Trauma and the brain

To understand how Psychological trauma impacts the brain it is helpful to know how the brain works. If we can think of the brain as an information processing system, always taking in information and filing it. When Trauma or a very disturbing event occurs, this stops/ alters / interrupts this information processing system. The information from the trauma becomes stuck, and is too big to be processed or filed away, so the event feels fresh, images are re-lived, nightmares may occur, emotions can be difficult to regulate, and the body also becomes stuck in flight or fight mode which causes symptoms of anxiety and panic. This is essentially a brain injury that needs treatment. EMDR therapy is a treatment that assists the processing of information that has become stuck.