Adam’s Reviews > The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma > Status Update

Traumatized bodies are "constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside." "The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed.

The brain is capable of being rewired -- we call this neuroplasticity. "Neurons that fire together, wire together. When a circuit fires repeatedly, it can become a default setting." We can overwrite our default settings by changing how our circuits fire.

The mind is connected to the body via the vagus nerve, which is why a gut-wrenching feeling is felt in the gut. Social support (seen & heard) makes us feel safe which then calms down our physiology. If unable to escape, the body freezes via the Dorsal Vagus Complex to conserve energy, which causes dissociation. Polyvagal theory explains therapy at the brainstem level

Humans are rhythmic creatures

A large factor in whether or not someone has prolonged trauma after a traumatic event is whether or not they were able to escape -- if they were able to react and have agency.

"When we gave the Rorschach test to 21 additional veterans, the response was consistent: 16 of them, ..., reacted as if they were experiencing a wartime trauma. ... While the majority of the veterans were upset by what they saw, the reactions of the remaining 5 were more alarming: ... "This is nothing." ... but the normal human response to ambiguous stimuli is to use our imagination to read something into them.