Your Brain on Trauma: Is it All in Your Head?

Is trauma all in your head? Yes and no. The brain structurally changes to adapt to the impacts of trauma. These adaptations cause full body responses. Trauma is stored in the body.

The structure of the brain

The most important job of the brain is to ensure survival. For survival purposes the brain creates and sends signals regarding what our bodies need, designs maps of the world to direct us where to go to get our needs met, generates energy to get us there, registers danger and opportunities, and changes our behavior based on present circumstances. 

There are three systems of the brain at work.

 Reptilian brain: instinctual

This is the part of the brain that is already on when we are born. It is located near the brainstem and is responsible for eating, sleeping, breathing, and going to the bathroom. This part of the brain ensures basic life sustaining systems that maintain homeostasis in the body and mind. 

These basic functions are often most vulnerable to trauma. 

Limbic brain: emotional

This part of the brain is located right above the reptilian brain and is the home to our emotions. It monitors danger, determines what is painful and what is pleasurable, and decides what is and isn’t important for survival. This part of the brain is shaped by experience. 

The limbic and reptilian as parts make up the emotional brain and is the seat of the nervous system. Visceral sensations from this part of the brain will impact the focus of your mind and the movement of your body. The emotional brain is the initiator of flight, fight, freeze as automatic physiological responses to danger. 

Neo-Cortex brain: rational 

This part of the brain is most interested in the external environment. It is the problem solver, the planner, the navigator. The frontal lobes integrate vast amounts of information and make meaning out of it. This is the home to empathy. 

Where does the amygdala fit into this picture? 

Danger is experienced through the senses. The senses are corralled by the thalamus, an area within the limbic system. The thalamus is where we determine a clear picture of what is happening to us. The information is sent to the AMYGDALA, part of the limbic brain, as well as the frontal lobes, just at a much slower pace. 

The amygdala determines if we are safe or in danger and recruits the hippocampus to draw on past experiences to determine this. If the amygdala is sensing threat, there is an automatic message sent to the hypothalamus and brainstem. This message activates the stress hormone response and the autonomic nervous system to create a full body response. 

This all happens before we are consciously aware of danger! The amygdala doesn’t wait for us to make evaluations, it simply moves us to flee, fight, or freeze. 

Usually the executive functions of the frontal lobe catch up and we can consciously observe our thoughts and emotions, creating a pause between stimulus and response. 

Trauma disrupts the balance between the amygdala and frontal lobes, making it much more difficult to control emotions, thoughts, and impulses, and turn off the stress response to false alarms. 

In an effort to find more balance between the amygdala and frontal lobes, it requires top down and bottom up regulating tools. 

Top down regulation occurs by developing mindfulness, perhaps through meditation and yoga, while bottom down regulation involves breath, touch, and movement that recalibrates the autonomic nervous system. 

To heal from trauma the rational brain and emotional brain need to work together. This allows you the very healing experience of feeling like yourself. 

The Frontal lobes: The MPFC & DPFC

As long as you don’t become too overwhelmed, the frontal lobes can suspend the stress response by distinguishing false alarms of danger. Within the frontal lobes is the medial prefrontal cortex which acts as the observer. Located above the eyes, this area allows us to hover above thoughts and emotions objectively, creating a pause that allows one to weigh their options and make a conscious choice. 

The MPFC allows the executive functions of the frontal lobes to inhibit the automatic responses of the emotional brain. It is essentially the part of the brain that allows for responses, rather than reactions, through mindfulness. The emotional intensity of the amygdala is countered by the observations of the MPFC.

When someone has been through trauma, the MPFC is drastically effected and it becomes extremely challenging to control emotions and impulses. Instead the moment that danger is detected, you go right into flight, fight, or freeze. 

When a traumatized person is in a highly emotional state, such as fear or rage, the MPFC is less active or offline. The capacity for the frontal lobes to inhibit responses shuts down. 

Within the frontal lobes is also the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, located on the sides of the frontal lobes, and is responsible for creating meaning and context of an experience. The DPFC, in combination with the hippocampus, compares present experiences and how they relate to the past and predict the future, and is intricately involved in our perception of time. This part of the brain relays to us that the experience we are having has a beginning, middle, and end. 

Trauma has the opposite effect, there is no sense of time, it is completely fragmented, and each subsequent negative experience feels as if it will last forever. The DPFC has been knocked out.

To heal from trauma, the parts of the frontal lobes need to come back online. The amygdala, MPFC, and DPFC need to be on. The DPFC has no direct connection to the emotional brain, where the trauma resides, but the MPFC does, explaining why mindfulness is the way to turning back on. It begins with self-awareness.  

The Left Right Split in the brain from trauma

When someone experiences trauma the left hemisphere of the brain shuts down, as the right hemisphere becomes highly activated. 

This type of activation and shutdown of the hemispheres explains why traumatic events seem to be happening in the present when someone becomes triggered. 

The left side of the brain is responsible for linguistic, sequencing, analyzing, and processing facts and statistics. The right side of the brain is home to intuitive, emotional, visual, spatial memory, and is where we experience sound, touch, smell, and the emotions they evoke. The right hemisphere also reacts to facial expressions and gestures. 

This split is highlighted by two regions in the brain. Broca’s area is located in the left frontal lobe of the neo-cortex and people who have experienced trauma have a significant decrease of activity in this area. This means you cannot put your thoughts into words. When a trigger occurs, this area of the brain goes offline. 

On the flip side, Broadmann’s area 19, is overly activated. This is part of the visual cortex in the brain and is the location where images first enter the brain. 

I’ve found that after experiencing trauma, we often become more left hemisphere dominant in attempting to control and cognitively understand our experience and symptoms, while protecting ourselves from the felt sense of what happened. We want to prevent similar events from happening in the future by being much more calculated, but at the expense of spontaneity and fluidity. 

If we can lean into activities that generate a creative flow, then we are able to re-engage with our right hemisphere and begin to establish a sense of balance between both sides and integration of our experiences. 

What activity or intention brings you more flow? For me, I find that freedom in yoga, writing, riding horses, dance, and deep juicy convos with safe people. 

Integration of the three brains through one mind

To heal trauma and feel fully human again, there has to be a development of collaboration between our instincts, emotions, and thought processes. The rational brain and the emotional brain need to work together to create a sense of harmony.

When in harmony we are able to notice felt sensations, communicate and feel our emotions, as well as bring awareness to our thoughts. Without this connection our rational brains take the liberty to create catastrophes and fantasies that compel us to isolate from other humans.

Our felt sense is our connection to our reptilian brain and we can identify these sensations as reactions. Through our emotions and organized cognition we get to choose to respond, rather than react.

Our instincts aren’t only reactions though, they help to form our identity. Instincts in combination with emotions and thoughts, form the foundation for our sense of belonging. That we are all human and are in this together.

Healing trauma is so much about re-connecting to the natural world and all the people in it. When our brain is working together under one mind we function fully and operate as we were designed to.

We can reach our fullest potential while delegating trauma to the past.

Is trauma all in your head?

I will leave you with this.

Yes, and absolutely not.

The brain adapts to accommodate the trauma, but cognition based healing modalities cannot create a fully healed experience from trauma because trauma is stored in the body/ Trauma is ultimately a deregulation of the nervous system which is a mind body experience.