The Impact of Trauma on Depression
Trauma can significantly impact a person’s mental health and can be a major contributing factor to depression. When a person experiences trauma, it can lead to emotional dysregulation, making it difficult for the individual to manage their feelings. This can lead to a cycle of negative emotions that can become a depressive state. It is not unusual for a person to blame themselves for what has happened, or to view themselves as defective for feeling the way they do after a trauma.
How Trauma Affects the Brain
Trauma impacts brain structures involved in emotion regulation and memory processing. The amygdala, which is responsible for processing emotions, especially fear, can become overactive. At the same time, the prefrontal cortex, which regulates these emotions, can be impaired. This combination can result in an individual having difficulty managing negative feelings and can lead to a greater likelihood of developing depression. Additionally, traumatic experiences are not always stored in the brain as a coherent memory, but can remain as fragmented sensations, images and emotions that can cause distress in the present.
Healing from Trauma and its Impact on Depression
When someone begins to address their trauma, they can expect a positive impact on their depression. As the person works through the trauma, the brain’s emotional responses become more regulated, and they will experience a reduction in negative emotions and thought patterns.
Self-Help Approaches to Trauma
There are several self-help approaches that individuals can use to help manage their trauma:
- Self-Compassion: Practicing self-kindness and understanding can help to reduce self-blame and shame. Acknowledging the difficulty of your experience can promote acceptance and healing.
- Mindfulness and Acceptance: Learning to observe thoughts and feelings without judgment can allow individuals to see how their thoughts and feelings affect their behaviours. This can help them break free from unhelpful thought patterns and to see the impact of negative thought patterns.
- Emotional Regulation: Techniques such as breathing exercises, which may improve heart rate variability, and being aware of the feelings in your body can be useful for calming the nervous system.
- Reframing Thoughts: Examining negative self-statements and creating alternative statements can promote a healthier mindset. It can be helpful to look for the evidence to support the argument against a negative self-statement, and consider how you can change that thought going forward.
- CPR for the Amygdala:
- Havening is a method that aims to depotentiate the traumatic memories stored in the amygdala by engaging the brain’s electrochemical system to release the encoded traumatic experiences. This can reduce the impact of past events on present-day information processing. Havening can speed up the healing process for trauma and make it easier for the client to understand how past trauma is impacting their day to day interactions.
Professional Help for Trauma
Seeking professional help is useful for many individuals seeking to address their trauma. New approaches such as Havening and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) can offer unique ways to deal with traumatic experiences.
- Havening: Havening can help to clear the trauma, reducing the impact of negative events and allow the person to move forward. In particular, it allows for the traumatic memories stored in the amygdala to be depotentiated.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT): ACT focuses on accepting difficult thoughts and feelings related to the trauma. Rather than battling with those thoughts and feelings, ACT assists clients to develop psychological flexibility and to commit to actions that align with their values.
Summary
Trauma can significantly contribute to depression by disrupting the brain’s ability to regulate emotions. Addressing trauma, whether through self-help methods, or with a professional, allows for emotional regulation and a reduction in depressive symptoms. New approaches such as Havening and ACT can offer specific techniques and philosophies which help clients resolve trauma. Self-compassion, mindfulness, and emotional regulation are also helpful strategies in dealing with the impact of trauma.
Tags: Trauma, Depression, Self-Compassion, Mindfulness, Emotional Regulation, Havening, ACT, Amygdala, Neuroplasticity