Unresolved Trauma Can Impact Your Health
It’s important to think about your response to that BIG thing you went through, because if you are still feeling residual effects, it can influence your health in a not-so-great way. This is why you always hear about how important it is to process your emotions.
Trauma Changes the Brain
Research suggests that the brains of people with PTSD differ from brains of those without PTSD in two main ways:
They are hyperactive to threat (amygdala, the part of the brain which generates fear in response to danger, is affected).
They have difficulty regulating or damping down anxiety and anger (medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain where thinking and learning take place, is affected).
In The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD he describes the imprint trauma leaves behind on the mind, brain, and body. The trauma imprint affects the way a person gets through their day today, in the present, even though the event took place in the past.
When we feel a big emotion and our bodies go into fight or flight mode, they typically come back to equilibrium when the event is over and the threat has passed. In PTSD, the body thinks that the threat is still there - so it stays in fight or flight mode. Stress hormones continue to be produced.
In the case of PTSD, people become stuck in this new state and have real trouble moving forward with new experiences. Everything is colored by the past because the body still thinks that the past is happening in the present.
Fight or Flight Response
While PTSD is an extreme response, it’s probably more common than you think. Remember a couple of weeks ago when we talked about how common abuse is? Even if you have never been diagnosed with PTSD, it’s certainly possible you are still dealing with residual effects of that BIG thing you went through.
So, why does that happen? Why do we still suffer long after the experience is over?
First we need to walk through the fight or flight response. Watch this one minute video explanation of what happens in the brain when we feel big emotions or take a look at the images below.
When the amygdala senses a threat, it sends a message to the stress hormone system and autonomic nervous system. This happens incredibly fast, before we are even consciously aware of what is happening. Stress hormones including epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine (noradrenaline), and cortisol, among others, are released. Heart rate increases, blood pressure goes up, and rate of breathing increases. You can see how when the amygdala is out of sorts, the whole system is affected.
Stuck In Stress Response
We store memories of the traumatic event. Those memories can can be provoked, or triggered, by certain things, like scent of a perfume or the melody of a specific song or the sight of certain hospital. When we get exposed to that trigger, our body sets off the alarm bells that we are in trouble, and before we know it, we enter fight or flight.
People with a history of trauma have amygdalas that can get provoked more easily and their bodies have a harder time coming back to baseline. It’s a double whammy. What happens is that the body is in fight or flight mode, awash with stress hormones, too frequently.
Stress hormones cause panic and anxiety, which you might expect. But a body that is constantly in fight or flight is also at risk for memory and attention problems, irritability, and sleep disorders. Remember when the pandemic first started and you couldn’t concentrate or get any work done? It may have been due in part to your stress hormones.
Some people’s minds may be able to ignore these messages by pushing them away time and again so that they are in denial. But the body still feels the effects of the stress hormones. Dr. Van Der Kolk says, “The physical effects on the organs go unabated until they demand notice when they are expressed as illness. … the body continues to keep the score.”
Long-term the overactive stress response can cause chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and other autoimmune diseases. The good news is that there are tangible ways to course correct from this overactive stress response. We’ll get to those in our next installment of the trauma series.
Resources
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD
Orchid Story podcast Episodes 23 and 24 with psychotherapist and functional nutritionist Elena Kyrgos LMFT