What is the Trauma Cycle?

There’s a lot of talk about trauma in today’s society. But what really is trauma and how does it happen? Trauma happens when we experience an event that is beyond our capacity to process. This means that something negatively impactful happens to us and we either do not know how to process it, or there is no one there to help us make sense of it. To understand how trauma happens, we must first understand how we process difficult things.

The Bonding Cycle

When we experience a traumatic event, especially in our critical developmental years, we have an inherent need to reach out for connection and for a secure attachment figure (normally a primary caregiver) to help us make sense of what happened because we cannot do it by ourselves. The secure attachment figure then intervenes and responds to the need (through acknowledgement, validation, comfort), we relax, and return to wholeness. This is the bonding cycle and through connection, we are able to process traumatic events. This is why every major negative event that happens isn’t necessarily traumatic. If we have someone to process the negative event with, it doesn’t get stuck, and we can be ok.

The Trauma Cycle

The trauma cycle starts when a secure attachment figure is unavailable or, more likely, an attachment or authority figure meets us with something like dismissal, criticism, rejection, neglect, abuse, abandonment, or some sort of shaming response that makes us feel bad and subsequently, the trauma gets “stuck”. When we are shamed for what happens to us, bidding for connection, or even making mistakes, this leads to an internalized shame response. We are then left to cope with the deficit, which no children can do in a healthy way on their own.

This also leads to our amygdala (or limbic system) recognizing this circumstance or making a bid as an emotional threat. If we made a bid for connection or made a mistake and that was met with a negative response, we will see making a bid for connection or making a mistake as a threat to our well-being. This leads to the fight, fight, freeze, fix, etc. response in our brain firing off in events that are recognized by the original traumatic even. The neurons that fire together, wire together and our brain loves to recognize patterns. That’s how our brain keeps us alive.

Because we’re left with the pain of our bid for connection going unnoticed, we are also left with the emotional pain to deal with on our own. Since we are not naturally equipped or meant to do that by ourselves, our default is to make the pain go away through numbing. That means we stuff it down and seek our something to make us feel good. Whether that is video games, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, we will find a way to escape the emotional pain. Side note: emotional pain is so hard to deal with because, unlike physical pain, you cannot see it, it’s not immediately visible and it hurts on such a deep level.

What happens is shame is internalized for the response a person receives. There becomes a “narrative” or “belief” about the self, such as “I’m not enough” or “I’m a bad person”. Then, what is born out of this trauma is a “new identity” or “protector” that tries to be everything the old self wasn’t. Why? Because it’s trying to avoid further emotional wounding or harm. This means if you were heavily criticized for failing a test, you may become an academic perfectionist so no one can ever criticize you again. The goal here is to stop feeling the pain, avoid it at all costs. And this new identity is pretty good at it… most of the time.

Where to Start the Healing Process

Where this starts to fail is we cannot be perfect. It’s impossible, it’s unsustainable, and it’s just downright exhausting. This is typically why people start to seek out therapy to resolve their unresolved wounds from the past. If you are interested in learning more about how Trauma Therapy in Colorado Springs can help you heal these past wound and live more fully yourself, contact us today!