Trauma + the Brain

The work of doctors Bessel van der Kolk, Bruce Perry and Peter Levine have informed the work of trauma specialists for decades.  

We now know trauma lives in the lower regions of the brain where language can't access. 

When we are born, we have two seperate brains they are not connected to each other yet.  The brain is busy buiding a bridge between the two sides called the corpus callosum.  

There is a bridge connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain.  When we are "regulated" with low heart rates and blood pressure, the bridge is open and information can flow freely from one side to the other.  

When we experience times of intensity - the classic example being when adrenaline is coursing through one's system - the bridge closes.  What we experience during those times is stuck and stored in the "creature side" of the brain.  

This part of the brain does not understand language and it does not have any sense of linear time.

These facts inform the need for experiential therapies when treating trauma.  The importance of re-regulating, and the applying the methods to do so is imperative in the effective treatment of trauma.