Trauma

There are many ways to define trauma such as physical injury which involves trauma to the body and often requires therapy of a physical nature to heal, and sometimes counseling therapy to heal the mind. There are emotional and physical traumas such as intimate partner violence, child abuse, sexual assault which often require counseling therapy to heal the mind and sometimes require some physical therapy to heal the body. Then there are developmental/attachment traumas which occur in the first 18 years of life and can create difficulty in forming and maintaining relationships. These require counseling therapy to help heal the mind and often movement of some sort such as yoga to help re-connect the body and mind.

The Trauma Wellness Center focuses on

Trauma changes our brains. The Hippocampus is where our new information or short-term memories move to longer-term memory. The Amygdala is located next to the Hippocampus and it is our instinctual part of the brain, some call it the “lizard brain.” When our “thinking brain,” the pre-frontal cortex, detects/interprets danger - it “shuts down” or goes “off-line.” The Amygdala then instinctually chooses flight, fight or freeze according to what is most likely to protect us in the moment. This is not a cognitive choice as our thinking brain is not working at this point. Our hippocampus cannot record and process memories as there is no context from the thinking brain. The Amygdala records the situation like a polaroid camera clicking repeatedly and the pictures dropping to the floor as they slide out. When you look down at the pile of pictures, you have no idea what order they go in. At this point the memory is stored maladaptively as it has not processed through the hippocampus. In the future, when something happens that is scary or uncomfortable, you may be “triggered” and feel the emotions that go with the past traumatic memory even though those emotions do not match the current situation. Others may view you as “overreacting.” This also accounts for why people who have encountered a traumatic event or been triggered by past trauma are unable to give a full and chronological account of what occurred, their brain did not record it that way. This can be confusing for law enforcement when taking statements and may appear as though the person is lying when, in fact, they are doing the best they can with how their brain stored the information.

What tends to happen when

Manipulation can be toxic

What do you experience as you look at this picture?