Healing from Trauma: Rewiring Your Nervous System

Understanding our nervous system is about learning how our body has been impacted by past experiences. For individuals who have experienced trauma, the nervous system often operates on "high alert" or in a hypervigilant state, leading to complications in both emotional and physical health. This hypervigilance, based on past traumatic events, can cause the body to perceive threats where none exist.

I'm Rachel Tenny, a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LCMHC), and I've spent years helping clients understand that therapy and healing are often found in our bodies, not just in our minds. The relationship between our brains and bodies is crucial, and I'm constantly exploring it both personally and through my work with clients.

The primary goal of our nervous system is to keep us safe. Our bodies remember past traumas and want to prevent us from experiencing them again. However, for those who have experienced trauma, safety often feels dangerous, and danger feels normal. This can be likened to seeing a harmless bunny and reacting as if it were a bear. The body senses danger that doesn't exist, often because it perceives the unknown as a threat.

Why Trauma Responses Can Seem Confusing

It can be perplexing for outsiders to understand why people remain in unhealthy or abusive situations. Often, it's because it feels safer to face a known threat than to risk an unknown one that could be worse. It's important to recognize that we've all experienced trauma in some form. Whether it's a single traumatic event like a natural disaster or ongoing trauma such as childhood abuse, trauma triggers our stress response and can alter how our nervous system functions.

The Body’s Response to Stress and Danger

Our body has different ways of responding to stress and danger, controlled by various parts of the nervous system. Trauma can disrupt these normal responses, leading to issues like anxiety, depression, and difficulty regulating emotions. For instance, trauma can cause the body to become stuck in a "fight or flight" response, resulting in constant fear and hypervigilance. Conversely, it can also cause the body to shut down, leading to feelings of numbness or dissociation.

The Mismatch in Threat Perception

When your body responds to a threat as greater than it is, it's called a mismatch. These mismatches happen to all of us occasionally, but when they occur frequently, they can significantly impact our quality of life and interactions with others. In moments of high emotion, your body struggles to differentiate the level of threat and, based on past experience, responds as if the threat is much higher than it is.

Living in Survival Mode

Constantly being on high alert feels like surviving rather than living. Survival mode affects our mental, emotional, and physical health. It's not sustainable, so the nervous system constantly seeks safety cues from our environment to return to a place of regulation (ventral vagal state). We consciously want to feel safe; the same is true for our nervous system.

Path to Healing

If this resonates with you, know that you are not alone, and it's possible to learn to understand your body and work towards healing your nervous system. Your body has done an excellent job protecting you from harm in the past. Take time to thank it for that and know it's possible to help it establish safety in the present.

Learn More

Understanding your nervous system and how it reacts to trauma is the first step towards healing. Check out my Understanding Your Nervous System Guide for the nitty gritty on Nervous System 101 along with some helpful worksheets and lessons to learn more about your triggers, glimmers, mapping, and learning how to regulate your nervous system.

Take it slow and know that you're doing great!