Rewind Trauma Therapy

When you have experienced trauma or have a significant fear or phobia there are physiological changes in the way that your brain works. Lets break it down…

Your Amygdala is like an alarm in your brain that sends out signals to your body to go into fight, flight or freeze…people who have experienced trauma or who may have a diagnosis of PTSD or C-PTSD often have excessive activity in the amygdala making them feel on ‘high alert’ a lot of the time, which is pretty exhausting!

The Hippocampus is the part of your brain responsible for memories. The hippocampus works in partnership with the amygdala. For someone who has symptoms consistent with PTSD or C-PTSD the link between these two parts of the brain can become a little funky, or unstable, for a better term.

For example- for someone who doesn’t have these symptoms they could hear fireworks go off, perhaps get a bit of a shock initially, but then within a split second make the connection with fireworks, realise one has gone off, the message is relayed to the amygdala, which alerts the rest of the body that it is safe and it can chill out.

For someone who has experienced trauma, they may make the connection to an extremely traumatic event instead…this could lead to a firework sending them into a state of anxiety and fear, it may create flashbacks and behaviours that could appear extreme- their mind may be thinking that it was a gun shot, an attack, or someone breaking into their house.

The hippocampus is unable to do it’s job, so the amygdala keeps sounding the alarm, causing distress (being triggered).

The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex works similarly to your hippocampus in reassuring the amygdala; it is responsible for emotions and impulses. When someone has experienced trauma this part of the brain becomes less active, again meaning that the amygdala doesn’t get the ‘we can chill now’ memo.

This lower activity in the Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex can also present as being ‘cold’, ‘distant’ or ‘withdrawn’ at times and as it also deals with language, when activity is reduced it can mean difficulty articulating or expressing thoughts or emotions.

In simple terms…

Imagine when you experience life, there’s a little old lady in your brain who stores your memories away. When these are nice, happy or even mundane memories- she stores them neatly away in a filing cabinet, out of the way so you can access them whenever you like and whenever you choose.

When something traumatic happens, she has no idea what to do, so the files go everywhere- scattered around your brain…they don’t get processed and the emotional charge stays high.

So, whenever you see/hear/feel/experience anything remotely connected to those events your brain goes back onto high alert straight away because that file comes right back to the forefront of your mind, with all of the associated emotions.