Trauma and the Brain

What happens to the brain following a traumatic experience?

• The amygdala is the part of our brain involved in the threat system.
• Its job is to keep us safe by alerting us to danger.
• It does this by setting off an alarm in our body by triggering the fight, flight freeze response.
• It gets us ready to act.

Unfortunately the amygdala can also be triggered by:

• Our own worrying thoughts.
• Our relationship stresses or worries over whether we belong.
• By the things the brain has learnt to be linked with trauma, for example, the smell of aftershave.

It is sometimes hard to know what has set it off.

The link between trauma and memory

• The hippocampus helps us store and remember information.
• It is like a library and tags our memories with information about where and when they occurred.
• When our threat system is active the hippocampus doesn’t work so well.
• It can forget to tag the memories with time and place information which means they sometimes get filed in the wrong place.
• When we remember them it can feel as though it is happening again.

Video

For more information on how stress affects the brain watch this TED talk: