When a bird is just a bird: Understanding a trauma response

Sometimes people have a difficult time understanding what a trauma response is. Something simple happened to me today before I left work, which triggered my internal alarm system/trauma response and I thought I would use this example as a way to talk about trauma. Our brains are equipped to react instantly, oftentimes outside of our awareness, when we are faced with a threat or what our brain perceives as a threat. Our brain prepares our body to fight off the threat, flee from the threat, or “play dead” (freeze) to not be noticed by the threat.

So here’s what happened today: I was looking at my computer screen typing something and out of the corner of my eye, I can see out a glass door. While I was focused on typing, a bird slammed right into the glass door! I could feel that my whole alarm system was activated. I ducked, put my hands up, and my legs rolled my chair back as I was ready to stand. My body was ready to flee! My heart was pumping quickly and I felt tense all over my body. Once I became consciously aware of what happened (“Oh! That was a bird.”) my body started to go back to its normal resting state as I talked myself down and relaxed my body. The bird flew away quickly and appeared unharmed. Within a minute or two, I was back to normal. However, I did notice myself continuing to check the door every once in a while. I think my brain was scanning for threats!

This is a simple example of how our body uses its built in fight/flight/freeze response. This response is adaptive-it helped our ancestors get away from scary animal predators! The problem comes when this trauma response triggers frequently and for situations that are harmless or for non-existent threats. Kind of like the brain thinking there is a big scary animal predator there, even if it is not. Often when people feel threatened, their trauma response does its job like mine did today-I reacted unconsciously by ducking and moving, I consciously saw that the threat was not something that was going to harm me, and I shook it off- letting myself laugh and return to neutral quickly. It is common that the “trauma” of a situation comes from someone not being able to complete their trauma response-they are not able to run (as in the case of car accidents) or they are not able to fight (as sometimes is the case in sexual assault). These repressed responses often trick our brains into being alert for danger constantly and our trauma response is triggered frequently leaving us feeling anxious, wired, hyper alert and/or hopeless and untrusting.

This is where therapy can be really helpful in sorting out what may be going on in our brains. By bringing up the trauma either through play, art, or talking about it, we can allow our trauma response to complete. Sometimes I have children run in place in session when they couldn’t run during the trauma they went through. Sometimes we do super slow-mo pillow punches or balloon battles when they did not get to fight their response out. Sometimes we dance or make goofy faces to pull out of a freeze response. Over time and distance from the trauma, we re-teach our brain to calm down more quickly and hopefully decrease how often these responses occur. We see things for what they are like a bird crashing into our glass door instead of a larger threat like violence or someone coming aggressively into my office.

Sometimes a bird is just a bird! I’m glad the bird and myself are both alright.