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What’s a traumatic experience?
Trauma is an experience or can be a series of experiences that overwhelm the central nervous system. It occurs when one’s ability to defend, protect or say no is overwhelmed putting the body into a trauma response often referred to as a fight, flight, fawn, freeze, flop response. It’s honestly a normal response to an abnormal situation and will vary from person to person. It is the outcome of what occurs when your active response to the threat does not work.
Another way to look and understand an overwhelmed central nervous system is to simply understand some medical conditions make the nervous system overstimulated.
the brain and how it's primed to respond
During a traumatic event or when the nervous system is overstimulated, the brain is primed to respond reflexively (meaning automatically or without conscious thought) to ensure survival. However, that very same response the brain takes often keeps us safe but can also keep us trapped in cycles of traumatic memory or patterns of behavior. Some refer to this as staying in a state of being a victim to a traumatic experience but we’d like think more often than not that the brain is simply unable to come out of a cycle because it does not have to the tools to do so.
what you should understand
When it comes to trauma, especially childhood trauma, you should understand the brain physically changes. One of the changes is to the amygdala, which is brain’s emotional reaction center, it becomes highly reactive.
When a person is triggered, the brain is primed to respond reflexively going into high alert shutting down rational thinking to a degree. This is where feelings can become overwhelming (referred to as emotional dysregulation) and remember this is completely normal. This is a part of the nervous system automatically reacting to try and keep you safe going back into a trauma response again.
When it comes to different medical conditions each person will have a differences pending what their condition is.
For this very reason, we should strive to grasp and seek a greater understanding of ourselves and one another.
when left untreated or suppressed
If trauma or an overstimulated nervous system is not treated or is suppressed and we fail to learn how to feel safe, it can have lifelong effects on a person. This is the origin of the concept of historical trauma; it is when trauma is passed down from one generation to another due to any kind of impairment.
If untreated or suppressed, it can embed itself in the body and can show up months or even years later in various forms like chronic illness.
If treated, individuals can equip themselves with the necessary tools to mitigate future triggers and acquire skills for self-regulation.