Trauma Brain
Dr. Glen Doyle, a therapist and leader in complex trauma work, says, “Decisions we make while our frontal lobe is short-circuited by trauma responses don’t represent our values or potential.
They no more represent who we are than statements read to the media by hostages being threatened by their captor just outside of the camera frame.”
Let’s talk about that.
This is important right now, especially because of what we are collectively experiencing. If you are a compassionate person who cares about others and has empathy, it’s a challenging time to be alive on this planet. Add in past traumatic experiences, and staying regulated is nearly impossible. Some would say staying regulated is ridiculous because of everything that is happening, and that nervous system regulation will not change abusive and violent systems.
While supporting your nervous system is not going to fix our fraudulent government, it is still important. Why?
Because your health and well-being are important. I don't have another way to say it.
You matter.
Your health matters.
Your state of being matters.
Your life matters.
How you feel in your body–matters.
It all matters.
If wanting all of us to feel even a tiny bit better in this life makes me delulu and selfish, then fuck it…that’s what I am.
I will never stop pushing my agenda of you fucking deserve to feel good in this life and in your body.
Returning to Dr. Doyle’s quote, the decisions we make while our frontal lobe is short-circuited by trauma responses don’t represent our values or potential. This is nervous system dysregulation. This is being stuck in a circuit of fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses to life. This is living on autopilot. Tell me, do you make your best long-term decisions from this place? How well do you plan your future from here? How creative do you feel? How expansive are your thoughts? Can you visualize, dream, imagine–and are those thoughts applicable to building your life, your future, or are they just an escape? I am not throwing shade on imagination escapism–sometimes that’s where we need to be; sometimes that can be regulating. But escapism is not our goal.
What does your frontal lobe do?
Thinking–reasoning, judgment, decision-making, and creativity
Learning and information recall
Executive function–attention span and working memory
Voluntary muscle movements
Social understanding
Repeated traumatic experiences lead to a loss of mass in the frontal lobe and overdevelopment of the amygdala- the brain’s fear center. This all gets activated when life triggers our trauma. Do you feel unsafe? Do you have food or housing insecurity? Any financial insecurity? All of these things trigger our amygdala to take over our frontal lobe.
This. This is WHY nervous system regulation is critical. Because living your life from your Amygdala is stressful. It’s harmful to the body. And we cannot access the logic and creativity needed to change this world. Living from the Amygdala keeps us hiding in fear. This is exactly where the power-mongering bastards want us to live. We are easy to control here. Fuck them and their death cult.
Self-care, emotional regulation, inner work, meditation, vagal nerve exercises…all of these things become activism in a fascist world. Taking care of yourself is anti-fascist. They want us dead? Fuck them. Let’s live and love so fucking hard; let’s care for one another with such reckless abandon until they are deleted from existence.
Self-care is activism.
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