Trauma: How to heal

Trauma can be confusing because it shows itself in so many different responses of the body and mind. That confusion can be alleviated when you understand the basics about how your brain works, how trauma shows itself, and what helps (and doesn't help) to heal from trauma.

Brain Basics

When we are living with trauma responses, it is hard to know why our body and mind react in sometimes bewildering ways. It can help to learn a bit about the different parts of the brain and the different functions.
Frontal Lobe:
This is your thinking brain, the part responsible for reasoning and verbal expression. It creates memories for facts and events. 
Limbic System:
This is your mammalian brain. It is nonverbal, emotional, and it creates gut memories. 
Brainstem:
This is your reptilian brain. It is instinctive and it controls basic functions such as your breathing and heart rate.
 
What are the 'symptoms' of trauma?
 
Some of the symptoms of trauma include:

• Irritability
• Angry outbursts
• Depression
• Numbing
• Somatic issues (body pain, headaches, digestive issues)
• Difficulties with relationships
• Difficulties with sexual relations
• Easily distracted
• Hopelessness
• Difficulties parenting
• Difficulties at work
• Suicidal thoughts or feelings
• Self-harm
• Substance abuse
• Overwhelm
• Shame
• Eating disorders
• Flashbacks
• Nightmares
• Anxiety
• Panic attacks

 
Rather than calling these ‘symptoms’, some prefer to refer to them as ‘adaptations’: These feelings are adaptations of the mind and body in an attempt to survive the trauma and its fallout.
If you can identify any of the ‘adaptations’ listed above, ask yourself how it helped you to survive. For example, how did the numbing or irritability help you to survive?
 
These feelings or adaptations don’t feel like a memory of an event long since passed. Instead, your body and mind feel like you are still stuck in the trauma, as if we are still threatened by the dangers.
 
Memory muscle
 
Trauma responses create the following reactions:

• Your frontal lobe (the thinking brain, where words are expressed) shuts down.
• The limbic system (the emotion brain, the nonverbal brain), in particular, the amygdala, sounds the alarm as if there is danger right now.
• The brainstem (reptilian brain, instinctive brain) increases heart rate, speeding you up or shutting you down.

 
Because your frontal lobe shuts down in response to trauma, it can be hard to put the experience into words. However, we know how it feels, and you still feel like it is happening every time we are triggered.
 
Healing from trauma
 
In order to heal from trauma, you don’t have to tell and retell your trauma story. In fact, sometimes telling the trauma story ends up re-traumatizing someone or overwhelming them with feelings of shame, fear, or anger.
 
Often the nature of trauma leaves people without the ability to put that experience into words. Speechless trauma. Images and diagrams can be useful, but so can physical exercises. At the most basic, this can take the form of breathing exercises, but there is also tapping and other movement. There is something symbolic about giving the body a chance to move, or escape, when once it might have been trapped or frozen in an overwhelmed state.

To tell stories about the trauma, to use the frontal lobe (or thinking brain), isn’t really helping the amygdala (the brain’s alarm). To heal trauma, we need to use the ‘noticing brain’. We learn to observe and notice instead of interpreting our experiences. We notice a feeling as a feeling, or we notice the quickened breathing as quickened breathing, or we notice the thought as just a thought. In turn, we can produce a less reactive amygdala.
 
To heal from trauma, we need to calm the amygdala so we can get the frontal lobes to come back ‘online’ and help the prefrontal cortex to rediscover the ability to put words to our feelings. We need to calm our body and mind. We need to become curious about these ‘adaptations’ (or ‘symptoms’ manifested in our mind and body), and we need to help the mind and body realize that we are safe now.
 
Helpful phrases 

As you work through trauma, it can be helpful to use these phrases. Some of my clients type them on an inote on their cell phone, and others stick them up on the wall or bathroom cabinet in their home:

That was then (trauma, in the past), and this is now (safety, in the present).
That feeling, sensation is just a trauma response.
I am just triggered; I am still safe.
It is over now, I am safe now.

Trauma work can be bewildering but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. With these basic principles, you can work steadily with an experienced professional to truly put the trauma in the past, so your body and mind are no longer a place of conflict but a place of calm and safety.

Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist at Explore Transform
Ridgewood, New Jersey