I was emotionally / psychologically abused for a brief amount of time by a parent when I was a child. I was never diagnosed with PTSD and the abuse has never really bothered me mentally. Over a decade later, I jump every time someone touches me and occasionally when people say my name, no matter who it is. Sometimes I will be fully aware that someone is about to touch me (friend giving me a hug, significant other holding my hand, etc.) and I will still jump as if they caught me off guard. I have also heard some similar stories from other people, none of whom were physically abused. Is there a reason for why this happens?
In: Biology
Just because you were never diagnosed with PTSD doesn’t mean you don’t have it. What you’re describing is PTSD.
One of the biggest priorities of any living being is self-preservation. It’s an instinctual behaviour, which often has us react to perceived threats reflexively without any conscious decision-making. The jumpy reaction when being startled is your body going “OH SHIT! WE GOTTA FIGHT OR RUN!”
Abuse especially at an early stage of development effectively teaches your brain that some things that are considered harmless by others are, in fact, threats. Even if you don’t think you’re bothered by the abuse, the jumpy reactions indicate that it has left more scars than you thought.
The brain is hardwired to remember times when you were in danger so that you don’t die if you encounter those same circumstances. And it’s judging danger based on if you felt afraid or hurt, not necessarily physical injury.
Like, say you were attacked by a tiger, but managed to avoid getting hurt by dodging it and then running away. Naturally, that would still be a frightening and upsetting experience, and you’d want to do the same thing in the future (since that reaction kept you alive), so anything that could potentially be a tiger, like hearing a crunch behind you, is now going to put you on guard so that you can react more quickly to dodge the tiger if it jumps at you.
But that means that someone you know stepping on a branch behind you, or a non-dangerous animal like your pet dog walking behind you, or a branch falling down and hitting the ground, are all going to make your brain go, “TIGER! THERE’S A TIGER BEHIND YOU! DO SOMETHING!!!”
Like, you know the phrase, “The man who sleeps with a machete is a fool every night but one”? This is, “The brain that freaks out at noises behind you is overreacting every time EXCEPT the one time it is actually a tiger.”
Substitute “tiger” for “anything that can make you afraid or upset” and you can see why you might have a startle response to innocuous things, even if you were never physically hurt.
Abuse can cause the brain to become hypervigilant and overreact to potential threats, even years after the abuse has ended. This can manifest as an exaggerated startle response.
Your brain is really, really good at learning and executing patterns. That is a large part of what it’s designed to do, after all! And it will keep doing whatever it’s been programmed to do until given another program — especially when its current program is about keeping you safe from threats and danger, which is considered the highest-priority program for survival of all. Think of this as the CD currently in the deck.
So it’s not enough that the abuse has stopped. As long as the program / operating system / CD in the deck is the same one, the one that’s been taught HOLY CRAP LOOK OUT THINGS ARE DANGEROUS, it will keep playing. Sometimes the only way to stop it from playing is to figure out how to eject the CD, stop the program, write a new one, record a new album, and run the new program / play the new album instead. Finding the eject or stop button takes time, and writing the new program or album takes time, and might even sound or feel weird at first because it’s different from the one that’s been playing for so long.
And in the meantime, anything else that triggers the old program is going to make it harder to hit stop / eject / delete. This is the process of retraining the nervous system / healing from trauma. It is an active process, and it usually takes work.
But our minds are remarkably adaptive, and will learn what we teach them. If you can gradually teach your nervous system that things have changed, and how to run a new program, bit by bit, it will. This is called “neuroplasticity.”
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