When you experience a trauma, you don’t often think of the body as the thing that remembers the trauma. You go through something, store it in your mind, and it becomes natural to want to suppress it—out of mind and out of sight.
Your body, however, continues to hold on to the trauma and can become symptomatic with anything that triggers your senses back to the original moment. Your trauma may not be on your mind, but a simple trigger will impact you.
The Brain and Body Share a Connection
Unprocessed trauma can activate the amygdala in the brain. Your amygdala is essentially a smoke alarm within your brain. A simple stimulus or triggering event can kick in your internal alarm system and send your body into a high alert phase. Whether the threat is real or perceived, you have the same response.
Once the amygdala becomes activated, it causes a release of stress hormones and increased involvement of the autonomic nervous system. When you start to feel threatened, this duo orchestrates your fight or flight reflex and, in certain circumstances, a freeze response.
The frontal lobe in the brain should be able to override and turn off the alarm system, but with significant trauma and stress, it isn’t always that easy. The scale between the two brain areas tips, making it harder for the lookout to see threats accurately.
What Happens with Fight or Flight?
This response serves as a survival mechanism. For our ancestors, this response was to shield from life-threatening circumstances.
When dealing with life post-trauma, your body can become confused and overreact to the fight or flight mode when not in any life-threatening danger. Things like family issues, work interactions, or even a traffic jam can cause your body to respond.
Your mind and body become triggered. A rush of hormones stimulates (or overstimulates) your nervous system. Your adrenal glands become activated and release adrenaline and noradrenaline. This causes an increase in your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. Depending on your situation, it can take as long as an hour to return to a normal physiological state (called homeostasis).
Physical Symptoms of Trauma
When trauma isn’t fully processed, it will find somewhere else within the body to go. Stuck emotions or prolonged stress can have an impact on body functioning. Being in that heightened state of fight or flight will make your body tense and, often, fatigued. Muscle spasms, headaches, aching muscles, and chronic pain can occur.
Ongoing, unaddressed trauma can further lead to confusion, sadness, agitation, and body numbness. Experiencing such physical symptoms can often make you feel like something is physically wrong with you.
Emotional Symptoms
Additional symptoms include memory loss, confusion, and brain fog. Anxiety and depression, whether related to the trauma itself or the resulting physical symptoms, can occur. You may tend to be more irritable or agitated than normal.
Social isolation and avoidance of situations that trigger you can become normal behaviors. You may experience changes in sleep or appetite. Any of these factors can contribute to the physical symptoms and cause further spiraling.
Becoming Stuck in the Past
As long as you continue to operate in a state of unresolved trauma, your body is going to remain in a stuck state of trying to protect itself. You go on the defensive; you experience physical and emotional responses that are somewhat out of your control. The trauma itself keeps getting replayed over and over.
It isn’t so much a problem of being stuck in a past moment, but it becomes an issue of not truly living in the present. You miss what is happening around you and can fall down a path of disconnect.
Thankfully, you can change the narrative and shift your body back into a normally functioning rhythm. With the proper treatment, you can get to the root of your problem and process through it. Contact us for a free consult to learn more about your treatment options.
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