Grounded Wellness and Counselling- Melissa Lavallee

Why Trauma Hijacks Your Thoughts: How the Brain Protects You, Not Punishes You

Trauma changes the way your brain thinks, and not because you’re “broken,” damaged, or doing anything wrong. Trauma changes the brain because it has one job: to keep you alive.

I want to start here …with compassion.
With truth.
With grounding.

Because so many of us grow up believing that our thoughts are the problem.
Our sadness is the problem.
Our reactions are the problem.
Our “overthinking” is the problem.

But trauma research and Indigenous teachings that have existed long before Western psychology tell a different story.

Your mind is not trying to hurt you.
It’s trying to protect you.

And once you understand why your thoughts react the way they do, healing becomes less about “fixing yourself” and more about gently learning what your nervous system has been trying to say all along.

Story-as-Medicine: How Indigenous Teachings Explain Trauma

In many Indigenous cultures, including Métis teachings, stories are used to explain what the body already knows but the mind hasn’t named yet. Story is a map. Story is medicine. Story gives shape to things that feel too big to hold alone.

Elders often say that the body remembers what the mind forgets.
That pain, fear, and survival are not just emotional experiences, they are stories carried forward through generations.

Western research echoes this.
The brain changes after trauma. (van der Kolk, 2014)
Thought patterns shift.
The threat system becomes activated.
Memory reorganises itself around danger. (Herman, 2015)

Different worlds, same truth:
Trauma teaches the mind to scan for risk before it reaches for safety.

You didn’t create that pattern. You inherited it. You survived because of it.

The Trauma Brain: A Survival Machine

After trauma, three main areas of the brain change the way they function:

1. The amygdala becomes hypervigilant

This is the part that scans for danger. After trauma, it works overtime.

That’s why you may:

• interpret neutral things as threats
• jump to worst-case scenarios
• feel “on edge” even in safe places
• read tone changes as danger
• assume you’re being judged, abandoned, or disliked

This is not overreaction.
It’s survival.

2. The prefrontal cortex goes offline

This part helps with logic, planning, and emotional regulation. Trauma quiets it.

That’s why you might:

• struggle to make decisions
• lose words mid-sentence
• freeze in conflict
• feel “foggy” or disconnected
• avoid things that feel overwhelming

Your brain isn’t failing, it’s responding to overload.

3. The hippocampus struggles to store memory

Trauma disrupts time and order.

That’s why memories may feel:

• fragmented
• out of sequence
• vivid, like they’re happening now
• numbed out
• blurry or missing entirely

This is protective.
The mind tucks away what is too much to carry.

Why Trauma Creates “Hijacked” Thoughts

Here’s the truth:
Your brain doesn’t care about your long-term peace when it thinks you’re in danger.
It cares about keeping you alive in the moment.

So it uses primitive thinking patterns, including:

• catastrophising
• black-and-white thinking
• self-blame
• predicting harm
• mistrusting safety
• emotional reasoning (“I feel worthless, so I must be worthless”)

From a CBT perspective, these are called cognitive distortions (Beck, 2011).
From an Indigenous lens, these are the stories the body tells when it doesn’t feel safe.

Not wrong.
Not dramatic.
Not weak.

Just… activated.

And activation is a sign of protection.

How Trauma Shifts Your Inner Narrative

One of the quietest wounds of trauma is how it reshapes the inner voice.

Many survivors develop thoughts like:

• “Everything is my fault.”
• “I should’ve known better.”
• “I can’t trust anyone.”
• “I’m too much.”
• “I’m not enough.”
• “I deserved it.”
• “It wasn’t that bad.”

These thoughts are not truth they are survival-coded beliefs.

Narrative therapy helps us see these as stories you were forced to carry, not stories that originated within you (White & Epston, 1990).

And Indigenous story-as-medicine expands this even further:
You get to reclaim your story, reshape it, and release what was never yours to hold.

How to Gently Work With Trauma-Driven Thoughts

Healing begins with two steps:

1. Name what’s happening without shame

Try language like:

• “My survival brain is activated.”
• “My nervous system is trying to protect me.”
• “This is an old story, not my present truth.”
• “I’m noticing a trauma response.”

Naming dissolves shame.

2. Pair the story with a regulation tool

Because you can’t out-think a dysregulated nervous system.

Try:

• deep belly breathing
• temperature change (cold water on wrists)
• grounding through the senses
• placing a hand on your chest
• slow, rhythmic movement
• saying affirmations that brings you back to yourself

When the body settles, the mind begins to soften.

You Are Not Broken. You Are Wired for Survival

This is the piece I want you to carry out of this blog and into your healing:

Your thoughts make sense in the context of what you’ve been through.

Trauma didn’t break you.
It reshaped you to endure the unbearable.
It rewired your brain so you could survive things no one should’ve had to face.

And healing isn’t about undoing who you became.
It’s about creating enough safety for your brain to remember who you really are.

References

Beck, J. S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Herman, J. L. (2015). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.