The Body Keeps the Score

Trauma short circuits the normal brain process by taking the rational brain, the prefrontal cortex, offline.

Trauma affects the brain by hijacking the basic housekeeping system and the emotional brain, and decreasing the activity of the rational brain.

Trauma creates a different kind of memory than ordinary events. Unlike remembering an ordinary event, when someone experiences the memory of a traumatic event, they are virtually reliving the experience.

rdinary memories have beginnings, middles, and ends. They are seamlessly integrated into a person’s story of their life and the person usually moves on. A traumatic memory is a sensory and visual experience. It fires up the visual cortex of the brain and creates physiological changes. The traumatized person experiences the memory as if the trauma is happening at the current moment. It is not integrated and the person does not move on.

oe, a burn victim, had been welding a tank when there was an explosion. He escaped by climbing out of a small hole. He suffered burns on the sides of his hands, and although the burns were not huge, he experienced immense trauma from the experience. He reported panic attacks, nightmares, and flashbacks, and was unable to go back to his job. He desperately wanted to make himself go back, but he could not. His rational brain was unable to override the emotional brain. Joe said “My boss wants me to go back into the tank to weld, but I’m still trying to get ou

Trauma affects the brain by hijacking the basic housekeeping system and the emotional brain, and decreasing the activity of the rational brain.

Healing means breaking the cycle of stress mobilization, and bringing the person into the present where the danger is gone.

After a traumatic incident, the flight/flight impulse is thwarted, creating a cycle of anxiety, increased stress, and dissociation from everyday life.

Ordinary memories have beginnings, middles, and ends. They are seamlessly integrated into a person’s story of their life and the person usually moves on. A traumatic memory is a sensory and visual experience. It fires up the visual cortex of the brain and creates physiological changes. The traumatized person experiences the memory as if the trauma is happening at the current moment. It is not integrated and the person does not move on

After a trigger, the person is pushed back into the trauma, experiencing the memory again as if they are seeing it in the present. The vividness of traumatic memories hijacks the brain, and prevents the person from living in the present, making them numb and dissociated from daily life.