How Trauma Affects Your Brain’s Smoke Detector
If you experienced childhood trauma and suffer from anxiety, there is a reason why. That reason is called your amygdala and it became heightened as a result of the trauma you experienced. The amygdala is the part of your brain that perceives threats. Call it your brain’s smoke detector. Childhood trauma affects your brain in general, and specifically, it increases activity in the amygdala.
Increased amygdala activity means that you become easily triggered and feel threatened when a threat does not exist. “This can make a person more likely to react to triggers, especially emotional ones,” according to the Australian organization, Blue Knot Foundation.
Studies show a link between childhood trauma and increased amygdala activity
If you are like me, you need to see studies linking increased amygdala activity and childhood trauma. And they include:
A study where researchers looked at 20 depressed patients with and without a history of childhood trauma. Researchers found a link between physical abuse and amygdala activity, which suggests a link exists between childhood trauma and depression.
Researchers looked at 12 female PTSD patients who endured physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse before they turned 18. What they found is that the severity of sexual abuse correlated with the size of the amygdala.
Researchers conducted structural MRI scans on 149 children aged eight to 17 years old with and without exposure to physical abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence participated. They found an association between childhood violence exposure and an increased amygdala.
While all of the studies cited above are of humans, a recent study found similar results in rats. The lead author of the study, Jennifer Honeycutt, a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern, said of the connections between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, “The disruption of this circuit is going to lead to maladaptive behaviors. That’s where you start to see increasing anxiety-like behaviors even in the absence of something that could be anxiety-provoking.”
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week course developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1980s. The Palouse Mindfulness website refers to it as a “ “blend of meditation, body awareness, and yoga,” according to Palouse Mindfulness. It is also “learning through practice and study how your body handles (and can resolve) stress neurologically.”
Studies show that it helps childhood trauma survivors. Researchers looked a 27 childhood sexual abuse survivors who participated in an MBSR course and daily practiced mindfulness skills. What they found is after eight weeks is a 65 percent reduction of depressive symptoms. They also found a significant reduction of symptoms of numbing/avoidance. In another study, researchers conducted MRIs on the brains of people who participated in an MBSR class. What they found is decreased amygdala activity. In a study of 155 adults, researchers looked at MRI images of those practicing mindfulness and found decreased amygdala activity.
Are you ready to try MBSR?
Are you interested in taking an MBSR course? Several free online courses exist, including one at Palouse Mindfulness and Happiness.com.
If something in this article touched you or triggered you, pray this prayer:
Oh Lord, I come to You, the one who created my amygdala. I ask You to heal the damage done by childhood trauma. And I ask You to empower me to not only start an MBSR course but finish it.