ptsd, trauma, body, brain

If the trauma is severe enough, a person may lose the capacity to concentrate on necessary goals. If that happens, the self is no longer in control. If the impairment is very severe, consciousness becomes random, and the person “loses his mind”—the various symptoms of mental disease take over. In less severe cases the threatened self survives, but

One of the major adaptations was the evolution of the dorsolateral vagal nerve, a large part of the vagus nerve that links the internal organs with the central control systems in the brain and is the basis for the rest-and-digest response. This adaptation made it possible for mammalian parents to offer the significant post-birth care and investment

Research has shown that only the upper levels of the brain are able to tell time, while the brain stem, which controls functions like body temperature and heart rate, contains no networks capable of processing the passage of time. What this means in practice is that when trauma is activated in our body and our consciousness shrinks down to its bare

This pain is powerful enough to alter not only our own genes but, as researchers in the field of epigenetics have discovered, the genes of subsequent generations. Our minds and bodies organize around preparations to prevent a similar trauma from happening in the future, and in the process, our consciousness becomes caught in reacting to a frighteni

Genetic memory is stored in every cell, but learned memory seems to be stored in specific areas of the body muscle tissue.

One excellent experiment is to let go of the fear of fear itself. When we stop being afraid of fear, we notice that it is just a feeling. In fact, fear is far more tolerable than depression.

is one thing to process memories of trauma, but it is an entirely different matter to confront the inner void—the holes in the soul that result from not having been wanted,

people who have been programmed by life itself to experience others as threats and themselves as helpless.