Understanding trauma in our bodies
Sometimes the effects of trauma and adverse childhood experiences can look like unsafe or harmful behaviours. This can cause us to feel shame or judged by others. It can lead to being pushed out of our community, punished or sent to prison. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be held accountable for our actions. But that accountability needs to take place in a safe and supportive environment to grow beyond those behaviours.
Learning how trauma affects our brains can help us understand that some behaviours are ways we cope with overwhelming life histories and stories. When we understand this, we can see that as a community creating spaces our bodies consistently feel safe will help us all feel better and make more fulfilling choices.
How trauma affects our brains
Trauma can change our brains. When we experience trauma, the part of our brain that tries to keep us safe by alerting us of danger is activated. When this happens, the parts of our brain that control learning, memory, reasoning and impulse control are suppressed. If the trauma experience is significant, our brain's alert system can get bigger and more sensitive. Meaning this alert system’s reaction will be more powerful, activated more quickly and to smaller threats or events.
This can mean that we are in an overly alert state even in a safe environment.
The huge amounts of energy this state uses results in drops in energy and feelings of numbness. It also disrupts sleep patterns and concentration. As the brain is using all its energy keeping us safe, there is less energy for learning, memory, reasoning, and impulse control. This can have long-term effects. But these effects can be prevented and/or treated.
If you’d like to understand how trauma affects the brain in more detail or in a way that you can teach others, please watch Dan Sigel’s demonstration of the Hand Model of the Brain.
How adverse childhood experiences affect our brains
As babies, our brains use our experiences to understand the environment we were born into. Every experience informs our brain about how safe our environment is and what resources are available. As we develop, we adapt to our environment to give us the best chance of surviving and reproducing.
If we grow up experiencing adverse childhood experiences, our brains could think our environment is unsafe and that resource, such as food or companionship, are limited. Our brains will then develop tools to survive to be able to reproduce in such an environment.
The more adverse experiences we have, the more unsafe and resource lacking our brain will think the environment is.
Dr Haley Peckham makes sense of this by likening experiences to rain and our brains to the land. While one raindrop doesn’t have much impact, when there are lots of raindrops they can have a huge impact. As rain falls on the earth, it flows down the easiest path, possibly in grooves that are already made. More rain means bigger streams, bigger grooves, and bigger impact.
As children, if we have one adverse experience, such as being hungry or crying and not being soothed, this is like one raindrop. This experience may not have an effect. But if this experience is repeated, like a rainstorm, the brain will form streams which will carve out neural pathways. This changes the landscape of our brains. If the experience is significant enough, like a huge raindrop, this can also change our brains.
If we have experienced adverse childhood experiences, the tools our brain develops to keep us safe tend to prioritize immediate threats and survival. After immediate survival, energy will be sent to regulation, then controlling thoughts and actions to support long term goals, and lastly future planning. The opposite is true if we haven't experienced adverse childhood experiences.
This means possible signs and impacts of adverse childhood experiences are ways to meet these goals, to meet needs in harsh environments.
This can look like a person who is skittish or quick to anger because growing up they often entered survival mode due to prolonged bullying. It could look like a person who appears to have poor impulse control because growing up their experiences informed them that resources are limited.
Or it could look like a person self-harming to calm themselves because their energy has been spent on immediate threats and they don’t have enough energy to calm, or self-regulate, in other ways.
How trauma affects our bodies
When our bodies detect a threat, it has several ways to keep us safe.
Without us knowing, our bodies will increase our heart rate, make our breath quicker and shallower, and stop using energy on digestion.
If our heart rate and breathing continue to increase, energy will stop going to our digestive system and we will feel unsafe. This state is called survival mode. Going into survival mode is not voluntary or intentional. This is a very old process our brains have developed to keep us safe.
One stage of survival mode is to move, flight or fight, sometimes called hyperarousal. Everything in our bodies tells us we need to remove ourselves from our environment. It can look like chronic anxiety, reactivity, and/or irritability.
Another survival mode is to stop, or freeze, sometimes called hypoarousal. In this state our bodies feel like they can’t remove us from the threat. We become so overwhelmed with panic we shut down. It can look like dissociation, withdrawal, fainting, loss of purpose, social isolation, despair, and depression.
These modes can happen separately or at the same time.
In this state our bodies are getting less nutrients and energy. If we enter survival mode frequently or for long periods of time our bodies may not be getting the nutrients or energy it needs to keep healthy. This can lead to health implications, such as organ failure, that seem to have no cause.
The window of tolerance
The window of tolerance can be useful to understand when we function best.
Within our window of tolerance, our heart rate and breathing are slow, our bodies are getting the energy and nutrition it needs to stay healthy. This tells our bodies we feel safe. In this window we can socialize, function, and more or less control our thoughts and actions.
If we start to panic, if our heart rate and breathing begin to get quicker. We may still be able to function but if we don’t calm ourselves, we may not be able to function for much longer.
If our panic continues, we may not be able to feel safe or connect with people. In this state our bodies are telling us we are unsafe and should not let people near us physically or mentally.
When we enter survival mode, hypoarousal or hyperarousal, we are outside our window of tolerance. Our environment feels unsafe. It often feels unsafe to let people near us physically or mentally. In this state, it can be difficult or impossible to talk or think our way back into our window of tolerance.
Getting back into our window
| Stage of panic in ourselves or others | Possible biological signs | First step |
| Early-stage | Slight quickening of breath and moderately increased heart rate. | The first thing we can do is to deepen our breathing. This can change our body's signals and reassure our bodies we are safe. |
| Early-stage | Slight quickening of breath and moderately increased heart rate. | Engaging in soothing and empathetic interactions is another effective and quick way to calm ourselves. These interactions can slow our heart rate and breathing and begin to send energy back to our digestive system. This will tell our bodies that we are safe, and we will begin to feel calm. |
| Intermediate-stage | Breathing is fast and difficult to slow; heart rate is fast; and being around people feels threatening, uncomfortable or unsafe. | We can try calming movements to help relax the body and then the mind so that we can connect again. |
| Late-stage | Heart rate and breathing are very fast; feelings of panic; might notice signs of shutting down or lashing out; might be getting sweaty; and being around people and in the environment feels threatening, uncomfortable and/or unsafe. We are in survival mode. | If we are in survival mode, we often need to remove ourselves from the environment we are in. Being in a safe space, somewhere familiar, with low stimulation is best. It can take a while to calm down, so we need to be kind and patient with ourselves and/or others. And then work through the previous steps until we are calm and able to connect and function. |
Coping with trauma and adverse childhood experiences
The types of tools we develop to survive depends on how safe our brains believe the environment is. If our brains believe we live in an unsafe environment, the tools we develop to cope may appear harmful to ourselves or to our community. Seeing these tools as behaviours that someone rationally chose can lead to punishment which can make trauma responses more sever.
| These tools can look like: | Which leads to overrepresentation in: |
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Punishment often makes trauma responses worse as it confirms the bodies belief that the world is unsafe.
Seeing these behaviours as ways to meet needs, survive and cope shows the importance of consistently safe environments to change behaviour. Environments that consistently meet needs of safety, support and connection. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be held accountable for our actions. It means that when held accountable our safety still needs to be a priority, and we still deserve to be treated with empathy, safety, dignity, mutual support and cultural safety.
Prevalence of coping adaptations
People who have experienced 4 or more ACEs are:
- 20X more likely to be incarcerated in their lifetime
- 12.2X more likely to have attempted suicide
- 10.3X more likely to injected drugs
- 6X more likely to have had or caused unintended teenage pregnancy
- 4.6X more likely to suffer from depression
- 2.5X more likely to contract a sexually transmitted infection.
People who have experienced adverse childhood experiences are also more likely to have children who also experience ACEs.
In populations considered vulnerable, these statistics tend to be higher due to higher rates of trauma and adverse childhood experiences.
Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, who experience compounding trauma of colonialism, racism and intergenerational trauma, signs of trauma can be visible in suicide and self-harm rates, alcohol and drug use, changes to family dynamics and more.
Changing the way we meet our needs after a potentially traumatic event is possible, but it is difficult to do alone. Changing our behaviour to be more sociable and enriching requires our brains and bodies to trust we are in a safe environment. This trust doesn't form with one safe experience, one raindrop. Our bodies and brains need repeated experiences of safety, of needs being met, and of kindness. The more people involved in helping all our community members feel safe the quicker our community can heal from trauma and shift these tools to more personally and socially fulfilling behaviours.
Resilience
Resilience is our ability to come back to ourselves after an adverse, stressful, or traumatic experience. Some liken this to a tree in the wind. The tree needs to bend in the wind, so it doesn’t break. But when the wind stops blowing, the tree is straight again. Being resilient doesn’t mean we don’t react to adversity, stress or trauma. It means that we come back to ourselves afterward.
Resilience is built on our environment. If our experiences have shown us that we live in a safe, supportive environment, recovery from stress feels safe and can be quick. These experiences include support from family, friends, school, and needs being met by our environment. They can also include feeling connected to one’s culture and mother tongue, and, for First Peoples, connection to Country.
Often people who show resilience feel closely connected with others, such as family, community, and humanity. Feeling connected increases our compassion and desire to support others. But this requires our bodies to feel safe enough to be able to connect with others.
On a physical level, resilience is our body's ability to return to optimal functioning. This means slow and deep breathing, a regular heart rate, a functioning digestive system, and a nervous system that is able to connect and engage with others. The process of recovering from a stress response takes flexibility. But like muscles, flexibility takes practice. This means that small doses of stress that our bodies recover from increases our ability to recover which builds resilience.
If our stress response is overactive from a young age, flexibility, or resilience, can be harder to develop.
Post-traumatic growth
Post-traumatic growth is when healing from a potentially traumatic event leads to a more enriching life. This is like Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending pottery with golden lacquer. When we put the pieces back together, the cracks do not go away. Instead, they are turned into something meaningful, beautiful even.
There are five areas where post-traumatic growth occurs: improved relationships; increased personal strength; recognition of new life possibilities; enhanced appreciation for life; spiritual development.
