How can trauma impact our emotional processes?

 

What is traumatic for one person may not be for the next, as individual responses to trauma are based on multiple factors, including a person's natural strengths, support network, and vulnerabilities. Traumatic memories impact the central nervous system, and repercussions can include anxiety, restlessness, panic, hyperarousal, additional physiological symptoms. When the nervous system becomes stuck on alert mode, we have difficulty self-regulating, which can lead to a constant state of fight-or-flight.

While emotional responses are biological processes that fuel us for action and are intended to last long enough to encourage survival, if the emotional brain struggles to separate the real from the imagined - a common sturggle in survivors of trauma - an instant memory recall or an imagined future event might unnecessarily activate the survival response. For example, fear can play a key role in survival as it encourages us to move away from a crisis and towards safety or freedom. Following a traumatic event, however, fear may prompt the brain to encourage movement away from the emotional brain's felt threat regardless of the reality of that threat for physical survival. Survivors of trauma can also experience sleep disruption and intrusive memories, which can interfere with emotion regulation, contributing to poor impulse control. Left untreated, these repercussions can have a lasting impact on a person's life. For some individuals, the effects of trauma can be so severe that they experience loss of identity.

Yet there is always hope for recovery - and it takes courage to reach out for help! Recovery is a journey, with a timeframe and route unique to each individual survivor. Investing in your own healing path involves finding the right support and treatment that works best for you, including talking to a trusted friend or family member, seeking support from a mental health professional, and/or joining a support group.

A supportive therapeutic environment can help us access and process emotions, as processing involves using experiential and somatic techniques to help increase awareness of and engagement with our emotions in real-time. By accessing and processing emotions, we can begin to reduce anxiety and depression and achieve greater self-awareness, resilience, and growth. With the right support and treatment, it is possible to heal and to reduce the way in which symptoms - which are a normal response to an abnormal event - are interfering with your life.

 

broken image

Recommended further reading:

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk