Trauma Healing: Understanding the Coherence of Your Trauma Responses

Your brain's response to trauma isn't broken—it's brilliantly designed for survival. Discover how understanding your internal systems can be the key to profound healing and self-trust.

Have you ever wondered why you react the way you do to certain triggers? The answer lies in understanding the remarkable coherence of your brain's trauma response system.

The Wisdom Behind Your Trauma Response

Your brain and body don't engage in costly behaviors without good reason. What may appear as "problematic" is actually an intelligent system working exactly as designed—to protect you at all costs.

When we recognize this coherence, something profound can happen: we develop greater self-trust and compassion for our reactions, even during our most challenging moments.

As a decolonial trauma therapist specializing in neuroscience-based healing approaches, I've witnessed countless clients experience breakthrough moments when they finally understand that their symptoms aren't “bad”—they're evidence of their brain's remarkable survival intelligence.

Understanding Your Three Internal Systems

To truly grasp how trauma affects you, let’s explore three interconnected systems within your brain that play distinct roles in your experience and healing:

1. The Witnessing Mind: Your Internal Observer

Located in the middle prefrontal cortex, your witnessing mind allows you to observe your internal experiences with curiosity and compassion. When activated, it releases GABA—a soothing neurochemical—to regulate emotional activation in the subcortical brain.

This system excels at integration, synthesizing information from various brain regions to create insights and meaning from your experiences. It's your internal compassionate observer.

Practice: When feeling frustrated, try noticing the physical sensation (perhaps heat in your chest) and acknowledge it: "I see you, frustration. I feel your heat." This simple act of witnessing activates neural pathways that help regulate intense emotions.

2. The Hurt System: Keeper of Your Pain History

Housed in your subcortical brain (the lower brain region dealing with emotions, trauma, and subconscious memory), the hurt system stores the painful lessons from your past experiences. These aren't conscious—you might be operating from a subconscious belief of "I'm always alone" without realizing it.

This system operates below conscious awareness with remarkable speed, using what you've learned from past experiences about yourself and how the world works to unconsciously shape how you navigate life moment to moment.

3. The Protective System: Your Vigilant Guardian

This subcortically-driven system leverages frontal brain resources to protect you with adaptive skills. It knows what your hurt system believes about you and the world, and works tirelessly to protect you from further pain.

Your protective responses typically follow two strategies:

• "Get away" protectors push down pain to prevent emotional flooding (like distracting yourself with TV)

• "Fix it" protectors maintain optimistic fantasies that something external will heal your internal pain without having to directly address it (like looking for the perfect relationship that will heal any sense of aloneness) 

Despite their sometimes costly methods, these protective responses have noble intentions: to increase safety, justice, and wellbeing or to decrease suffering.

The Healing Power of Integration: A Personal Journey

In my own trauma healing work, I discovered a profound subconscious belief that "I don't exist." When I first accessed this core wound, I felt the overwhelming terror associated with it.

But with my witnessing mind engaged, I could feel deep compassion for the young part of me that survived being unseen and trapped in abuse. This compassion naturally extended to my protective system that had worked so tirelessly to help me feel seen and loved, even when its strategies sometimes led me to stay in relationships that were harmful to my wellbeing.

The integration of compassionate awareness toward both my hurt and protective systems created a transformative healing experience. Through the supportive presence of my witnessing mind, my system discovered a new truth: I do exist, and I am no longer trapped. It was a glorious return to myself. 

Your Healing Journey

Understanding the coherence of your trauma response system can deepen your healing. When you recognize that your brain and body have been working brilliantly—just as designed—to keep you safe, your protective and hurt systems may naturally become more receptive to new information, opening the door to transformation.

Tune in for a future post on how to begin connecting with your protective and hurt systems.

Book a consultation to explore how trauma therapy can help you reconnect with your innate wisdom and transform your relationship with yourself.