Stress-related disorders are a way of categorizing groups of symptoms that you may experience after a traumatic event, such as a natural disaster or car accident, or as the result of having grown up in an environment of emotional neglect, physical abuse, and/or with caretakers who were unpredictable and unsafe, perhaps due to their substance use disorder or incarceration (CDC, 2021). These symptoms fall into two categories of trauma-related disorders, often referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD (WHO, 2021), respectively. Both PTSD and complex PTSD can have a lasting effect on a person’s everyday life experience.

Formally speaking, stress-related disorders can be diagnosed as major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, acute stress disorder, and even dissociative identity disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2022) among others, including personality disorders. 

Some of the symptoms of these disorders include the following:

• Recurrent, intrusive distressing memories of traumatic event(s)

• Nightmares: recurrent, distressing dreams related to traumatic event(s)

• Flashbacks that feel like the event is happening in the moment

• Intense/prolonged distress at exposure to internal or external cues that resemble an aspect of the traumatic event(s)

• Avoidance of anything associated with the traumatic event(s)

• Inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event(s)

• Significantly diminished interest in activities that were once meaningful

• Feelings of detachment from others

• Persistent inability to experience positive emotions (e.g., happiness, satisfaction, or loving feelings)

• Persistent negative emotional state (e.g., fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame)

• Persistent negative beliefs (e.g., “I am bad,” “The world is a dangerous place")

• Insomnia or restless sleep

• Irritable behavior and angry outbursts

• Difficulty concentrating

• Hypervigilance

• Exaggerated startle response

• Reckless or self-destructive behavior

(American Psychiatric Association, 2022)

There are many theories as to why we experience stress-related disorders and symptoms, and as research continues, we are able to gain a better insight as to what is happening.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, in his book The Body Keeps the Score, describes the connection between trauma and stress-related disorders and symptoms. The research done by him and many others has helped demonstrate that emotional trauma isn’t just a cognitive, thinking issue: It’s a body issue, meaning that when a person experiences a traumatic event, the sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and sensations of the experience are stored maladaptively—meaning, incorrectly—in the body, specifically in the central nervous system, and in what he calls “the emotional brain."

“The emotional brain,” describes van der Kolk, “is at the heart of the central nervous system, and its key task is to look out for your welfare. If it detects danger ... it alerts you by releasing a squirt of hormones ... The resulting visceral sensations ... will interfere with whatever your mind is currently focused on and get you moving—physically and mentally—in a different direction,” he explains (2014, p. 57).

The emotional brain can be affected by trauma and begin to malfunction, sensing danger when you are actually safe, and thus releasing hormones and neurochemicals that then affect how you feel, behave, and perceive the world (Van der Kolk, 2014). This is often called a PTSD response, and it is generally an unpleasant and unwanted experience. Moreover, it often serves as the root cause of many stress-related disorders and symptoms (Van der Kolk, 2014)—those exact symptoms we often work so hard to avoid.

All of this information and understanding is of little use if you can’t use it to help you heal from the damage caused to your body and brain by emotional trauma.

For decades, the general understanding has been that various types of talk therapy with a trusted counselor are the key to recovering from emotional trauma. In recent years, however, a multitude of studies have indicated that healing from emotional trauma involves working with the whole person, including the body and the brain (Van der Kolk, 2014).

Duros and Crowly (2014) offer the following explanation:

“Current research reveals that ... trauma is actually something that happens deep in the core of the brain and the body [and thus] the most effective treatment approaches integrate traditional therapy modalities with those that focus on calming the nervous system” (p. ).

In this website, we will explore three body-brain approaches to healing that are shown to be among the most studied and supported treatments for emotional trauma: EMDR, neurofeedback, and trauma-sensitive yoga.

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.). https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787

Anxiety & Depression Association of America (ADAA). (2024, October 31). What is depression? https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/depression

Anxiety & Depression Association of America (ADAA). (2022, October 28). Anxiety disorders: Facts & statistics. https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics

CDC. (2021, April 26). About the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/about.html

Duros, P. & Crowley, D. (2014). The body comes to therapy too. Clinical Social Work Journal, 42(3):237-246. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-014-0486-1 

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

World Health Organization (WHO). (2021). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems (11th ed.). https://icd.who.int/