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Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically and then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you’re acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you’re acting out of fear. Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you. Trauma is that scarring that makes you less flexible, more rigid, less feeling and more defended. — Gabor Maté
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Trauma is an inability to inhabit one’s body without being possessed by its defenses and the emotional numbing that shuts down all experience, including pleasure and satisfaction. — Bessel van der Kolk
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Trauma can be anything that happens too much, too fast, too soon, too long coupled with not enough of what should have happened that was resourcing. — Resmaa Menakem
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Whether it be because of bullying, abuse, sexual assault or other forms of violence, trauma is a pandemic. Sometimes those who have experienced trauma (or PTSD) wonder why they can’t move on from past events, even if they happened years ago. Through talk therapy, they may come to understand that they are no longer in danger, yet may continue to experience heightened anxiety, panic, flashbacks and nightmares. However, Healing from trauma requires healing the brain and body’s biology, not just our thoughts
Trauma changes the brain and body in ways that talking and reasoning may not be able to reverse.
Neurofeedback is one of the new promising, evidence-based therapies that can help address the deeper, underlying biological changes that result from trauma and PTSD. However, trauma is stored in deeper parts of the brain and nervous system as whole-body experiences, not just linear narratives. This means that patients don’t just remember what happened as a coherent story – they also remember how they felt and how their bodies reacted. They remember how scared they were, as well as their racing heart and difficulty breathing.
Talk therapy often cannot address these emotional and physical memories of trauma that have become ingrained in the body’s biology.
Additionally, one study found that about 40% of patients in the community with PTSD drop out from CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), the most recommended type of talk therapy for trauma. Patients need a more comprehensive type of treatment with better outcomes.
Trauma changes the brain and body in ways that talking and reasoning may not be able to reverse.
Neurofeedback is one of the new promising, evidence-based therapies that can help address the deeper, underlying biological changes that result from trauma and PTSD. However, trauma is stored in deeper parts of the brain and nervous system as whole-body experiences, not just linear narratives. This means that patients don’t just remember what happened as a coherent story – they also remember how they felt and how their bodies reacted. They remember how scared they were, as well as their racing heart and difficulty breathing.
Talk therapy often cannot address these emotional and physical memories of trauma that have become ingrained in the body’s biology.
Additionally, one study found that about 40% of patients in the community with PTSD drop out from CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), the most recommended type of talk therapy for trauma. Patients need a more comprehensive type of treatment with better outcomes.
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"One of the promising treatments for calming the body and speaking to the deeper parts of the brain is neurofeedback. Traditionally we’ve tried to heal PTSD through talking and making meaning of the event, but treatment methods that help calm arousal systems in the deeper regions of the brain have been helpful in calming PTSD more than those that try to do so through talking and reasoning.”
— DR. BESSEL VAN DER KOLK, AUTHOR OF “THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE /
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How does trauma affect the brain and body?
Trauma takes away a person’s sense of safety and stability at a deep, core level and activates the amygdala. The amygdala is part of the limbic system, a deeper, more primitive part of the brain that primarily responds to basic signals about fear and safety. Here, memory is stored as a lived experience with feelings and physical sensations that may not be connected in a logical story.
Talk therapy works at the prefrontal cortex where we plan, learn, and organize, but it does not communicate as well with the limbic system. In other words, talk therapy can appeal to our sense of reasoning and language, but it doesn’t speak to the deeper parts of the brain that experience and store the memories of trauma.
During a traumatic event, the amygdala alerts the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that coordinates the body’s stress response by producing hormones like cortisol. In addition, the autonomic nervous system - which controls our involuntary body functions - goes into fight-or-flight mode. This means having a faster heart rate, breathing more shallowly, sweating, and not being able to think clearly.
In this way, trauma can change the body’s biology. Even after the trigger is gone, the amygdala can hold onto the physical memory of trauma, and our bodies can get stuck in this fight-or-flight mode, leaving us with higher levels of cortisol and symptoms of hyperarousal.
NEW TREATMENTS FOR CALMING THE BRAIN & BODY AFTER TRAUMA
While we can ask someone to calm down and think more rationally, that may not change their whole-body response to trauma. We need trauma treatments that can heal the brain and body’s biology.
Trauma takes away a person’s sense of safety and stability at a deep, core level and activates the amygdala. The amygdala is part of the limbic system, a deeper, more primitive part of the brain that primarily responds to basic signals about fear and safety. Here, memory is stored as a lived experience with feelings and physical sensations that may not be connected in a logical story.
Talk therapy works at the prefrontal cortex where we plan, learn, and organize, but it does not communicate as well with the limbic system. In other words, talk therapy can appeal to our sense of reasoning and language, but it doesn’t speak to the deeper parts of the brain that experience and store the memories of trauma.
During a traumatic event, the amygdala alerts the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that coordinates the body’s stress response by producing hormones like cortisol. In addition, the autonomic nervous system - which controls our involuntary body functions - goes into fight-or-flight mode. This means having a faster heart rate, breathing more shallowly, sweating, and not being able to think clearly.
In this way, trauma can change the body’s biology. Even after the trigger is gone, the amygdala can hold onto the physical memory of trauma, and our bodies can get stuck in this fight-or-flight mode, leaving us with higher levels of cortisol and symptoms of hyperarousal.
NEW TREATMENTS FOR CALMING THE BRAIN & BODY AFTER TRAUMA
While we can ask someone to calm down and think more rationally, that may not change their whole-body response to trauma. We need trauma treatments that can heal the brain and body’s biology.
References:
REFERENCES:
Anxiety / Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Neurofeedback Publications
Level 4: Efficacious (description of efficacy levels here)
Nature: Translational Psychiatry (2013)
Orbitofrontal cortex neurofeedback produces lasting changes in contamination anxiety and resting-state connectivity
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
Department of Neurosurgery, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA
Summary; Changes in resting-state connectivity in the target orbitofrontal region correlated with these improvements in anxiety. Matched subjects undergoing a sham feedback control task showed neither a reorganization of resting-state functional connectivity nor an improvement in anxiety. These data suggest that NF can enable enhanced control over anxiety by persistently reorganizing relevant brain networks and thus support the potential of NF as a clinically useful therapy. link...
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