Your brain has no way of knowing if the danger is still present, so it relies on you, the way you feel and react now.
Sometimes trauma feels like failure, like there must have been something we could have done at the time to have prevented those damaging memories from being created in the first place. So we hide it. We don’t speak about it. And when those foul memories resurface, we do everything we can to swallow it all back down.
All this does is amplify the surfacing effects.
Let me explain:
Emotional responses to traumatic spikes are based on something called “state-dependent memory” factors. Simply put, dozens upon dozens of tiny details present when the trauma occurred serve as positioning anchors to lock that memory firmly into your subconscious.
These include sights, sounds, smells, temperature, what you were doing, who you were with, how tired you were, what kind of emotional state you were already in, if the Yankees won that day — and on and on. Your brain greedily gobbles up all of this data into what we call a “memory loop” that gets burned into your subconscious like a horrible 3-d nightmarish movie.
It fades quickly. Then it waits…
Your brain locks all of this data into deep storage with a “just in case” intention. You’ve inadvertently taught it something, although what it has learned is deeply skewed. It only decodes this information as danger, and our brains don’t like danger. It knows the venom it carries is sharp and powerful, so it saves it for a rainy day. When that day comes (when all those state-dependent factors reappear) it fires off that spike.
This next part is critical.
Your brain is actually doing two things here.
1) It’s forcing you back into the exact same emotional state you were in when the original traumas occurred, because it’s trying to warn you.
2) It’s sending out feelers for new information.
Your brain has no way of knowing if the danger is still present, so it relies on you, the way you feel and react now. Is all of this still valid? What you do in this moment can either disrupt the traumatic memory loop or amplify it, even if the new information it receives is faulty.
You can’t stop this. Brains gonna be brains.
What you CAN do is choose how you react during these spikes, stay in the moment, discover the truth in what is really happening, and hopefully serve to dull those memories to the point where they have no more bite.
Failure? Hell no.
You’re a friggin warrior.
Each time those spikes come back you go to battle, and this is a good thing. Instead of allowing it to happen, you’re standing up for yourself, you’re fighting back, you’re taking control, and you’re building up resistance and fortitude.
Most importantly, you’re retraining your brain.
This is how we become more #resilient.
It takes time. So if you can’t do this right away don’t beat yourself up. You’re not failing, you’re just being human. Just remember to stay in the game, keep fighting and stay the course. You can do this. You can get better. You can heal.
⚡
TU