look at a couple in therapy. One partner has trauma, and the other does not. One can get triggered by their partner in an argument, and its difficult for them to acknowledge that an older experience is triggering them.
Stay Away From Alcohol
A drink to bring on sleep or to take off the edge is one way some choose to go through the stress of a traumatic event. Theyâre trying to numb the emotions or forget things. It may feel like itâs working in the short term, but it can do damage in the long run. The problem is, if the stress continues, alcohol use may continue, too. That could lead to mental and physical problems and long-term dependence.
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Why Understanding What Trauma Does To The Brain Helps You Heal
February 14, 2020Rhonda Kelloway, LCSW, SEP
Trauma happens when you experience an event as physically or emotionally harmful or even life-threatening. Your bodys ability to cope is overwhelmed. Even though the event passes, trauma has lasting adverse effects on a persons mental, physical, social, emotional, and spiritual well-being. With nearly 61% of men and 51% of women experiencing trauma in their lifetime, its essential to understand what trauma does to the brain to be able to heal and minimize life-long adverse effects.
How To Cope With Trauma Triggers
Identifying your triggers is the first step towards coping with them because you cannot avoid them all. Increased awareness of the source for your triggers also helps you recognize why you are reacting the way you are. This understanding can help you feel more in control because there are patterns and predictability to what you are experiencing.
Here are some other healthy strategies to lessen their impact:
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Trauma Disrupts Daily Life
All this trauma-driven activity in the brain translates to symptoms that change the way you live and behave. PTSD is an often-confusing state driven by survival instincts that take charge and override normal.
Post-traumatic symptoms fall into four categories:
- Thinking Intrusive thoughts and flashbacks related to the trauma conversely, you may experience memory loss.
- Emotional Intense emotions and moods, such as anger or sadness accompanied by sudden rage or tears. Negativity and blame are common, as are numbness and anxiety. It can be difficult to find joy in things you once loved.
- Behavioral Avoiding anything related to the trauma or its memories. For example, going out of your way to avoid the site of a traumatic event or hiding pictures of someone connected with your trauma.
- Physical Bodily changes such as increased heart rate and shortened breath, feeling jittery or on edge, startling easily, panic attacks, insomnia, and nightmares.
Brain fog is a common complaint among trauma victims, who find it difficult to focus, concentrate or take in new information. If you suffered from a mental health disorder before a traumatic event, symptoms of that disorder could worsen. Trauma can affect relationships you may withdraw from others, especially those who seem insensitive or oblivious to what youre going through.
The Brains Response To Trauma
Trauma can change your brain on many levels, from the way you make decisions down to your immediate, subconscious responses to the world around you. Part of the reason it can be so hard to overcome the effects of trauma is that it goes after several areas of your brain at once.
According to a 2006 study by NIH, trauma mainly affects three important parts of your brain: the amygdala, which is your emotional and instinctual center the hippocampus, which controls memory and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulating your emotions and impulses. All three parts work together to manage stress.
When youre reminded of a traumatic experience, your amygdala goes into overdrive, acting just as it would if you were experiencing that trauma for the first time. Your prefrontal cortex also becomes suppressed, so youre less capable of controlling your fear–youre stuck in a purely reactive state.
Meanwhile, trauma also leads to reduced activity in the hippocampus, one of whose functions is to distinguish between past and present. In other words, your brain cant tell the difference between the actual traumatic event and the memory of it. It perceives things that trigger memories of traumatic events as threats themselves.
Trauma can cause your brain to remain in a state of hypervigilance, suppressing your memory and impulse control and trapping you in a constant state of strong emotional reactivity.
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The Fight Or Flight Response
Its important to understand that your fight or flight response is an automatic response. When a threat is present, the body pauses all functions that are involved in the usual rest and digest state. These physiological changes help improve the chances of survival. Some changes are increased heart and breathing rate, the release of stress hormones , dilated pupils, and increased blood pressure, to name a few. Its a total body shift to a threat response state.
As long as you can run from the threat or fight back, these physiological changes will continue. When youre caught or can no longer run or fight, you freeze. This freezing is when your nervous system is too overwhelmed to offer any other solutions to survive. This is the point where most trauma occurs.
Healing Fear 4 Of : Healing In Your Own Hands: Cpr For The Amygdala
CPR for the Amygdala is an easy-to-use tool for calming the mind and body in a moment of emotional hijack. Watch this short video and learn how to calm your brain through the engagement of the Self-Havening touch and brain exercises. A fast brain is a reactive brain, and a slow brain is a calm brain. Lets calm the mind and put you back in charge of your emotional state.
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How To Find The Right Art Therapist
To find an art therapist qualified to work with PTSD, look for a trauma-informed therapist. This means the therapist is an art expert but also has other tools to support survivors on their recovery journey, like talk therapy and CBT. Art will always remain the centerpiece of treatment.
When seeking art therapy for trauma, its important to seek a therapist who is specifically knowledgeable in the integration of trauma-based approaches and theories, advises Curtis. Its important to note that any intervention done with visual and sensory materials can also be triggering to the client and should therefore only be used by a trained art therapist.
A trained art therapist will have at least a masters degree in psychotherapy with an additional art therapy credential. Many therapists may advertise they do art therapy. Only those with certified credentials have gone through the rigorous training essential for PTSD treatment. The Art Therapy Credential Boards Find A Credentialed Art Therapist feature can help you find a qualified counselor.
Where To Find Treatment
There are a variety of treatment options available, with new and innovative techniques emerging and being researched for their effectiveness. The key to accessing treatment is to acknowledge that these resources could be helpful to you or your loved one. People who struggle with PTSD often experience feelings of shame and fear, finding it difficult to initiate seeking help. Many struggle in isolation with hope that the symptoms they are experiencing will go away on their own.
If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
For more mental health resources, see our National Helpline Database.
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Ensure Your Personal Safety
If you are in a dangerous situation healing is not likely until you deal with the current emergency. Make a safety plan and execute it. You need to feel safe and have reliable food clothing and shelter before you think about other aspects of recovery. But dont put off recovery waiting for the day you will miraculously feel safe. Get started on the safety part first. Just taking steps to move to a safe place can be empowering.
Challenges to your safety dont only come from outside. You may be a big part of the danger. Avoid, control, or work on urges and cravings. Confront any urges to commit suicide and seek help immediately if you have thoughts of suicide. Recognize and deal with non-suicidal self-injury, substance abuse, eating disorders, and the urge to try out risky behaviors. Dont put yourself at risk to be victimized anymore.
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How Trauma Makes Neurobiological Changes To Your Brain And Body
Sometimes when we go through trauma, PTSD occurs. Here’s what to know.
Reviewed by:
Vivian Sun
Dr. Vivian Sun is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her medical degree from University of Maryland and psychiatry training at University of Pennsylvania and Stanford. She is board certified in general and child/adolescent psychiatry and specializes in the treatment of conditions such as ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and PTSD.
Taylor Leamey
Taylor Leamey writes about all things wellness, specializing in mental health, sleep and nutrition coverage. She has invested hundreds of hours into studying and researching sleep and holds a Certified Sleep Science Coach certification from the Spencer Institute. Taylor also holds bachelor’s degrees in both Psychology and Sociology.
Post-traumatic stress disorder occurs as a by-product of a traumatic event you’ve experienced. Essentially, PTSD is a mental health condition that impacts your ability to regulate your fear response. While not every traumatic event will result in PTSD, it impacts around 12 million people yearly, with women being more likely to have PTSD symptoms.
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Ways To Heal From Emotional Trauma
Healing from psychological and emotional trauma is an individual experience. What works for one person may not for another. Below are options that may help you move towards healing but the path is certainly not the same for everyone. If you feel lost or overwhelmed by an experience, professional guidance from a behavioral health provider may help you find your way.
What Happens If Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Goes Untreated
While post traumatic stress has become more visible and discussed in recent years, especially in the aftermath of the Iraq War, thousands of people still struggle with undiagnosed and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.
The consequences of untreated post traumatic stress disorder can be severe and can impact an individuals mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical health. The risks of untreated post-traumatic stress disorder include:
Ongoing stress and anxiety
- Individuals with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder may suffer from chronic episodes of traumatic stress, anxiety, or flashbacks, often triggered by sights, sounds, or sensations associated with the traumatic event. Over time, this stress response can lead to a deterioration of physical health, as well.
Difficulty managing personal and professional relationships
- Post-traumatic stress disorder can often lead individuals to isolate themselves away from family, friends, and colleagues as a way of coping with intrusive thoughts and feelings. When left untreated over a long period of time, the disorder can cause rifts within families and lead to lost jobs, missed school, and other complications.
Health complications
- Post-traumatic stress disorder has been linked to other health issues, including difficulty sleeping, long-term pain, challenges with blood flow or the heart, and muscular or skeletal injuries. Psychologically, PTSD sufferers are more likely to struggle with anxiety and panic disorders.
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Ptsd Recovery Is A Lifestyle
PTSD is more than just a diagnosis or mental illness, it’s a lifestyle. With poststraumatic stress you live every moment feeling, seeking and identifying the origin of danger, threat and fear. That’s your new normal.
Oppositely, in healing you release all of those behaviors and begin to live life feeling safe, effective and confident. That’s a big change! Especially if you have struggled with PTSD for any length of time, or if you ever despaired that you would never heal, it can seem very surreal to finally feel things changing for the better.
To mitigate this feeling so that it becomes more normalized, try this:
Go deeper into that surreal feeling and connect it to the present moment. For example, pause, take a deep breath in, notice the feeling and identify what about the present moment is making it appear and allowing you to feel it so acutely. Is this feeling coming from the people you’re with, the place you’re in, the thought you just had? Recognizing how your present experience relates to and even causes this feeling of well-being does some important things:
- Connects your good feeling to the present moment
- Highlights that your present feels safe
- Forms a new pathway in your mind for feeling good
- Teaches your mind and body that this feeling is real
Trauma And The Brain Fact #2
There are many structures in your brain that engage during a traumatic moment, but there are 4 that play critical roles when youre in survival mode:
How these 4 structures interact and how they function individually affect how you feel during and after trauma. When they over- or under-function they change how you think, process information, sleep and even behave.
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Healing Fear 3 Of : Our Fear Brain Loves To Gossip
Our Amygdala loves to gossip about all the scary things. Strange isnt it? Shell interact with many different brain parts creating her very own choose your own adventures of doom when shes afraid. This results in increasing agitation, stress, anxiety, rumination and more. Oh our sweet Amy shes always trying to keep us safe at the cost of our quality of life! In this video Dr. Kate explores the relationship of the Amy the amygdala with the working memory and prefrontal cortex and discusses the role Amy plays in defining our sense of self in the world around us. When we help Amy heal, we are empowering ourselves to build resilience and agency. Come learn how to stop those ruminating thoughts that cause so much pain and beginning building your resilient neuro-garden!
How Trauma Affects The Brain Immediately
All humans have built-in survival instincts. One of these is the fight or flight response, which originates in a part of the brain called the amygdala. One of the primary functions of the amygdala is to detect threats and danger. When the amygdala identifies a potential threat, it works to sound the alarm by activating the sympathetic nervous system.2,5
The sympathetic nervous system is like a gas pedal that floods the body with stress hormones and chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline. This puts the body into a state of fight or flight, causing several physiological changes in the body and brain. These changes arent random they are meant to increase the chance of survival in a life-or-death situation.5
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What Routine Brain Imaging Misses About Head Injuries
If you seek medical treatment for a head injury, you may undergo certain types of brain imaging, such as MRI or CT. These neuroimaging technologies show the structure of the brain, but they dont provide information on how it is functioning. For this reason, an MRI or CT scan can show normal results even if youre struggling with symptoms.
Brain SPECT imaging, on the other hand, shows how the brain functions. It measures blood flow and activity in the brain and shows 3 things: areas of the brain with healthy activity, areas with too much activity, and areas with too little activity. This can be more valuable in cases where cognitive dysfunction, psychological issues, or behavioral problems are present.