What does the traumatic stress response look like?
Under normal circumstances your brain will respond to stress with an appropriate response (fight or flight) and then switches off the response once the threat has gone away. If there are lots of threats while your brain is developing this switch can become mistuned and doesn’t switch off or on in the right way. So for example, constantly checking for threats and having exaggerated responses or not reacting at all.
This can cause longer term changes in the links between the parts of your brain that deal with memory (hippocampus), fear (amygdala) and more sophisticated thinking skills like planning and reasoning (frontal lobes). This system is known as the limbic system.
There are very sensitive periods of brain development throughout your childhood so the timing, type of trauma and frequency of the trauma will all impact on whether you end up with difficulties or not and it explains why everyone has different experiences.
Neurochemical systems are affected, which can cause a cascade of changes in attention, impulse control, sleep, and fine motor control. Chronic activation of certain parts of the brain involved in the fear response may affect the parts of the brain which are involved in cognition and memory. Chronic activation of the neuronal pathways involved in the fear response can create permanent memories that shape the child’s perception of and response to the environment. While this adaptation may be necessary for survival in a hostile world, it can become a way of life that is difficult to change, even if the environment improves.
It’s a circular problem in that health and social inequalities make it more likely you’ll experience adverse life experiences which can then lead to further health and social inequalities. A study conducted in America, the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study, found associations between adverse events during childhood development and the health and wellbeing of the person throughout their life, suggesting a negative correlation.