DAILY MAIL - Aftermath of trauma

What people often don't realise about trauma is that when the experience is happening the part of our brain that time and date stamps the events is not engaged. This means that whatever is occurring doesn't have the ability to be filed away and stored like our other memories. This means that the body and the mind might well still feel like it's happening now because there hasn't been that opportunity to properly connect to the fact that the threat has now passed. Learning to feel safe again and to have the edges of the traumatic wounds lay flat again can be done within specialised trauma therapy. When trauma is processed and assimilated then people might still feel sad about the outcome but their distress levels should have decreased to minimum levels.

Living through trauma can make your brain become more alert to feelings of stress and hypersensitive to thoughts, feelings, sights, sounds or smells connected with the trauma. Therefore even in a safe space, if something in your environment is detected as a possible ‘threat’ this can trigger a full-on ‘get yourself safe now’ reaction – often known as a fight, flight, fawn or freeze response. For example, if part of your trauma was feeling trapped and one day you’re in sat in a traffic jam, you might start to immediately panic and feel hugely anxious that the car can’t move. Even though you know logically you are safe in your car, the feeling of being trapped is triggering a trauma response. Your brain's drive for safety overrides the conscious logic. Unprocessed trauma can lead to disproportionate reactions to environmental triggers.