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The Trauma Brain, Self-Compassion, and Mindfulness

Understanding trauma involves more than sympathizing with the traumatic situation. It also involves knowing the sensory information about the environment and body state received by the person’s senses: eyes, ears, touch, smell, and taste. This sensory information is processed and interpreted and can have a major impact on the functioning of the brain for the rest of a person's life. In other words, trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories, but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.

Trauma and the Brain

  • Trauma can affect your brain's emotion networks to make you overreact or under-react to stressful situations.
  • Trauma creates fixed neural networks that are isolated from other parts of your brain and resistant to change.
  • Avoidance behaviors and trying to suppress your trauma do not work and can create more damage.

For more information about how trauma manifests in the body, watch the video below.

Treating trauma/PTSD takes more than your own efforts – it takes recovery in the context of relationships with families, loved ones, and/or professional therapists. The role of those relationships is to provide physical and emotional safety, including safety from feeling ashamed, admonished, or judged, and to bolster the courage to tolerate, face, and process the reality of what has happened to you.

Bessel van der Kolk, a best-selling trauma research author, writes that “Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves… The only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, activating the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we’re feeling" (p. 208). He further writes that “Traumatized people are often afraid of feeling so they avoid these sensations which increases their vulnerability to being overwhelmed by them… In order to change you need to open yourself to your inner experience through self-awareness" (Van Der Kolk, pg. 210).

Start with showing Self-Compassion…

The first step in managing trauma is to show yourself some self-compassion.

Self-Compassion:

  • Research shows that people who lack self-compassion are likely to have critical mothers, to come from dysfunctional families, and to display insecure attachment patterns (Neff & McGeehee, 2010; Wei, Liao, Ku, & Shaffer, 2011).
  • Childhood emotional abuse is associated with lower self-compassion, and individuals with low self-compassion experience more emotional distress and are more likely to abuse alcohol or make a serious suicide attempt (Tanaka, Wekerle, Schmuck, Paglia-Boak, & the MAP Research Team, 2011; Vettese, Dyer, Li, & Wekerle, 2011).
  • Self-compassion may protect against the development of PTSD by decreasing avoidance of emotional discomfort and facilitating desensitization.

Self-Compassion and Mindfulness

  • Mindfulness is “awareness of present experience with acceptance” (Germer, 2005), and self-compassion may be considered the heart of mindfulness—the emotional attitude of mindfulness.
  • Self-compassion is a particular kind of acceptance: It is self-acceptance in the face of sorrow and pain. Mindfulness typically focuses on acceptance of moment-to-moment experience, whereas self-compassion focuses on acceptance of the experiencer.
  • Mindfulness says, “Feel your pain with spacious awareness.” Self-compassion adds, “Be kind to yourself in the midst of the pain.”
  • Mindfulness exercises help you to feel safer and more comfortable in the body, perhaps through yoga (Emerson & Hopper, 2011), focused awareness exercises (e.g., sensing one’s feet on the floor, feeling the breath; R. D. Siegel, 2010), or self-soothing techniques such as petting the dog, loving/kindness meditation, or compassionate self-talk.
  • Mindfulness and self-compassion allow us to engage difficult thoughts, feelings, and sensations with open eyes and an open heart. When mindfulness is in full bloom, it is naturally full of self-compassion whenever we’re suffering.
  • Self-Compassion builds your capacity to tolerate and transform traumatic memories rather than avoiding or turning away from your traumatic memories.

For more information about the 3 Components of Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristin Neff, see below.

Also, try out the following Loving & Kindness Meditation, visit the website linked below. Enter the code: R2QMC

Please contact your ASA/ADON for resources or complete a Student Support Counselor Referral if you are experiencing unmanageable mental health symptoms and/or experiencing unsafe conditions that are affecting your academic success. Your Student Support Counselor will be able to assess your symptoms and get you the help that you need.

Please attend Open Consultation hours available on Thursdays 10am-12pm/6pm-8pm using the link below.

(You do not need a referral form completed for Open Consultation)

YOU ARE NOT ALONE. WE ARE HERE FOR YOU.

Watch the video below to learn about our referral process to get resources and support.