Healing the Nervous System from Trauma

To live life with an overactive nervous system is to exist in a permanent state of alert.

Your body rarely feels calm or at ease.

It makes it hard to think clearly, function, or connect meaningfully with others. It’s also incredibly exhausting and makes us sick.

What’s the solution?

How can we go about healing the nervous system from trauma?

Let's do a quick breakdown of the parts of our nervous system and how trauma completely disrupts it.

What is the autonomic nervous system?

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the part of the nervous system that controls involuntary bodily functions, such as the heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and respiration.

The ANS is divided into two parts: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. These two systems work together to maintain homeostasis (the body’s internal stability).

What is the sympathetic nervous system?

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is responsible for the body’s “fight-or-flight” response, which is triggered by stress or danger. This response increases heart rate and blood pressure and diverts blood flow to the muscles and away from the digestive system.

What is the parasympathetic nervous system?

The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for the body’s “rest-and-digest” response, which slows the heart rate and blood pressure and increases blood flow to the digestive system.

Both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are essential for maintaining the body’s homeostasis.

What happens to our nervous system when we experience trauma?

Emotions happen in the more primal, limbic part of the brain. But they can get stuck.

When we experience trauma, our “fight-or-flight” response kicks in. But then our trauma response gets trapped in our nervous system, which is an adaptive response to perceived danger. Unfortunately, when it gets stuck in that place, it makes us sick. We may see threats everywhere or constantly feel overwhelmed. Our immune system is unable to work correctly, which makes us more susceptible to chronic diseases. Getting stuck in these cycles means that we can't return to a sense of safety. So we exist in a constant state of high alert. Our bodies are always activated.

Neurological Health and Trauma

Living with trauma, PTSD, or complex PTSD can mean existing in a state of constant high alert. Our bodies are not designed to be in a state of hypervigilance.

Trauma sometimes traps us in survival mode. When that happens, the trauma rewires our brains in ways that make healing far more complex.

The reptilian part of our brain stays primed for an attack. When your brain is in constant stress mode, it trickles down and impacts other parts of the body.

If the brain does not reset, we risk developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

When our brains are over-stimulated, or traumatized our body's alarm system will go off super easily. what happens to an over-stimulated, traumatized brain. When someone perceives a threat, the emotional part of the brain gets launched into high alert, which shuts down rational thinking.

You may feel things like; anger, desperation, panic, detachment, numb/frozen in place, or the need to flee. This might last for days or hours or be chronic for some, which is highly disruptive to our ability to exist in the world.

Emotional dysregulation can make it feel impossible to function in our personal, romantic, and professional lives.

What is emotional dysregulation?

Dysregulation is an inability to regulate emotions or manage emotional responses in a typical way.

It feels like getting flooded with emotions, adrenaline racing, feeling numb, or overwhelmed by emotions like panic or rage in the face of triggers that wouldn’t typically warrant such intense emotional reactions.

Even if you intellectually know that the situation isn’t that serious, your brain and body react as if it is a five-alarm fire.

This, of course, is flawed.

Unfortunately, too many people suffer in silence and turn to drugs or alcohol, or self-harm for relief.

This is why we need ways to heal our nervous system from trauma, learn strategies for emotional regulation, and feel safe inside our bodies.

Ways To Heal The Nervous System From Trauma

There are tools and strategies we can implement both in the short term and long term to heal our nervous system and return our brains and bodies to homeostasis.

Trauma, like people, is complicated. You’ll want to work with a trained medical professional throughout your journey.

Trauma-Informed Yoga

Yoga is excellent for nourishing the mind-body connection and regulating our internal world.

Trauma-informed yoga helps trauma survivors connect with their bodies and move through the traumatic sensations in their bodies while remaining sensitive to the needs (and triggers) of the class participants.

It appears to be effective, too!

One study followed a group of 64 women with chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD.

Half participated in a trauma-informed yoga group, and the other half to a supportive women’s health group.

By the end of the study, 16 of the 31 participants in the yoga group no longer met the criteria for PTSD.

It’s very promising!

Grounding Techniques

Grounding techniques help to pull your attention away from the emotional response or memory, triggering a trauma response and back into the present moment.

They do this by bringing attention back via one or more of your five senses – taste, touch, sight, smell, and sound.

Anything that pulls you out of a terrible flashback or dissociative state can be a grounding technique.

Maybe you grab a sucker and focus on the taste and the hard click and clack against your teeth.

Or perhaps you stomp the ground to feel the impact on the soles of your feet.

You might even grab a puzzle to busy your eyes and hands.

Grounding techniques alone do not do much to soothe your nervous system, but they are effective tools for stopping your nervous system before it goes into high alert.

Meditation

Meditation is another tool for activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

When practiced consistently, meditation can reshape the brain and strengthen the areas of the brain that are responsible for learning, cognition, memory, and emotional regulation.

• The posterior cingulate, which is involved in mind wandering, and self-relevance.

• The left hippocampus, which assists in learning, cognition, memory, and emotional regulation.

• The temporo parietal junction, or TPJ, which is associated with perspective-taking, empathy, and compassion.

• An area of the brain stem called the Pons, where a lot of regulatory neurotransmitters are produced.

  
  

Conversely, long-term meditation also shrinks the amygdala, the part of the brain where fight-or-flight takes place, which reduces stress and anxiety.

This is by no means an exhaustive list.

There are many tools and practices, as well as tips and tricks, to help you calm an overactive nervous system both in the short and long term.

But you at least get an idea about where to start.

Because trauma is complex and multi-faceted, working with a trained professional to create a treatment plan tailored to your specific needs is essential.

Bottom Line on Healing the Nervous System from Trauma

The good news is that many intelligent, thoughtful people are finding innovative approaches to treating trauma at both the emotional and physical levels.

As always with mental health, the challenging part is finding what works for you.

We have promising new techniques and modalities, but we don’t have a lot of research or studies to back them up.

That’s why it’s essential to research what’s out there and work with a trained professional you trust who specializes in trauma.