What is trauma?

Trauma is when you experience something where you believe your life could be in danger or you experience extreme fear. During this time, your brain is not able to process the content of the experience as there are high levels of emotional arousal.

 

What happens in your brain when you experience trauma?

There are two main parts of the brain that are heightened when you are experiencing something traumatic: the amygdala and the hippocampus.

The amygdala is known as the “fear centre” due to its ability to automatically sense real or perceived danger. It will assess any threat and send information to other parts of the brain to advise on how you should respond depending on the situation.

Whenever your brain perceives a threat, you may feel emotions such as fear, anxiety or anger. These emotions will then trigger a response, as the body prepares to deal with the danger. Your brain works this way to help keep you alive in threatening situations.

The hippocampus is closely connected to the amygdala, but the hippocampus’ job is focused on memory. If you experience something traumatic, the memory of that event isn’t stored properly by the hippocampus as the amygdala is heightened and pulling all the resources to it. This means that you may not remember all details of the experience, however you may remember them later on, it could be a smell, a colour or a sound that brings that memory back up.

 

How can your body respond to trauma?

You may have heard of the “fight or flight response”, which is referring to our automatic reaction of fighting or running away when you face a threat. There are actually 5 responses that you can display following a traumatic incident. All of these responses are biological responses that your brain will do automatically to keep you safe when it perceives you are in danger.

 

The Five F’s of Trauma

Fight – it is what it sounds like, your body gets prepared to fight someone or something off. The threatened individual may respond with overt aggression, but this can also include things like screaming or saying “no”.

Flight – is when your body gets prepared to run away; this can mean you put space between yourself and the threat. So you could physically run away, you could move to another space, hide or you could back away. Sometimes it may not be possible to physically run away so this could be where our mind disconnects from our body and the situation.

Freeze – is when your body completely freezes, you cannot move and some people cannot even think. Animals often freeze to avoid fights and potential further harm, and can ‘play dead’ to avoid being seen and eaten by predators.

Flop – is almost like fainting but your brain doesn’t actually turn off. Your body becomes very limp, as this is its way of protecting itself from the pain when it reaches the limit of what it can take – this can be physical or mental pain.

Friend – when experiencing a traumatic event, you may be nice to the person who hurt you, help them in some way or you may participate in order to prevent yourself from being in further danger. It is important to note that does not mean that you were consenting, it is a survival instinct.

 

You may feel conflicted about how your body reacted to the trauma. In a moment of danger, these responses all happen automatically to try to keep you safe and to reduce any further harm.

 

How these responses still occur even after the trauma

If you have experienced trauma, even a lot of time after the traumatic incident you can live in states of hyperarousal, hypoarousal or both.

Hyperarousal is the ‘red alert response’ which activates the fight or flight response. This can include hypervigilance, anger, rigid posture, tearfulness, agitation, and restlessness.

Hypoarousal is the response which activates collapse and submit reactions. This can include going floppy, spacing out, becoming mute or freezing. Sometimes this can also cause dissociation (disconnecting from the body, mind or emotions or a combination) when a situation or event causes emotions to become too overwhelming.

These states of arousal can be extremely distressing and therefore, being able to feel somewhere in the middle of these two extremes would be helpful. The concept known as the Window of Tolerance refers to the optimal (best possible/ideal) zone of arousal for someone to function in everyday life.

If you have suffered a trauma, you will have an ‘optimal arousal zone’ which is slightly smaller than someone who hasn’t experienced significant trauma. Any stressors you have in your life can easily move you into a hyperarousal state or hypoarousal state. This often happens unconsciously, but when you are in a hyperarousal state or hypoarousal state, you can find it more difficult to manage the world around you.

To stay in your window of tolerance (our optimal arousal zone) means you are present, your emotions are balanced, and you can think rationally and deal with stress in a more healthy and manageable way.

Things that can help you to stay in this zone can be: exercise, grounding, mindfulness techniques and any other form of self-care. Doing these will help to expand your optimal arousal zone which can help make going into hyperarousal or hypoarousal states happen less frequently.

 

Risk taking behaviours

If you have experienced sexual violence and abuse, sometimes survivors can engage in what are considered to be ‘risky behaviours’ as a way of coping with their experiences. This could include behaviours that can be considered to be dangerous and/or addictive. For example, you may be addicted to anything from dangerous situations, food, sex, alcohol, drugs or gambling. These things can become addictive because they can fill a need for a person in some way. A common reason can be as a way to numb the feelings and memories about abuse.

When you experienced your trauma, you did not have many options or control and so it makes sense if you have deviated towards these behaviours. But these behaviours or addictions can often be self-defeating and destructive. Firstly, it can help to recognise the patterns of behaviour that you do. To move forwards, remember you now have options and control which means you can pick and choose between your coping behaviours, discarding the ones that no longer work for you and keeping positive skills you have developed.

Consider:

• What coping behaviours do you currently have?
• How do they affect your life today? Is this positive or negative?
• If this is negative, what healthier strategies could you use?

 

Remember: how you reacted was not your fault.