How Trauma and PTSD Change the Brain

traumatic experiences like abuse assault or witnessing violence or tragedy can leave people feeling constantly on edge and ptsd can impact your emotions your stability your relationships right trauma can also have an impact on physical and mental health and these are really common experiences for many people and they're due in part to four ways that your brain changes after experiencing trauma but the good news is that when you understand how trauma impacts the brain these symptoms can often be reversed you can learn to heal okay so quick review when you experience something threatening or dangerous or

just witness something happening to someone else your brain activates the fight flight freeze response essentially the survival mode in the reptile part of your brain this response helps keep you safe it shuts down thinking it releases a surge of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline and it sends blood to the big muscles so you can fight or run away this gets your heart pounding it speeds up your breathing and all of this is so that you're prepared to take physical action to stay safe and then after the threat has passed your nervous system should go back

into restorative mode the rest and digest mode but with ptsd something interferes with your ability to feel safe your brain and your body stay stuck in this mode so even when you're safe your brain and your body stay tense they're on high alert and you don't ever or don't often revert back to that restorative mode so when trapped in a constant trauma response people with ptsd experience four types of difficult symptoms these include painful thoughts which is like upsetting memories flashbacks and memory loss um intense emotions feeling helpless anxious ashamed scared jumpy angry feeling blame

or persistent negativity or just feeling numb bodily changes so these include increased heart rate feeling jittery or on edge startling easily unexpected rage or tears short and shallow breathing panic attacks insomnia or nightmares and then the fourth category of symptoms is behavioral changes so this is usually avoidance of anything related to the trauma or its memories now these symptoms show up because after experiencing trauma your brain changes on a physical level now this isn't simply damage as people would perhaps think but it's your brain adapting to the experience that the world isn't safe and in

my opinion it's your brain taking measures to help you avoid future dangers so essentially your brain makes you more danger avoidant your brain is super moldable it adapts and it rewires depending on what we experience and how we use our brain so when we experience trauma here are four ways that the brain changes or adapts after that experience so first the amygdala this is an area of the brain that scans for threats and it connects memories and emotions so this is kind of like the smoke alarm of the brain and after trauma it becomes much

more active it becomes much more sensitive and more likely to alert to turn on that alarm when it perceives a threat survivors become less tolerant of stress and little things make them feel more anxious so common things like loud noises people entering a room from behind or seeing someone who reminds them of an aggressor these can all trigger that threat response even when the loud noise is just fireworks or when that person with a beard is actually just a waiter right i've had clients who felt triggered by grasshoppers or radiators and both of these things

are actually safe but the amygdala associates them with trauma and then sets off that red alert so to summarize with ptsd the amygdala becomes more sensitive okay second brain scans indicate that after trauma the hippocampus shrinks so the hippocampus is the part of the brain that processes emotions and memories after trauma stress hormones essentially kill off cells in the hippocampus making it less effective at processing emotions this also makes it hard for the brain to distinguish between the past and the present so this is essentially what a flashback is it's your brain experiencing a memory

that feels like it's happening right now people who've experienced trauma they may have missing memories fragmented memories or painful memories that pop up when they don't want them and when these memories pop up they re-trigger the amygdala so essentially the amygdala perceives the memories as a new threat and sends off you know that alarm that restarts that trauma cycle that those that whole flooding of the fight flight freeze response and all those physical changes and the stress hormones and all of that now these changes to the hippocampus they can also contribute to short-term memory loss

but the connection between the hippocampus and the amygdala gets stronger like these two love talking to each other now and so essentially this maintains that fear response over time even if you can't remember the traumatic event your smoke alarm is still going to blare with the slightest trigger okay number three the prefrontal cortex shrinks so this is the part of the brain that essentially handles higher order thinking and planning rational thought and language things like that this part of the brain becomes disrupted by constantly reverting back to that fight flight freeze part of the brain

or the reptile part of the brain so when you're stuck in fight flight freeze or hyper vigilance the thinking part of the brain gets turned down and the way that neuroplasticity works is the more we use a part of the brain the more it grows pathways there but the less we use a part of the brain those pathways gets trimmed so when we can't use reason to think through our traumatic memories or sensations then it makes it hard for us to override that danger signal that the amygdala and hippocampus are sending and it makes it

harder to remind ourselves that the danger is not real so because that prefrontal cortex has shrunk a little bit it makes it harder to process through those memories it makes it harder to speak about what happened it makes it harder to think clearly and rationally and you can see how a person can get trapped in a loop of trauma if they don't get treatment so these symptoms just make it harder and harder to escape the cycle of ptsd okay number four the last way your brain is impacted is really through the broader nervous system so

this constant flooding with stress hormones keeps the body locked in an activated sympathetic state or the fight flight freeze state it's also known as hyperarousal so you feel constantly on edge you feel jittery you feel stressed out until you get exhausted then you have adrenal fatigue right you you shut down and you feel depressed so being stuck in this state of an overactive dysregulated nervous system leads to a lot of strain on the body and that can contribute to chronic illnesses like autoimmune disorders low functioning of the immune system diabetes obesity muscle tension chronic pain

and problems with like sleep in the gut and and your heart health so those are the four ways that trauma impacts your brain and nervous system in general but just like how your brain changed in response to trauma it can heal too and this is called neuroplasticity so your brain adapted the trauma response as a functional way to deal with real threats and dangers your brain's not out to get you but it also has a built-in ability to change in response to healing and perceived safety so the amygdala can learn to chill out the hippocampus

can relearn the process emotions and your nervous system can strengthen its ability to revert back to that parasympathetic or that rest and digest response we can target these structures in the brain and in the body through cognitive work and through body-based work so a couple of the ways that we can do this are through yoga mindfulness writing exercises so just think of this right you're having a trauma response you're having these big intense emotions and you sit down and you make yourself write about it that's turning on the prefrontal cortex that's clarifying that in the

present moment you are safe it's helping your hippocampus process through memories and that sends a message to your amygdala that you're actually safe right so something as simple as a writing exercise can help rewire your brain from from that trauma okay more types of treatments include um cbt emdr somatic experience these are all treatments that help your brain and body rewire and restore your inner sense of safety and clarity now there's a lot of studies out there that show that your brain can rewire like this but here let me give you one example research using

mri scans of the brain show that mindfulness practice is correlated with growth in the hippocampus and shrinking of the amygdala so essentially it reverses the effects of trauma i teach a bunch of these skills on my channel so check out my healing trauma playlist if you'd like to learn more or you can check out my free course grounding skills for anxiety and trauma the link's in the description below and in an upcoming video we're going to talk about how being transformed by trauma can lead to good things so please remember there's always room for growth

and healing and change and and it just comes from the tiny little baby steps that you can take so thank you for watching i love you all and take care [Music]