A traumatic response can strike when you least expect it. A racing heart, tense muscles, a sudden urge to escape – these are all automatic reactions by the brain’s nervous system, especially if you’ve experienced or witnessed a traumatic event.
The body responds to these events by releasing a flood of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This helps your brain stay focused on remaining safe.
But sometimes our brains and bodies can get stuck in survival mode, triggering traumatic responses that can occur long after the event has passed, seemingly out of nowhere. When these reactions start to disrupt our daily lives, it can develop into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD,) a serious mental health condition that affects 3.5% of the adult population.1
The experience of a traumatic response can be incredibly frightening, especially if you don’t know how to manage it. That’s where grounding techniques can help you feel safe, calm, and more in control.
What happens during a traumatic event?
A traumatic event is any experience that creates an intense feeling of fear, an overwhelming sense of helplessness, or a strong sense of danger. It often involves a threat to your safety, well-being, or life, and it can include witnessing something happening to someone else. These events can have a lasting impact on your mental, emotional, and even physical health.
When a traumatic event occurs, your brain has one job: keep you alive. Once the alarm has been raised, a chain reaction begins that affects a number of different regions in the brain:
- Amygdala: Located deep in our brain, the amygdala is one of our most primal parts. It acts like a smoke detector and plays a key role in processing emotions, especially those rooted in fear and other survival responses.
- Hypothalamus: The amygdala sends a message to the nearby hypothalamus, which functions as a crisis manager during trauma. It takes over the body’s normal calming systems and gets your body ready to respond to danger. This includes the vagus nerve, which helps control your heartbeat, breathing, and digestion. The hypothalamus also signals the adrenal glands to release two stress hormones:
- Adrenaline: A fast-acting hormone that gives you a quick burst of energy and keeps you alert.
- Cortisol: A stress hormone that keeps the body on high alert by affecting blood pressure, energy levels, and inflammation.
- Prefrontal Cortex: Adrenaline and cortisol suppress activity in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that helps you think clearly and make decisions. This allows the body to prioritize quick action instead of overthinking and explains why we feel frozen, panicked, or unable to think clearly.
- Hippocampus: Stress hormones also affect the hippocampus, which organizes memories and connects them to emotions. When the brain prioritizes survival, it disrupts the hippocampus’s ability to make sense of these experiences, often leaving the memories fragmented or disjointed.
This neurological disruption plays a key role in how the body responds after trauma.
What Is a trauma response?
The brain’s inability to organize fragmented memories of a traumatic event is why certain sounds, smells, or sensations have the power to trigger intense reactions.
A trauma response is the body’s automatic reaction to a threat — whether real, remembered, or imagined — and often occurs without your conscious control. Sometimes this includes flashbacks, where the brain reactivates a traumatic memory so vividly that it feels like the event is happening all over again.
When faced with a threat – real or perceived – your nervous system may automatically react in one of four ways:
- Fight: Responding with aggression, anger, or frustration in an effort to protect yourself or regain control.
- Flight: Feeling the need to escape, avoid, or physically remove yourself from the situation as fast as possible.
- Freeze: Feeling stuck, paralyzed, or disconnected. Unable to move or speak, even if you want to.
- Fawn: Trying to appease or please others to stay safe, often ignoring your own needs or boundaries.
These survival responses are not conscious decisions. They’re automatic, protective instincts rooted in your brain’s wiring. These responses can include a range of physical and emotional responses:
Physical responses to trauma:
- Racing or pounding heart
- Rapid breathing or shortness of breath
- Sweating or chills
- Shaking or trembling
- Headaches or migraines
- Stomachaches, nausea, or digestive problems
- Muscle tension or aches
- Fatigue or exhaustion
- Sleep disturbances or insomnia
- Dizziness or lightheadedness
- Changes in appetite (eating much more or less)
Emotional responses to trauma
- Fear, anxiety, or panic
- Shock, disbelief, or confusion
- Sadness or depression
- Irritability or angry outbursts
- Emotional numbness or feeling detached
- Guilt or shame
- Feeling helpless or hopeless
- Mood swings or feeling overwhelmed
- Intrusive thoughts or flashbacks
- Nightmares or distressing dreams
- Difficulty concentrating or remembering things
- Withdrawal from others or loss of interest in activities
While each of these responses serves a survival function, when there is no presence of danger they can interfere with daily life and be a sign of PTSD.
PTSD coping skills and grounding techniques
As the brain and body struggle to heal from trauma, many people develop coping skills – some unconsciously – to help them feel safe, secure, and more in control.
Sleeping with the TV on, for example, is a common traumatic response designed to drown out anxious thoughts or provide company to combat fear or loneliness at night. While this isn’t inherently bad, some coping skills can actually create more harm than good.
Coping skills that may become harmful
- Avoiding people, places, or situations
- Staying constantly busy
- Substance use or misuse
- Overeating or undereating
- Self-harm or risky behavior
- Prioritizing the needs of others
- Controlling routines
On the other hand, intentional, healthy coping strategies reconnect and ground the mind and body in the present moment to remind you that you are safe.
Grounding techniques for PTSD include
- 5-4-3-2-1 sensory ground method: Engage your senses with the present moment and name five things you can see, four things you can feel, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
- Box breathing: Breathe in for four seconds, hold your breath for four, exhale for four, hold for four, then repeat.
- Cold water or ice: The sensation of cold – an ice cube in your hand, a splash of water, or a cool shower – interrupts the sense of panic by shifting your focus to your body.
- Touch texture: Feeling something rough, soft, bumpy, or smooth gives your brain something to process.
- Name the environment: Orient yourself to where and when you are. Say out loud, for example, “My name is ____. I’m in my bedroom. It’s Tuesday. I’m safe.”
- Move your body: Actively stretching, walking, stomping, or swaying can help your brain reengage with your body.
- Say soothing statements: Telling yourself “I am safe right now” can help you stay grounded. Try to choose phrases that reassure without dismissing how you feel: “I’ve gotten through tough moments before — I can get through this too.”
- Grounding object: Carry a small object (a stone, coin, fidget cube, or piece of fabric) as a reminder to focus your senses.
- Engage your sense of smell. Because smell is directly linked to our emotional memory center, inhaling essential oil, citrus, or a scented lotion can help anchor spiraling thoughts.
- Use your voice: Vocalizing (singing, humming, or reciting a poem or song) can have a calming effect on the body.
Download our Trauma Response Toolkit.
Knowing when to seek support
Common warning signs of PTSD include
- Feeling on edge or easily triggered
- Frequent flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares
- Avoiding people, places, or activities
- Feeling emotionally numb, disconnected, or hopeless
- Relying on unhealthy coping strategies just to get through the day
PTSD is highly treatable, with many people experiencing significant symptom reduction and, in some cases, full remission.2
Treatments for PTSD include:
- Talk therapy: Allows patients to process their traumatic experiences in a safe and structured way. Modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), prolonged exposure therapy (PE), and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR.)
- Medication: May be prescribed to reduce anxiety, ease depression, improve sleep, or calm physical symptoms. Medications can include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). Both are commonly prescribed to help regulate mood, anxiety, and stress.
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS): A non-invasive, drug-free treatment that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate areas of the brain involved with mood regulation.
- Spravato® (esketamine): An FDA-approved nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression that may help patients experiencing trauma-related symptoms.
For those struggling with post-traumatic reactions: you are not alone. Living with trauma responses can feel exhausting and unpredictable, but your symptoms are not a sign of weakness. With the right support and evidence-based care, healing is possible.
Schedule your free consultation today.
References
1National Alliance on Mental Illness. (n.d.). Posttraumatic stress disorder. NAMI. Retrieved May 15, 2025, from https://www.nami.org/About-Mental-Illness/Mental-Health-Conditions/Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorder/
2 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. (n.d.). PTSD treatment basics. https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/tx_basics.asp
Medically reviewed by Veronica Calkins, LCSW.
