Fear and trauma while not the same emotions, both have profound effects on our brain. Fear is so powerful that it destroys careers, relationships, and businesses. Fear is simply derived from the unknown. It is the notion of uncertainty, at all levels from unpredictability to not being in control of future outcomes. Trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition with intense, disturbing thoughts and feelings, often event or trigger-based. The Health Care Policy report from Harvard Medical School shares that 60% of Americans experience at least one trauma-based event in their lifetime. And that number appears to be increasing.
Trauma-based stress impacts the brain particularly the hippocampus, which is the brain’s emotional processing center. The hippocampus is necessary for making new memories. If you didn’t have it, you couldn’t live in the present, and essentially be trapped in the past of old memories. As with Alzheimer’s disease, it affects the hippocampus first and severely. Besides memory and emotions, the hippocampus is extremely tied to estrogen and mood disorders. For example, in both schizophrenia and severe depression, the hippocampus appears to shrink.
Now when applying Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) techniques or engaging in mindfulness activities, MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s “fight or flight” center, the amygdala, also appears to shrink. As the amygdala nodes shrink, the pre-frontal cortex, associated with higher brain functions such as awareness, concentration, and decision-making, all become thicker. Additionally, research highlights that long-term meditators have an increased amount of gray matter. Brain regions (e.g. sensory cortex and insula) associated with attention, introspection, and sensory processing was thicker. This makes sense. When you’re mindful, you’re paying attention to your breathing, to sounds, your body, your present moment experience, and shutting cognition down.
Many doctors and specialists often view PTSD as complicated cases because the goal is to get to the “heart of the matter”, or the “root cause”. By this point, the effect has already taken over the body, and a better approach is to focus on reducing and minimizing PTSD vs. fully analyzing the event or trigger. Reducing the harmful effects of PTSD is proving viable through research and the use of MBSR. These techniques are useful to manage anxiety, fragmented sleep, PTSD, and overall concentrating. If you are looking to explore a MBSR program, most will focus on teaching:
- Mind and body awareness to reduce the physiological effects of stress or pain
- Exploration of stress experiences to develop less emotional reactivity or attachment
- Fostering tactics centered around non-judgmental awareness in ADLs (activities of daily living)
- Mindfulness meditation (with and without sound)
- Body movement or energy movement through tai-chi, qi-gong, and yoga which promotes serenity and clarity to support stress management
PTSD, anxiety, restless sleep, and depression – you don’t have to live with this bodily pain. You have the right to lively fully, with love, until your last breath.
Sources:
1) https://psycheducation.org/brain-tours/memory-learning-and-emotion-the-hippocampus/
2) B Grace Bullock, Ph.D, July 2019, Mindfulness
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