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🧠 What Happens in the Brain?
🧠 What Happens in the Brain?
(And Why It’s Not Your Fault)
(And Why It’s Not Your Fault)
When we talk about trauma, we’re not just talking about moments of pain. We’re talking about what gets wired into the body and the brain — especially when safety, dignity, and stability are missing for long periods of time.
For Black people across the diaspora — whether through enslavement, colonization, redlining, police terror, family separation, or constant scarcity — trauma hasn’t just been individual. It’s been structural, historical, and inherited.
These experiences change how the brain learns to protect us.
🧠 Your Brain Has 3 Main Parts in a Circle of Response:
🧠 Your Brain Has 3 Main Parts in a Circle of Response:
The Survival Brain (Brainstem):
Kicks in when we feel unsafe.
It controls fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
It's fast, reactive, and designed to keep you alive — not to help you thrive.
The Emotional Brain (Limbic System):
Feels threats, joy, pain, shame, connection.
Helps decide: "Do I trust this? Is this safe?"
The Thinking Brain (Prefrontal Cortex):
Helps with planning, empathy, consent, communication.
It’s the last to develop and the first to go offline when we’re stressed.
⚠️ What This Means in Our Communities
⚠️ What This Means in Our Communities
If you’ve lived through chronic stress — or if your people have for generations — your brain may be wired to scan for threat constantly.
Even if you’re not in active danger, your system may act like you are.
So when you walk into a group space, circle, or decision-making meeting, your brain might say:
💥 Survival Brain Behaviors
💥 Survival Brain Behaviors
(a trauma response, not a personal failure):
(a trauma response, not a personal failure):
🧱 Hyper-independence
“If I don’t do it, it won’t get done right.”
Comes from not being able to depend on others or systems.
Protection against disappointment, betrayal, or being ignored.
🗣️ Explosive Conflict or Complete Shutdown
“I have to go hard to be heard” — or — “Why bother speaking?”
Comes from past experiences of being silenced, overpowered, or punished for speaking truth.
🤐 Fear of Being Seen or Heard
“If I take up space, I’ll be hurt, rejected, or abandoned.”
A legacy of being invisible or criminalized for existing.
⏳ Impatience with Process
“Just make a decision already — this is too slow.”
Urgency is often a trauma response, linked to environments where slowness felt dangerous or where our time was never our own.
🔥 Truth Bomb:
🔥 Truth Bomb:
These are not flaws.
These are brilliant adaptations to unsafe systems.
You are not “difficult.”
You are smart and wired for survival.
But now, we are choosing to rewire for thriving — together.
🧘🏾♂️ What Helps?
🧘🏾♂️ What Helps?
Trauma is not a life sentence — healing is always possible.
What the survival brain needs most is:
Safety — physical, emotional, spiritual
Ritual — rhythm, grounding, repetition
Voice — being heard, seen, and honored
Relationship — consistent, loving presence
Choice — especially in how you show up
🖤 A Final Word
🖤 A Final Word
Your body is not broken. It remembers. It protects.
And in this circle, it can begin to feel safe enough to trust again.
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