Jun 15, 202013 min read

Is everyone traumatized?

[listen]

[read, with empowerment]

When I was 19, my life changed. I always thought it was because I had a violent near-death experience - but as I've finally started allowing myself to heal, I've come to the understanding that it's not the assault that changed my life - it was the mindset that came out of the whole ordeal.

Trauma has this really insane way of making you blind to the possibility of your life ever getting any better than it currently is. Most of us don't know how to cope with traumatic events - so we suppress them in an effort to "move on" and heal. This is what does the real damage in the long run - pretending that something didn't happen when it did; normalizing unacceptable behaviors because we don't know how to set boundaries; creating an image of who we think others want us to be; distancing ourselves from the version of us that "got us into" the traumatic situation in the first place.

In our industry in particular, so many have dealt with persistent mental health issues in their lives - most people have also experienced some sort of physical, emotional, or sexual trauma in their life as well. This is a fairly universal life experience - but as a culture, especially if you're from a working class background, we simply don't talk about it. It's "not polite" to talk about real stuff.

We pathologize and medicate the awareness of our own traumas, slapping on a "mentally ill" label to anyone who consciously communicates that they are experiencing a totally normal bout of depression or a totally understandable bout of PTSD after a life experience that was out of their scope of control - instead of teaching about what trauma does to the brain, learning coping/healthy processing techniques and finding empowering ways to rationalize and forgive ourselves to eventually release these memories. We become controlled by anger and we live in fear. We build up walls to prevent anyone from getting to know what lies beneath the surface - and then we wonder why we're all so disconnected and anxious and sad all the time. We've forgotten who we are.

Shit happens. To all of us. You're not special if you've experienced trauma - you're normal. This is what makes us human.

It's incredibly freeing to speak your truth - the release of shame is an antidepressant in itself. Don't be afraid to share your own story. Take comfort in knowing that someone out there relates to what you've gone through... better yet, make an effort to find the people who get you! Connect with them. Be vulnerable. Life is so much better when you live as your radical true self.

Don't be ashamed of having a story - it shows you've lived a little.

What is trauma?

It's a controversial topic for many, but trauma is one of the most universal human experiences. Most of us experience trauma in our lives at one point or another - some of us get a heavy dose of it at a young age, whereas others experience a fairly painless upbringing only to be thrown to the wolves as an adult.

The word trauma comes from the Latin word meaning "wound." A traumatic experience is any experience that causes a distressing or overwhelming physical or emotional reaction. Trauma affects everyone differently - it is highly dependent on your mental state, age, life experience, and socioeconomic status at the time. What's cripplingly traumatic to some is not a big deal to others.

There are three main types of trauma : acute, chronic, and complex.

Acute trauma results from a single incident, such as a fire or car accident.
Chronic trauma is repeated and prolonged, such as domestic violence or abuse.
Complex trauma is exposure to varied and multiple traumatic events, often of an invasive, interpersonal nature.

Often, people who have grown up in highly unusual or traumatic environments might not even realize that they've experienced trauma - they might be so de-sensitized to negativity, struggle, or fear that things that should faze them simply don't any more (ie, what happens when you grow up with an alcoholic parent - for a great example of what "unaware of their own trauma" looks like, watch the show Shameless). If you can’t identify one single event that could have had a huge effect on you, know that trauma can also result from ongoing similar experiences or events.

Some examples of major (obvious) traumatic events:

domestic or family violence, dating violence
community violence (shooting, mugging, burglary, assault)
sexual or physical abuse
natural disaster such as a hurricane, flood, fire or earthquake
a serious car accident
sudden unexpected or violent death of someone close (suicide, accident)
serious injury (burns, dog attack)
major surgery or life-threatening illness (childhood cancer)
war or political violence (civil war, terrorism, refugee)

Other traumas are not necessarily as obvious, but can still have a lasting effect on us. I would argue that these traumas are even more insidious than the more obvious traumas above, because people are much less likely to seek out guidance or help due to the insistence that "it wasn't that bad." Psychological trauma, loosely defined, refers to another type of wound: any past event that creates significant hardship and impairment in the present, at least one month after it occurred. Basically, if there's a memory that comes up often and still upsets you, it's probably a trauma.

Some examples of less-obvious (hidden) traumas include:

early childhood neglect, deprivation, lack of emotional support
systemic racism/societal oppression
growing up/being LGBTQ+ (especially in an area where it's not accepted)
growing up in poverty (stress + fear)
having a parent or caregiver that was an addict or alcoholic
being adopted or subjected to the foster care system
watching your parents go through a messy divorce
having a parent or sibling that was mentally or chronically ill
abruptly/frequently changing schools
having a parent that was emotionally absent/invalidating/unaccepting
watching a parent being hurt (domestic violence or an accident)
having a parent that was in prison
going to prison / juvenile detention
being constantly put down/shamed by a parent or caregiver
a sudden or unexpected breakup (especially one that involved infidelity)
public humiliation / shaming, cyberbullying
verbal/emotional abuse
homelessness

Professional kitchens have the potential to be incredibly traumatic, toxic workplaces - and honestly, I think it's a big reason why so many traumatized people are attracted to them. It sounds counter-intuitive, but we are biologically hard-wired to seek the familiar - if all we have ever known has been screaming, stress, struggle, and fear, we will unconsciously gravitate towards environments and people that repeat and reinforce these patterns (until we become aware of the pattern and consciously decide to seek out the unfamiliar). If you're not used to boundaries, respect, and balance, it's going to feel really weird and uncomfortable. It's probably going to feel "lame" in comparison to the drama and chaos of fear and insecurity. It's important to recognize this, as it's the root of self-sabotage - we resist what we do not understand, even if it's in our own best interests.

Historically, cooking has been very low-level "peasant" work - it's only recently that we've enjoyed a tiny bit of respect in the world as professional craftsmen. Cooks have essentially been servants to the ruling class for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Our profession might currently be on a higher societal pedestal, but our collective mindset as an industry hasn't evolved at the same accelerated rate. We are enjoying respected careers, but we haven't learned how to respect ourselves - and the disconnect is causing a lot of issues in the industry. At the root of it is generational trauma - centuries of being overworked, underpaid, and treated like we don't matter.

What does trauma do to the brain?

In a normal brain, the interaction between the hippocampus and the amygdala is important for processing emotional memory. It’s suspected that they both change in response to experience as well. But when someone experiences trauma, do these parts of the brain change together, or are they completely independent of one another?

The Amygdala

The amygdala is a section of nervous tissue in the brain that is responsible for emotions, survival instincts, and memory. A major role of the amygdala is to detect fear. It recognizes and gathers information around us to determine threats. By using our senses, such as sight and sound, the amygdala will respond with the feeling of fear if it perceives a threat. This all happens unconsciously, deep in our brains.

When affected by trauma, the amygdala becomes hyperactive. Those who suffer from emotional trauma will often exhibit more fear of traumatic stressors than others. Often, stimuli can trigger overactivity in the amygdala if somehow connected to the traumatic event a person suffered from. This might lead to chronic stress, heightened fear, and increased irritation. This might also make it harder for those suffering to calm down or even sleep.

The Hippocampus

The hippocampus is part of the limbic system in the brain. It is mostly responsible for storing and retrieving memories, while also differentiating between past and present experiences. When affected by trauma, the hippocampus may be physically affected - studies have shown that in people suffering from PTSD, the volume of their hippocampus may be smaller than others.

Mainly, the hippocampus will affect the ability to recall some memories for trauma survivors. Other memories may be extremely vivid and constantly on the mind of survivors. Environments that remind the survivor of their trauma in even small ways can cause fear, stress, and panic. This is because the victim cannot differentiate their past trauma and the present situation. The fight-or-flight response is then activated due to the brain’s perception of a threat.

The Prefrontal Cortex

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain that regulates emotions. This emotion-regulating center is often affected after trauma and becomes vulnerable to other parts of the brain. Normally, the amygdala will sense a negative emotion, such as fear, and the prefrontal cortex will rationally react to this emotion. After trauma though, this rationality might be overridden and your prefrontal cortex will have a hard time regulating fear and other emotions.

So, these three parts of the brain- the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex- are the most-affected areas of the brain from trauma. They can make a trauma survivor constantly fearful, especially when triggered by events and situations that remind them of their past trauma.

source

The Polyvagal Theory

Understanding the vagus nerve and its role in our mental health is a game changer.

In summary: The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body. It begins in the brain stem, and connects both "sides" of the nervous system : the sympathetic (fight/flight response) and the parasympathetic (rest/digest/calm response).

Research by Dr. Stephen Porges has pointed to a third branch of the vagus nerve - essentially, a split in the parasympathetic nervous system. This split divides the parasympathetic nervous system into two branches - the main ventral vagal (rest/digest/calm) and the smaller dorsal vagal (freeze response). This discovery is huge - especially for trauma survivors.

When a person has a reaction or response to trauma, the body interprets the traumatic event as a life threat. The socially acceptable response to trauma or danger is either fight or flee - but there are plenty of people who find themselves completely physically immobilized in stressful situations.

The polyvagal theory explains this response in physiological terms, helping to remove the shame and social stigma that's often associated with experiencing the freeze response in the face of trauma. It answers the question many survivors ask themselves - "Why didn't I fight back? Why didn't I do something?"

The sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are meant to work in a rhythmic alternation that supports healthy digestion, sleep, and immune system functioning (this is also known as the state of homeostasis). However, chronic stress and unresolved trauma interfere with the balance between the nervous systems, which confuses our body and leads to all sorts of physical symptoms of distress.

Ideally, stress is temporary. When faced with chronic stress, the body will continue to produce high amounts of cortisol - keeping us in a state of high alert without the ability to rest. As a result you will likely feel keyed up, jumpy, or anxious.

The good news is, the vagus nerve can be intentionally stimulated ("toned"). Toning the vagus nerve can help our bodies "re-route" our nervous system response, especially in stressful situations. With practice and conscious effort, this allows us to begin to self-regulate our bodily responses.

The easiest way to stimulate the vagus nerve is by deep belly breathing. When we are under chronic stress (hello, kitchen life!), we tend to take shallow breaths that are concentrated in the chest - stimulating the sympathetic nervous system and exacerbating anxiety + the fear response. Practice sending the breath down to the stomach (bypassing the chest), holding it, and slowly exhaling. At first, this might feel like you're "breathing backwards" - keep practicing until it feels normal and becomes your default way of breathing. Depending on your levels of stress/trauma, this might take a while. Stay with it. Notice when you're chest breathing. Be kind to yourself.

[resources + further reading at the end]

ACEs High

In psychology, there is a concept known as ACEs - short for Adverse Childhood Experiences. It's a way of understanding how early exposure to negative life situations (things like physical or sexual violence, witnessing death, experiencing abandonment or other traumas before the age of 18) affects us in adulthood - and the results of the ACES studies are intense.

Interestingly, trauma (especially early-life trauma) has been found to affect the growth of the brain cortex - which then affects our learning, behavior, and health (including things like memory, attention span, and the capacity to regulate emotions and handle stress). It affects everything - according to the CDC, toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect such things as attention, decision-making, learning, and response to stress.

Children growing up with toxic stress may have difficulty forming healthy and stable relationships. They may also have unstable work histories as adults and struggle with finances, jobs, and depression throughout life. These effects can also be passed on to their own children. Some children may face further exposure to toxic stress from historical and ongoing traumas due to systemic racism or the impacts of poverty resulting from limited educational and economic opportunities.

The scariest part of the studies is the correlation between childhood trauma and physical disease - those with high ACEs scores are more likely to develop chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, or cancer, catch infectious diseases, engage in risky behavior like drug use and unsafe sex, suffer from mental health conditions like PTSD and depression, have less educational opportunities and as a result lower incomes, and commit suicide. It's terrifying. We like to think that what happened in childhood doesn't affect us, but research shows the exact opposite - it affects us, in a very dramatic way.

It’s common to discount what happened to us as kids as not that important once we’re adults. Yet, what we have to remember is that it’s not about how we feel about the event now, but how we felt as kids that affects us. Many things feel a lot bigger and scarier to a child who has little control or power over his or her circumstances.

To a child, even small rejections can feel like a life or death threat - we depend on our parents for survival. As adults, we may roll our eyes when we think about all the times dad came home belligerently drunk or the times when mom was really late (or forgot altogether) to pick us up from school.... but those experiences can become integrated into a child’s sense of self, making the child feel unlovable and instilling the belief that he or she must be completely self-reliant. One of the most common beliefs we pick up from a young age is "I'm not good enough" - it is an insidious mind virus that wreaks havoc on our sense of self as an adult.

How to heal from trauma

Meditation is one of the most effective ways to self-regulate. Many studies have shown that with regular practice, mindfulness meditation can actually change the structure of the brain - which is amazing news! According to a Harvard study, eight weeks of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was found to increase cortical thickness in both the hippocampus, deewhich governs learning and memory, and in certain areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation and self-referential processing. There were also decreases in brain cell volume in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, anxiety, and stress – and these changes matched the participants’ self-reports of their stress levels, indicating that meditation not only changes the brain, but it changes our subjective perception and feelings as well. In fact, a follow-up study found that after meditation training, changes in brain areas linked to mood and arousal were also linked to improvements in how participants said they felt — i.e., their psychological well-being.

According to Dr. Lisa Firestone, when we fail to deal with our trauma (and instead resort to "coping methods" like taking on blame, disassociating, trying to bury our memories, or repeatedly reliving the deep emotional pain) we are not making sense of what happened to us and, thereby, falling victim to our past in the present. When our traumas are unresolved, our brain isn’t fully integrated. Present day events can trigger us, and we risk getting thrown back into emotional states we experienced as kids. Dr. Jack Kornfield recommends an approach called “RAIN” to help us mindfully deal with these triggers. The steps include:

Recognize – Pause and notice what you’re feeling.
Accept/acknowledge/allow – whatever strong emotion is occurring in the moment.
Investigate – Start to investigate your internal experience. Try what Daniel Siegel calls SIFTing through your experience, noting Sensations, Images, Feelings and Thoughts that arise.
Non-identification– Don’t allow the thoughts, feelings or experiences to define you. If a memory arises, remember that the memory is not happening to you now and does not define who you are.

When we learn to approach our memories with calmness and curiosity, we are less likely to be triggered. We’ll also start to notice our triggers more quickly, which diffuses their intensity. The concept of “name it to tame it” refers to the fact that when we identify our emotions in this way, we tend to not be ruled by them. Identifying where this heightened emotional reaction is coming from can help you differentiate the past from the present and feel more calm and centered in the moment. It’s often the case that, when we make sense of trauma, something clicks and we’re able to calm down and choose our actions and reactions more wisely.

We can’t change the past, so why bother remembering it?

No matter how often we try to tell ourselves that the past is in the past or how much we try to write off the ways we were hurt as “no big deal,” our history continues to affect us in countless, unconscious ways. Research shows that when we fail to face and process the large and small traumas of our past, we can become stuck in our pain. We may struggle in our relationships and recreate our past in our present. In order to identify the events that hurt us, we must realize that trauma can exist in many forms.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that acknowledging that you have experienced trauma in your life does not mean that you are broken or weak - it means that you are human. Your trauma does not need to define you - but you do need to be honest with yourself about what you've experienced and how it has affected you. As children, our story may shape who we become, but as adults, we can shape our story. We can’t control what happened in the past, but we can control the hold it has over us in our current lives.

Awareness is power - if you've been struggling for as long as you can remember, please reach out. Please know that healing is possible. Your biology does not have to become your destiny.

What wounds do you need to heal?