When Faced With Challenging Experiences, Especially As A Parent, Navigating Through Them Can Be Difficult.
Chances are, trauma or an overstimulated nervous system has a hold on you too!

Impacts On The Nervous System

What’s a traumatic experience?  

Trauma is an experience or can be a series of experiences that overwhelm the central nervous system. It occurs when one’s ability to defend, protect or say no is overwhelmed putting the body into a trauma response often referred to as a fight, flight, fawn, freeze, flop response. It’s honestly a normal response to an abnormal situation and will vary from person to person. It is the outcome of what occurs when your active response to the threat does not work.

Another way to understand an overwhelmed central nervous system is to understand some medical conditions make the nervous system overstimulated.

the brain and how it's primed to respond

During a traumatic event or when the nervous system is overstimulated, the brain is primed to respond reflexively (meaning automatically or without conscious thought) to ensure survival. However, that very same response the brain takes often keeps us safe but can also keep us trapped in cycles of traumatic memory or patterns of behavior.

Some refer to this as staying in a state of being a victim to a traumatic experience but we’d like to think more often than not that the brain is simply unable to come out of a cycle because it does not have the tools to do so.

what you should understand

When it comes to trauma, especially childhood trauma, you should understand the brain physically changes. One of the changes is to the amygdala, which is the brain’s emotional reaction center, it becomes highly reactive.

When a person is triggered, the brain is primed to respond reflexively going into high alert shutting down rational thinking to a degree. This is where feelings can become overwhelming (referred to as emotional dysregulation) and remember this is completely normal. This is a part of the nervous system automatically reacting to try and keep you safe going back into a trauma response.

When tackling different medical conditions, it's crucial to acknowledge that each person will have unique experiences. These differences are influenced by the specific condition and the way their brain interprets information.

For this very reason, we should strive to grasp and seek a greater understanding of ourselves and one another.

when left untreated or suppressed

If trauma or an overstimulated nervous system is not treated or is suppressed and we fail to learn how to feel safe, it can have lifelong effects on a person. This is the origin of the concept of historical trauma; it is when trauma is passed down from one generation to another due to any kind of impairment.

If untreated or suppressed, it can embed itself in the body and can show up months or even years later in various forms like chronic illness.

If treated, individuals can equip themselves with the necessary tools to mitigate future triggers and acquire skills for self-regulation.

Easy? Nope! But in our eyes and based on our experience, it is necessary to learn to process. It is also necessary to support and better understand yours and your dependents' nervous system.

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Dive a Bit Deeper into the Topics Below!

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is such a fascinating field of science! It is the study of how the nervous system develops, its structure and what it does. It covers the whole nervous system with a primary focus on the brain.

If we understand some basic information of how the brain is processing information, given it’s like a central computer coordinating all activities of the body, it can help us better connect our thoughts and body so we can adapt and respond better to different experiences.

The brain controls what you think and feel, how you learn and remember, and more. It enables the body to respond and adapt to changes both inside and outside the body. But how does it do this?

At a high level:

  • The nervous system includes the brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of nerves.
  • Its job is to send messages back and forth between the brain and the body with the main objective of keeping you safe.
  • It takes information from the environment by using our five basic senses (taste, hearing, sight, smell, touch), processes that information with the help of our ‘to date’ life experiences and perception, and then responds.

What’s important to know is perception and sensory experience of the world becomes a huge conversation here.

Sensation is non-negotiable and is basically the body trying to perceive what’s happening from the physical world whereas perception is negotiable and is what a person chooses to pay attention to.

The outcome of taking in information and processing it is often seen through one's emotions as this is the body's way of helping the brain and nervous system to match the internal and external environment.

If we take it a step further, depending on what a person has been through, their nervous system may or may not be able to respond to the experience they find themselves in. In the event a person is unable to take in and cope with an experience then they are likely experiencing a traumatic experience. What this means is that the nervous system is so overloaded it is unable to function as it usually would and one may need some help. This is often referred to as trauma.

Psychology

The human mind goes into three main ego states of mind which reflect a person’s emotional state.

We can move rapidly between them, or we can get stuck in a particular ego state of mind for some time but these all carry a purpose and are consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behavior that can be categorized as parent, adult, and child ego states of mind. They are fundamental in understanding how a person shows up in the world.

  • The parent ego state of mind is behaviors, thoughts and feelings copied from parents or parental figures. This state of mind is often unconscious behavior which simply means an individual’s complex mental activities within themselves proceed without their awareness.
  • The child ego state of mind is behaviors, thoughts and feelings replayed from childhood.
  • The adult ego state of mind is behaviors, thoughts and feelings which are in direct response to the here and now.

Recognizing how your upbringing shapes your emotional state and influences unconscious behavior is key. Choosing to consciously respond to situations opposed to unconsciously responding also becomes key.

That being said, having an understanding of how our ego states of mind operate can be beneficial in teaching our brain to better regulate emotions, commonly known as 'emotional intelligence'. We do this by learning ways to consciously think and by interrupting patterns that are no longer useful. Additionally, given we are now a bit wiser, we can choose to engage in communication with others simply knowing they too are functioning in a similar manner but with a different upbringing.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is crucial for personal growth and recovery. It provides the ability to process emotions and establish healthy relationships.

To understand emotional intelligence you must first understand the difference between self-regulation and emotional intelligence.

Self-Regulation is the process of actively managing how we feel about our emotions, thoughts, events, experiences, and behaviors.

Emotional Intelligence is about effectively managing your own emotions and understanding the emotions of others.

In simpler terms, self-regulation allows us to practice emotional intelligence and helps us avoid being overwhelmed by our emotions.

So how is emotional intelligence challenged during Trauma? 

You will recall that during a traumatic event, the brain physically changes where emotions become highly reactive. The brain also narrows and is primed to respond reflexively (meaning automatically or without conscious thought) to ensure survival. This is where the disconnect happens and one may need some help to get out of the fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop response. 

When the brain is primed to respond reflexively, we need to learn how to teach the brain to respond in a reflective manner (meaning using careful thinking with conscious thought) without becoming stuck in negative cycles to regain regulation and to adapt well. This is basically teaching the brain new patterns while it learns that we are safe but it requires understanding, education, time, coping tools and a lot of effort by the person and/or family that has experienced the traumatic event or for those that have to work with an overstimulated nervous system regularly. The hard part is when we need to trick the brain in a way so we can be strong for loved ones, helping them feel safe when that may not be the case - like when your child is up against something that is life threatening.

Your perception and sensory experience of the world without a doubt is going to be challenged and in the end you will become a new version of yourself. Using reflective responses and stepping into each of your emotions while navigating the 5 stages of trauma (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) will build on emotional intelligence.

Did you know Data Reveals
Parents Of Children Who Experience Trauma May Develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It Also Tells Us That The Child Impacted By Trauma Is Not Their Chronological Age
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