Trauma meaning any kind; I was thinking mostly abuse.
In: Biology
I’ll use PTSD as an example, /u/Magg71 answer is pretty good tho.
See the brain as a like a giant smart boiler (for lack of better explanation), stress is a temperature increase.
This boiler is smart, when temperature increases too much, a cooling process happen to keep things in order and things can continue to work. This cooling process is very efficient and makes it so the boiler keeps its shit together even in tough situation.
Now let’s say a MASSIVE temperature increase happen (trauma), first the cooling process will happen at full force, but the temperature it increases so much that the materials implied in the cooling process starts to melt and lose its functions and bad things happen.
After a while and little help (medication, time) , you can decrease the temperature…but it’s still stay relatively high and since the cooling process is fucked up and doesn’t work well, a non major temperature increase will induce the same situation as before and further melt the cooling processes and thus it further loses its function.
If this continue, after a while, any little temperature rise will provoke a massive reaction.
That’s what happen in PTSD. The trauma induce a massive stress, which will liberate a massive amount of cortisol in the blood, this massive amount of cortisol will fuck up the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus (two brain regions that normally shut down the “stress reaction”) and your body gets stuck in flight or fight mode.
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