To understand this you have to know what exactly your brain does with traumatic events in your life.  Where does it store these memories?  Can you manage those memories on an ongoing basis or are they out of your control?  How does your body respond to the traumatic events you have experienced?  Does it matter if it was a single traumatic event or a prolonged season of trauma?

Somatic & Declarative Memory

Trauma is stored in the somatic memory and expresses itself in biological stress responses. When you hear a certain song, smell a certain aroma, or see a certain object it triggers strong emotions and sensations. This is somatic memory, an association between your senses and a certain event in your life.  It will cause physiological responses: if it’s a sweet memory it will make you smile; if it’s a traumatic memory it will make you shake, sweat profusely, and your senses will cause you to “re-enter” the moment of trauma and re-experience it.  This is a long-term conditional response to any reminder of the event.

You can try to talk yourself into thinking the event is not happening in the moment but your body will plunge into a state of hyperarousal and your hormonal secretion will respond in a flight or fight mode as if you are living the trauma in the moment.  You cannot talk yourself out of that. You have to evoke declarative memory aka explicit memory which is information that can be evoked consciously. There are two types of declarative memory: episodic memory and semantic memory. Episodic memory stores personal experiences, and semantic memory stores factual information.

Trauma interferes with your ability to evoke declarative memory, which would allow you to remember the traumatic events but also the factual information of whether you are currently living in that traumatic condition or merely recalling it.  An inability to do this will cause your trauma to be stored on a somatosensory level; images and sensations experienced during the time of trauma will actually invade your senses and cause you to plunge right back to the moment of trauma.  This level of storage is extremely impervious to change and will need professional intervention to essentially rewire your brain.  

Memory Storage & Retrieval

While a normal memory process involves storing the memory in the hippocampus of the brain for a period of time and then transferring it into a long-term area of storage, traumatic events can end up being stored in an area outside of the hippocampus making it very difficult to retrieve as a normal part of declarative memory.  This is why psychotherapy is needed to retrieve these memories, change the physiological responses associated with them, and finally tuck them away into a different part of the brain.

Does all of this sound like what you do when you are reorganizing your house or moving into a new place?  Yes!!!  That is exactly what needs to be done in combating traumatic events in our lives – the house in which your memories are stored needs to be reorganized.

Cling to God’s Character & Promises

My own personal journey in healing from trauma also involved burying myself in the promises of scripture.  I know this for a fact – God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  While a season of trauma may make you wonder if He has changed, the truth is your reality has changed and you are viewing God through the shattered lens of your traumatic experiences.  Cling to the truth of His immutability, His omnipotence, and His undeniable love for you.  This is the promise I cling to – He is my safe space.

“He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.”

Psalm 91:4-6