How Exercise Helps You Heal From Stress & Trauma

Thinking your way through a stressful or triggering situation doesn’t work for everyone! Those of you that have lived a particularly traumatic life and now struggle with what feels like constant anxiety and stress may find it INCREDIBLY difficult to cope using your mind and thoughts.

Many of you might notice that when you get anxious or stressed, you tend to become physically immobilized while your brain is running a marathon that leads you nowhere - just desperately wanting a way to feel better.

You try and try to think it through or talk it out, but you’re left feeling stuck - and it’s at that point that you start to wonder if something is really wrong with you. Why is it so hard? Why are you so different from “normal” people? What the heck is going on with your brain?

You are not permanently broken! So start by taking a few deep breaths and grab a drink of water. Let’s go on a journey together to understand the impact of stress and trauma on the brain.

The Neuroscience of Trauma and Stress

When a person is subjected to a stressful event or circumstance, the brain and nervous system kick into action not only for survival in the moment but also to learn how to survive future scenarios. The stress-response begins in the amygdala - a part of the brain responsible for recognizing danger and sounding the alarm to the rest of the brain and body to protect you.

This is also known as the fight-or-flight response. Its main agenda is survival by whatever means possible. It shuts down parts of your brain and body to preserve energy so that you can respond to whatever danger has been perceived. You might physically fight off the danger. You might run away if that’s an option. If it’s not an option, then you might fawn, or go along with whatever the circumstance is to get through it. Or you might completely freeze.

This is a response that we all have to stress. Once the perceived threat is no longer there, the brain and body shift into what’s called rest-and-digest mode to allow you to recover from it. But what happens when a person endures repeated trauma or ongoing stress in their life?

Simply put, the amygdala and the sympathetic nervous system - responsible for the fight-or-flight response - get overstimulated. And the parasympathetic nervous system - responsible for rest-and-digest mode - gets understimulated.

Let’s talk a little more about the parts of the brain affected most by trauma, PTSD, and chronic stress.

The Amygdala:

Its job is to perceive and process threats and regulate emotions. As already mentioned, it becomes overactive in people that have experienced trauma. It can cause you to develop chronic issues of fear - fear of other people and fear of your surroundings (Van der Kolk, 2014).

The amygdala is primarily concerned with your survival above all else. From the time you are born, it is collecting information to protect you from danger. When it's overstimulated you may develop issues like intrusive memories, nightmares and other physical symptoms (Diamond & Zoladz, 2016).

The Hippocampus:

Its job is to store your memories and experiences for future reference. It lives in close proximity to your amygdala. When the brain is under chronic stress, the hippocampus is known to get smaller in volume making it harder to access, process, and learn after traumatic experiences (O’Doherty et al., 2015). This begins to answer the question above about why it can be so hard to work through triggering circumstances when you experience them in the present day.

The Thalamus:

Its job is to process and transfer most of your sensory experiences; things like sight, sound, touch and sensations in your body. Think of this as a sort of operator station in your brain. It picks up the signals and then makes a determination on whether or not to transfer that information to your cortex for conscious interpretation.

It helps your brain integrate the sensations you have with the full story of a memory. But what happens when trauma and stress occur? Well, the thalamus shuts downs! The necessary filtering and integration of your sensations stops happening and you experience SENSORY OVERLOAD! This can lead to all kinds of unhelpful coping mechanisms to try to numb out the stimulation (Van der Kolk, 2014).

Frontal Lobes:

This is the meat and potatoes of your cognitive processing. The frontal lobes are responsible for language, abstract thinking, planning, and decision making. It's also where your imagination and ability to empathize comes from (Van der Kolk, 2014).

Traditional talk therapy often relies heavily on this part of your brain to verbally work through your experiences, explore different perspectives, and make choices about how to move forward.