Have you ever noticed that when you feel threatened, you feel like a helpless, vulnerable child? It’s because of what’s happening in your brain.
Paul Hegstrom, Ph.D., author of Broken Children, Grown-Up Pain, explains it this way:
“A child who is under the age of puberty is lacking the chemicals in the brain to see the whole picture and make decisions. So the wounds that happen in childhood, a time during which the child does not have the capacity to understand, trigger the thalamus at the point of the wound to make its own decision to keep the child from being hurt again. A decision based on the thalamus is not based on the whole picture of the event that just happened, it is based on the adrenaline of the events and the relationship of the current event to previous events and trauma stored in the brain. Once a child is traumatized, the child will be more vulnerable to perceiving future events as trauma. …
“Every experience, every bit of input, including things that we are not even aware of, are all being interpreted by the thalamus as the input goes into the brain. If we were mature and could resolve our issues, we could, by our choice, receive the good, delete the bad, and choose the things that we want to think upon.
“However, in the wounded child’s brain, the thalamus makes the decisions.” Broken Children, Grown-Up Pain by Paul Hegstrom, Ph.D., page 16.
A brief examination of two stress hormones is in order here. Adrenaline, which Dr. Hegstrom refers to, works in the short term; it’s necessary for survival in crisis situations where a fight-or-flight response is required. Cortisol, on the other hand, works in the long term, increasing blood pressure and blood sugar and reducing immune response.
For the traumatized child, life becomes a long, drawn-out crisis. In a psychological phenomenon called hypervigilance, the traumatized child spends most of her time on the lookout for trouble, and as a result, will easily be triggered into fear, anxiety, and depression. Fear increases the level of cortisol, causing chronic tension and anxiety; it can become a frightening, out-of-control vicious cycle.
And it can continue into adulthood, unless we learn to recognize what’s happening in our brains and to take control of our thoughts.
For more information, see http://helpineedahug.com.