Kamilah StevensonCEO, Healthy And Better · Health & Wellness Coach | Degreed Counselor | Published Author | Helping People Achieve Holistic Wellness

Could Trauma Be Impacting Your Brain and Success?

21 Aug 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:00

In this presentation, the speaker explains how chronic trauma keeps the brain locked in a fight‑or‑flight state, causing the amygdala to become over‑active while the prefrontal cortex—the region responsible for executive decision‑making—receives little use. This neural imbalance hampers higher‑order thinking, leading to poorer choices, reduced ability to plan for health, and diminished overall success. By highlighting the physiological link between persistent stress and diminished cognitive function, the talk underscores the importance of addressing trauma to restore balanced brain activity and improve life outcomes.

Chapters

When your brain is constantly in fight or flight and you are constantly living in trauma, then you also cannot operate in a higher order thinking capacity because the amygdala is what is overutilized often when you are in this traumatic, uh, way of living. And the prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that is the executive decision maker. And that part of your brain is almost like if you don't use it, you lose it. And so if you're not using that part of your brain, especially because you're stuck in these traumatic experiences from the past, then you definitely are not making high-order executive decisions that will cause for you to have a healthier, more successful