Light up as you create brain connections for trauma healing

Just as fireworks light up the night sky, certain activities and inputs can help light up your brain. The brain connections created during bilateral stimulation can help you feel lighter and brighter as well, and they can support the trauma healing process.

The Mood and Memory Connection

Independence Day reminds us of the many reasons we have to celebrate: freedom, family, food and much more. Colorful fireworks shows fill the sky with sparkle and sound. For many of us, these shows stir up fond childhood memories and make us feel like kids again. We ooh and ahh as the colors flicker in front of our eyes, and we smile as we watch our children’s enthusiasm for the display. For others, however, the loud sounds and ground-shaking rumbles can trigger trauma memories from war zones or other unpleasant experiences.

These two different responses to the same sensory input illustrate how our brains react to visual, auditory and even tactile stimuli. These inputs spark muscle memory that can bring up either pleasant or unpleasant emotions.

How your brain reacts naturally can impact your mood. For people with PTSD or other trauma-related conditions, such as anxiety and depression, external stimuli can often feel overwhelming as the brain goes into fight-or-flight mode.

Cognition and mood symptoms are one of the hallmarks of a PTSD diagnosis. According to the National Institutes of Health, these symptoms include:

“
- Trouble remembering key features of the traumatic event
- Negative thoughts about oneself or the world
- Distorted thoughts about the event that cause feelings of blame
- Ongoing negative emotions, such as fear, anger, guilt, or shame
- Loss of interest in previous activities
- Feelings of social isolation
- Difficulty feeling positive emotions, such as happiness or satisfaction
Cognition and mood symptoms can begin or worsen after the traumatic event and can lead a person to feel detached from friends or family members.”

Whether triggered by external events, such as fireworks, or internal thought processes, PTSD and trauma symptoms can leave people feeling like a completely different version of themselves. Mood swings, fear, anxiety or depression can drastically impact these individuals’ lives.

Creating Positive Triggers

The flip side, and the good news, is that you can retrain your brain and create positive emotions and moods with the right kind of inputs.

In my practice, I use a technique called bilateral stimulation that helps create connections between the two hemispheres of the brain as the individual focuses on positive thoughts. This approach was developed as part of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), which has been shown to have a positive effect on people in trauma recovery. As Good Therapy explains:

“The success of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in treating trauma and mental health challenges teaches us that alternating right- and left-brain stimulation, via visual, auditory, or tactile experience, helps facilitate emotional processing...
Along with helping us process emotions, EMDR can help build up positive memories, experience, thoughts, and feelings. We call this resourcing, and use imagined or real resources to cultivate feelings of peace, nurturing, protection, and wisdom. In addition to and as part of processing negative experiences, it is crucial to cultivate the positive, sometimes the opposite of what occurred in the experience of trauma.”

Bilateral stimulation can help you both process the traumatic memories and recreate a more positive response to recalling them. In addition, you can use this therapy to help focus your brain on positive associations or thoughts when you begin to spiral.

Using visual, auditory or tactile stimulation, combined with positive imagery, this technique creates strong and positive connections in your brain that support mood regulation and coping skills in the face of trauma triggers.

So, while the world looks a little different this July, you can create some of your own positive fireworks as you continue on your trauma recovery journey.

To learn more about EMDR, bilateral stimulation and how they support trauma recovery, contact me. In addition, check out my #HER Circle support groups for women.