A multi-speaker conversation (Nick Stumbo, Heather, and another speaker) about how trauma—especially sexual trauma—is encoded and retained in the brain and how understanding those mechanisms enables healing. Key points: trauma memories are stored in the limbic system (amygdala for emotion, hippocampus for memory), which prioritizes survival and predictability, causing vivid long-term recall of painful (and pleasurable) events and creating triggers. Healing is framed as reprocessing those memories with an adult, integrative understanding (beyond moralizing behavior), recognizing brain wiring that seeks pleasure and avoids pain, and using reinterpretation and new behaviors (group work, counseling) to reduce the power of past events.
Saint Heather, to that point, how does the brain process sexual brokenness or trauma? And how does that. How does understanding that really help us move towards real change?
Yeah, that's a great question. So a lot of times when we're talking about the brain, that when we experience any type of trauma, because a lot of times our woundedness and our sexual behaviors, if they're unhealthy, they come from a place of trauma. But our trauma basically lives in our limbic system. So you have the amygdala, which is all about emotion, and you have the hippocampus, which is all about memory formation. And those two things working together to basically capture these really painful experiences that we've had, store them in our mind. Because again, our limbic system is really all about survival and predictability, right? And because our brain wants to always do what it thinks we need to protect us. And so it's those kind of things that live in our brain. And so. And that's why. And it's to protect us. And so that's why sometimes, you know, you might not be able to think. Think of what you were doing last week, but you can remember things that happened 30 years ago as if they just happened. And it's because in that instance, your brain was capturing all of this really great, helpful information to help to protect you and to keep you safe from whatever the threat was in your environment. So then when it comes to understanding that, you know, why it is we do what we do or why it is that we maybe are triggered in a specific way or something in an instant will bring us to tears. And we don't know why. It's because information is stored in our brain. And the process of healing really is the process of going back into those memories and recognizing what really was happening in those times. Being able to process it, hopefully with a fully developed adult brain so that you can make sense of what happened, that you can even sometimes come to a resolve about it in order to stop living in that state. Does that make sense? So I think that that's part of the healing process.
Yeah, it's an invitation that we're going to go deeper beyond behavior modification, understanding the why. And it's really helpful to recognize there is a part of our brain that does not think of it like sexual brokenness. I think in my entry point to recovery, I was really struggling with that. Why am I doing this thing? I don't want to do that I think of as wrong, as sinful, harmful to my marriage, you know, not healthy in my life. But I keep doing it. And I remember in that first year with counseling and group understanding, the part of my brain that was wired, and this is God's creation of our brain, was wired to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. And that was an amoral part of my thinking process that was not judging, like, is this good? Is it wrong? It was just saying that feels good. And even in acting out behaviors like pornography and masturbation, that part of my brain was going, this is great, this is amazing. And my brain had been designed by God to feel that. And so if I only look at it as a moral problem, yeah, I feel really stuck. But if I can recognize, oh, a part of my brain has been designed to like this, and then to remember what feels good and even to set me up to go back to the places that feel good, I now begin to recognize there is a system at play here. And if I'm just trying to, you know, reject the evil and make that moral choice, I'm going to miss this whole other component of what's physically happened in my brain that remembers a source of pleasure and does not judge it on the moral character that another part of my brain does. And I know all that can be explained in the actual parts of the brain. But that was my simple understanding that first year of going, oh, there's actually a part of my brain that was wired this way and is kind of working against me. And if I'm not aware of that, I'll be blind to it. And at the same time, if I am aware of it, I can work in conjunction with my brain because it does want to feel good. And I can come up with other behaviors or patterns that will replace that desire or that method of trying to feel good.
And Heather, I love that the impact on the brain isn't just for negative moments. Like, it can also be, I think beauty and pain are so imprinted on our brain. I remember you'd given me some slides to present on the brain to a general audience. And that night at this church just in southern Oregon, I remember saying, who here remembers the best Christmas present they ever got? And there's like some 70 plus year old man who's like, a horse. I got a horse when I was 8. It's just like, think about that. This dude is in his 70s and he's reminded he was taken back to a Christmas over 60 years ago. And he is right there in the moment of that childhood joy, that hippocampus, right? The memory associated with the amygdala, the feeling. And I Just, I was like, man, that's so beautiful. And so whether it's beauty or pain, our brain remembers those. We get so stuck sometimes. And unfortunately, in the work we do, we often are unpacking or processing painful moments of like, oh, when I was six and that uncle or that aunt did something to me. Right. Whether that's abuse or an exposure moment. I feel like so often I could ask, you know, the young adult that I'm meeting with for coffee, when were you exposed to porn? And instantly they're right back to that memory. In the office, seated in the chair, looking at, you know, their dad's computer or laptop, whatever it might be. They're right back to that moment. To your point, Nick, they couldn't tell me what they had for dinner last night, but. But they're right back to that moment. And something I've found to be so insightful is that kids are really good observers, but not often good interpreters. And I think what we get to do in pure desire groups as guys get in is not only help them see those moments, but to offer them reinterpretation of what happened to you. Wasn't okay. Cause to your point, Nick, you're like, that was just a part of my story. That's just simply how I thought it was supposed to be. And it's. In making sense of those stories, I think we can help and begin undoing some of the power or the impact that painful moments have.
