Written by: Danny Greeves, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
I’d like to introduce you to Trauma Town. This busy, densely populated area used to be called the Borough of the Brain, but then something happened. Something happened that was overwhelming. It turned the Borough of the brain into a tense, stressful, chaotic place that was eventually nick-named Trauma Town. It still has all the same facilities, but like a good neighbourhood ‘gone bad’, Trauma Town is now an incredibly difficult place to live. Let’s go on a tour of Trauma Town so we can see just how much this place has changed.
Our first stop is the ‘Default Mode Network’.
The Default Mode Network is important for processing feelings in your body and identifying self-relevant information. It's also key in planning for the future. So this is where the members of parliament work. The key members of the town electorate, the mayor and all the civil servants.
In times gone by, in the Borough of the Brain, they would plan improvements for the town, they would look for opportunities to grow the town's resources. They would plan the next decade of new buildings and upgrades to make the town a nicer place to live.
But now, in Trauma town, it’s a different story. Future planning doesn’t go anywhere, no-one can agree on anything so plans get ditched. The town doesn’t make any new buildings and the old ones fall into disrepair. There's graffiti, vandalism and a power struggle between the MP’s. There is chaos everywhere and now the future seems scary.
Our next stop is the ‘Salience Network’.
The Salience Network is crucial for helping you determine what information in your environment is important. It helps to identify threats and potential challenges. It gives you an accurate read on your environment.
This is where the town council lives. They look after all of the environmental challenges in the town. They keep the public toilets clean, they run waste disposal and they process all the recycling to keep the town neat and tidy. They also identify threats to the town like pollution and animal rights issues.
Since that awful event, the town council in Trauma Town is in disarray. Instead of council agents keeping the toilets and the streets clean, they’re getting confused. They are worrying and fretting over crumbs being spilled in restaurants. They see people smiling in the street and mistake their smiles for evil intent and believe they want to spread pollution. They are mixing up signals and putting all the residents on edge. The worst part is because they are getting environmental signals mixed up, the real villains, the people polluting the land and abusing animal rights are getting missed, so the town is suffering.
Next on our tour is the ‘Central Executive Network’
The Central Executive Network is vital in helping you think, engage in periods of focused concentration and feel present in the moment. This is the business district. Usually, inspired business people have been innovating, creating and selling valuable products. Helping the town thrive and putting money in people’s pockets.
Since Trauma Town, people have become sluggish, sick leave is on the rise, people have closed their businesses and signed up for benefits. People don’t seem present, they’re retreating within themselves, and the whole town is getting desperate for money.
Close by is the hippocampus. This area is a crucial part of the brain involved in learning and memory. This is the town hall and records department. In times gone by, the town hall would be large and full of staff. They would document and record all the new learnings, turn them into safe memories and send them down to the records department to be archived.
Since the place became Trauma Town, almost the entire staff were laid off in a cost cutting exercise. Now there’s only one member of staff, who is totally overwhelmed by the workload. As a result they aren’t filing some records in the right place, some are just getting thrown out, and the difficult events the town goes through are just getting pushed to the side, so no-one is learning how to improve. Because no-one is learning, the town keeps repeating the same mistakes and everyone is getting stressed.
Maybe the architects are faring better?
The next stop is the epigenetic expression in the DNA.
This is where the town architects are based. This is where all the blueprints live for future generations. The previous architects were sticklers for symmetry and consistency. They would make sure each blueprint was carefully preserved so when the next house needed putting up, there was an exact replica ready to be made.
But the onset of Trauma Town pushed the old architects to leave, and the new ones are only in it for a quick buck. They end up making mistakes in the blueprints. They don’t proofread their work and sometimes they don’t even complete the plans at all. The result is, the children of Trauma Town are going to have to live with homes that have holes in the roof. There will be plumbing problems leading to leaks and floods. The children ‒ the future of Trauma Town ‒ and their children, inherit all these faulty building plans and so the future looks expensive and bleak for the next generations to come.
Up next is the ‘Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex’.
This is the time-sensing part that lets you know when one event ends and the next one starts. The part that helps you keep an ongoing track of time as it passses.
This is the major town newspaper.
Unfortunately, following that awful event, the newspaper shut down. That awful event was the last newspaper story to go out ‒ and it was terrifying. Afterwards, the writers went home and the editors were laid off. But the newspaper has a long term contract with the printers. So what they end up doing is continuing to print the same newspaper day after day.
The people of Trauma Town see the same paper everyday of the week and so it feels like this awful event is going on forever. Stuck in groundhog day with no way to escape. There seems no end to it all. This keeps the residents of Trauma Town in a constant state of fear.
But our final stop on this tour bucks the trend…
The final stop is the ‘Amygdala’.
The Amygdala is involved in fear and desire. It initiates the fight or flight response and is fundamental to impulsive behaviour and immediate gratifying reactions. It’s the part that strikes you down with fear and then later on gives you the craving to eat, drink or take drugs. The Amygdala is the local nightclub.
Since Trauma Town took over, the nightclub has been BOOMING.
Everyday people flock to the nightclub. They try to drink their problems away, there are people taking drugs in the toilets and the kebab van outside has a queue down the street.
All of the intelligent, ambitious and focused people who worked across the town now come to the nightclub every night of the week. They stay up late, wake up hungover, and repeat the cycle all over again.
But all is not lost for Trauma Town.
With the right expert team, with the right plans in place, and with the willingness of all the residents of Trauma Town to do their part, in less than a 12-weeks this once beautiful town could be restored to its former glory.
Danny Greeves, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Danny is a multi-award winning professional therapist, coach, hypnotist, author, and speaker. His mission is to change the landscape of trauma therapy and help people reduce and resolve painful or traumatic memories. Danny was featured in USA TODAY as being in the top 9 coaches globally to help you level up your life in 2022. He has published and authored multiple books including ‘Accelerated Trauma Resolution’, the step-by-step guide to overcome trauma; as well as the 5-star reviewed ‘Six Steps to Self Confidence'. Danny works with private clients on a 1-2-1 basis in addition to corporate clients including the likes of Google. He has appeared on a range of podcasts and radio shows sharing wisdom to help in the search for inner peace and confidence.
