Understanding the Effects of Trauma (Part I)

Human history portrays stories of lives that recount tragic experiences, and the history of trauma has a significant and diverse range of expression from war, natural and human disasters, family violence, and brutalities to sexual exploitation, terrorism, and child abuse. More people within history have experienced trauma than those that have not. Yet, human history is also filled with many stories of post-traumatic growth, resilience, hope, and human flourishing despite these traumatic accounts.

The National Center for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) reports that “going through trauma is not rare. About 6 of every 10 men and 5 out of every 10 women experience at least one trauma in their lives. Women are more likely to experience sexual assault and child sexual abuse. Men are more likely to experience accidents, physical assault, combat, disaster, or to witness death or injury.” The growing field of traumatology, the interdisciplinary study of various aspects of trauma, is giving important perspective as research findings and ongoing reflections within complex trauma have exploded in the last two decades.

Overlapping aspects of life experiences that have contributed to the language of the trauma literature include: child abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, intimate partner abuse, societal trauma, community violence, school violence, medical trauma, ethnic trauma, human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, persecution and torture, acute events, intergenerational trauma, dislocation trauma, and various microtraumas that have been non-verbalized. The language of trauma has moved to center stage to depict the types and contexts of trauma and reflected on in everyday household conversations.

Whether recent experiences as vivid flashbacks, reliving in nightmares, feeling on edge, being unable to fully relax around others, remaining at a distance and not trusting fully, or simply becoming stuck in that experience are all part of the descriptors of those that have been traumatized. The American Psychological Association defines trauma as “an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape or natural disaster. Immediately after the event, shock and denial are typical. Longer term reactions include unpredictable emotions, flashbacks, strained relationships and even physical symptoms like headaches or nausea. While these feelings are normal, some people have difficulty moving on with their lives.”

Distress from the aftermath of school shootings, natural disasters, sexual assaults, adverse childhood experiences (ACES), and other forms of situational stressors all contribute to the growing global climate and concern of trauma and its impact upon the human brain and body. Contrasting and varied traumatic life experiences promote the stew of emotions that are felt and experienced. The intensity, frequency, and duration of trauma-related symptoms may or may not become better accounted with a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis, but there are several factors to consider: how graphic is the exposure to the event, how repeated is the exposure, and how much does this traumatic experience violate the expectations and understandings of how the world works?

Secondary trauma is also on the horizon, and a recent study confirmed that 22 out of 190 wives of military personnel also suffered similar symptoms of their husbands’ war-time experiences. Researchers from UCLA’s National Bureau of Economic Research have also provided substantial evidence in the most recent chapter of understanding the global portrait of the field in traumatology. Essentially, they have highlighted that stresses from war and war-torn conditions are more likely to be passed down through the generations, and future children can become impacted by the effects of the stressors’ longevity.

Effects of Trauma on the Human Brain

The healing journey toward recovery for victims of trauma requires specific treatment and skill sets that can support the rewiring of the brain in this journey. The traumatized brain functions differently as a result of the trauma experience. Additionally, the human brain has remarkable capacity to change in response to former past experiences in the world, and also has the ability to change in response to future experiences as well. Neuroscience researchers have termed this as plasticity, reflecting that the human brain can change in response to the past, present, or future experiences. Based on various studies, confirmed evidence provides that the traumatized brain is mostly impacted in the three areas of: the prefrontal cortex (PFC, the command and thinking center), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, the center for regulating mood states), and the amygdala (the center for fear-based responses). In each of these regions of the traumatized brain, the PFC and ACC are underdeveloped whereas the amygdala’s Fear Center can be over-reactive. Research studies have consistently confirmed that the brain regions which process fear and anxiety are greatly linked to the trauma imprints of former experiences.

Changing the brain in response to traumatic events can require significant effort and energy, but the rewards are great with time, effort, and repetition. As a result of reacting to the traumatic event, perhaps 99 more problems arise such as, “I’m feeling scared, on edge, angry, can’t sleep, etc.” These are very common reactions to one underlying circumstance.

Here are several experiences that can occur after the trauma:

• Experiencing flashbacks: When a traumatic memory becomes cued, the brain perceives that the trauma experience is reoccuring over again. Specific current experiences set off an alarm for the brain to interpret them as the trauma all again, and it can be challenging to navigate the vivid details of powerful emotional memories from the trauma.
• Nightmares: Even during sleeping hours, the brain can still be in overactive response to the shock of the nervous system. Traumatic experiences can be likened to nightmares, but dreams are affected not necessarily translated to the exact traumatic experience, but the emotional content can be commensurate to feelings of being in extreme dread, open danger, or being chased in the dream.
• Replaying the memory: There might be significant and concerted effort to erase the memory or lessen its intensity, but the brain allows the memory to keep returning over and over in an experiential loop in order to better make sense of the traumatic experience and reconsider how to possibly react better to its ongoing impact.
• Fear and anxiety: Like waves alongside the shoreline of an ocean, these emotional reactions of fear and anxiety can ebb and flow in their intensity. These are some of the more common expressions of how the brain chooses to interpret the traumatic event, and the frequency, intensity, and duration of these experiences are more long-lasting than the emotions experienced at the time of the trauma itself.
• Feeling numb: In contrast to the experiences of strong emotions, the traumatic experience might cause an emotional shut-down altogether and the inability to feel and sense positive emotions on a regular basis. With positive life events, the typical positive emotions that ‘should’ are not felt or experienced.
• Sadness: This emotional content can be commonplace after a traumatic event and feelings of sadness can also vary in degree. The nervous system’s freeze, flight, or fight response wants to be calmed with the parasympathetic nervous system, and feelings of sadness and crying are natural responses to help soothe the mind and body.
• Belief that the world is extremely dangerous: After a traumatic event, the worldview that the world is extremely dangerous and unsafe becomes adopted. In the aftermath of the trauma, the world can be seen as dangerous and there will be an overestimation of how unsafe the world actually is, but over time this belief shifts toward more of a compromising middle perspective that there will be some dangerous and unsafe places and also relatively safe places.
• Self-blame: After the trauma, it might be easier for self-criticism and maintaining feelings of responsibility for the traumatic event. Feelings of unnecessary guilt and associated thoughts of regret are part of the commonplace responses after a trauma. Beating ourselves up for having gone through the trauma or being upset over feelings of being upset are part of the myriad of reactions within self-blame.

This list of trauma’s impact on the brain and body is not comprehensive. In hindsight, not all post-traumatic experiences have negative long-term consequences. The current research literature has already reflected that post-traumatic growth can occur after a traumatic event. Understanding the normalcy and inevitability of pain associated with the traumatic experience will help to manage the grief, loss, and pain of the traumatic experience. Trauma survivors can start to make their pain the secondary focus and redirect their energy instead of making it the primary focus and dominating theme of their lives, and this becomes a lifelong process. We will look next at the strategies to move toward healing and recovery from traumatic memories in Part 2.

Recommended Resources:

• Healing the Wounded Heart: The Heartache of Sexual Abuse and the Hope of Transformation by Dan Allender
• Restoring the Shattered Self by Heather Davidiuk Gingrich
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence–From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
• It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered by Lysa Terkeurst