ABSTRACT
Trauma impairs brain development and attachment, prejudices memory and experience, deforms the personality, and disables the ability to be fully relational. In a familial or caregiving environment of totalitarian control, abandonment, or enmeshed helplessness, violence or betrayal, children can develop pathologic attachments to their abusers that propel into adulthood and unfavorably color their lives. Sensory input also travels to the locus ceruleus in the brainstem, our most primitive alarm system, which in turn routes messages to the right amygdala. The hypothalamus forms the core of the mind/body connection, and can engage the autonomic nervous system, immune and endocrine function, as well as learning and memory through hippocampal connections. The orbitofrontal cortex is the only cortical structure that directly connects with the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the brainstem reticular formation that regulates arousal.
