Meet Alyssa Kohne
Trauma, in simple terms, is a normal response to an abnormal situation. Trauma is the physiological response our body goes through when experiencing a situation that is perceived as threatening. Once this occurs, our body and brain work on overdrive to respond to the situation. There are multiple bodily systems involved, including our nervous system, limbic system, and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal systems. That’s fancy therapist jargon for ‘different areas of our brain.’ These areas release chemicals and initiate responses to help us make it out of the situation as safely as we can.
However, there’s a catch. These systems don’t always go back to normal functioning after the event is over. For some people, they will stay in overdrive long after the event has ended. To illustrate this, consider a smoke detector. The job of a smoke detector is to alert us in response to smoke so that we can stop a potential fire before it happens. Now, consider that you have a highly sensitive smoke detector that beeps any time you start the microwave, turn on the oven, or turn on the stove. Annoying, right? The smoke detector is no longer doing what it was designed to do, instead it’s interrupting your day. At some point you may be able to ignore it. The more likely outcome is that you would stop cooking in your kitchen altogether.
It takes the smallest thing to send you into a spiral of the past.
Maybe a smell, sound, or even taste can do it. One minute you’re in the present, the next thing you know you’re back there reliving it for the umpteenth time. If you had a quarter for every time someone said, “but it’s over now, you should move on”, you could probably buy a brand new car. If only it was that easy. Very few things over any relief; your dreams aren’t safe, people and places aren’t safe, you aren’t even safe. But, despite all of this, you try to carry on and act like everything is normal. Sometimes it even looks and feels that way. But it doesn’t last long. Something always brings you back, shakes you to your core, and reminds you that you can’t forget or move on. If this sounds familiar, you may have experienced trauma.