Trauma and the Childhood Brain
As you might already know, trauma responses happen naturally. When your body recognizes a threat, your brain and autonomic nervous system (ANS) react quickly, releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones trigger physical changes that help prepare you to handle a threat, whether it involves actual physical or emotional danger, or perceived harm.
We can think of the brain as a collection of interdependent brain systems. Each system has a function.
When children face traumatic experiences, like abuse and neglect, the brain can adapt to help them cope. Research has focused on 3 particular system called the threat, reward and memory systems.
The threat system in the brain allows us to detect and respond to danger. It helps us step back instantly from a speeding car or avoid an angry dog in the park.
Our brain learns from the experiences we face at every point in our life. When we go through such difficult traumatic experiences in our childhood, our brains respond to this threat. Signals are sent to a part of your brain called the amygdala. Then, your brain will start using natural safety mechanisms. The brain also shuts down all other functions such as higher order thinking. All the blood and energy is diverted towards the heart and muscles to either “fight” or “flee”. The Brain also chooses to freeze (unable to move) or dissociate (brain shuts down, feeling disconnected from the body). - Will be discussed in details later
Repeated exposure can lead to long-term changes in the brain and how the brain responds to threats in the future. A sense of hypervigilance ( over sensitivity) towards threats can develop making you want to avoid potential threats and dangers more than usual. These reactions also may be remembered by your brain, and be used long after even when the real threat has passed. Our bodies may “get stuck” in a loop of being scared and anxious for situations that have no real threat as well, or situations that may have a potential threat.
Reward system
​All positive factors in our lives and motivation is taught to us by the reward system in the brain. Our brains have the innate capacity to understand what a reward is. When we do experience abuse, or neglect from people we look up to, or trust, these rewards, and our perceptions about the world become less consistent. Slowly over time our brain starts to respond less to any type of reward. Even if a reward is given, our brain becomes less sensitive to it, and we fail to see it, which confirms our belief that rewards are infrequent. This also acts as a protective factor so that we don't get our hopes up and disappoint ourselves.
Memory system
We store information of the past, learn new things and draw from past experiences to help us navigate future situations, all these are possible because of our memory systems. Repeated abuse and trauma has shown to impact our memory systems. It is seen that the part of the memory that we store important personal events is a bit different than that of individuals who have not experienced significant trauma. We find it difficult to remember positive autobiographical memories that we experience, and that most of the time, the negative experiences in our day to day become more prominent than the positive ones.
Therefore, fear, anxiety, running away, freezing, shutting down, not being able to think, failing to recall positive aspects in life, failing to see rewards are normal reactions that take place in the brain after a traumatic experience.
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It is important to remember that there is no right or wrong way to feel / react/ response if you have been sexually assaulted. Everyone reacts differently. These are all natural responses to trauma. Therefore it's important to understand the different reactions, responses to CSA.
The brain is both rational and intuitive. When you are in dangerous situations such as sexual assault, the intuitive side takes over. It does whatever it needs to do to survive. As explained before, The threat system - Takes over.
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