The Body Keeps the Score

Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors.

Traumatic experiences do leave traces, whether on a large scale (on our histories and cultures) or close to home, on our families, with dark secrets being imperceptibly passed down through generations.

The part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival is not very good at denial.

As our minds desperately try to leave trauma behind, our bodies keep us trapped in the past with wordless emotions and feelings.

These inner disconnections cascade into ruptures in social relationships with disastrous effects on marriages, families, and friendships.

If the interpretation of threat by the amygdala is too intense, and/or the filtering system from the higher areas of the brain are too weak, as often happens in PTSD, people lose control over automatic emergency responses.

Faulty alarm systems lead to blowups or shutdowns in response to innocuous comments or facial expressions.

The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented, so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own.

As long as the trauma is not resolved, the stress hormones that the body secretes to protect itself keep circulating, and the defensive movements and emotional responses keep getting replayed.

Many untreated trauma survivors start out like Stan, with explosive flashbacks, then numb out later in life.