The biology of trauma (and why it sucks so hard)
Trauma hasn’t been destigmatized along with some other mental conditions that have gained widespread acceptance in the last decade. Many of these experiences are intensely private.
“Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It interrupts the plot … It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it.”
Jessica Stern, Denial: A Memoir of Terror
Some mental health problems exist from the minute you’re born, like little bombs waiting to explode in your head right when stability is needed the most. Other problems come from experiences — especially nasty ones that leave you shaken and disturbed for decades afterward.
Trauma is something we don’t typically share with strangers. Trauma hasn’t been destigmatized along with some other mental conditions that have gained widespread acceptance in the last decade. Many of these experiences are intensely private.
The most jarring experience I had while working at Canada’s national broadcaster looked to crack our heads open and let the trauma spill out. I led the redevelopment of a pretty big program, and the broadcaster hired some fancy business people who had been very successful in their fields to conduct a workshop with some of the staff involved in the project.
Before we were allowed to talk about what might make a good television program, however, we were asked to draw a straight line on a piece of paper. From there, we were to write down all the high points and low points in our lives. We were told to dig deep because this was a safe space, and what we said would never leave the room by a guy who found success making software, not offering psychological services.
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The first person spoke and things went a little dark. The next person spoke, and things got really dark. As we went around the room, each story got more tragic, and everyone was sobbing with each new confession.
It was the trauma Olympics, and I decided to go for the pole vault. I blurted out something that happened to me when I was a kid, something I’d never said out loud to almost anyone, and then looked around at my shattered colleagues and the strange tech millionaires who were guiding our session.
The turtleneck leading the session waited for a second and clapped his hands toward us.
“Well,” he said. “Thank you for sharing. Now that we’ve established such a deep level of trust, we can truly get on with our work in a fearless way.”
I’d never heard that the secret to good television is to deconstruct the souls of everyone involved and leave their tiny pieces of sadness on a boardroom floor. If you’re wondering why the program never really found its feet, that’s as good as any you’re going to find.
The Body Keeps The Score
This bizarre story springs to mind as I started reading The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, And Body In The Healing of Trauma by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk. He’s studied the effect of trauma on the human mind for more than three decades, looking to understand better the consequences of PTSD and how it manifests in the brain. This isn’t a piece of pop psychology — it’s a clinical piece of work that is as much textbook as a gripping non-fiction account of the types of experiences that leave people broken and incapacitated.
“Trauma produces actual physiological changes, including a recalibration of the brain’s alarm system, an increase in stress hormone activity, and alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant,” Van Der Kolk writes.
“We now know that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive. These changes explain why traumatized individuals become hypervigilant to threat at the expense of spontaneously engaging in their day-to-day lives. They also help us understand why traumatized people often keep repeating the same problems and have such trouble learning from experience. We now know that their behaviors are not the result of moral failings or signs of lack of willpower or bad character — they are caused by actual changes in the brain.”
It’s the research, stupid
The book delves into decades of research and explains why we find ourselves locked in a perpetual state of flight-fight, constantly scanning for danger long after the threat has passed. Whether it be a driver reliving a car crash in nightmares, a vet breaking into a rage after hearing a random sound, or someone who was beaten as a child, the consequences are surprisingly long-lasting and under-treated.
“Many traumatized individuals are too hypervigilant to enjoy the ordinary pleasures that life has to offer, while others are too numb to absorb new experiences or to be alert to signs of real danger,” he writes. “When the smoke detectors of the brain malfunction, people no longer run when they should be trying to escape or fight back when they should be defending themselves.”
It can be especially challenging for us when the trauma has been inflicted by others. But he says anyone suffering the after-effects also feels haunted by how they acted during the trauma — what they could have done and didn’t, who they could have told but didn’t.
“They despise themselves for how terrified, dependent, excited, or enraged they feel,” he writes.
They are often robbed of imagination, constantly pulled back to the worst moments of their lives when they could be looking ahead to bright things awaiting them in the future. It keeps them from enjoying what they have in front of them and leaves them guarding against threats that no longer exist.
“When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility,” he writes. “Without imagination, there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach.”
The book’s science separates it from other offerings on the shelf. Much of it went over my head, the same way early psychology courses can cause your eyes to glaze over when learning about the function of different parts of the brain (amaglyawhat?). I skipped some sections that dug too deep because it was clear they were written for other doctors and not for bozos like me, trying to understand my own reaction to certain things.
But I know one thing for sure — I learned more from this book than I did from the dude who made us blurt out the worst moments of our lives so that we could better develop a news programme.
I give The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind And Body In The Healing of Trauma a solid 9/10.
