The amygdala stores the visual images of trauma as sensory fragments, which means the trauma memory is not stored like a story, rather by how our five senses were experiencing the trauma at the time it was occurring. The memories are stored through fragments of visual images, smells, sounds, tastes, or touch.
The brain's emotional reaction center associated with behavioral functioning and survival instincts, the amygdala, shows correspondingly increased reactivity with higher reported exposure to trauma during infancy and early childhood.
Trauma is not physically held in the muscles or bones — instead, the need to protect oneself from perceived threats is stored in the memory and emotional centers of the brain, such as the hippocampus and amygdala. This activates the body whenever a situation reminds the person of the traumatic event(s).
Continuous trauma can weaken remaining neural pathways to the thinking part of your brain and strengthen neural pathways to the survival part, thus bypassing the thinking part, which makes some children less capable of coping with adversity as they grow up.
Brain scans show childhood trauma can cause shrinkage in the hippocampus, the area linked to memory storage and retrieval.
Signs and Symptoms
Anxiety: Childhood trauma increases the risk of anxiety. Anxiety triggers a reaction where adrenaline courses through the body, telling it to fight or leave a situation. Your heart rate increases, and you may feel sick to your stomach. Childish reactions: Childish reactions may look like a tantrum.
However, because of improvements in brain imaging technology, we now know that neuroplasticity is a lifelong quality. This means that regardless of age, it may be possible to rewire your brain and nervous system from childhood trauma by having new, positive, and supportive experiences.
Studies have shown that people with PTSD have lower executive functioning than the general population. Trauma-induced damage to the prefrontal cortex may result in: Impulsive decision making: Poor executive functioning, due to problems in the prefrontal cortex, can cause someone to make riskier decisions.
In order to properly heal PTSD, getting effective treatment, such as PTSD counseling, is key. While healing childhood trauma is not always easy, it is possible! Trauma-based therapy can help you pinpoint triggers, create healthy coping mechanisms, and lessen the severity of your symptoms.
It over-relies on these blueprints from the past, creating a sense of danger in the present, long after the threat is gone. If post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops, it can lead to lasting changes in the brain and, without treatment, may prevent you from living the happiest, healthiest life possible.
These traumas can be the result of intentional violence—such as child physical or sexual abuse, or domestic violence—or the result of natural disaster, accidents, or war. Young children also may experience traumatic stress in response to painful medical procedures or the sudden loss of a parent/caregiver.
Grief can be stored in various parts of the body, such as the heart, lungs, throat, and stomach. People may also experience physical sensations like heaviness in the chest or tightness in the throat when experiencing grief.
So, these three parts of the brain- the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex- are the most-affected areas of the brain from emotional trauma. They can make a trauma survivor constantly fearful, especially when triggered by events and situations that remind them of their past trauma.
According to a 2006 study by NIH, trauma mainly affects three important parts of your brain: the amygdala, which is your emotional and instinctual center; the hippocampus, which controls memory; and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for regulating your emotions and impulses.
When something reminds a person of past trauma, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. Because the left brain isn't working very well, however, they might not be aware that they are experiencing and reenacting the past. They are furious, terrified, ashamed or frozen.
Attachment Issues: Traumatic experiences in childhood can lead to insecure attachment styles in adulthood. This may manifest as a fear of abandonment, resulting in clinginess in relationships (anxious attachment), or as a fear of intimacy, leading to emotional detachment and self-isolation (avoidant attachment).
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Children and adolescents with PTSD have symptoms such as persistent, frightening thoughts and memories or flashbacks of a traumatic event or events.
Without treatment, repeated childhood exposure to traumatic events can affect the brain and nervous system and increase health-risk behaviors (e.g., smoking, eating disorders, substance use, and high-risk activities).
Acquired amygdala damage reliably impairs fear conditioning, and behavioural, physiological and (in humans and perhaps other species, subjective) responses to threats [6–9].
While damage to the brain following a traumatic brain injury is permanent because damaged brain cells cannot regenerate or repair themselves, there is hope for functional recovery. This is because functions affected by TBI may be rewired and improved by healthy brain cells.
In fact, depending on the severity of the injury, recovery time for a TBI may vary from a few weeks to six or more months. Each person reacts differently to injury and illness. Thus, recovery time will vary between individuals. However, the length of recovery time for TBI depends on how long a patient is unconscious.
The child may struggle with self-regulation (i.e., knowing how to calm down) and may lack impulse control or the ability to think through consequences before acting. As a result, complexly traumatized children may behave in ways that appear unpredictable, oppositional, volatile, and extreme.
There aren't any treatments that specifically help the amygdala. Instead, treatments target specific symptoms or conditions related to it. Treatments can vary widely and include: Mental health therapy (psychotherapy).
The trauma inflicted in childhood changes the way a person connects with others. It can introduce a sense of shame or lack of self-worth, which can cause you to form relationships in unhealthy ways. For some people, this might take the form of making unhealthy attachments with unsuitable people.