How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body Pat Ogden, PhD - Free Report - pg.

How Trauma Impacts

the Brain and Body
with Pat Ogden, PhD

a Free Report from NICABM

National Institute for the Clinical

Application of Behavioral Medicine
How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body Pat Ogden, PhD - Free Report - pg. 2

a Free Report with Pat Ogden, PhD

How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body

Sometimes a client’s instinctive response to trauma can keep them stuck in painful emotions and memories.

Because when trauma occurs, there’s often no time to think – we just react.

That’s why it can be critical for our clients to understand what happens in the brain and body when they
experience trauma . . .

Dr. Ogden: When we feel threatened and in danger, we respond instinctively through our bodies.

Trauma stimulates our survival responses.

“When the amygdala is lit
It activates our right amygdala, which sounds the alarm for action. But up and the brain is wired
when the amygdala is lit up and the brain is wired for survival, the for survival, the thinking
brain often shuts down.”
thinking brain often shuts down.

Some trauma survivors re-experience this phenomenon over and over by

“It’s very difficult for
traumatic reminders – their subcortical instincts are triggered and their
our patients to make
frontal lobes shut down.
sense of what is
happening to them Many patients say, “I can’t think clearly. When my trauma comes up, I feel
when their trauma is crazy, and I can’t think. I’m in an emotional state. I have a lot of body
re-stimulated.”
sensations that I don’t understand.”

It’s very difficult for our patients to make sense of what is happening to them when their trauma is re-
stimulated. So this is where brain science can be helpful clinically.

How to Use Brain Science to Normalize a Client’s Response to Trauma

Dr. Ogden: I often show my patients a diagram of the triune brain. I demonstrate how our instinct and
trauma responses live in the subcortical areas of the brain, and how this is our body trying to keep us alive
and protect us.
How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body Pat Ogden, PhD - Free Report - pg. 3

It’s about that old saying, “It’s better to mistake a stick for a snake than a snake for a stick.” That is how the
brain works, too – it’s better to be alert to potential trauma than not be alert to trauma because then you
really might not survive.

We also might talk a little bit about the right amygdala and how it’s so easily triggered when a person feels
endangered. But it’s important to note that it has lost the capacity
to evaluate if the danger is real or if it’s a traumatic reminder. “A little bit of psychoeducation
can help a patient feel that,
Just a little bit of psychoeducation can help a patient feel that, Oh, I’m not crazy; this is
“Oh, I’m not crazy; this is normal; this is natural; there’s nothing normal; this is natural; there’s
wrong with me. nothing wrong with me.”

We just have to increase the flow of information so my frontal lobes and my left hemisphere can help
organize and regulate these subcortical responses.”

How Polyvagal Theory Can Help a Client Understand the Trauma Response

Dr. Ogden: I worked with a young man who had a lot of abuse, especially from his father.

He came to me because he wanted a relationship with women. He wanted to be able to ask a girl out. He said
he had very dramatic responses in his own body that he didn’t understand.

For example, he told me the story of a girl he liked, and they did an activity together and had a good time –
but when she gave him a hug at the end, he literally fainted.

He said, “I didn’t know what was going on – it made me crazy! She was very nice, but I was so confused!”

So we talked a little bit about the dorsal vagal response – how it can really stimulate that reflex of fainting
and how that’s a survival response.

That was very reassuring to him – it was something he could learn how to mitigate. He could learn to keep his
social engagement system online when he was with this girl.

With this young man, his trauma was so severe that as intimacy became a reality in terms of that hug, his
arousal just plummeted – the dorsal vagal system tone increased so that he literally passed out.
How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body Pat Ogden, PhD - Free Report - pg. 4

In this case, we’re really talking about Stephen Porges’s polyvagal hierarchy, and learning about this was very
helpful to that client.

Two Strategies for Working with Implicit Processes of Trauma

Dr. Ogden: We also talked about mindfulness and how, if he could be aware of his reactions inside, that
would put a gap between his reactivity and his environment.

He started to learn how to observe what was going on inside, which keeps the frontal lobes online.

Mindfulness is like the observing part of the brain – you can watch what
Mindfulness is like the
is going on inside.
observing part of the
brain – you can watch As he began to notice his reactions, he began to learn about them rather
what is going on inside.” than to have them take him over.

One of the gestures we worked with was a reaching out and beckoning action.

It is a very basic movement of reaching toward another and then asking them to come toward you. It is a
proximity-seeking action, and in his history, proximity-seeking actions were dangerous.

He literally could not make the movement. He would start to do it, but then it would turn into a push away –
a “keep away” motion.

I asked him to try, but he really couldn’t do it. It turned into what looked like a fight invitation. It was a
motion that said, “Get over there.”

What’s interesting is that he’s a fighter – he learned how to box in order to help himself feel safe. He said this
is what he would do if he was challenging somebody to a fight – but it wasn’t an invitation.

He literally could not make the motion. It was too dangerous for him. Yet he could say he felt this emotional
need in his chest – he really longed for connection with others.

Even as he thought about asking me to come closer, he heard this voice inside saying, “What are you doing?
What are you doing? You’re going to get hurt.”
How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body Pat Ogden, PhD - Free Report - pg. 5

Just that little exercise we did started to bring some of the implicit processing of the right brain and his
subcortical survival responses into his awareness.

Before we talked, he wasn’t aware of what was happening inside – he just knew he had a hard time asking a
girl out. He wasn’t aware of how powerfully those implicit processes were affecting him.
How Trauma Impacts the Brain and Body Pat Ogden, PhD - Free Report - pg. 6

About Pat . . .
Pat Ogden, PhD is the founder and director of the
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, an internationally
recognized school that specializes in training
psychotherapists in somatic and cognitive approaches for
the treatment of trauma, as well as developmental and
attachment issues.

She is a co-founder of the Hakomi Institute, served on

the faculty of the Naropa University in the Somatic
Psychology and Contemplative Psychology departments
from 1985 to 2005, and lectures internationally.

She is the first author of the groundbreaking book, Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor
Approach to Psychotherapy, which was published in the fall of 2006.