Trauma's Impact On Our Brain & Body

One of the most fascinating things I've learned about trauma is how it affects our bodies. In my previous post about adverse childhood experiences, I touched on this a little. We see the effects of experiences like abuse, neglect, household dysfunction including addiction, mental illness, incarceration in a person's life decades down the road.

Even if trauma happens later in life, it can manifest in many of the same ways as early life trauma. We can experience high blood pressure, fatigue, aches and pains, nightmares, and become immuno-compromised to name a few. In terms of mind/body we see anger, insomnia, and numbing behaviors such as drinking which could lead to addiction. Psychologically we can see anxiety, depression, addiction, and PTSD. We can also see loss of purpose, sense of self and depersonalization. The range of ways trauma shows up in our bodies is vast.

When speaking with clients it's important to stress that trauma can show up physically because that may be surprising to them, and a good way to help them understand the magnitude of it's effect on their lives. I think many clients assume that trauma affects a person psychologically, but to also impress upon them that, in addition, here are all the other ways you may see it show up physiologically, could be an effective way to help them see the benefit of addressing it as early as possible. So many people take their physical health more seriously than their mental health, I'd start by talking to the client about all the ways they may have already imagined it affecting them (depression, anxiety, nightmares) and then bring their attention to how it can actually create physiological changes in the body causing systemic disruption. For me one of the most significant examples is how it can affect their immune system. Without a healthy immune system, many more problems can occur in the form of chronic illnesses and disease if trauma is allowed to go unchecked.

By creating the awareness of how we can not only be psychologically affected by trauma, but physiologically as well (and for decades), we may be able to impress upon our clients the importance of trauma work to heal our brains and our bodies.