According to the DSM-5, trauma is “any situation in which a person is exposed to scenes of actual or imminent death, serious physical injury, or sexual assault, whether as a direct victim, close to the victim, or witness.” .
Instead, for ICD-11, it is “any exposure to a stressful situation of an exceptionally threatening or anxiety-producing nature that is likely to produce profound discomfort in most people.”
But beyond the definitions and technical conceptualization… How does psychological trauma affect the human brain? Let’s see it.
The best way to understand what a trauma is is to consider it as that experience that marked a before and after in our lives and that has the ability to change our brain, affecting especially the regions that deal with emotions (the amygdala). , as well as the regions that deal with memory (the hippocampus). Therefore it is normal to see how People who have gone through traumatic experiences have their attention, concentration and memory affected.
To understand in a simple way what happens in our brain when we experience a traumatic situation, we can visualize the image of a library: everything is organized until something happens that messes everything up. The trauma remains “filed” in a dysfunctional way, in our “library”, saving all the information at a somatic and cognitive level with the same strength and intensity that we experienced during that stressful event.
After that event, everything is mixed up and The new information we store will be based on that traumatic event, which has remained frozen in our brain. From this fact, the brain can choose to dissociate amnesiacly or constantly relive, in the form of nightmares, intrusions, what happened to us.
On a somatic level, the person lives with a lot of anxiety and because the amygdala is hyperactivated, we see danger signs everywhere; causing us a lot of anxiety.
The person who has gone through abusive or abandoned relationships during their childhood constantly lives behind the lenses of trauma, with a vivid feeling of not understanding what is happening to them. Their experiences generated negative cognitions and emotions, which are at the basis of their self-concept and how they see the world, feeling lost, blocked and “trapped.”
The influence of trauma on brain functioning
Trauma significantly affects the maturational development of the brain during childhood, modifying it and altering executive functions, memory, attention and concentration. Cognitive processes such as mentalization, among others, are also altered. Cortisol levels are also modified.
Today we know that the brain has the ability to heal, to heal its own “wounds.” The brain, like any other organ, tends to recover, so, with proper treatment, the brain can recover and heal. Dreams are a reflection of this; During the deep phase of sleep, the brain tends to organize all the information that comes to it. It is their innate tendency to keep their facilities in order and cleanliness.
Intervention in therapy
The best treatment to heal these brain injuries is EMDR, a therapy designed in principle for post-traumatic stress, which today is applied to all trauma situations, anxiety disorders, depression, grief, addictions, etc. and it is one of those that are most supported by scientific research, with countless publications.
EMDR helps the brain re-process trauma and desensitize it, helps you organize that event and unlock it so that it can relate to other more functional and adaptive memory networks. The person overcomes what happened to him, he understands that it is part of his life, his memory, but it does not determine his present. He gets to know what negative and distorted cognitions are at the basis of his life, and can replace them with other more realistic and positive cognitions.
The past is overcome, that is something unquestionable, we can go to the origin of what happened to us and heal everything that was damaged. We can, from our present, continue with our lives understanding what happened to us and understanding ourselves.
Thanks to ever-expanding scientific research, everything that is now known about the brain, and thanks to EMDR, we can overcome what happened to us and live our lives to the fullest.
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This article has been reviewed by our editorial team at PsychologyFor to ensure accuracy, clarity, and adherence to evidence-based research. The content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice.
