Brain States & Child Trauma

Ever been down and find yourself opening the 'fridge, not sure if it was leftover pizza or a cold beer that you wanted -- or both?

Before Brain States people just described how they were feeling when they did this as "bad" or "down" but now we know that you are just in Brain State 4 or Brain State 5.   This ability to understand what the brain is doing and separate it into discrete sections, allows us to create specific tools to effectively address stress.  In developing these tools we have been looking at how other people have been using Brain States, and Bruce Perry is one of the main researchers who uses the idea of Brain States.

Bruce Perry of Baylor College of Medicine applied Brain States to child trauma and EBT has drawn upon understandings of how the areas of the brain that are dominant changes with levels of stress since 1990. Yet these ideas are so old and well-accepted that they are considered axiomatic. Now more research based on them -- that the level of stress in the brain impacts symptoms -- continues to emerge.

Carolyn McCarty, Ph.D., the principal investigator, the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Research Institute on a study published in the General Hospital Psychiatry.  Of  about 800 men and women at ages 24, 27 and 30 who were surveyed, showed that women who misused alcohol in their early 20's were more than three times as likely to be obese in their late 20's, compared to those who did not imbibe. Women who were obese at age 27, had double the risk of problem drinking at age 30. Men did not have similar problems. Women who are obese at 27 were more than twice as likely to be depressed when they were 30.

Currently, there are no research instruments that assess the range of emotional,  and behavioral stress symptoms. Based on physiologic brain states, extremes of emotions and actions are predictable in stress, yet research only looks at a narrow range of them. What about the other common emotional states of stress -- e.g., numbness, shame, hostility, irritability, discouragement, mania, and  behavioral –– e.g., overspending, exercise addiction, prescription drug misuse, recreational drug use, screen addiction . . .

Framing our problems narrowly points to the need for pharmacologic treatments, finding the "silver bullet" for depression or obesity, for example. If we look at what is similar among symptoms –– chronic stress –– the treatment is quite different. Before neuroscience took leaps in understanding how to rewire the stress response and self-regulation, we settled for "shooting down" one stress symptom after another. Now a new paradigm is emerging.

Consider your range of stress symptoms over the last 10 years. How many medications would it take to alleviate them, only to have more and more appear as we move through life? Consider a whole nation living that way! It's time for a new paradigm. Instead of treating the symptoms of stress, let's treat stress itself -- rewiring the brain so that our set point, our emotional comfort zone is not teeth clenching and pill popping, but joy!