We know so much more about trauma than ever before. Of course, trauma has always been part of a lived experience extending to all living beings, but we now have so much more information about what it does to the brain and why the body responds in the way it does. We know about the fight, flight, freeze response and how these survival states are activated by a specific part of the brain. We know that this causes certain changes in the body to ready it for action or inaction with one goal in mind: survival.
Views on trauma have evolved over the years. While it is true that trauma is more than the everyday stressors we will all experience in life, trauma doesn’t just derive from life threatening events. It is not only about what happened but how it was experienced. Bessel van der Kolk – a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who has worked with trauma for over 50 years – says that ‘trauma is something that makes you so upset it overwhelms you’.
So, it follows that while trauma can be caused by a specific event, such as a car accident, it can also arise from our ability to respond to a situation that feels out of our control and beyond our capacity to cope with. The point where our vulnerability to stress starts to outweigh our resilience to it.
A trauma response goes beyond feeling down or frustrated or sad, all of which are in the realm of ‘normal’ human experience. Instead, the whole body moves into a dysregulated state because the survival part of the brain is in charge. The thinking part takes a back seat while emotions can feel much bigger, more intense and overwhelming. Thoughts are shaped more by the fear or dread that is present and the body is ready for action. Or conversely, a numbness takes over and the body moves into a sort of shutdown mode with no energy and a feeling of disconnection. When these states take over they are often described as being outside of the window of tolerance.
It is not uncommon for some people to live in this state much of the time. The survival part of the brain can start to take over at times when it really doesn’t need to, when there is no danger or overwhelming stress, but because it has been needed in the past it thinks it is needed now. However, just as the brain has learnt to react in one way it can learn to react in another way through awareness and keeping the thinking part online.
Here is a clip of eminent psychiatrist, Dr Dan Siegel, talking about the importance of connection and integration in the brain. He demonstrates his hand model of the brain which is a very quick and convenient way to think about the different parts of the brain and what happens to them during times of overwhelming stress.