The importance of trauma: A modern trend or a neglected truth?
Anastasia Nikolitsa © Sofo Soma
September 2025
As the study of the human brain and Nervous System has been developing rapidly over the last two or three decades, a shift in the scientific paradigm is inevitably taking place in the field of Psychology too, affecting the perspective and practice of Psychotherapy (of any approach). Increasingly, the truth and the fact of early trauma is being taken into account as a fundamental contributing factor to the establishment of psychopathology, as the question “to what extent do genetic findings support or challenge our clinical nosology” (Smoller et al., 2020) remains unanswered. It is true that there are scientists who turn their scientific intent to the biomedical explanation, the assumption that mental disorders are medical illnesses rooted in biology, downplaying the lack of a warm and stable attachment to the mother as something popular but unsubstantiated (Lebowitz & Appelbaum, 2019, p. 555). However, even as to the origin of Schizophrenia, which for centuries has been statistically observed to recur intergenerationally, the evidence so far is a combination of physical, genetic, psychological and environmental factors. As the World Health Organization states, “research has not identified a single cause of Schizophrenia. It is thought that the interaction between genes and a number of environmental factors may cause Schizophrenia. Psychosocial factors may also influence the onset and course of Schizophrenia”[1]. Complementing this differentiation, as reported by Read, Os, Morrison & Ross (2005), large-scale studies on the general population suggest that the relationship between symptoms of Psychosis/Schizophrenia and childhood neglect and abuse is causal. As does this, equally large-scale study, by Korver-Nieberg et al., in 2015, which found that “both attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with severity of hallucinations and persecution” (p. 83). Many mental health professionals through their clinical practice and research work, for over twenty years, have advocated for a truly integrated bio-psychosocial model of Psychosis than is currently prevalent, emphasizing the need to train the staff to ask about abuse and the need to offer appropriate psychosocial treatments to patients who have been abused or neglected as children (Read et al., 2005).
In my view and in my clinical experience, the quality of the primary connection with the mother, or its rupture, is a very important environmental factor, decisive for the enhancement of psychopathology. It seems as if we have not moved away from what Bowlby[2] wrote in the 1970’s about patterns of attachment to the primary caregiver and their crucial role in our adult relationships. The difference today is that neuroimaging capabilities provide verifications of brain activity during this disruption, emphasizing the indelible imprints of a traumatic attachment pattern and the long-term and decisive effect it can have on the psycho-neuro-immunology of the mammalian brain. For example, a correlation has been made between stress in early life with later immune system function (Ganguly & Brenhouse, 2015), inflammation (Danese & Lewis, 2016) and nociceptive system function (Melchior, Kuhn & Poisbeau, 2021). That is, the findings are no longer merely theoretical and empirical, as in Bowlby’s time. Furthermore, we know that the constant presence of absence or interrupted loving care, fear or anger in the parent’s gaze, and abuse by the parent creates attachment conflict (Corrigan, Young & Christie-Sands, 2025).
In addition to the above, there is a chronic misconception about the Nervous System that the largest number of nerve cells in the brain are involved in the function of learning, memory or perception, overlooking those that regulate the gut, circulation, body temperature, respiration and other homeostatic tasks necessary for survival and adaptation to the environment (Nicholls & Paton, 2009). Historically, there are very specific reasons why “the study of the brainstem has been neglected compared with research made on structures such as the cortex, hippocampus, cerebellum, retina, basal ganglia and spinal cord” (p. 2447). As Nicholls and Paton (2009) cite, one reason for neglect is that, until recently, the Brainstem has been difficult to access experimentally as it is located in an inaccessible region of the Nervous System. Although the complex circuits of the Brainstem regulate the basic automatic bodily responses of the body, such as breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, etc., for many years they have been extremely difficult to investigate precisely. A second reason for the neglect of Brainstem and its importance is the very history of neurobiology as a discipline, which goes back to the early 1960s, when Stephen Kuffler, head of a group of neurobiologists in the Harvard Department of Pharmacology, decided to bring together people from different disciplines into a single new department, so that the scope of research would be determined by the problems that remained unanswered rather than by the techniques used. Thus, the first Department of Neurobiology was created, and then this example was followed by the creation of new departments and training courses in neuroscience in most medical schools and universities in the US and Europe. But this led to the extinction of neuroanatomists and physiologists who knew the functions of the nervous system from the university departments. The authors of this report conclude that in recent years, transgenic and molecular biological approaches, electrical and optical recording techniques and computational methods have helped us to understand more and more about how the Brainstem performs its functions under normal and abnormal conditions. Finally, it is important to mention that “its neurons create the rhythm of inspiration and expiration, which starts in utero, and continues until the moment of death” (p. 2447) so it is easy to associate it with intrauterine life and therefore intrauterine trauma.
At an international scientific level there still seems to be a polarization about which parts of the brain are important for the study and treatment of mental health. The scientific paradigm has already shifted, especially after Jaak Panksepp’s discoveries. It is now scientifically proven and internationally accepted that there is a subcortical basis for self-consciousness in the mammalian brain (see the International Declaration of Consciousness[3]), as well as the existence of specific emotional circuits that produce specific emotions in brainstem structures[4] (Panksepp & Biven, 2012). Inevitably, the previous paradigm, which considered the Amygdala and Hippocampus[5] as the key brain structures for learning affective/emotional responses, and which argued that change in behavior and quality of life occurs when new neural pathways are created from the Prefrontal Cortex[6] to the Amygdala, has become obsolete.
As a result, more and more mental health professionals are turning to new knowledge that illuminates the importance of the deepest part of the brain and its earliest, most ancient and automatic capacities for survival, processing and integration. Moreover, the knowledge that the earlier the trauma occurs, the less capacity there is available for the Neocortex to regulate its effect (Corrigan & Hull, 2018), overemphasizes the need to turn to those deeper areas of the brain that operate automatically, before affects, thinking, feelings, and volition – before consciousness emerges. The upgraded knowledge offered, here, is that new neural pathways can be established in the brain -and thus new habits, perception, consciousness, and emotional state- without purposeful effort. That is, when the remnants of trauma responses are eliminated by the deeper structures of the Brainstem, where shock and affect are first generated (Corrigan, Young, Christie-Sands, 2025) then “an opening [is provided] for intrinsic healing mechanisms to flow” (p. 4).
Alongside this shift occurring in the scientific paradigm of Neurobiology, and as research increasingly elucidates more and more around the neural mechanisms through which change can occur in the brain and the learned emotions and responses of the nervous system, neuroscience-based approaches are of increasing interest to Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists and Psychologists (Corrigan & Young, 2025). However, most of these approaches have not touched on the nuclear brain mechanism that is directly involved in the response to trauma. This is because, so far, the most dominant theories around trauma-related disorders are based on the old scientific paradigm. “Research has focused on the ‘limbic’ areas for the acquisition and extinction of fear responses without consideration of, for example, where fear arises in the brain. Whilst these approaches have undoubtedly been of benefit in managing symptoms, their overall success has been limited and many patients continue to experience significant distress. An insistence that top-down modulation of symptoms can always be learned if patients have sufficient motivation adds to the sense of failure of those whose symptoms persist despite their best efforts” (Corrigan & Young, 2025, p. 2).
Because of this inevitable shift in the scientific paradigm, there is also an increased search by mental health professionals for new methods of trauma healing that are effective and in line with the new discoveries about the human brain and the Nervous System. After EMDR, several models of trauma treatment followed, such as Brainspotting, EarlyLifeProtocol EMDR, the Comprehensive Resource Model (CRM), and most recently Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), all of which have in common the access and ability to process implicit trauma memory. New information is rapidly being provided to us by contemporary neuroimaging studies of the Brainstem and by the global scientific effort to map the healthy brain network (the “connectome”). For this reason, developments on methods and models that activate the intrinsic healing mechanisms of trauma responses and their subsequent implications on how we perceive the different psychiatric diagnoses will be rapid from now on. “Effective trauma psychotherapy engages the intrinsic healing properties of the brain’s complex systems for emotional homeostasis. These are the capacities that have been inhibited by the traumatic experience to the extent that affective-somatic-memory complexes intrude as clinical symptoms and syndromes. Effective trauma psychotherapy that promotes fundamental healing relies on the facilitation of the systems developed over the course of the evolution of the human brain to learn from adversity without being destroyed by it” (Schwarz et al, 2017, p. 64). Any mental health professional who is not aware of the developments in neurobiology and does not integrate the new knowledge and understanding of what it means to heal and heal will find it difficult to adapt to a field that is not only rapidly evolving but that has already established a new vocabulary and terminology. The necessary new skills will become the foundation so that the therapist will be able “to make optimal the conditions through which recovery may occur” (p. 64).
Knowing the above, this new trend that has been created around trauma, both by people seeking healing and professionals, is self-evident. More and more mental health professionals are being trained in these models and this has now established the term Trauma Therapy as well as the new concepts of trauma treatment, trauma healing, or “erasing” of the root of trauma (Corrigan & Hull, 2018). Terms like these were not in the vocabulary of practitioners until recently as the primary goal of Psychotherapy treatment was never about healing trauma but managing its consequences in present life. Fortunately, more and more Psychotherapists, in Greece too nowadays, are being “initiated” into the new skills of safe trauma treatment and are beginning to understand the concept of healing. “As long as we create neurochemical safety in the brain and allow its inherent ability to process, -which has been inhibited/inhibited because of the traumatic experience-, we will be surprised to find that relatively quickly and easily the process is completed and the chronic discomfort is transformed into a new experience, with new awareness and physical sensation, without the person feeling that he or she has painfully relived what was remembered” (Nikolitsa, 2024, p. 86).
References
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Corrigan, F.M. & Young, H., 2025. Orienting to ‘where’?, in Corrigan, F.M., Young, H & Christie-Sands, J., 2025. Deep Brain Reorienting: understanding the Neuroscience of trauma, attachment wounding and DBR Psychotherapy. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, New York & London. DOI:10.4324/9781003431695-3
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