The Link Between Emotion and Trauma

When an emotion exceeds what the nervous system can absorb in the moment, it can leave a more lasting trace: this is where the link between emotion and trauma is formed. How do traumatized people then react in the face of emotions?

Traumatized people show several possible types of reaction: flight, fight, or freeze, common to all human beings faced with danger. Often, when there is acute trauma, freezing takes over, and there can then be either denial or a form of overactivation, sometimes going as far as genuine dissociation.

In this state, when an event occurs and activates emotions, the information sent to the brain can trigger highly varied reactions: apathy, or on the contrary a disproportionate reaction, uncontrollable sobbing, an explosion of anger, or panicked fear.

Van der Kolk and Levine have explained these mechanisms in detailed and precise ways. What matters most is to allow people, at first, to regain power over their own reactions, step by step, gently, without ever forcing things. Treatments for post-traumatic stress that work show the importance of regaining an awareness of the body, of becoming aware again of sensations and emotions, but always in a measured way, step by step, without excess, drawing on positive resources that allow the body to regain its homeostasis when too strong an emotion arises. Little by little, as the capacity to regain control of the body returns, the process of psychological and physical healing can take place. This capacity to return, on one's own, to a state of calm, has a name: self-regulation. This is exactly the mechanism the next article goes on to detail.