The Unseen Script: How Trauma Shapes Our Choices and How to Rewrite It
Our past shapes the way we make decisions, often in ways we don’t consciously recognize. This week, Neil Strauss captured a profound truth: when we struggle to make choices that serve us in the present, it is often our past making the decision for us. More often than not, that past is trauma.
This article explores some of the most groundbreaking insights on trauma, from Polyvagal Theory and the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk to Brené Brown’s approach to healing through connection. Whether you are navigating your own healing journey or seeking to understand trauma’s impact more deeply, the concepts here offer a foundation for reclaiming a sense of safety, connection, and self-empowerment.
Trauma is not a memory
Trauma is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope, leaving lasting emotional, psychological, or even physical effects. It can result from a single event, repeated experiences, or prolonged exposure to stress or danger. As Gabor Mate famously says it’s not what happened to you, it’s what happened inside you. One doesn’t have to be a combat soldier to encounter trauma. Any form of violence, abuse and neglect in childhood causes trauma, it’s highly common and considered to be the root cause of many physical illnesses.
We tend to think trauma as the memory of something, but it’s not. Research has demonstrated it creates physiological changes, including the brain’s alarm system and an increase in stress activity that interrupts our filters for decision-making. Unresolved trauma is a living experience that continues to shape our behaviors, emotions, and relationships. It disrupts self-regulation, leading to unconscious adaptations that affect both the mind and body.
I am not a neuroscientist or therapist, nor do I claim scientific expertise. However, after two years of deep research into trauma from highly credible sources, I have gathered key insights that may be helpful. If you have a history of trauma, it’s important to know that the brain’s natural neuroplasticity can be harnessed to cultivate a sense of safety and aliveness in the present. While trauma is a significant part of your personal history, it does not have to define your reality.
Polyvagal Theory: The Nervous System’s Role in Trauma
Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory explains how the autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulates safety and threat responses. Trauma disrupts this system, often leaving individuals stuck in fight/flight (hyperarousal) or freeze (hypoarousal) states.
Ventral Vagal State (Safety & Connection): When active, we feel calm, socially engaged, and capable of self-regulation.
Sympathetic State (Fight/Flight): The body perceives danger, leading to anxiety, hypervigilance, or anger.
Dorsal Vagal State (Shutdown/Freeze): If overwhelmed, the body disconnects, resulting in numbness or dissociation.
Trauma survivors often struggle with self-regulation, shifting unpredictably between these states. Healing involves activating the ventral vagal system through breathwork, movement, and safe social interactions. Research shows that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), trauma-informed yoga, and co-regulation with others can help restore nervous system balance.
A key concept in Polyvagal Theory is neuroception, the unconscious detection of safety or danger. This process determines whether the nervous system shifts into a defensive or safety state. To recover from trauma, one must first allow the activation of defensive responses rather than suppressing them. Safety, both internal and external, is the foundation for healing.
Trauma and the Body: Bessel van der Kolk’s Key Findings
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a leading trauma researcher and clinician, has famously stated that “the body keeps the score.” His work illuminates how trauma imprints itself on the brain, nervous system, and body, often outside of conscious awareness. This is why healing frequently requires engaging the body, not just the mind.
How Trauma Changes the Brain
The amygdala (the brain’s threat detection center) becomes overactive, keeping trauma survivors in a state of chronic hyperarousal and survival mode.
The prefrontal cortex (which governs reasoning and impulse control) becomes underactive, making it difficult to rationally process trauma triggers.
The Broca’s area (a language center in the brain) may shut down when trauma memories are triggered. This explains why traumatic memories often resurface as fragmented bodily sensations and emotions rather than clear, verbal narratives.
Trauma is a Somatic Issue, It Lives in the Body
Trauma often involves disconnection from the body. Many survivors breathe shallowly, unconsciously tense up, or avoid feeling their own physical sensations because what’s inside is pain and panic. Over time, this can lead to a limited range of emotional experiences, some survivors feel numb, while others feel only anger but not sadness.
Paradoxically, healing requires gently reconnecting with the body and its sensations so that trauma can be processed and released rather than indefinitely stored as muscle tension or psychosomatic issues.
This makes trauma primarily a disconnection problem. If language is our portal to connection, then trauma blocks that portal by limiting self-expression and emotional vocabulary.
Healing Through Connection: Brené Brown
A practical concept from Brené Brown’s work that directly applies to trauma healing is story stewardship, how we share and honor personal stories, both our own and others'.
For survivors, sharing the “story” of their trauma is a pivotal and tender process. Brown urges doing so only with those who have “earned the right to hear it”, meaning people who have proven themselves trustworthy, empathetic, and non-judgmental.
Sharing trauma with an unsupportive person can re-traumatize.
Sharing with someone empathetic can be profoundly healing.
From the survivor’s side, practicing vulnerability in telling their story is an act of courage. From the listener’s side, Brown calls for caring, confidential handling of that story, i.e., stewardship.
Over time, such experiences replace negative emotions with a sense of being valued and understood. While Polyvagal Theory teaches that the body needs to feel safe, Brown’s work emphasizes that the heart needs to feel safe too, safe to be seen authentically.
Conclusion: A Holistic Approach to Healing
Healing from trauma is a holistic process that requires both somatic and relational restoration.
Polyvagal Theory teaches that self-regulation and safety cues are fundamental to healing.
Bessel van der Kolk’s work highlights the necessity of body-based therapies in trauma recovery.
Brené Brown’s insights underscore the power of vulnerability, connection, and self-compassion.
Recovery is not about erasing the past but reclaiming a sense of safety, connection, and self-empowerment. With the right tools and support, you feel more alive.
If you’ve made it this far, something must have resonated with you.
Trauma can disrupt a person’s sense of normalcy, forcing them to develop unique coping mechanisms, heightened perception, and deep introspection, qualities that often fuel artistic and intellectual brilliance.
I created Higher Narrative’s guidance programs with a deep focus on story stewardship, helping people shape and understand their personal narratives and developed a range of tools to guide you on your journey.
Narrative Engineering Programs aren’t solely about trauma, they also explore leadership and creativity, if you feel drawn to learn more, I’d love to connect. Book a free 30-minute discovery call, and let’s explore how we can work together.