So we all have a penchant for fear, it’s a foundational aspect of PTSD. But what happens when our brain relay system is wonky due to those adaptations? 

Let’s talk about the faulty DMN. How it throws us into disjointed memories, disables continuous autobiographical recall, explains poor sense of somatic (bodily) self, and interacts with those pesky sub-sensory threshold fear triggers. Reflect on this one, it’ll explain a lot.

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Transcript / Blog Version:

So, friends, why’s it so hard to live with PTSD? The answer comes down to… fear. Continual, internal and externally directed, fear. Fear of self, fear of others, fear of all sorts of life events that we’ve learned to avoid. And living under that fear without being influenced by it? Eh… not such an easy thing. Noting that you’re freaked out, but not letting a trauma brain run away with it? Hmmm…. Goes against our wiring.

We’re designed to pay attention to the bad, and that system is amped up for us with complex PTSD, because we learned to be extra vigilant in life. To see many things as being negative or potentially leading to negative events. To be extra-sensitive in preparation for those dangers, in a way that starts making everything seem pretty fucking dangerous.

Especially, as we’re always saying, with a headful of domestic, relational, abuse. That’s what keys us up to be terrified of others, and a whole host of “normal” daily happenings including all manner of home-based events, too.

This is how we end up on edge 24/7. Greatly impacted by life. And reacting to things that others can’t comprehend. Our brains are sensitized to things that hurt in the past, and our pasts are filled with other humans and otherwise “standard human activities” fucking us up. So now… we’re super-tuned to everything.

This ongoing, easily-triggerable, fear? Obviously speaks a lot to having chronic, traditionally untreatable trauma. Can’t break the trauma activation patterns, because so many things are still sending your brain and nervous system to the moon? Can’t break out of those patterns to rewire the brain.

And this past year, we learned a good deal about the neurological relay system that creates many of these lifelong disturbances. Namely, fear responses that shatter our memory systems and play tricks on us. And the resulting self-limitations that crop up when we’re frightened into shutting down.

I had a prevailing question – why does it feel like self-stagnation is a daily “program” that shows up out of nowhere, and how does it seem to be connected to external conditions triggering this system?

So, we did some research and started learning about the peculiarities of the DMN – the default mode network – that exists in our brains. It’s a central “track” of connected compartments that’s supposed to be activated, by default, as we go through our daily lives. We all have it. But of course, trauma tweaks our DMN so it doesn’t work the same way as those without PTSD. Why wouldn’t it.

Let’s talk about why that matters this time.

The DMN contains memory hubs that correspond with episodic sensory memories and autobiographical recollections of self, as a whole. They are two different compartments that oversee these important parts of our memories. We need to remember exact events that happened to us in vivid detail so we can avoid those similar situations, but we also need to have a cumulative story about everything we’ve seen to have a sense of self. So, we have separate sections of the brain responsible for each action. Both, strung together by the DMN.

The DMN also contains our somatic awareness of self – or, ability to recognize, feel, and orient our own bodies in space. Which, as you’d guess, is negatively impacted by trauma. We spend so much time disassociating during traumatic events that we often lose our sense of having a body, at all.

I know this cleared up a few questions I have, about forgetting that I am a physical, observable, being. How about you?

But the differences between traumatized DMNs and non-traumatized DMNs get a lot more damning, even, than losing our own body in space.

For those of us with a heavy trauma background, apparently we have less access to our autobiographical recollection center when we’re in a baseline, relaxed, condition. It’s less active under regular, nondistressed standards, than it is for supposedly “non traumatized” folks. This means, as a steady state, we’re less aware of our lifetimes of existence and personal histories than other folks are.

You can probably already see how this impacts you.

We often talk about having a splintered “slash” lost sense of self… and obviously that’s partially born from this inability to remember our lives, holistically. We forget who and where we’ve been. We feel like we exist in fragmented moments, rather than cohesively across a singular timeline. We lose our own perspectives, you may have heard about it.

All of this stops us from embodying ourselves every day. We don’t act like the respectable adults who we are, because we honestly forget that’s the case when our memories go missing.

And this is only further troublesome because of the other memory compartment. The episodic, sensory memory section of the brain. Which, rather than being downregulated like its counterpart, is actually hyper-activated in our heads. This is particularly true when we’re under distress of some sort. We have a stronger connection to this visceral memory center during those times – it is more active in fMRIs, anyways – which has a lot of implications.

Specifically, that we’ll be re-experiencing our visceral – our sensory – memories… which, under the distressing conditions that light up this compartment, are often going to contain negative, disturbing, traumatic, events.

And we know that we hold traumatic memories differently in our brains – in a semi-settled, semi-unresolved, state, that contains a ton of perceptual information. You carry a lot of details about what you saw, smelled, felt, tasted, and heard, because the memory hasn’t been condensed and processed fully.

So, when we’re tossed backwards into one of these episodic, visceral, memories… we are, in a very real way, reliving the event. We’re flooded with sensory information that seems to be as real and relevant today as it was ten years ago. And, in that state, unaware of our own autobiographies and physical bodies in modern day… we’re rather untethered from reality. We can’t necessarily bring ourselves out of that sensory memory recollection, so much as we relive it.

And even worse? We expand upon it. Whatever is happening in the modern day will elaborate upon the original memory, so that it becomes a massive file of shit information…. All of which seems to be happening in the here and now.

This is critical to understand, because, refer to the beginning of this episode. With a long history of trauma in very “general” environments and normal human situations, we’re easily triggered into a fearful or distressed state by… like… anything.

Relationships, home environments, work environments, all public and private places – they’re all fodder for complex trauma brains that can spark our fear.

And.. get ready for this… it gets worse… our DMN is able to respond to these events at sensory sub-threshold levels. So, we don’t necessarily consciously KNOW what’s sending fear responses through our brains and veins. We’re just thrown into a subtle or very blatant fear response. And that fear response subsequently hands us over to the visceral, disjointed, memory center where we’re terrorized by things we want to forget.

We learn to be on the ready, for instance, for energy changes in a social space. We learn to keep ourselves safe by anticipating what others are thinking and feeling. So, we might detect some subtle change in vibe that our brain picks up through its hypervigilant fear guardpost… but we might not CONSCIOUSLY be aware of that change of tone.

But it doesn’t matter, because our brain will have already activated a memory or string of memories of similar times that this has been problematic or had negative result. And we’re then swimming in those old recollections, as if they’re happening here and now.

All without ever knowing WHAT caused that change, in the first place. Leaving us, instead, with this sense of having an unpredictable, random, brain and body, that we learn to fear, themselves. Creating a penchant for disassociation and distraction.

And from that vantage point, we have no control over our lives. We can’t act in our own best interest. We can’t even behave in ways that we want to. Because we’ll be reacting to trauma patterns, not engaging our full brains.

Consider that when we’re thrown into reliving survival experiences, it naturally limits the available behaviors of our brains. Executive functioning? Not so much. Emotional responses? Hell yeah, or hell no, depending on which way you swing. Old trauma behavioral patterns? Definitely, there’s no doubt.

This has the effect of continually limiting how we can act and who we can be, especially if we’re in a situation that’s routinely activating the DMN fearfully. We have limited control over what actions we can take. What thoughts we can think. What feelings we can have.

And all of these things make us feel… like limited versions of ourselves. Like we can’t act our our own intentions. We can’t follow through on our plans or decisions we make. And we might have absolutely no idea why, which can only spawn further self-condemnation. And triggers more self-limiting patterns. But that’s talk for another episode.

So… let’s leave you here with a lot to think about concerning the DMN in your own life. The hyperactive threat detection center, wonky autobiographical memory compartment, powerful sensory memory section, and faulty somatic awareness depo. Altogether, I think there’s a lot to reframe from your past and present if you give this episode a re-listen.

But I hope it’s helped explain a few things about your (maybe, chronically, freaked out, fragmented, and uncontrollable-feeling) life so far. And I’m looking forward to meeting back here next time, where we’ll talk about what comes from all of these neurological events… lifetimes of self-limitation.

Til then, you know the drill.

Hail your Self.

Hail your DMN – it’s doing it’s godDAMN best to keep you alive.

Hail Archie. Uh, that’s how I felt about taking care of him, too.

And cheers, y’all.