We experience trauma, an emotional response, after going through something distressing or frightening that we were unable to successfully cope with or control. That could be a natural disaster that affects your whole community or something that only impacts you individually, like violence against you, a car accident, or an unhealthy relationship. It also may not be a sudden event. You might have trauma from a lasting experience, like a neglectful childhood. Ultimately, we can describe trauma as “disruption without repair.” 

In any case, that trauma often has a lasting effect — and it’s not just a mental one. Today, we want to talk about how trauma impacts your body. As Bessel van der Kolk, author of the famous novel, The Body Keeps The Score, says, “After trauma, the world is experienced with a different nervous system.”

The lasting physical effects of trauma

The traumatic experience could cause lasting physical effects of its own. If you get in a major car accident, for example, you might bear the physical scars for the rest of your life.

But the implications of a traumatic experience don’t stop there. To understand how trauma impacts your body, we have to also look at the brain. 

Because of the experience, the brain might remain on high alert. Key parts of your brain — like your amygdala, which is responsible for your fight, flight, or freeze response — might store the memory of the event. As a result, anything that reminds the brain of it can trigger a physiological  response. And even when you’re not thinking about the traumatic experience, you might still experience symptoms. 

That’s partially because the brain remaining on high alert can make your hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis more sensitive. This part of your body controls your stress response. That sensitization often means that it increases your body’s cortisol levels. This stress hormone makes it hard to relax. As a result, you might always feel like you’re on edge. 

Physical remnants of trauma

All of this can contribute to lasting physical symptoms like:

• Sleep problems
• Muscle tension
• Headaches
• Chronic pain
• Trouble focusing or remembering
• Tightness in your chest
• An upset stomach
• Persistent fatigue

What’s particularly interesting is that you can feel all of these symptoms even if you think you’re “over” the traumatic event. The brain activates this response as an attempt to keep you safe — and make you aware of potential threats. The problem, though, is that the brain doesn’t always realize that the event has ended and, in fact, you may already be safe. Knowing how trauma impacts your body — even if you feel emotionally past your trauma — might explain the way you’ve been feeling physically. 

One way to understand this is to think of the amygdala like our brain’s smoke detector. Its purpose is to detect potential “fires” by looking for key data points, or “smoke” that indicate that we’re in danger. But sometimes, after traumatic incidents, the brain identifies “smoke” where there is no “fire.” 

For example, if we’ve been in a traumatic car accident, the brain might automatically identify automobiles as “smoke.” This will set off the internal alarms and tell us there is a “fire” when an automobile might not always represent this. 

Ways to process trauma

If the above symptoms sound familiar and you’ve lived through a traumatic experience, you would likely benefit from taking action to resolve your body’s trauma response. 

Certain types of therapy can help. Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy both often deliver results for people seeking to process their trauma. 

Connecting your mind to your body can also go a long way. Yoga, in particular, has been shown to help with trauma symptoms. This type of mindful movement can help you build a deeper mind-body connection while soothing your system, helping to fight the cortisol overload. 

Ultimately, if you’ve lived through a traumatic experience and you feel like you’re past it but you’re still experiencing physical symptoms, it likely stems from how trauma impacts your body. For help processing what you’ve been through and moving out of your brain’s high-alert response, we’re here. We can’t always control going through trauma or the fact that these experiences rewire our nervous system, but we have control over how it shapes us moving forward. Need support in re-writing this narrative? Get in touch with our therapists at the Ventura Counseling & Wellness Center in Ventura or the West Valley Counseling Center in Tarzana.