People often come to me having already tried other forms of therapy, and having left feeling unheard. Sometimes that's because a therapist offered here-and-now solutions without addressing the past emotions and experiences that were still causing distress today.
Some experiences leave lasting ripples that need an approach working with the interplay between mind, emotion and body. Traditional talk therapy often only touches the surface of how the brain and body hold psychological pain, which leaves people managing overwhelming emotions, persistent physical sensations, and the difficulty of reconnecting with themselves and others.
If you're on a journey of healing, you're not alone in finding that. This is what the neuroscience actually says, and what it means for the kind of support that helps.
What trauma is
Most people experience something traumatic at some point in their lives.
The word comes from the Greek for wound, and it was once used only for physical injury. It now includes physical, emotional and psychological wounds.
A traumatic event is one that poses a direct or perceived threat to life. Someone can experience trauma from any situation where they felt threatened with serious injury, violence or death. Emotional and psychological trauma can arise from:
- threats to life or bodily integrity, such as a violent encounter
- the death of someone close
- natural disasters and accidents
- physical or sexual assault
- domestic violence
- childhood neglect
- sexual harassment or abuse in childhood
- diagnosis of a life-threatening illness
Trauma can also occur from witnessing someone else's safety being threatened.
Why severity varies so much
The severity of trauma is influenced by the person's perception of the event, their age, the type of harm, and the intensity, frequency and duration of exposure. Where a caregiving relationship was involved, that changes things significantly.
It also depends on what resources a person had available: their capacity for resilience and, crucially, the emotional support that was there afterwards.
Complex trauma
Complex trauma emerges from ongoing interpersonal abuse, neglect or violence occurring within caregiving or close relationships.
These experiences disrupt attachment bonds and erode trust, which affects the development of a sense of self. That loss of trust, in yourself and in others, means complex trauma can contribute to a range of mental health difficulties, including anxiety disorders, depression, panic disorder, agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Researchers have also found that traumatic experience within a family can affect future generations through epigenetic change. There's evidence that some traumas produce epigenetic changes carried across generations, predisposing descendants to traumatic symptoms. Studies of the descendants of Holocaust survivors are among the most cited examples.
This is why psychotherapy now considers factors beyond a person's individual experience, looking at events in their family and social history as part of understanding and treating trauma.
How trauma affects us
Trauma breaks our sense of connection to ourselves, and it alters how we perceive the world and the people in it. Brain chemistry changes, and the brain begins operating from its protective survival mechanisms.
Trauma responses are unique to each person, but some signs are common. If these resonate, please remember they are normal reactions to an abnormal and distressing event.
Emotional and psychological signs: shock, denial or disbelief; confusion and difficulty concentrating; anger, irritability and mood swings; anxiety, fear and feeling on edge; guilt, shame and self-blame; withdrawing from others; sadness or hopelessness; feeling disconnected or numb.
Physical signs: insomnia or nightmares; fatigue; being startled easily; racing heartbeat; edginess and agitation; aches and pains; muscle tension.
Trauma doesn't only affect thoughts and emotions. It has a physical footprint, which is precisely why treatment needs to include the body.
The neuroscience
This section is a little science-heavy, but it matters. Understanding the neurobiology of trauma dismantles a lot of victim-blaming, and it explains many of the behaviours trauma survivors are judged for, including by themselves.
From a neurobiological perspective, trauma is an experience, or pattern of experiences, in which the body's automatic stress response systems are activated so extremely or for so long that they alter the regulation and functioning of the nervous system itself.
In 1994, Stephen Porges proposed the Polyvagal Theory, which describes how trauma affects body as well as brain. The theory proposes that the vagus nerve, a core nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, has two pathways with different functions. The ventral pathway responds to support, safety and social engagement. The dorsal pathway responds to extreme danger.
This can quite literally mean that the parts of the brain and body active in a restful state go offline during a traumatic experience, while the body prioritises survival and the fastest available route to safety: fight, flight or freeze.
It also offers a compassionate explanation for how we respond afterwards. Shutting down and being unable to move. Becoming defensive and angry. Those aren't character flaws. They're a nervous system doing what it learned.
Bridging neuroscience and the body
Trauma-informed therapies bring neuroscience together with body experience, treating the body's wisdom as a crucial part of healing.
As Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, puts it: when therapeutic approaches focus mainly on thoughts and neglect the body, the therapy will be limited.
In my practice I've seen the difference that integrating neuroscience and somatic awareness makes, particularly for people who haven't found talk therapy helpful for processing their trauma.
The work begins with establishing safety and always moves at your pace. It's built on a personalised, non-judgemental humanistic model alongside contemporary neuroscience, and it's designed to deepen your connection with your own emotions, behaviours and needs, so we can understand where a response is actually coming from.
Whether the experience behind it happened recently or long ago, an ongoing emotion or behaviour is a sign of an unmet emotional or psychological need. Finding the root lets us acknowledge what happened and learn how to meet that need, which is where healing starts.
Bringing the whole person
Sessions bring together the cognitive, emotional, somatic, relational and spiritual aspects of experience.
Using a gentle method of inquiry, we focus on sensation as the foundation of felt experience. You stay with what your body is doing and describe what you observe, and meaning emerges from that rather than being imposed on it. This helps you identify your own needs and hear your internal dialogue, so internalised messages, blocked memories and unresolved emotions can surface.
The window of tolerance
Neuroscience gives us the concept of the window of tolerance: the range within which we feel comfortable and safe, and can handle daily stress without feeling out of control.
For trauma healing, the nervous system needs to be within that window, where you have the most psychological flexibility available to you. Understanding where your window sits is what keeps the process both effective and sustainable, so that the work doesn't push you so far outside it that it causes more distress.
That's not caution for its own sake. Working outside the window is how therapy retraumatises people.
Self-regulation and empowerment
Trauma leads to disconnection from the body and the self. Neuroscience-informed techniques help reset the nervous system and restore self-regulation, which is what allows the move from surviving to something more like living.
Support to heal
If you're looking for a way to heal that integrates neuroscience, somatic awareness and holistic understanding, I'd be glad to support you.
I'm passionate about creating spaces where real and lasting healing can happen, where you can move at your own pace toward your most connected and fulfilling relationships.
You can read more about how I work, or get in touch.
Wise Beginning is a psychotherapy and counselling practice in Brisbane. Sessions are available online and in person, in English and Spanish.
Immediate support
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- DVConnect Womensline (QLD): 1800 811 811
References
Chefetz, R. (2000). Affect dysregulation as a way of life. Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 28(2), 289–303.
Fisher, J. (2017). Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors: Overcoming internal self-alienation. New York: Routledge.
Jablonka, E. (2009). Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: Prevalence, mechanisms, and implications for the study of heredity and evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 84(2), 131–176.
Levers, L. L. (2012). Trauma counseling: Theories and interventions. Springer Publishing Company.
Levine, P. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. California: North Atlantic Books.
Levine, P. & Frederick, A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. California: North Atlantic Books.
Perry, B. D. (2008). Child maltreatment: A neurodevelopmental perspective on the role of trauma and neglect in psychopathology. In T. P. Beauchaine & S. P. Hinshaw (Eds.), Child and adolescent psychopathology (pp. 93–128). John Wiley & Sons.
Wolynn, M. (2016). It didn't start with you: How inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle. New York: Penguin Books.
