By Cheryl Burgess, Achieve Wellbeing Therapy | 17.06.2026
Trauma changes us.
Whether the trauma is a single overwhelming event, childhood neglect, domestic abuse, sexual assault, coercive control, or repeated experiences of feeling unsafe, trauma can fundamentally alter how we experience ourselves, others, and the world around us.
One of the most common things I hear from clients is:
“Why didn’t I fight back?”
“Why couldn’t I scream?”
“Why can’t I remember what happened properly?”
“Will I ever get my memories back?”
These are deeply understandable questions. Sadly, many survivors spend years blaming themselves for responses that were never conscious choices. Modern neuroscience now helps us understand that many trauma responses, particularly during sexual trauma, occur automatically through survival systems that operate far beneath conscious awareness.
Understanding these processes can often be the first step towards self-compassion and healing.
Trauma Is Not Just What Happened
Trauma is often misunderstood as the event itself.
In reality, trauma is what happens within the nervous system when an experience overwhelms our capacity to cope, process and integrate what is happening. Trauma occurs when an event, or series of events, exceeds our ability to maintain a sense of safety and control.
When faced with overwhelming threat, the brain’s primary concern becomes survival rather than logical thinking, memory formation, or future planning.
The nervous system rapidly shifts into defensive states designed to maximise survival.
Traditionally, we speak about fight, flight, and freeze. However, trauma research increasingly recognises a broader range of autonomic survival responses:
- Fight
- Flight
- Freeze
- Collapse
- Submit
- Appease (sometimes referred to as “fawn”)
These responses are not conscious decisions. They are automatic biological survival programmes governed by the autonomic nervous system (Porges, 2011).
Why Freeze Happens During Sexual Trauma
One of the most misunderstood trauma responses is freeze.
Many survivors of sexual assault or abuse describe becoming unable to move, speak, shout, or resist. Some report feeling paralysed despite desperately wanting the experience to stop.
This reaction can be profoundly confusing and often becomes a source of shame.
Yet neuroscience tells us that freeze is a highly adaptive survival mechanism.
When the brain perceives a threat as overwhelming or inescapable, the autonomic nervous system may activate a state of immobility. Rather than mobilising energy for fight or flight, the body shifts towards conservation and protection.
Research suggests that immobilisation responses may reduce injury, conserve energy, and increase the chances of survival when escape appears impossible (Porges, 2011).
Many trauma survivors later judge themselves harshly for freezing. However, freeze is not weakness. Freeze is survival. The nervous system made the best decision available with the information it had at that moment.
The Brain Under Threat
To understand trauma, it helps to understand what happens inside the brain during moments of overwhelming stress. Several structures play particularly important roles.
The Amygdala
The amygdala acts as the brain’s alarm system. Its role is to detect threat and activate survival responses. During traumatic experiences, the amygdala becomes highly active and prioritises information relevant to danger and survival (Roozendaal, McEwen and Chattarji, 2009).
The amygdala is also heavily involved in emotional memory formation, which is one reason traumatic memories can feel emotionally intense long after the event has ended.
The Hippocampus
The hippocampus helps organise experiences into coherent memories. It provides context, chronology, and a sense of when and where something occurred.
During extreme stress, however, hippocampal functioning can become disrupted. This can make it difficult for the brain to organise traumatic experiences into a coherent narrative, contributing to fragmented recall and memory gaps (McEwen, 2007).
The Prefrontal Cortex
The prefrontal cortex is involved in reasoning, decision-making, emotional regulation, and reflective thinking.
During traumatic experiences, activity in this region often decreases. As a result, survivors may later struggle to understand why they behaved in certain ways or why they could not think clearly at the time.
The reality is that survival systems temporarily take priority over rational thought.
Do Stress Hormones Damage the Brain?
Many survivors wonder whether trauma has physically damaged their brain. The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
When we experience overwhelming threat, the body releases a cascade of stress hormones including cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. These chemicals are designed to help us survive by rapidly preparing the body to respond to danger.
In the short term, these hormones are protective. They increase alertness, sharpen our focus on threat, and mobilise the body’s resources for survival.
However, when trauma is severe, prolonged, or repeated, these stress hormones can begin to affect the functioning of key brain regions involved in memory, emotional regulation, and learning (McEwen, 2007).
Research has shown that elevated cortisol levels may interfere with normal hippocampal functioning, making it more difficult to organise and integrate experiences into coherent memories. This may contribute to the fragmented and sensory-based nature of traumatic recall (McEwen, 2007).
Studies have also found associations between chronic trauma exposure and changes in the structure and functioning of the hippocampus, increased sensitivity within the amygdala, and reduced activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex involved in emotional regulation and executive functioning (Teicher and Samson, 2016).
Importantly, this does not mean that survivors are permanently damaged.
The brain remains capable of change throughout life. Through neuroplasticity, new neural pathways can develop, and many trauma-related changes can improve through effective therapy, supportive relationships, emotional processing, and experiences of safety.
Rather than viewing trauma as causing irreversible damage, many clinicians now understand trauma as creating adaptations within the brain and body that were originally designed to help us survive but may no longer be needed once safety has been restored.
Dissociation: When the Mind Protects Itself
For many trauma survivors, particularly survivors of sexual trauma, freeze may be accompanied by dissociation.
Dissociation is often described as:
- Feeling detached from the body
- Feeling unreal
- Feeling numb
- Watching events as though they are happening to someone else
- Experiencing gaps in awareness
- Losing track of time
Dissociation is not a sign that someone is “going crazy.” It is another extraordinary survival adaptation.
When an experience becomes too overwhelming to fully process, the brain may reduce conscious awareness of aspects of that experience.
Van der Kolk and Fisler (1995) proposed that dissociation may be central to understanding traumatic memory. Their work suggested that traumatic experiences are often initially stored as sensory, emotional, bodily, and fragmented impressions rather than coherent verbal narratives.
In simple terms, trauma may be remembered through body sensations, smells, sounds, images, emotions, and physical reactions long before a person can explain the event in words.
Why Traumatic Memories Feel Fragmented
Many survivors become concerned because their memories do not feel complete. They may remember fragments but not sequences. They may recall sensations but not timelines. They may know something happened without being able to explain it clearly.
This is often a consequence of how traumatic memories are encoded. During overwhelming stress, the amygdala becomes highly activated, stress hormones surge, hippocampal functioning may become disrupted, and narrative memory formation becomes impaired.
As a result, memories may be stored in disconnected fragments rather than integrated stories (Van der Kolk and Fisler, 1995).
Van der Kolk (1998) argued that traumatic memories often persist as vivid sensory experiences that can be triggered by reminders long after the original event has ended. This helps explain why a smell, sound, facial expression, touch, or bodily sensation can suddenly evoke intense emotional reactions without conscious understanding of why.
Can Missing Memories Be Fully Recovered?
This remains one of the most complex and debated questions within trauma research.
The honest answer is that we do not know whether every traumatic memory can be fully recovered in precise detail.
Current evidence suggests several important points. First, genuine memory gaps can occur following severe trauma. Second, memories may emerge gradually over time as safety increases and dissociation reduces. Third, memory is reconstructive rather than a perfect recording system.
Research supports the idea that traumatic memories can initially be fragmented and become more organised over time. However, contemporary memory researchers caution against assuming that all missing memories can eventually be recovered in complete detail (McNally, 2022).
From a therapeutic perspective, the goal is not necessarily complete memory retrieval. The goal is integration.
Healing does not require remembering every detail. Many survivors recover without ever obtaining a complete chronological account of what happened.
What Does Healing Actually Look Like?
One of the myths surrounding trauma recovery is that healing means forgetting. It does not.
Healing means that the memory no longer controls the present.
A healed trauma memory may still be sad, painful, or upsetting. However, it becomes recognised as something that happened rather than something that is still happening.
The nervous system gradually learns:
“I survived.”
“The danger is over.”
“I am safe now.”
Research increasingly suggests that trauma recovery involves integration across emotional, cognitive, physiological, and relational systems rather than memory retrieval alone (Van der Hart et al., 2004; Nijenhuis, Van der Hart and Steele, 2010).
Healing often involves reconnecting with the body, developing self-compassion, processing emotions safely, building healthy relationships, and creating a coherent sense of self that is no longer defined solely by what happened.
The aim is not to erase the past. The aim is to reclaim the present.
A Message for Survivors
If you froze, your body was trying to protect you.
If you dissociated, your mind was trying to protect you.
If your memories are fragmented, there are understandable neurobiological reasons why.
Your symptoms are not evidence of weakness. They are evidence of survival.
Trauma can leave people feeling disconnected from themselves, from others, and sometimes from their own history. Yet healing is possible.
Recovery is not about becoming the person you were before trauma. Recovery is about becoming the person you were always meant to be, free from the burden of carrying survival responses that are no longer needed.
Professional Disclaimer
This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered a substitute for individual psychological, psychiatric, medical, or legal advice.
Traumatic memory is a complex area of neuroscience and psychology. While research supports the understanding that traumatic experiences may be encoded and recalled differently from ordinary memories, memory is not a perfect recording of events. Contemporary trauma therapy does not seek to recover memories for their own sake, nor does it assume that all traumatic experiences can or should be remembered in full detail.
The primary goals of trauma-informed therapy are safety, stabilisation, symptom reduction, emotional processing, and the integration of traumatic experiences into a person’s life story. Recovery and healing are possible whether or not complete memory retrieval occurs.
If this article raises concerns about your own experiences or wellbeing, it is recommended that you seek support from a qualified mental health professional with specialist training in trauma and attachment.
References
McEwen, B.S. (2007) ‘Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: Central role of the brain’, Physiological Reviews, 87(3), pp. 873-904.
McNally, R.J. (2022) ‘Are memories of sexual trauma fragmented?’, Memory, 30(1), pp. 26-30.
Nijenhuis, E.R.S., Van der Hart, O. and Steele, K. (2010) ‘Trauma-related structural dissociation of the personality’, Activitas Nervosa Superior, 52(1), pp. 1-23.
Porges, S.W. (2011) The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication and Self-Regulation. New York: W.W. Norton.
Roozendaal, B., McEwen, B.S. and Chattarji, S. (2009) ‘Stress, memory and the amygdala’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), pp. 423-433.
Teicher, M.H. and Samson, J.A. (2016) ‘Annual research review: Enduring neurobiological effects of childhood abuse and neglect’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57(3), pp. 241-266.
Van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E.R.S., Steele, K. and Brown, D. (2004) ‘Trauma-related dissociation: Conceptual clarity lost and found’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 38(11-12), pp. 906-914.
Van der Kolk, B.A. (1998) ‘Trauma and memory’, Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 52(S1), pp. S52-S64.
Van der Kolk, B.A. and Fisler, R. (1995) ‘Dissociation and the fragmentary nature of traumatic memories: Overview and exploratory study’, Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8(4), pp. 505-525.
If you are interested in exploring trauma-focused therapy, you are welcome to get in touch via email at or visit achievewellbeingtherapy.co.uk for further information.
