Often, stimuli can trigger overactivity in the amygdala if somehow connected to the traumatic event a person suffered from. How emotional trauma affects the brain might lead to chronic stress, heightened fear, and increased irritation. This might also make it harder for those suffering to calm down or even sleep.
According to a 2006 study by NIH, trauma mainly affects three important parts of your brain: the amygdala, which is your emotional and instinctual center; the hippocampus, which controls memory; and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulating your emotions and impulses.
Trauma can make you more vulnerable to developing mental health problems. It can also directly cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some people misuse alcohol, drugs, or self-harm to cope with difficult memories and emotions. Depending on how you're affected, trauma may cause difficulties in your daily life.
The energy of the trauma is stored in our bodies' tissues (primarily muscles and fascia) until it can be released. This stored trauma typically leads to pain and progressively erodes a body's health. Emotions are the vehicles the body relies on to find balance after a trauma.
Brain areas implicated in the stress response include the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. Traumatic stress can be associated with lasting changes in these brain areas.
Intrusive memories
Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event. Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks) Upsetting dreams or nightmares about the traumatic event. Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the traumatic event.
And the answer is yes. The brain is incredibly resilient and possesses the ability to repair itself through the process of neuroplasticity. This phenomenon is the reason why many brain injury survivors can make astounding recoveries.
Mindfulness, yoga, bodywork, nutrition, and fitness regimens can help your body metabolize and move the trauma and soothe the limbic system, rewiring your stress response and alleviating the physical and psychological symptoms of trauma.
Awareness is the first step to addressing trauma blocking—examining the ways trauma blocking negatively impacts your life. Keeping a log to help notice what is happening before engaging in blocking activities is a helpful way to begin the path towards awareness and changed behavior.
Trauma often manifests physically as well as emotionally. Some common physical signs of trauma include paleness, lethargy, fatigue, poor concentration and a racing heartbeat. The victim may have anxiety or panic attacks and be unable to cope in certain circumstances.
In conclusion, posttraumatic stress disorder after the intense stress is a risk of development enduring personality changes with serious individual and social consequences.
There are degrees of trauma. It can be emotional, mental, physical or sexual. It can occur once, or repeatedly. However, it is possible to fully recover from any traumatic experience or event; it may take a long time, but in the end, living free from the symptoms of trauma is worth every step of the journey.
A plethora of complications from traumatic brain injuries, ranging from minor cognitive delays to debilitating and life threatening symptoms such as seizures and coma, can follow the victim for years after the injury. You need to know that brain injury recovery time can take anywhere from a few weeks to ten years.
Not everyone requires treatment for traumatic stress. Most people recover on their own with time. However, mental health professionals such as psychologists can help you find healthy ways to cope in the aftermath of a traumatic event.
"Traumatic stress early in life can impair the development of sensitive physiological systems and neurological networks," said Carrion. "We know from our research that early life stress can alter hormonal systems and brain function."
As noted above, trauma can disrupt one's sense of identity, and one's identity can affect the way one perceives and recovers from the trauma. The trauma, however, can also become incorporated into one's identity. The fact that you have to face trauma and how you deal with that trauma can be life defining.
Children who had experienced such verbal abuse were three times as likely as other children to have borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive or paranoid personality disorders in adulthood.
Uncontrollable reactive thoughts. Inability to make healthy occupational or lifestyle choices. Dissociative symptoms. Feelings of depression, shame, hopelessness, or despair.
Adults may display sleep problems, increased agitation, hypervigilance, isolation or withdrawal, and increased use of alcohol or drugs. Older adults may exhibit increased withdrawal and isolation, reluctance to leave home, worsening of chronic illnesses, confusion, depression, and fear (DeWolfe & Nordboe, 2000b).
For most people, talking to yourself is a normal behavior that is not a symptom of a mental health condition. Self-talk may have some benefits, especially in improving performance in visual search tasks. It can also aid understanding in longer tasks requiring following instructions.
Trauma survivors can capitalize on this plasticity to heal. A traumatized brain tends to experience excessive activation in areas related to fear, and reduced activation in "thinking" areas. Psychotherapy and mindfulness training can reduce activation in the fear center and allow for healthy emotional expression.
After practicing TRE® people often use the words 'grounded', 'relaxed' and 'calmer' to describe their feelings. After a period of several months people have reported relief from illnesses such as Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Eczema and IBS.