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The Right Brain and Healing Trauma

Dan Thorne, LMFT • Jun 23, 2021

When a person suffers from trauma, working with their right brain improves their social interactions and relationships.

Why is it that talking doesn’t help trauma survivors heal from their experiences?


There are several explanations to this phenomena. The first is that, when a traumatic experience occurs, the left side of the brain shuts down and the right side processes.


First, an explanation of the brain’s functions.


Two sides of our brain work together most of the time. But they each have their own functions. The left side is designed for logical thinking. It is the side we use when we read, do math, figure out logic problems. When we wish to explain our past, spew out statistics. It has an orderly fashion of working.


The right side of the brain is for creative and non-logical thinking. It’s where stories come from, music, art, poetry, dance moves. It’s also where our memories of sound, touch, and smell are stored.   When we react to non-verbal gestures, faces, voices, it’s because of the right brain functions. 

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk discusses memory and trauma research in his book, The Body Keeps the Score. When scientists started doing Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or fMRI’s, they learned how the brain functions during activity. Researchers would ask a trauma survivor to sit inside an MRI machine. And then they would ask them to recall memories and see where the brain stimulated. They found that the right side, especially in recalling traumatic memories, activated. While the left side of the brain totally shut down. 


As a result, trauma survivors cannot put into words or logic what happened to them. As Dr. van der Kolk indicated, “In technical terms they are experiencing the loss of executive functioning.” 


The second explanation is that people with traumatic memories reduce their healthy interactions with others. The right side of the brain develops our relationships. According to David Hosier in his work on Childhood Trauma Recovery, the right brain involves our ability to empathize with others, trust others, identify with them. Read emotions, form healthy attachments, and know non-verbal communication.   


If traumatic memories reach the right side of a person’s brain, they may hinder these relationships. Which is why children who experienced trauma have difficulty with social interactions. 


Then what are some solutions?


Practitioners in settings with trauma survivors should focus on the activities which are right brained in nature. Less talk, more doing. Activities such as art, drama, poetry, journaling, psychodrama, dancing, movement.


Mindfulness activities such as imagery, meditation, visualization, hypnosis, yoga, qigong, tai chi.


Telling a youth that it’s not their fault they were abused only goes so far. Helping them feel like a whole person integrated with mind and body helps combine the left and right side. A little at a time.


Giving them ways to retell their trauma experience as an observer, with someone there to help them through the experience, reshapes the memory into one they live with. And can accept. 


These activities along with hundreds of others help the trauma survivor access their trauma memories in a safe environment, healing one step at a time.


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