Have you wondered, “How does trauma affect the brain?” Many people wonder this, particularly those affected by trauma and possible changes. Indeed, trauma and PTSD create changes throughout the brain. But in this organ’s credit, your brain works hard to bring its own recovery when you show it how. Understanding this will make it obvious that trauma therapy is necessary to live a full and healthy life.
How Does Trauma Affect the Brain?
Your brain has millions of connections. All of those connections take on responsibility for specific tasks. This complex organ is a web of networks and communication, making it easier to understand why trauma causes damage in your brain.
So how does trauma affect the brain? One experience of trauma involving sight, smell, hearing, and pain connects that trauma to most of your senses. It also affects your emotions, speech, and thought. So trauma also affects how you express yourself. All of this damage makes up your post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.
Still, how PTSD affects one person affects another in different ways. No two people experience the same outcome from one single event, even when they both experience the trauma together. All of your thoughts, emotions, speech and sensory perceptions store throughout your brain and form your own brand of mental illness.
More About PTSD and the Brain
The more extreme your trauma and its resulting PTSD, the longer lasting and more deeply embedded your effects. A case of minimal PTSD sometimes resolves on its own, and the individual gets back to normal daily living. So for the long term, the trauma does not affect their brain very much.
But someone with extreme PTSD cannot heal their brain on their own and need help with their recovery. The trauma after a brutal attack, for example, will not go away without treatment. Quickly, the traumatic events reshape your daily life, and you adjust your routine around the dark events, memories, and emotions. These adjustments affect every single area of your life.
With severe PTSD, you stop feeling good about yourself, leading you to stop trying to look presentable. You keep your trauma secret, too. So in not wanting to talk to anyone about it, you stop wanting to see other people at all. So why bother going to work out or for a walk after dinner?
You can see how this example of severe PTSD affects every part of living and takes the joy out of life very quickly. You start suffering deep depression, anxiety and a world of other emotions in the trauma’s aftermath. In your isolation, fear, depression, and anxiety, you stop working as you should, preparing meals and being interested in other people, much less yourself.
Making the Decision to Change Your Brain for the Better
When you suffer from PTSD, you know you need help. You experience too many obstacles in everyday life not to see and feel this deep need. You always wonder, “How does trauma affect the brain?” But you know how it affects all parts of your life.
The prospect of getting help overwhelms many men with PTSD. You fear judgment, labels, and even trying to bring up these old events. So you do not make the decision you need to make. Instead, you engage in substance use, sit on the couch for hours on end, absorb yourself into video games or television and stop living your life.
Instead, decide to take back your life. This trauma was not your choice. You chose to survive in the events, themselves. So now make a choice to survive your trauma’s aftermath. Stop living as if you lost yourself and commit to putting the pieces of yourself and your magnificent brain back together. PTSD treatment can help you take back control of your life.
Where You Find Help for Addiction and PTSD
If you suffer PTSD today or trauma in your past, seek trauma informed care at a quality rehab treatment center. Through this knowledgeable care, you start healing your brain as you stop hiding behind your substance use and addiction. Young men just like you take these steps into young adult rehab programs each year and start living a better, PTSD-free life as a result.
Therapies, programs, and services to seek for your best results include:
- Addiction rehab treatment
- Housing among male peers in treatment
- Dual diagnosis treatment
- Trauma-informed clinical care
- Outdoor and wilderness-focused treatment
- Individual, group, and family therapy
Call Red Oak Recovery now at 828.382.9699 and ask caring counselors, “how does trauma affect the brain?” They guide you to the programs and services you need for lasting trauma and addiction recovery. Put your trauma behind you and start enjoying better days ahead with Red Oak Recovery’s help.
