Trauma meaning any kind; I was thinking mostly abuse.
In: Biology
Cortisol works to combat stress like an analgesic (aspirin) and is a potent anti-inflammatory hormone. If you are in a situation where you quickly become scared, cortisol leaps in and instantly manages your physical response to stress by regulating your heart rate, blood pressure, etc.
Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands which are small glands located on top of each kidney. There is some evidence that suggests that constant trauma and abuse over an extended period of time wears out this response system. Normally, it should function like an buoyant bath toy that once submerged, slowly comes back to the surface. However, holes will start appearing if it gets overused and worn out. This in turn will affect its ability to float back to the surface. Pretty soon the system stops functioning, and this can result in a mental health issue called Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood. This said, there are lots of other unfortunate outcomes that can result from untreated trauma, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Mood Disorders (Depression), and others.
Honestly we don’t truely know. The brain isn’t fully understood. My partner has DID from mental trauma as a child and a myriad of other issues including PTSD
Really depends on the trauma, the person and the environment. I think this is an ongoing field of study in neuroscience.
Using PTSD as an example. A traumatic event (or multiple events), leaves the brain stuck in fight or flight mode. The hormones that trigger this response can impact the structure of the brain over time. Studies have found that the size of certain parts of the brain related to stress are different in some people with PTSD.
I listened to the [blinkist.com](https://blinkist.com) for the book called Widen the Window by Elisabeth A Stanley yesterday. It was pretty good and talked about this subject. It was eye opening
On short, it does what it can to survive.
The brain is also made from parts and portions, also called zones, each with its own functions and as they overlap, injury or any sort of birth defect can make the person susceptible to change. The brain has a sort of defense mechanism called neuroplasticity. However, the brain is not perfect and it can over-do it.
A shock or stroke is a physiologic analog to this, when it, too, overdoes it in order to compensate for injury. It simply does it too much and the patient can die from a cascading series of primitive reactions of too much entirely.
When we’re talking about emotional trauma, one needs to comprehend that it’s a balance of resilience and intensity. One person’s easily tolerated insult is another person’s life-changing moment.
I’ll use PTSD as an example, /u/Magg71 answer is pretty good tho.
See the brain as a like a giant smart boiler (for lack of better explanation), stress is a temperature increase.
This boiler is smart, when temperature increases too much, a cooling process happen to keep things in order and things can continue to work. This cooling process is very efficient and makes it so the boiler keeps its shit together even in tough situation.
Now let’s say a MASSIVE temperature increase happen (trauma), first the cooling process will happen at full force, but the temperature it increases so much that the materials implied in the cooling process starts to melt and lose its functions and bad things happen.
After a while and little help (medication, time) , you can decrease the temperature…but it’s still stay relatively high and since the cooling process is fucked up and doesn’t work well, a non major temperature increase will induce the same situation as before and further melt the cooling processes and thus it further loses its function.
If this continue, after a while, any little temperature rise will provoke a massive reaction.
That’s what happen in PTSD. The trauma induce a massive stress, which will liberate a massive amount of cortisol in the blood, this massive amount of cortisol will fuck up the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus (two brain regions that normally shut down the “stress reaction”) and your body gets stuck in flight or fight mode.
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