What exactly is a trauma response - and what do we do about it?

Trauma response: it’s a term we hear all the time now. Just today, I went to a workshop at my yoga studio on breathing, and when I mentioned that I noticed my heart rate increased after one of the deep breathing exercises, the person next to me turned to me and said, “Sounds like a trauma response.” The therapist in me was thrilled that someone in the wild recognized this, but what exactly does it mean?

I believe very strongly in understanding the body’s role in processing, storing, and healing from our trauma. I get chiropractic adjustments at least weekly if not more. I go to ayurvedic yoga classes several times a week. I see a therapist who practices somatic modalities. In the past year, I’ve worked on transitioning off some of my prescription medications and replacing them with supplements and other holistic alternatives. After using a daily steroid inhaler for the past six years, I’ve been able to stop taking it completely! I don’t consider myself a crazy crunchy person, but I’ve really experienced life-changing results by the methods I’ve taken to build awareness and understanding of what’s happening in my body and giving it what it needs to thrive.

There is a big difference between “stress” and “trauma.” Stress can be trauma, but not always. Stress can be simple day to day challenges. You’re sitting in traffic, running late for a meeting, something in the house is malfunctioning. Typically, this kind of problem comes up, you attend to it, the problem is resolved, and you move on. Your body responds to these stressors in the way it should - your heart rate increases, your focus is solely on the problem in front of you, you can move quickly and make snap decisions - your sympathetic nervous system is directing energy to the parts that are needed to resolve the problem in front of you. Once the problem is resolved, your body can return to its parasympathetic state - your heart rate slows, your mind can wander, and you can rest easily.

Trauma - especially complex trauma - is different. It can start out as stress, but the problem doesn’t get resolved quickly. In fact, it may never resolve. Your needs can go unmet for years. Your body can exhaust itself trying to compensate for what it doesn’t have. As human beings, our bodies are wired to survive. Our bodies will adapt to our circumstances. But over time, this takes a toll. If our bodies are in survival mode for an extended time, they will wear out.

A car is built to be able to stop suddenly if it needs to. Someone swerves unexpectedly in front of us, we can slam on the brakes and avoid a collision. However, if we stop like this every time we are at a stop sign or a red light, our brakes will wear out. Our bodies are like this. If our heart rates are chronically elevated, if we are frequently tense, if our sleep is chronically poor, our bodies will become exhausted. Whether through natural means, like health issues that come up due to body systems being worn out, or due to adaptive coping mechanisms such as substance use and other trauma responses - our body’s natural rhythms will be disrupted and no longer function the way they should and are capable of.

So back to the main point - what is a trauma response? A trauma response is a way the body has learned to adapt as a result of experiencing a significant, paradigm-shifting stressor. This can be a major one-time trauma - like a bad car accident that leads to anxiety and avoidance anytime you need to drive on the highway. It can also be a small, easily overlooked but chronically present denial of one’s core needs. A child who learns that their parents are emotionally absent and therefore avoids asking for anyone’s time because they have learned they will just be disappointed. That child grows up and marries someone emotionally absent because that is what they’ve always known. They feel like their needs are silly and have learned to be self-reliant, even when getting help would feel really good and relieving. They reach out for help and again are disappointed, reinforcing the belief that they need to take care of all their needs themselves.

Trauma responses are not necessarily based in logic and rationality. With a car accident - even though you may have driven safely to your destination hundreds of times before, having one traumatic experience can be enough to overwrite those hundreds of positive or neutral experiences. With a less obvious but chronically repeated trauma, you may be quick to judge yourself for the trauma response - for example, you finally reach out for help and it goes well, and then you criticize yourself for not having done this sooner. The really, really important thing when working with trauma responses is to approach it and yourself with unconditional compassion and curiosity. The trauma response, however irrational it may seem, exists for a reason. Sometimes we can use logic to move through a trauma response - like maybe reminding yourself of the hundreds of times you’ve reached your destination successfully brings comfort and you can get back in the car with relative ease. But other times, you can logic yourself to death and still feel the same crippling anxiety you did before. Our brains, especially our logical brain, are just one part of the equation. A huge part of understanding trauma responses is recognizing and observing our body’s cues, and ultimately working to restore a sense of safety in our bodies.

In our therapy sessions, I help clients recognize their own trauma responses and become more aware of them when they happen in daily life. We work on cultivating self-compassion and eliminating judgement when these responses occur. We focus on understanding the roots of these trauma responses, understanding how we’ve typically coped when they come up, and identify how we would like to be able to cope in the future. We approach this with so much grace, understanding that many of our trauma responses and subsequent coping mechanisms are things we’ve been doing for years if not most of our lives, and we understand that it will take time to re-write these neural pathways. We celebrate the smallest victories, the smallest improvements in catching ourselves before automatically engaging in the trauma response, of creating space to decide how we want to move forward instead of going on autopilot. It’s so rewarding to see people becoming empowered, taking control, and living their lives the way they want to instead of staying stuck in a loop of triggers and trauma responses.

It is a beautiful honor to get to do this work with people, and I am so grateful to my clients for showing up for themselves. It’s often uncomfortable work and it takes incredible courage.