Trauma Happens Below and Before the Mind ~ Part Two ~

(NOTE* – I capitalize several words that have other cultural, spiritual, and contextual meanings).

In part one – the conversation explored the nature and experience of Trauma, and its effects on your instinctual and social adaptability.

(With some metaphor and playful imagery, I compared immediate instinctual reactions or social ‘fitting in’ behaviors, with the gradual full-time job of living in, and living with, a sense of imminent overwhelm and Trauma.

All in service of an important question…

What if most of the experience and aftermath of Trauma happens below and before the Mind?

If you have not read Part One of this series – HERE is the LINK.

If you have already read part one, I uploaded the incomplete version – OOOOPS!!! – if you want the full experience, give it another glance. It is waaaay better now.)

If you have not read the previous series Mental Health is more the Mental – HERE is Part One.

In this article, (part 2 of 3), I am going to focus on your Brain and Central Nervous system CNS and how Trauma and Chronic distress effect them over time.

Before I begin, this articles describes some TRIGGERING imagery. Please check in with yourself to make sure you feel open to that. Also, this article begins a long conversation about addiction.

If you would like some support and wisdom about with that aspect of Being, please reach out to my rock star colleague, Dr. Dana Leigh Lyons!

Back of House and Your Brain

If Trauma happens below your Mind, where does it happen?

In the sense of exactly where, I will share some places that offer you the best possible understanding of how distress and T-trauma can affect your moment-to-moment experience. Especially if you are feeling triggered!

The idea of Below the Mind though, suggests something lurking in the basement of consciousness. On one level, the basement is every cell in your body. On another level, the lurking aspects of Trauma effect certain parts of the Brain and Body so directly that their functionality can be a kind of dashboard light, letting you know how far your situation has gone. And, after you begin a healing process, how to notice when specifics functions begin improving.

What follows is a short introduction to your Hippocampus, Reticular Activating System (R.A.S.), and your Somatosensory Cortex (S.S.C.).

The primary function of the Hippocampus is to determine which short-term memories (recent life lessons) to long-term memory. This aspect of cognitive functionality says a great deal about the wisdom of evolution. If you learn something in a casual way, the memories associated with the experience will be there the next time you ‘Netflix and chill.’ If you learn or experience something in a life of death context, it will be there every time you are surprised by a loud noise.

Your Hippocampus also helps with emotional regulation by ‘knowing’ which situations may be more fun, or serious, or romantic, or dangerous. In a way, your Hippocampus is like a simplified version of context and meaning. The driving forces for most of what we choose to do in daily life.

When it comes to living with Complex Trauma and many other sources of chronic distress, your Hippocampus is less of a wise mentor and more of a front-line soldier. This part of your Brain is highly sensitive to stress hormones like cortisol. Prolonged exposure to elevated levels of stress hormones can lead to atrophy of hippocampal neurons and impaired neurogenesis (the formation of new neurons), potentially contributing to the memory and emotional regulation difficulties that many experience living with C-PTSD.

The Amygdala, the proverbial ‘lizard brain’ for instance, often shows hyperactivity in individuals with PTSD, contributing to heightened fear responses and emotional reactivity.

The Prefrontal Cortex, responsible for executive functions and emotional regulation, may exhibit decreased activity, potentially explaining the difficulties in managing emotions and intrusive thoughts when people with Trauma feel triggered or overwhelmed.

The Prefrontal Cortex, responsible for executive functions and emotional regulation, often shows decreased activity, potentially explaining the difficulties in managing emotions and intrusive thoughts experienced by those with PTSD.

The Brain of a person who has not experienced significant Trauma, has the ability shuffle long memories, short term memories, and emotional self-regulation to continue to redefine danger and meaning.

Unfortunately, for the most part, the Brain of a person with PTSD cannot shift danger (memories) and meaning (motivation to self-regulate) around as easily, which is why it feels like being stuck in time. Or, why all of the personal growth and meditation don’t seem as effective at first.

Your Reticular Activating System (R.A.S.)

The R.A.S. also regulates reflex tonus (the baseline tension of the greater muscles of your whole body, their reactivity, and your ability to relax) and sensory response capacity (your nervous system’s ability to respond to what you hear, smell and see).

Basically, your R.A.S. determines how fidgety, nervous, tense and/or jumpy you are, as well as how aware you can be of your environment.

The easiest way to understand why this part of you is so important, is through a story.

Imagine you are alone, sitting in the forest meditating. Somewhere off to your left and behind you, maybe 30 feet away, a stick breaks. A BIG stick breaks…

Sitting with your eyes closed, you are naturally imagining what could be that size, in this kind of forest. It is probably a Bear.

As an experienced meditator, you can choose stillness (a bit of a gamble), or as an animal you can choose fight or flight – or lay down and play dead.

Ready…?

Imagine the Bear comes very close, maybe sits right in front of you. Given that your primary danger is withing the reach of your reflexes, it only makes sense for your brain to ignore what you hear or smell. Survival is about efficiency most of the time.

There is more to this metaphor. The point so far is as stress looms, your body becomes constrained or collapsed, while your awareness of your environment dims.

Let’s shift the context. Now imagine you are you, going through a stressful time. High consequence danger bears on the outside, and let’s add chronic disease and pain bears on the inside. (That is 60% of people, BTW)

Given that your nervous system is meant to keep you alive, how does your R.A.S. respond to chronic external and internal distress?

Since the R.A.S. connects with your external sense awareness and your ability to move, what is the best use of your Mind?

Wrestling with two ‘bears’ at once uses up all of your inner resources, making you more prone to exhaustion, overwhelm, and more complex disease processes. It is natural and necessary, when you need to protect yourself outward and inward, to focus on the inward danger, and all too often literally hold on for your life.

If your Reticular Activating System is trying to function at 110% everyday, doing everything possible to keep you alive, how would you feel about life?

Would you be up to some fasting, a cleanse, and a few months in the gym?

Or would you prefer any chance to find peace and relaxation? How about some substance abuse and numbing?

This change in your R.A.S. is also related to the specific ways, and how fast people age.

(There should be a book on the R.A.S. – It is possibly the most important dashboard light in your Brain and your Life).

This article is about what is below your mind. Feeling this wound up and burned out is ‘normal’ for people with any kind of Trauma, Chronic Distress (Anxiety, Depression. Etc.), Chronic Illness and Pain, Neurodivergent experience, and long-term Mental Illness.

With a loaded R.A.S., your brain is certain that it lives in a relentlessly dangerous world. This creates a kind of Neurological precondition for impatience, exhaustion, and sensual apathy.

Your R.A.S. in Review

• Your R.A.S. helps regulate sleep patterns and the transition from sleep, an intermediate state called Hypnagogia, and alert wakefulness. We can all jump out of bed or love to sleep in sometimes, because of your R.A.S.
• Like the idle of a car, your R.A.S. maintains a consistent level of conscious alertness and can raise or lower your Brain’s activity depending on each situation.
• Actively maintains postural tone, sense of balance, and degree of reflexive preparedness.
• Your R.A.S. can increase your Neurological (Brain) and Neuromuscular (Reflexes) rapidly in the short term for enhanced fight-or-flight reflexes.
• It can decrease your access to sensory stimuli and extraneous information if you are in a long-term fight or flight environment.

Somatosensory Cortex (SSC)

It is responsible for processing sensory information and interprets tactile stimuli (touch, temperature, pressure (weight), pain, and proprioception – awareness of body position).

This part of your brain is the actual location that you experience your somatic sensations. Some parts of your body, like your lips and hands, use more brain volume than less sensitive places. This allows you to feel the exact location of contact, pain, and pressure as well as other more subjective somatic sense states that we will learn about in Part Three.

Another Story about Bears

Imagine building a log cabin out in the wilderness. By accident, you crush your left hand. The smell of blood and the sound of your yelling has attracted a Bear.

You don’t know about the bear…, yet!

You calm down gradually and start taking care of your hand. The pain has subsided a little and maybe things are not as bad as they look. The bear decides that this is the time, and charges from out of nowhere.

Somehow, you find resources to not only run away, but to climb a ladder and push it over so the bear cannot follow. You sit down on the second floor, wondering how you just did that. The bear paces below you, hoping for another chance.

How does anyone do that?

Now imagine you are a cell in the Somatosensory Cortex (SSC) inside your brain. Your job, as a brain cell, all day, every day, all of your life, is to supply nutrients and help supply the resources to make Neurotransmitters. Including morphine-like hormones called Endorphins that make you numb to pain, but still able to climb and carry things.

Imagine, as a brain cell, you get a signal from one of your hands. It is bad. Really bad!

The nerves in the arm are screaming for help. You tell the local connective tissue to make all of the opiates they can. It will not be enough. It is never enough. Those chemicals are hard to make, and building a tolerance happens very fast.

The more efficient choice would be to put a few molecules in the region of your SSC that relates to (feels) your left hand.

Why does this matter?

Trauma impacts your life, your identity, and your brain in ways that effect your experience and your behavior – from below your Mind.

Being able to negate certain memories or recreate certain kinds of relationship dysfunction to feel an ancient but potent feeling of distress, can create a numbing effect.

A severe example of this is self mutilation. The use of physical pain to reduce the experience of visceral and existential pain.

This can get very complicated – and terrifyingly simple…

Why would our brain regions evolve to selectively experience numbness or an inability to form a complete memory?

Why would Somatosensory numbing be a long-term survival advantage?

I have admittedly walked us down this road of restaurants and the brain structures in your ‘back of house,’ for a very specific reason.

This is how we resist memories of early childhood Trauma for as long as needed. Through a combination of instinctual and social adaptations, human Minds (as brains) can block out memories until the Mind and Self are ready. Your brain will know that you are ready after a long time of rest, rejuvenation, and consistently growing and evolving new neuropathways.

Consistent co-regulation, like therapy and ceremony, are also profoundly helpful.

Memories are bears. In my metaphor of bears representing a potential immanent overwhelm, some memories are best left sleeping for as long as possible. Some bears pace around you, some sit in your lap, others take over your belly and solar plexus. Your Mind can protect itself from those kinds of bears.

Memory bears are Mind bears. If you live with all of your memories, there is nowhere to hide, and numbing will no longer work in the same way. I will come back to this in a future article about why states of overwhelm can become addictive.

Inflammation eats your brain. I won’t go into this subject here either, but in a conversation about Trauma, the brain and risk factors – chronic inflammation accelerates almost every negative outcome for your brain’s tissues and neurotransmitter availability. This can be complicated even more with Post Concussive Syndrome.

If you are interested in learning about TCM Psychology (Qing Zhi Bing), there is a course starting in early Spring! LEARN more HERE!

Recap…

Just like a rider on a horse, your experience of life can be enhanced or limited by your horse, or the impact of your life experiences on your brain’s structures and functions. This changes your sense of Self, and of your Adaptive Capacity. (See original post)

In part three – we will explore the many ways that your Somatic or Embodied Experience can determine your social availability, your sense of Self, and the volume of assumed shame and self-loathing in your Heart.