Often with Trauma and Addiction we can get quickly triggered and suddenly we are craving or we are back in a situation that generated trauma for us in our lives and it’s as if we are actually back there again re-experiencing everything in real time.  How does that happen?  Why does our brain throw us back to that place and why does it feel so real that we become anxious and panicked?  Today we look at the way the brain reacts to trauma and how the part of the brain responsible for protecting us shuts down our rational decision making processes creating anxiety and even panic states.  We also discover that it is possible to reverse this process.  By controlling our bodies we can slow down our heartrate and allow that rational part of the brain to re-engage for us.  We will go through an exercise designed to lower our day to day stress levels and look at how using the breathing exercise from last week can bring us back to a more regulated state where we can begin deciding with our wise mind how we want to be in the world.