Healing My Childhood Trauma: What I Learned about the Brain
On a cold Thursday evening, I facetimed my friend to share what I had learned about childhood trauma from a book I recommended to them.
Earlier, my friend confided in me about their struggles with childhood trauma. I knew what that felt like, especially from the context of a Nigerian household where mental health was only acknowledged in the context of “a person being crazy”.
I had struggled with the ripple effects of childhood trauma for my entire life and only started working through healing my inner child a few years ago. I was desperate to help someone else find new meaning to their lives and so I recommended a book that I discovered while scrolling through my twitter feed.
I love this particular book because Dr. Perry is a brain development and trauma expert with expertise in neuroscience, clinical psychology and years of research in childhood trauma. In his conversations with Oprah Winfrey, he breaks down the effects of trauma from a neuroscientific perspective. You basically learn how your mind and body responds to years of inbuilt trauma.
All the panic attacks, short breaths, twitching, goosebumps, blacking out that your body has been through will start to make sense when you focus on “what happened to you” instead of simply saying “something’s wrong with me”.
This book has taught me quite a few things that I’m glad to share even before I finish reading it. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who’s looking to begin or enhance their healing process so they can lead a happier, richer and joyful life.
Here are five things I learned about how the brain and childhood trauma:
The brain has four interconnected areas — brainstem, diencephalon, limbic and cortex — that process the entire human experience. The functional capacity of the brain increases from the lowest (brainstem) to the highest (cortex).
The brainstem regulates things like body temperature and respiration while the cortex regulates creativity, thinking, language and the ability to distinguish between the past and the present.
All experiences are processed from bottom — up in the brain i.e from the brainstem to the cortex. Your brain processes these experiences into a catalogue of personal data that makes up the memories and diary of your life. This is an important point for understanding how a traumatic trigger travels from your sensory nerves (smell, touch, sight, taste, sound) to your brain before it becomes a full blown panic attack.
This data stored in your brain over the years will determine how you respond to situations around you. E.g — If stern eye contact from your mother was the first signal of incoming corporal punishment as a child, you could easily feel triggered aand get hot flashes if your partner looks at you sternly — even if they have no intention of hitting you.
The earliest experiences you have in life have the biggest impact on your mind and being. Basically, your childhood experiences shape the way your brain functions and organises information. This in turn affects the way you react to situations as an adult.
Healing the human mind takes a lot of time. It cannot be completed in a single day so give yourself time to learn, unlearn and relearn. Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never be triggered again, it means that you can bring yourself back from your learned traumatic response into a mindful and present state where you’re in control.
I just started reading the book again, so I’ll be sure to keep you updated as I read.