How do psychological traumas affect our brain?

According to the DSM-5, a trauma is "any situation in which a person is exposed to scenes of actual death or imminent, serious bodily harm, or sexual assault, whether as a direct victim, close to the victim, or witness".

On the other hand, for the CIE-11, it is "any exposure to a stressful situation of an exceptionally threatening or anxiety-producing that is likely to produce profound discomfort in most people".

But beyond the definitions and technical conceptualization... How does it affect the human brain psychological trauma? Let's see it.

Understanding trauma and its effects

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 capacity to change our brain, affecting above all 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 affected attention, concentration and memory.

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 ordered until something happens that messes it up all. The trauma remains “archived” in a dysfunctional way, in our “library”, keeping all the information at a somatic and cognitive level with the same force and intensity that we experienced during that event stressful.

After that event, everything is mixed up and the new information that we store will be resting on that traumatic event, which has been frozen in our brain. From this fact, the brain can choose to dissociate in an amnesic way or constantly relive what happened to us in the form of nightmares, intrusions.

On a somatic level, the person lives with a lot of anguish and because the amygdala is hyperactivated, we see danger signs everywhere; causing us a lot of anxiety.

The person who has gone through relationships of aggression or abandonment during their childhood lives constantly behind the windows of trauma, with a vivid sensation of not understanding what is happening to them. His experiences gave him cognitions and negative emotions, which are at the base of their self-concept and how they see the world, feeling lost, blocked and "trapped".

• Related article: "Mental health: definition and characteristics according to psychology"

The influence of trauma on brain function

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. levels of cortisol 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 recoverTherefore, with proper treatment, the brain can recover and heal. Dreams are a reflection of it; During the deep sleep phase, the brain tends to organize all the information that comes to it. It is his innate tendency to keep his facilities in order and cleanliness.

• You may be interested in: "Emotional memory: what is it and what is its biological basis?"

intervention in therapy

The best treatment to heal these brain injuries is EMDR, a therapy designed in principle for stress post-traumatic, which today is applied to all trauma situations, anxiety disorders, depression, grief, addictions etc and that it is one of the most supported by scientific research, with countless publications.

EMDR helps the brain to 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, understands that it is part of his life, of his memory, but does not determine his present. He manages to know what negative and distorted cognitions are at the base 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, to everything that is now known about the brain, and thanks to EMDR, we can overcome what happened to us and live our lives fully.