Psychological Trauma is Like a Brain Stroke

When you experience a profound psychological trauma, such as the betrayal trauma from a scam, the aftermath can feel like your own mind has turned against you.

It can be difficult to understand why you can’t think clearly, why your emotions feel overwhelming, or why simple tasks suddenly feel monumental. To help make sense of this, it can be useful to think of trauma not just as an emotional event, but as a neurological event that, in some ways, mirrors the effects of a physical brain injury like a stroke. While the causes are vastly different, the outcome, a specific and debilitating inhibition of certain brain functions, can be strikingly similar.

A stroke occurs when blood flow to a specific region of the brain is interrupted, starving that area of oxygen and causing it to shut down. The result is not a generalized weakness, but a specific deficit. If the stroke affects the motor cortex, a person might lose the ability to move an arm. If it impacts the language centers, they may struggle to speak or understand words. The part of the brain responsible for that function has been incapacitated.

Psychological trauma produces a similar kind of targeted incapacitation, but the mechanism is chemical and electrical rather than vascular. During a traumatic event, your brain is flooded with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This triggers a massive, life-preserving response from your most primitive brain structures, like the amygdala, the fear center, and the brainstem, which controls the fight, flight, or freeze response. To ensure your survival, your brain diverts resources away from its more advanced, rational regions. The prefrontal cortex, your center for logic, planning, and emotional regulation, is effectively taken offline. Your hippocampus, vital for forming coherent memories, is also suppressed.

This is why, in the days, weeks, and even years following a trauma, you may feel as if you have suffered a “psychological stroke.”

You might find yourself unable to access the very functions that once defined you. The part of your brain that governs emotional balance may seem damaged, leaving you in a state of constant hyper-arousal or numbness. The part that allows you to think through a problem calmly is inhibited, making you feel reactive and impulsive. The part that organizes memories into a clear timeline is compromised, which is why traumatic memories often feel fragmented, intrusive, and disconnected from the past.

You are not broken or weak; a vital part of your cognitive machinery has been temporarily shut down by the overwhelming shock of the event.

Understanding this parallel is not meant to be discouraging; it is meant to be validating. Just as a stroke patient is not blamed for their inability to walk, you should not blame yourself for your inability to regulate your emotions or think straight. Your brain is responding exactly as it was designed to in the face of overwhelming threat.

The good news is that, unlike the permanent or sustained damage from a major stroke, the brain’s response to trauma is often a functional state, not a permanent structural one. With time, safety, and targeted therapeutic work, the connections between your rational brain and your emotional brain can be repaired. You can learn to bring the prefrontal cortex back online, to calm the amygdala, and to process the memories that are stuck.

Healing is the process of rehabilitating these “injured” parts of your brain, slowly and patiently restoring the functions that were temporarily lost.

Prof. Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
December 2025