What Stress Does to Your Nervous System & How to Support It

We often think of stress as something that happens in our minds—a mental or emotional experience. But stress is also deeply physiological. It affects our entire body, especially the nervous system, which plays a central role in how we perceive and respond to the world around us.

Understanding how stress works in the nervous system not only helps us make sense of our own reactions, but it also opens the door to healing. When we learn how to regulate and support our nervous system, we build resilience and create space for peace, connection, and presence.

Your Nervous System is Built for Survival

At its core, your nervous system is designed to protect you. When it detects a threat—whether it’s physical, emotional, or even just a perceived danger—it responds automatically to help you survive. This is what we call the “stress response,” and it’s powered by the “gas pedal” in your nervous system (AKA. the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system).

This response can look like:

• Increased heart rate

• Rapid breathing

• Muscle tension

• A rush of adrenaline

• Hypervigilance or irritability

These reactions are part of what’s commonly known as “fight or flight.” In some cases, your nervous system might also trigger a “freeze” or “fawn” response—especially if it perceives that fighting or fleeing isn’t possible. These patterns are not conscious choices. They are deeply wired, instinctive reactions that have helped humans survive for thousands of years.

Your Brain Can’t Always Tell the Difference

What’s fascinating is that your brain doesn’t always distinguish between physical danger and emotional threat. For example, a difficult conversation, feeling rejected, or being overwhelmed by your to-do list can all activate the same stress circuitry in your brain as being chased by a wild animal.

This is why chronic stress, relational conflict, or unresolved trauma can have such a lasting impact. When your nervous system is repeatedly or continuously activated without being given the chance to return to a state of calm, it can get stuck in “survival mode.” Over time, this leads to physical symptoms (like fatigue, headaches, or digestive issues), emotional dysregulation, anxiety, difficulty sleeping, and disconnection from yourself or others.

Chronic Stress Keeps You Stuck

Chronic stress keeps your nervous system on high alert. When this happens, your body is constantly scanning for danger, even in safe environments. This ongoing state of hypervigilance can make it difficult to relax, feel joy, or connect meaningfully with others.

For people who have experienced trauma, this pattern can be even more pronounced. The nervous system becomes conditioned to expect danger, and this can lead to reactions that feel out of proportion to the present moment. Importantly, these are not signs of weakness or brokenness—they are signs of a nervous system doing its best to protect you based on past experience.

Regulation is Possible

The good news is that your nervous system is adaptable. With time, care, and consistent support, it’s possible to shift from a state of chronic stress into one of regulation and resilience. This process involves learning how to send signals of safety back to the body and brain.

Here are a few ways to begin:

1. Deep Breathing and Grounding Practices
Breathing deeply and slowly activates the parasympathetic nervous system—the “rest and digest” branch—which helps calm the stress response. Grounding practices, like noticing your feet on the floor or tuning into your senses, can also help bring you back to the present.

2. Safe Connection
Co-regulation—the calming presence of another safe, attuned person—is one of the most powerful tools for nervous system healing. This is one of the reasons therapy can be so impactful. When we experience relational safety, our bodies begin to learn that we no longer have to be on high alert.

3. Mindful Awareness
Learning to notice when your stress response is activated is key. The more you can observe your internal cues (tightness in your chest, racing thoughts, shallow breathing), the earlier you can respond with compassion and care instead of reacting from a place of survival.

4. Be Gentle With Yourself
Remember: your nervous system isn’t malfunctioning—it’s responding exactly as it was designed to. Offering yourself kindness in those moments of overwhelm can be incredibly regulating in itself.

Healing is Not Linear

Nervous system healing doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process that involves repetition, safety, and support. But the more you practice regulation, the more resilient your system becomes. You begin to notice that stress still happens, but it doesn’t take over in the same way. You’re able to return to calm more easily, stay present with others, and respond to life’s challenges with greater flexibility and strength.

Whether you’ve experienced trauma, are facing ongoing stress, or simply want to feel more grounded in daily life, learning to work with your nervous system is a powerful step on the path to emotional and relational health. You’re not alone—and with the right tools and support, healing is possible.

Why Rejection Hurts: The Neuroscience of Social Pain and the Path Toward Healing

Have you ever felt rejected, left out, or excluded—and noticed that it didn’t just affect your mood, but created a real, physical ache? That sensation isn’t just in your imagination. Research in neuroscience confirms that social pain—like rejection or isolation—activates the same brain areas as physical pain. In other words, the pain of being left out or disconnected is very real, and it’s deeply rooted in the way our brains are wired.

The Overlap Between Social and Physical Pain

Groundbreaking research by Naomi Eisenberger, Matthew Lieberman, and Kip Williams used brain imaging (fMRI) to explore how people respond to social exclusion. In one of their most well-known studies, participants played a virtual ball-tossing game called Cyberball. Some players were included, while others were deliberately excluded. For those who were left out, brain scans revealed increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC)—a region that’s also activated during experiences of physical pain.

The more emotional distress participants reported, the more active this pain-related brain region became (Eisenberger et al., 2003). What this means is that the brain doesn’t draw a sharp line between physical injuries and the pain of being left out. Instead, it processes both kinds of pain through overlapping neural systems.

Later studies, including Eisenberger’s 2012 review of the neuroscience of social pain, confirmed this overlap across various contexts. This growing body of research suggests that we are biologically wired to experience relational disconnection as threatening and painful. Our survival has long depended on our social bonds, so our brains developed mechanisms to alert us when those bonds were at risk.

We Are Designed for Connection

Human beings are relational by design. From birth, we rely on others to meet our needs, regulate our emotions, and help us make sense of the world. Our bodies are built for connection and we form relational bonds and attachment patterns through our attachment system. The natural opioid system in our brains, which helps reduce physical pain, is also involved in reinforcing social connection and attachment bonds. Alongside oxytocin, the body’s “bonding hormone,” this neurochemical system plays a key role in our ability to form and maintain attachment throughout our lives (MacDonald & Leary, 2005; Eisenberger, 2012).

That’s why rejection, abandonment, or exclusion can be so profoundly painful. It’s not a sign of weakness or oversensitivity—it’s a reflection of how much we are created for connection.

Social Pain and Protective Adaptations

When we experience attachment trauma, chronic rejection, abandonment, or other relational wounds, we naturally adapt to protect ourselves. These protective strategies—like emotional withdrawal, hyper-independence, people-pleasing, or shutting down—may have helped us survive painful circumstances. We form insecure attachment patterns to help us survive in suboptimal relational contexts. But over time, especially when we enter safe and healthy relationships, these same strategies can become barriers to connection.

Our nervous systems may still be on high alert, scanning for signs of danger or rejection even when none are present. These adaptations can interfere with our ability to trust, feel joy, or experience peace in relationships.

The Role of Counselling in Relational Healing

The good news is that we can repattern our relational responses. Because the brain is capable of change—a concept known as neuroplasticity—we can form new ways of connecting that are rooted in safety and trust, rather than survival and self-protection.

In counselling, this healing process might include:

• Experiencing relational safety in the therapeutic relationship, where you are seen, heard, and accepted

• Processing unresolved emotions from past relational pain—especially the emotions that were once too overwhelming or unsafe to feel

• Becoming aware of protective patterns, and learning new ways to stay present with your own emotional experience and that of others

When pain originates in relationship, healing often happens in relationship. Therapy can provide a safe space to explore what connection means to you, how past experiences have shaped your relational patterns, and how to move toward healthier, more fulfilling ways of being with others.

Faith, Pain, and Healing

For those who are Christian, this understanding of social pain resonates deeply with the spiritual truth that we were created for relationship—with God and with one another. Scripture does not minimize emotional pain—it acknowledges it and makes space for it. Jesus Himself experienced rejection, betrayal, and isolation. In Gethsemane, the place of His greatest anguish, He entered fully into the depth of human pain. This was no accident. It was a sign that He does not avoid our pain—He meets us in it.

Faith does not require us to deny our emotional reality. Rather, it invites us to bring our full experience—our grief, despair, anger, embarrassment, and sadness—into God’s presence. When we do, we often discover that pain can become a doorway to deeper intimacy with Him. Just as the Cross was not what people expected from a Savior, healing may not always look the way we imagine—but God’s love meets us in the middle of our pain and transforms it from the inside out.

You’re Not Alone

If you’ve experienced the pain of rejection, exclusion, or disconnection, know this: your response is real, your pain is valid, and healing is possible. Counselling is one way to begin restoring connection—with others, with yourself, and with God.

You were made for relationship. And you don’t have to navigate the path to healing alone.

References

Eisenberger, N. I. (2012). The neural bases of social pain: Evidence for shared representations with physical pain. Psychosomatic Medicine, 74(2), 126–135. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e3182464dd1

Eisenberger, N. I., & Lieberman, M. D. (2005). Why it hurts to be left out: The neurocognitive overlap between physical and social pain. In K. D. Williams, J. P. Forgas, & W. von Hippel (Eds.), The social outcast: Ostracism, social exclusion, rejection, and bullying (pp. 109–130). Psychology Press.

Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290–292. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1089134

MacDonald, G., & Leary, M. R. (2005). Why does social exclusion hurt? The relationship between social and physical pain. Psychological Bulletin, 131(2), 202–223. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.2.202

Anxiety, Trauma & the Body

If you have experienced trauma, anxiety or depression, you know that they are very viceral. Anyone who has experienced anxiety will be familiar with the feeling of your heart racing, getting hot, your throat closing or your stomach turning. The thoughts and emotions we feel are deeply interconnected with our bodies. Why is this and how does this work? How do we get rid of the feeling of our throat closing every time we get anxious? Let's start by understanding how the body is interconnected with our emotions. 

Why Consider the Body?

The body is the seat of emotion. This means that often the emotions and feelings we have typically start as a physical sensation. Noticing what is coming up in the body will help us to better manage the impacts of mental health.

How does understanding more about the body help us?  

1. Understanding how our body responds helps us to make sense of our experiences in the world.  
   Because our body is hardwired to keep us safe, alive, and to survive danger, several automatic defences kick in when we experience a trigger.  

2. Becoming aware of what our body is trying to communicate with us allows us to respond well.  
   We can respond in a way that helps us to settle feelings of being activated/ triggered, to keep ourselves safe, or to respond in a way that is in alignment with our values.  

Let’s start with an example: 

You are hiking in the forest, and you are just outside of the camping area where you will stay tonight. You can hear people who are cooking their dinner, laughing, and talking. Suddenly you see a great big bear 100 meters away! Your heart starts pounding, your vision gets really focused, your muscles tense. In a split second your brain determines, without your conscious input, that the bear is too big to fight so you run as fast as you can to the campsite. You can feel your heart pound as you sprint, and your muscles propel you forward to safety. You see an open door to a large wooden lodge where you will camp. Quickly, you run inside and slam the thick wood door shut. With a large, heavy wood beam, you lock the door shut. Park rangers who are used to working around bears notice the bear and scare it away with loud noises. The people in the lodge can tell that you were afraid. A woman who is there with her kids gives you a big, long hug. You can feel your heart slow down and muscles relax. She invites you to join them in cooking dinner, gives you a cup of hot chocolate and shares her food with you. As you are in the lodge, you enjoy the sound of people chattering, the smell of food, and the warm atmosphere. You are able to take a long deep breath and feel yourself settle and muscles relax.

This would be a pretty scary experience. This also outlines a typical stress response:  

1. You spot the bear.  

2. The part of your brain that functions like a smoke detector sounds the alarm for danger. This mobilizes you into action as your brain releases a bunch of hormones that cause physical changes in your body to amp you up for action. 

3. This activates your fight-flight response, helping you to run to safety.  

4. Your body completed the stress cycle by fleeing and acting on the increased mobilization and can reenter a state of safety and rest.  

Activation: What is It? 

Activators (triggers) are the cues that activate a stress response. 

• We detect activators through our 5 senses: what we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.  
  Ex. a smell of perfume, someone touching our shoulder, etc. 

• They can also be thoughts, emotions, or aspects of our internal experience. 
  Ex. feelings of shame, worries about a job application, or a body sensation (like a tightness in the chest) 

• They could also include social dynamics or aspects of relationships. 
  Ex. someone being antagonistic, power dynamics (like people with more authority), etc.  

Activators are different from activation.  

The level of activation is the physiological response.  

Activation is like a gas pedal that pumps gasoline into the engine of the car, propelling it forward. Except the gas pedal is our stress system/ nervous system mobilizing our body for action.  

Some activators might lightly press the pedal (such as, waking up late for an appointment and rushing out the door) versus other events that really slam on the gas pedal (such as, seeing an angry bear running at us or someone robbing us at gunpoint).   

What is the Nervous System (and what does it have to do with anything)? 

The nervous system is sort of like the control center in your body that sends signals to all other organs, body parts and systems. It includes your brain and spinal cord (central nervous system), and nerves that run throughout your whole body (peripheral nervous system), communicating information from your brain to your body, and from your body back to your brain and spinal cord.  

Some parts of our brain we have conscious control of which allows us to plan for the future, think about what we are doing now, talk with other people, or get up and walk. Other parts of our brain run on autopilot, and we do not have control over them. It keeps things going without us having to think about them, like our heart beating, our intestines digesting, and our lungs breathing.  

Why does this matter?

Our emotions, thoughts, relationships, and body are all deeply interconnected. Understanding how our body and stress system works is one of the first steps in managing anxiety and trauma. 

Anxiety is as much a physical experience in the body as it is an emotional or cognitive experience. This is actually good news! There are countless tools we have to use to calm the nervous system and restore a sense of peace that we can practice in counselling. When we ignore the experience of anxiety, trauma or stress in the body, we often get stuck in prolonged experiences of anxiety or stress, and it can amplify anxiety when we try to ignore it. 

How We Deal with Anxiety

In counselling, we work to identify actvitators for anxiety/ trauma. This can bring awareness to our daily experience and help us to know why we suddenly feel anxious or amped up. We also explore the experiences and beliefs underlying the activator/trigger to deal with the root of the anxiety. We also learn and practice ways of dampening the stress response and restoring a felt sense of peace in the body, which helps restore peace in our mind and emotions. 

As we become more aware of how anxiety, trauma and stress show up in the body, we learn to identify and manage the anxiety early. In other words, we help you to catch and manage the anxiety while it is a 1/10 instead of an 8/10 (which becomes much harder and unpleasant to manage). 

There is no need to live with enduring fear and anxiety and practical ways to restore peace to our mind, body and emotions. I used to live with anxiety, and understand how awful and debilitating it can be. The good news is that there is full freedom available from anxiety and fear. We are here to help you navigate this process. 

References

Corrigan, F., Fisher, J., & Nutt, D. (2010). Autonomic dysregulation and the window of tolerance model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881109354930 

Kozlowska, K., Walker, P., McLean, L., & Carrive, P. (2014). Fear and the defense cascade: Clinical implications and management. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 23(4), 263–287. https://doi.org/10.1097/HRP.0000000000000065  

Porges, S. W. (2017). The pocket guide to the polyvagal theory. W W Norton & Co. 

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2015). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind and body in the treatment of trauma. Viking Press. 

Understanding Addiction & the Road to Recovery

What is addiction and how do we heal? If you have experienced addiction, you are probably familiar with the feeling of being trapped and unable to stop. Addictions can feel like you are stuck in prison, in an abusive relationship, or are enslaved to something. If you hate it, why is it hard to stop? You may have heard it is because there is a chemical imbalance in the brain or that drugs/alcohol are chemically addictive, but could there be more to the story?

Dopamine & Addiction

The chemical component is certainly part of the story. With advancements in neuroimaging, we have learned a lot about the reward pathways and dopamine system in the brain. In short, the brain communicates through chemical signals called neurotransmitters. Dopamine is one type of neurotransmitter that reinforces or ‘rewards’ behaviours that are important for survival and is part of addiction. 

For example, you eat a sandwich and then your brain releases a small amount of dopamine. On a chemical level, it is like our brain gives us a little gold star, saying, “good job, keep doing that!”. Dopamine is also released when someone smiles at us, we are given something, we have sex, and countless other behaviours. 

However, addictions, particularly substances like alcohol, opiates, cocaine, and other drugs (but also process addictions like pornography, gambling, shoping, sex, etc.), override our normal dopamine system. Rather than giving a gold star, something like heroin will trigger a supernova in our brains. Even though other behaviours like eating lunch or spending time with family are still rewarding, they pale in comparison, at least on a neurobiological level. This is partly why addictions can rip apart our lives- the gravity of the addiction is so strong that it pulls us away from all the other things that we care about. 

Dopamine is more about ‘wanting’ than it is about ‘liking’. We may ‘want’ or ‘need’ the thing that we are addicted to on a chemical level, but emotionally hate it.

So if we can re-regulate the dopamine pathways, can we solve the addiction? It is not quite that simple, unfortunately. There is more to the story than just dopamine. 

Understanding our hardwiring is important when we try to understand addiction. The dopamine system is only one of many relevant neurobiological systems, and looking at neurobiology is only one part of the picture. Many systems are implicated in addiction (like the pain system), and other facets like spirituality, the social environment we live in, and even the economic-political environment. However, we will focus on just two systems in this post: the social attachment system and the survival-stress system. 

The Stress System & Addiction 

The stress system is online from our earliest moments. It helps us sense safety/ danger and act to keep us alive (think the fight-flight-collapse response). So when the stress system is activated, our body on a neurobiological level responds like we are in danger or could die. Anything that helps reduce the activation of the survival stress response then becomes associated with safety and survival and on a neurological level is reinforcing.

To illustrate with a theoretical example, Carrie is very anxious about experiencing rejection in social settings. Anxiety is an activation of the survival stress response, in which the body mobilizes energy to fight or flee. So, on a neurological level, Carrie’s nervous system has associated rejection with danger and will elicit a stress response when it anticipates rejection. However, when Carrie drinks alcohol, it helps her to feel calm and to dampen the stress response (since it depresses the central nervous system). This restores balance to the nervous system. 

However, Carrie has become reliant on alcohol to regulate her stress response. Although she used to only drink in social scenarios, alcohol became the primary way that Carrie has learned to manage her anxiety and feelings of overwhelm. 

In this example, alcohol is chemically reinforcing- dopamine is released when she drinks. Since Carrie drinks a large amount of alcohol daily, if she were to stop drinking she would also experience withdrawal and need medical detox.

Additionally, part of the journey to recovery for Carrie is learning how to identify what triggers her to drink, such as feelings of anxiety or fear of rejection. She will need to learn new ways of managing and regulating these feelings without alcohol. Often we are not taught how to engage with, feel and regulate our emotions. In counselling, there are practical tools we can learn to engage with emotions in a healthy way. We also work to heal and transform the painful beliefs and memories that are at the root of the addiction. 

The Social Attachment System

What is our social attachment system? It is our inborn and innate need for people. It is woven into every part of our being. We are hardwired through our social attachment system to need connection and belonging. Even before we are born and are in utero, the attachment system is already developing. From the earliest moments of life, our survival is dependent on others - without our caregivers, we would die. In the absence of connection and belonging, we experience suffering. 

Experiencing safety and connection early in life shapes our stress and attachment systems to make flourishing likely. However, when we experience chronic stress and disconnection, and we lack safety/ soothing then these systems become wired for survival instead. In either case, the outcome is not permanent or unchangeable, but these experiences set us on a trajectory that can make us more vulnerable or resilient to addiction.

This partly happens through how we learn to engage with our emotions. We are not born with the ability to manage our emotions. Experiencing co-regulation (soothing and comfort through another person) is the first step to self-regulate our emotions. As children, we are dependent on our caregivers to soothe our stress system, to provide comfort and safety, and a sense of stability and predictability. If we do not have a caregiver who can provide this then we adapt through our attachment style (closing off to others, or feeling very anxious to be connected to another person). However, addictions can function like an attachment substitute. 

Addictions provide comfort when we experience the pain of isolation or disconnection and relief from emotional distress. Through the attachment system, we are designed to find comfort and safety in the context of safe and loving relationships. However, when we are isolated, have dysfunctional relationships, or learn early in life that we can’t trust other people, we experience the pain of disconnection and are still left with the inborn need for connection. 

When we lack quality relationships in which we are meant to find comfort and safety, we must look elsewhere for security and a way to fend off the pain. This is one way that addictions form. Addictions can function like an attachment substitute. They provide safety and comfort and help us to regulate our distress.

We also find a sense of meaning and purpose in the context of relationships. God designed us to be in community- to both give and receive in relationships. Addiction is a natural response to a lack of connection to people, place, and purpose.

The Road to Recovery

In counselling, we consider the role and purpose that the addiction holds in your life. Does it help you to manage anxiety and stress, to feel ‘alive’, or to keep painful memories at bay? We also look at the ‘ecosystem’ of your life. What might facilitate addiction or contribute to building a life so fulfilling that there is no space for addiction? We also will explore some of the underlying causes of addiction. 

There is no one-size-fits-all model for recovery and the road to healing is unique for everyone. However, freedom, healing, and recovery are available to everyone. If you or someone you love needs support with addiction, please reach out to us for help. 

References

Alexander, B. K. (2008). The globalization of addiction: A study in poverty of the spirit. Oxford University Press.  

Best, D. (2019). Pathways to recovery and desistance: The role of the social contagion of hope. Policy Press.  

Bracha, H. S. (2004). Freeze, flight, fight, fright, faint: Adaptationist perspectives on the acute stress response spectrum. CNS Spectrums, 9(9), 679–685. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1092852900001954 

Corrigan, F., Fisher, J., & Nutt, D. (2010). Autonomic dysregulation and the window of tolerance model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 25(1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881109354930 

Fisher, J. (2017a). Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors: Overcoming internal self-alienation. Routledge. 

Morgan, O. (2019). Addiction, attachment, trauma and recovery: The power of connection. W W Norton & Co. 
Schore, A. N. (2001). The effects of early relational trauma on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Infant Mental Health Journal, 22(1–2), 201–269.https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0355(200101/04)22:1<201::AID-IMHJ8>3.0.CO;2-9 

Understanding & Healing Trauma

If you are coming to counselling to work through trauma, you are probably wondering what the roadmap to peace is. We will talk through how we understand trauma to provide an understanding of how we will work through it in counselling. 

How we understand what trauma is will really impact how we go about trying to heal it. 

What is Trauma?

When we think of something, “traumatic”, we might think of an event or experience. When we think of trauma as an event, we think of it as something that happened in the past.

Traumatic events can include:

• Things we typically consider to be traumatic like violence, abuse, war, car accidents, near-death experiences, medical procedures that went very wrong, etc.

• Trauma also includes exposure to chronic environments, such as neglectful childhood environments, frightening or unpredictable caregivers, systemic discrimination, colonization, bullying, etc. 

Trauma from chronic environments comes from being subjected to an unsupportive or dangerous environment and then having to adapt to this environment to survive. For example, having to hide your racial and ethnic identity due to systemic racism and white normativity.

When we speak about trauma, we are referring to the impacts of certain events, experiences, or circumstances. In other words, trauma is not just something that happened, but the lasting impact on our present-day lives.

Traumatic Memory: Implicit Memory

How does trauma show up in the here-and-now? Trauma can show up in our lives in the present moment through the following:

• Intense physical sensations in our body-  ex. feeling hot, having tense muscles, etc.

• Changes in perception - ex. feeling like we are being stocked, post-traumatic paranoia, intense suspicion, etc.

• Emotional reactions - ex. intense anger, fear, rage, anxiety, shame, etc.

• Thought patterns - ex. “I am a bad person and deserve to suffer”, “I will never be able to do anything worthwhile”, etc.

• Impulses- ex. a sudden impulse to run or attack someone, urges to self-harm, etc.

• Other PTSD symptoms - Ex. dissociation, flashbacks, nightmares, etc.

Implicit memories are non-verbal memories. They are stored in the part of the brain that does not record a story about what happened, but rather how you felt. It is kind of like one part of the brain writes the song lyrics (the story-based memory), but another part makes the melody (the implicit memory). So you might be singing the Sound of Music soundtrack, but to the melody of the shark music in Jaws.. Sound familiar?

When we experience intense forms of trauma or are very overwhelmed, the part of our brain that records timelines and narratives turns off. This means that we don’t encode the type of memory that helps you to remember that you went to the store, then took the number 5 bus downtown, then saw your friend, then you made a phone call, etc. We don’t record the story of what happened to make sense of our experience.

So rather than storing memory in a story format, our brain picks up and records sensory information through our five senses, body, and emotions. These get encoded as cues that will later activate your nervous system to ramp up a defensive state and our survival responses (like fight-flight-collapse responses).

Traumatic memory might also come back in flashes of imagery but without the full memory of what happened. Smells, sounds, sights, touch, and tastes can also be very powerful cues that your body/ nervous system encodes.

Activation and Triggering

Our body and nervous system are always scanning for safety and danger. When we experience something dangerous or traumatic, our body and nervous system form associations to help us recognize signs of danger in the future.

For example, if we were hit by a red car, in the future red cars may elicit the non-verbal memories associated with that experience (like your heart racing, feelings of anxiety and panic). 

If we don’t notice that our stress response is activated, we may generally feel “bad”, stressed out, anxious or depressed and then feel confused about why. This is what we call being “activated” or “triggered”. 

When you are in a safe situation and get activated, there are ways you can learn to turn off your activated nervous system and update it with the information that you are safe, which we will work on together in counselling. It can be frustrating how activation of the stress response can interfere with our daily lives, and how our internal experience may often feel incongruent with our situation.

For example, we might be with a bunch of people we love, but feel extremely lonely and disconnected; we might be walking through a safe street in our neighbourhood, and be overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. If trauma occurred in the context of our home, family, neighbourhood or close relationships, these areas of life might be riddled with landmines and activators.

Separating the Past and Present

When traumatic memory is stored as non-verbal, feeling memories, we often don’t recognize that it is connected to a past experience that is surfacing as an implicit memory. We can wrongly assume that our present environment causing these feelings.

This might surface as thinking “they embarrassed me”, “she was attacking me”, “he was accusing and blaming me”, rather than realizing that these emotions were being activated from implicit traumatic memories. This can cause challenges in our relationships and functioning in our daily life. We might also interpret these memories as reflections on our present environment: ex. “this is not a safe place”, “I can’t trust these people”, “I am going crazy”

When we know signs of activation and trauma symptoms, it becomes easier to recognize when we are activated and to feel in control of our experience.

In counselling, our goal is to first help restore a felt sense of peace and safety and to help you find ways of managing the activation. Eventually, the chronic activation of the nervous system settles down, and there are practical ways we can support this process. Once we do this, we can work on reprocessing what happened to bring deeper resolution. 

Additionally, we offer a therapy similar to EMDR called Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). This helps to connect the implicit feeling memories that keep getting activated with the story-based memory in the other part of the brain. This reduces how much activation you experience in your daily life and restores a sense of peace. Feel free to reach out to us to book a consult and learn more.

A Neuroscientific Approach to Counselling

Blueprints from the past that surface in our here-and-now experience.

A neuroscientific approach to counselling- what does that even mean? Good question and glad you are wondering!

Blueprints From the Past

In simple terms, our present-day emotions, thoughts, behaviours, and relationships are all impacted by our past environments and relationships in which we were immersed. These experiences then lay the blueprint in our nervous system for how we experience our present life and relationships. As counsellors, we are interested in how your past experiences are showing up in your here-and-now experience, maybe without you even noticing it.

Here is an example to illustrate what we mean. Growing up, Jamie’s father was a tall man with an imposing presence. He was often angry and would snap unexpectedly when Jamie would express sadness or other emotions. Jamie is now 29 years old and often feels a looming sense of dread when speaking with authoritative or tall men, resulting in severe anxiety for Jamie when speaking with his boss at work.

His heart will race and his throat tighten. Jamie presents as unemotional and even detached in his relationships. He expresses little emotion, but when something is strong enough to provoke an emotional response, a wave of anxiety and a sinking feeling in his stomach accompanies the feelings of sadness, shame, or anger. Jamie is seeking counselling for help managing his work-related anxiety and feelings of loneliness. 

In this example, Jamie may be unaware that his present experience of anxiety is related to his experience with his father growing up. While he may not be consciously thinking of his father while speaking with his boss at work, non-verbal feeling memories (implicit) memories of his father are being activated.

In other words, the memory of how he felt with his father is coming up, despite not having a story-based memory to accompany it. These feeling memories show up in his emotions (anxiety) and in his body (heart racing and tightness in his throat). Most of the time Jamie is unaware that this is happening, he just feels bad and hates going to work.

Jamie’s experiences with his father created a blueprint for how he interacts with authority figures and people who remind him of his father. They also formed a blueprint for how he manages his emotions and how he automatically engages with his own experience. As a child, he had to shut down his emotions and disconnect from aspects of his experience to avoid his father’s anger, a pattern that continued into adulthood. 

Feeling Memory vs. Story-Based Memory

In counselling, we are concerned with not only the conscious verbal memory/ story you tell about your experiences. We are also interested in the non-verbal story that your body and nervous system remember. Feeling-based (implicit) memory is filed away in a different part of the brain than story-based memory. Feeling memory and story-based memory be disconnected, which is very common for survivors of trauma. So in other words, you may regularly have feeling-based memories get activated (like anxiety, shame, anger, etc.) without knowing why. 

However, how do you work with feeling-based memories when you don’t have a conscious memory of them? Confusing, right?

This is where some of our approaches to counselling may differ from what you may be used to. In counselling, we may ask you what you are noticing as we speak about something, what you are noticing in your body, to pay attention to the thoughts arising in your mind, if you are noticing any emotions bubble up, or to ‘notice inside’. These are all ways feeling-based memory (implicit memory) may show up and shape your experience in the present moment. 

Since these implicit memories are often detached from a story-based memory, we can continue to feel persistent feelings of anxiety, loneliness, shame, anger, etc. that do not match our present moment circumstances or beliefs. This can be part of the reason that despite reciting scripture and knowing what God thinks of us, our felt experience is incongruent. 

Part of our goal is to help address the feeling-based memory that leaves you feeling anxious, sad, etc. and that is incongruent with your present-moment experiences. We can also do this without you rehashing every painful thing that has ever happened to you. 

We want you to leave feeling better, to address the roadblocks that keep tripping you up, and to break the cycles that leave you feeling stuck. There are some very practical ways that we can do this in counselling together.