Severe Trauma (Cingulate off) – Lacking the capacity to handle an emotional overload. Without the safety valve of someone to talk with, the cingulate cortex turns off. The highest level brain has been off for a while and now, the creative and emotional shuts down. As the overload increases the cortex will shut down what it can.
Rationality is gone. The ability to distinguish between objects and people is gone. In this state, the reaction is terror and rage. At level two the amygdala, which is not cortex and does not respond to our will or the desires, takes over. In the minutes, hours and days following a severe trauma, the need is to find someone safe to talk with, recovering level three is essential. Without a release of friendship and the ability to “compare notes” the memories are recalled at random or as a result of a trigger when the cortex resumes running.
Personally, I believe this random recall is healthy when it finally starts happening. The brain is taking disjointed, broken memories, trying to sort them out, trying to place them into the proper storage areas. When we realize this, these flashbacks become an essential part of the healing process.
Trauma rewires the brain. Fortunately, the brain does what it can to undo this rewiring as we learn to cope with the emotional overload, placing memories into their proper location: rebooting the brain.
A number of mood disorders show up at this stage: multiple personalities, depression, c-PTSD are a few.
For me, it was as if two people were inside trying to get out. In my case, it was not liking who I had become, as I tried to recover who I was before the trauma.
The individuality and personality is stored at the cortex which is shut off. Behavior filter is off. Fear is off or it runs wild. Decision making is random.
Here, exercises include dancing and sports helps restore the cortex.
The trauma of divorce can easily place a person into the depression of this category. In the words of Jesus,“If a man divorces his wife, HE makes HER into an adulteress.
But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.
So, here we have multiple problems. A relationship is unhealthy, where suddenly, or not so suddenly, one wants a divorce for whatever reason. The other is blindsided or left hanging, flapping in the wind, maybe still in love, wondering what happened. Communication might be cut, aloneness sets in, feelings and trauma are not always noticed. How can one notice a trauma when one’s brain has shut down? Here is a psychological abuse that is devastating. The victim of divorce, not even looking for anyone else, suddenly discovers a bounce and a rebound. As one friend once told me, “Rebounds never work.” Why not? Because while I am bouncing I am unhealthy. I am not who I really am. That part of me has shut down. If two unhealthy people come together, then later, when one or both of them become healthy, they will recover their former personality and goals. Once that portion of the brain was shut down, now it starts working again. Two rebounders discover they are married to complete strangers with goals and aspirations diametrically opposed to each other. Now what?
During this stage, inhibitions may be gone. There is an irrationality. Reason is overcome by fear and other emotions. Goals are obliterated. Relationships are damaged and hard to maintain. A person may bounce from job to job.
Profound Trauma