Phycologist Explains Trauma

If you or someone you know is dealing with anxiety, post traumatic stress, panic attacks, or depression, there's a reason why you're feeling that way that no one has told you about before. Trauma is coming from experiences that you've had in your life that are continuing to activate your nervous system. If you have an emotion, a feeling, or a sensation, your mind is calling for an action. So here's how I explain it to people. If they say, well, do I know if this particular event is still traumatic and affecting me? I'll say, I want you to think about the event. And I said, do you feel an emotion when you think of that event? And if they say, yeah, I get really angry when I think about it, then the trauma is active. Your mind thinks something's still happening. So the best way to explain what trauma is is your mind looking at old data in real time and telling you to do something. That's why you feel the emotion. So if you think about that bully that picked on you in school and you get angry, what does your mind want you to do? Attack them. But can you attack them? No. Unless you can go back 20 years, that doesn't exist anymore. It's just a memory of an event. But it's been stored in such high resolution, high definition that your mind confuses it with something that's real and happening now. Then you feel an emotion.