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We’ve come a long way since therapists prescribed to their clients to punch their pillows when angry as a cathartic way to release negative emotions. While it helped bring up the emotion, they left out a critical piece in recovery: connecting that emotion to the logical side of our brains. What the person felt was not relief but disassociation.
What we know today in neuroscience and psychotherapy research is that when a traumatic event occurs, the brain goes into dysregulation. That is, the body and the mind become disconnected. Our survival or emotional part of our brain kicks in and calls the shots while our logical or thinking part goes silent. It’s an acute physical reality just like when someone might get their shoulder disconnected in a sports accident.
The person who experienced trauma is said to be stuck in “trauma time” and may also be emotionally reactionary when something triggers them, which is called a “trauma response.” When a person continues to feel trauma, the brain stays in a disassociated state until they are able to re-integrate the two parts of the brain again. Sometimes this can take years… as with chronic stress or continually being in unsafe situations including financial insecurity, and domestic abuse or neglect.
When a person is finally safe, physically speaking, the work of re-integration can take place. Very often, a person still feels unsafe when they are physically safe because their somatic experience is still in the trauma state even though they cognitively understand they are in fact safe. This is why it’s difficult for people with trauma to even seek help; they are still reacting to the trauma as a habit of protection. Someone needs to guide them to a place of safety and recovery. People who have experienced trauma are in state of shock, have incurred PTSD and have emotional dysregulation.
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