Neurobiology of Trauma and Therapeutic Lenses
Neurobiology of Trauma Response
Key Brain Areas and Functions
- Reptilian Brain: Associated with survival instincts and the emotional brain. (Mnemonic: Fist)
- Limbic Area / Amygdala: Emotional processing center. (Mnemonic: Finger up)
- Frontal Cortex: Responsible for executive functions, reasoning, and making meaning.
Defining Theory
Theory Definition for a 12-Year-Old
The reasoning behind why and how a particular thing happens, supported by an evidence base.
Scientific Definition
A scientifically-based possible explanation for a fact, observation, or pattern in the world that provides a foundation for understanding relationships.
Van Der Kolk’s Characters (Brain Functions)
These concepts illustrate how different brain areas contribute to focus, emotion, and processing:
- The Cook (Thalamus): Focus, consciousness, attention.
- The Smoke Detector (Amygdala): Emotional processing and fear response.
- The Watchtower (Frontal Lobes): Making meaning and being helpful. When working, we can talk through the fear.
- The Timekeeper (Hippocampus): Sense of time and memory formation.
Time, Memory, and Trauma Symptoms
- Déjà Vu: The feeling that an event has happened before.
- Flashback in Trauma: You see and feel like you are reliving the event. This indicates the Timekeeper has failed. The therapeutic response emphasizes: “That strong sensation you are feeling is occurring right now.” (Related to brain sensitivity.)
- Symptom of Trauma: Inability to make sense of time often manifests as a Flashback.
The Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Collapse Response
The Amygdala/Limbic area assesses the threat and surges stress hormones for reaction. The Frontal Lobe may not have time to react.
- Flight: Can I escape the threat? (Yes)
- Fight: Can I overpower the threat? (Yes)
- Freeze: Can I make the threat lose interest? (Yes)
- Collapse (Depersonalization): If the answer is No to all of the above.
Therapeutic Lenses and Approaches
1. Strengths-Based Approach
Six Core Principles
- Initial focus is on strengths.
- The helping relationship is collaborative: Power with another, not power over another.
- Each person is responsible for their own recovery.
- All human beings have the capacity to learn, grow, and transform. People have the right to try, the right to succeed, and the right to fail.
- Work with people in natural settings in the community.
- The entire community is viewed as an oasis of potential resources.
This approach focuses on viewing client systems through a lens of their abilities, talents, skills, possibilities, values, and aspirations, rather than fixating on pathologies associated with current circumstances.
2. Empowerment Theory
A process of increasing personal, interpersonal, or political power so that individuals can take action to improve their life situations.
Social workers utilizing empowerment seek to facilitate the development of skills, knowledge, and resources that enable individuals to advocate for themselves and participate in decision-making processes.
3. Resilience
The capacity to recover after adversity. Resilience emphasizes factors that enable coping and adaptation to immediate crises.
Four Strategies for Building Resilience
- Identify and mobilize social support networks for crisis intervention.
- Enhance self-efficacy and coping skills.
- Identify existing strengths; individuals are the experts of their own lives.
- Meaning-making in the face of adversity.
Resilience focuses on building up power to improve one’s own situation, whether individually or communally, with an emphasis on community support.
Overlap of Approaches
The Strengths-Based approach serves as the starting point for many other ideas:
- Empowerment: Focuses on doing for oneself, concern with power, and community organizing.
- Resilience: Focuses on recovery after adversity and emphasizing protective factors.
Other Theoretical Concepts
- Conflict Theory: (Note: Content is incomplete in the source material.)