How does our relationship with Trauma contribute to disordered anxiety?
Our relationship with events that threaten our survival, safety, and security particularly including exposure to violence, violation, death and dying tends to be determined by the design of the animal brain. Generally, we react with adrenalin fueled fear and/or hyper-vigilance. These adrenalin levels give as little choice as our reptile brain’s runs its fight-run-or freeze survival reaction program. There is however a small window of opportunity to change our pre-programmed fear relationship with these events. This window surrounds the truth that we do have the ability to choose the way that we respond to our memory of events that we have already survived. The survival reaction to the trauma event at the time that it occurred does not have to define our response to our memory of the trauma. The difference here is defined by our relationship with fear chemistry vs our relationship with memory.
When we unpack a memory we will be able to note that we have highlighted certain aspects of the memory that have caught our attention. We see some events and details in the memory as important and some as less important. What we choose to put attention to in that memory DVD will determine how we define the memory, which is to say what we highlight in the memory will determine what that memory means to us.
Sex abuse trauma survivors may tend to view the ways in which they were helpless in the memory and not see the ways in which they were resourceful. Addicts may see the fun part of an intoxication memory while choosing not to see the parts where they were an embarrassment and were physically sick or impaired. Soldiers may see their powerlessness to help a brother who was blown apart in battle beside them and miss the part where they at risk of death secured the ring to return to the wife of that brother. They may view the memory through a lens of self-blame missing the sight of bond and brotherhood that stood its ground even in the borderlands of death’s doorway.
If we see new elements in the memory we change the meaning of the memory and with that change we alter our relationship with that memory and subsequently alter the biochemistry that accompanies the memory. The memory becomes an opportunity to believe in ourselves even in the face of death and violation.
Trauma memories that hold the original force of the fear driven adrenalin meanings will tend to generate a relationship of fear with the memory. This fear relationship will produce and reproduce full measures of adrenalin in the blood stream leading to anxiety disorders, that include hypervigilance and panic attacks. However, individuals who alter the meaning of the memory to include survivorship truths will reduce adrenalin levels within the memory itself.
It is important to note that animal brain memory is different from the memories in the higher brain regions. One very large difference is the animal brain’s design to protect us from threats and its ability to completely hijack the body to perform self-preservation defenses. The higher brain is focused more on tasks surrounding survival maintenance including maintaining; a means to provide, creature comforts, and reward programming.
Another important difference is that the reptile brain unlike the executive brain region has no sense of time. The reptile brain is blind to time zones. It’s tunnel vision view truly believes that threatening events in the animal brain memory recorder are happening now. This means that when trauma survivors have flash-backs or trauma memory trigger events the animal brain will respond by delivering the full measure of adrenalin that was required in the original event. This is happening because the lower brain actually believes that the event is happening in the present. In order to regulate this disturbing miscalculation, the executive brain must build a bridge to the animal brain in order to redirect the activation of the survival instinct. This is more difficult to do when individual’s have vilified the lower brain and the trauma memory that was triggered. Thus, if we can change our relationship with the memory and the biochemistry that accompanies that memory we may increase our ability to regulate our survival instinct ten-fold.
How does our relationship with adrenalin impact our anxiety?
Considering the biological truth that adrenalin is so central to the human process of anxiety it is not surprising to find that our relationship with adrenalin has significant influence on determining our anxiety levels. The natural goal of anxiety is to move the body and the mind to action. Adrenalin is instrumental in the achievement of this call to action. The nature of adrenalin in its pristine organic state is both healthy and necessary for our survival and growth. Given this truth that adrenalin and anxiety are vital parts of our mental health we might be surprised to find that our response to the feeling of adrenalin is a major facilitator in the process by which we develop an anxiety disorder. This suggests that the way in which we respond to our biochemistry can influence our biochemistry to move in unhealthy directions. This means that our response to adrenalin’s effect sends a message to the body and that message may be telling the sympathetic nervous system to produce increased measures of adrenalin. Our response to the biochemical event forms a particular bond with the biochemistry. If we have the same response overtime the response becomes a habit or a pattern. This pattern then forms a specific relationship with that biochemistry. For example, if we respond to adrenalin with fear, we send the message to our sympathetic nervous system that we are afraid of how adrenalin feels. The system receives our fear message and being a soldier who follows orders the system produces more adrenalin to help us with the fear. This means that the nervous system is just doing what we told it to do. However, if we change our relationship with adrenalin and rather than being afraid of something we have made scary and villainous, we see the truth that adrenalin is a friend and a guardian we will begin to practice a different approach adrenalin. This causes us to send a different message to our sympathetic nervous system and when we send a different message, we get a different result. This then begs the question what message are you sending to your adrenalin?
The 3- primary responses that we tend to choose when we experience the feeling of adrenalin include fear, acceptance, and control. Each response sends a different message to the sympathetic nervous system which in turn creates a different relationship with adrenalin.
The fear response sends the message that more adrenalin is required to fight off a threat to safety and survival. The control response sends the message that current adrenalin levels should be maintained or increased to serve our expectations. The acceptance response sends the message that the host is trusting the body’s ability to read the external universe and the host is prepared to absorb and adjust to the adrenalin levels that were released. This acceptance has a calming effect on the nervous system as it sends the message that the mind is in harmony with the body. This concurrence then actually produces some measures of oxytocin rather than adrenalin as the mind moves in concert with the body.
Larry Marshall is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Greenway Therapy . Learn more about him on his BIO page.
