SELF-CARE: How We Unknowingly Store Trauma in Our Mind and Body + FREE Self-Love Weekly Planner

Why can it be so challenging to heal from trauma (especially when you don’t have the right tools and support)?

As I mentioned in a recent post, one key obstacle is that many of us aren’t aware of how common trauma is and that we may very well be carrying it around ourselves. And of course, when you don’t know that you’ve experienced trauma, it’s pretty hard to address it and heal from it.

But another big obstacle is that we often have an oversimplified understanding of why traumatic events continue to affect our lives long after they’re over.

You see, many of us tend to think that if trauma is affecting our happiness, life, or relationships, it’s because the traumatic event was so jarring that we can’t stop thinking about it and we’re constantly distracted by it. As a result, we might think that if we just tell ourselves to stop thinking about the traumatic event, we’ll “get over it” and be able to move on with our lives.

But if you’ve ever tried to “just forget” about something that’s emotionally challenging, you know that this is usually easier said than done. After all, we typically can’t just command ourselves to stop thinking about something that’s emotionally weighty or meaningful to us in some way. In fact, when we actively try to stop thinking about something (performing what cognitive psychologists refer to as thought suppression), our efforts can even backfire, and we can actually end up thinking about it even more.

And then there’s the fact that sometimes, we’re not even aware that we’ve experienced something traumatic. Or we might know that something traumatic happened to us in the past, but we’re largely unaware of the impact that it continues to have on our life and relationships today.

So what is it about trauma that makes it so challenging to overcome—even if we try hard to let go of it?

And why do we keep feeling the effects of it on our lives—even if we’re unaware that we’re living with it?

Well, according to trauma experts, such as Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Gabor Maté, when we experience a traumatic event, the trauma can get stored not just in our mind but also in our body.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “How can a traumatic event get stored in my body? Does it just tuck itself under my stomach or wrap around my liver?”

That’s why in this blog post, I’m going to do a deep dive into how we store trauma in our mind and body and what this means for healing from trauma.

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The Mind-Body Connection

When we think of traumatic events that involve physical trauma, such as a car accident or an assault, it’s relatively easy to understand how the event could affect and be experienced in the body. After all, someone who experiences physical trauma will usually have physical injuries and scars.

But the effects of traumatic events that don’t involve trauma, such as divorce or emotional abuse, may seem purely psychological. Whereas a car accident survivor may clearly look physically injured, someone who has recently gotten divorced or been abused by a loved one may look “fine” or “normal” physically. Their emotional pain may be clear if you talk to them about what they’ve been through and how they’re doing today. But on the outside, it may seem like their body hasn’t been affected.

However, we know from a growing body of research that the mind and body are intimately connected. And it’s something that we experience in our everyday lives. For example, when we have to deliver a presentation at work or give a toast at a wedding, we might not just feel nervous. Instead, our stomach might also feel queasy, our palms might get sweaty, our mouth might feel very dry all of a sudden, and our legs might even feel a bit shaky.

In this case, our psychological experience of a situation affects us physically. And trauma research shows that similar mind-body communication unfolds when we experience a traumatic event.

How Trauma Gets Stored In the Mind and Body

To understand how trauma gets stored in the mind and body, we need to first talk about an important system in the body called the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is a part of our nervous system, and it consists of two branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is the system that gets activated when we experience a stressor. It’s what we more commonly refer to as the fight-or-flight response because it prepares us to “fight” or escape the stressor. It does this by increasing our heart rate, raising our breathing rate, and tensing our muscles. It also triggers the release of high levels of hormones, such as epinephrine and cortisol.

When the stressor disappears and we are no longer in danger, the parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. This system, which is also known as the “rest and digest” system, allows our body to return to a baseline, relaxed state. It does this by slowing our heart rate and breathing and relaxing our muscles.

The problem is that the autonomic nervous system developed to help us deal with brief, immediate threats in our environment, like a hungry bear. However, if a traumatic event overwhelms our nervous system for a longer period of time (either because we can’t recover from it or because it occurs on an ongoing basis over a period of time), our nervous system can become dysregulated and unbalanced. In other words, our trauma can become embedded in the neural pathways that run not only through our mind but also through our body.

Specifically, according to Dr. Levine, wild animals have an instinctive process that helps their nervous system return to a balanced state once a threat that they were facing disappears. Humans also have this instinctive process. However, our ability to judge and evaluate traumatic events can interfere with this process and prevent our nervous system from returning to a state of balance. And when this happens, trauma becomes embedded in our mind and body.

When our nervous system becomes imbalanced, one part of the autonomic nervous system may dominate the other. If the sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, we may often feel agitated and tense and constantly be on the lookout for danger. In comparison, if the parasympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, we may often feel fatigued, apathetic, or numb.

Trauma Can Shape Neural Pathways

The early years of life aren’t just a time of learning to eat, walk, and talk. They’re also a period of rapid brain development. This is why traumatic experiences in childhood can have an especially profound effect on people’s lives and relationships even years and decades later.

In particular, during early childhood, kids most commonly experience trauma in their relationship with a caregiver. Young children can’t regulate their nervous system independently, so they rely on their caregiver for help. If their caregiver fails to help the child regulate by providing the food, safety, or love that the child needs, the child isn’t able to regulate their nervous system, and they can develop dysregulation just like adults do.

However, because the brain is still developing at this age (and doing so very rapidly), experiencing trauma in childhood can do more than just dysregulate the nervous system. It can also influence the particular neural pathways that form in the brain and body. And because our neural pathways play a key role in both physical processes in the body and how we experience the world, trauma in early childhood can profoundly shape how we approach and respond to situations and relationships later on in life.

Beyond Conscious Awareness

I mentioned earlier that many of us don’t recognize that we’re living with trauma because we lack awareness of it. This is in part because we tend to misunderstand what trauma is and what “counts” as trauma. But it’s also because of where trauma can get stored in the body and mind.

Sometimes we’re aware that we’ve experienced a traumatic event, and we have conscious memories of it. For example, if we were in a car accident and didn’t lose consciousness, we might have vivid memories of the event. These conscious memories would be stored in the part of our memory that’s known as explicit memory. This is the part of our memory that we’re consciously aware of and can recall.

However, because trauma can be stored in neural pathways that run throughout the body and mind, it can end up in parts of the nervous system that don’t have direct connections to areas of the brain that are involved in language, communication, and conscious thought. These trauma wounds therefore become part of our implicit experience and lie outside of our conscious awareness. And as a result, it can be hard for us to consciously know that we have them (until we do inner work to uncover them).

Trauma Can Change Your Mind AND Your Body

When we think of trauma, we tend to think of it as a largely psychological phenomenon.

But experts now suggest that even when traumatic events don’t involve physical trauma, trauma can get stored in both our mind and body.

In particular, trauma can get stored in neural pathways throughout our mind and body, producing nervous system dysregulation. This can affect our ability to respond to triggers associated with a traumatic event appropriately.

However, when we experience trauma in childhood, which many of us unknowingly do, the trauma can also influence the particular neural connections that form when our brains are developing rapidly. And as a result, it can continue to shape how we experience situations, approach relationships, and perceive ourselves later on in life.

Because trauma can be stored in the body, many healers and psychotherapists, including myself, use an approach called Somatic Experiencing to help people process and heal from trauma. If you haven’t heard of this approach before, you may be curious about it. For this reason, I’m going to dedicate my next post to discussing somatic experiencing. (After all, who knows? Maybe it’s the right approach for you.)

However, you might already know that you’re ready to begin your journey of healing from trauma and want someone who can guide you through the process. Or you might sense that taking an integrative approach to trauma, which is what I do, would work best for your needs.

If this is the case, I’d like to invite you to schedule a FREE Strategy Session with me. During the session, we’ll chat about what you’re struggling or dealing with and how we can work together one-on-one to help you heal from your trauma, experience more joy, and build more fulfilling relationships. Click below to schedule a Free Strategy Session with me.

In the meantime, grab a copy of my FREE self-love weekly planner. It’ll help you give yourself the love and care that you need and deserve so that you can be in the right headspace to make the most of your healing journey.

And finally, if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and courses.

Until next time!

Vera

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