For a long time, I didn’t think my trauma was affecting me that much. I wasn’t having flashbacks. I wasn’t crying every day. I told myself I was functioning.
But then there were the mornings I couldn’t get out of bed. Not because I was tired or lazy, but because the thought of going into an unhealthy workplace situation triggered such overwhelming anxiety that I felt physically ill. My body simply refused. The fear wasn’t abstract – it was in my stomach, my chest, my limbs. Some mornings, the weight of it was so crushing I couldn’t move.
And then I’d find myself drinking an entire bottle of wine after a hard day, telling myself I “deserved it.” Or I’d get feedback from my boss – constructive, even kind feedback – and feel myself physically shrink, my chest tightening, wanting to disappear. Or I’d realize I’d spent three hours scrolling social media to avoid the hollow feeling that crept in during quiet moments.
Trauma, I’ve learned, doesn’t always announce itself. It operates in the background, shaping how we move through the world in ways we don’t even notice until we start paying attention.
Finding a Framework That Made Sense
When I came across Dr. Jim Hopper’s work on key brain circuitries, something clicked.
Hopper is a psychologist who has spent over two decades researching trauma, teaching about its effects, and working to translate neuroscience into something actually useful for healing. His framework focuses on six brain circuitries that are particularly relevant to understanding suffering and recovery: fear, seeking, satisfaction, embodiment, default mode, and executive function.
What makes his approach different is that these circuitries are accessible to our awareness – we can actually notice them operating in our daily lives. And because we can become aware of them, we can begin to exercise some choice over how we use them. This isn’t just theoretical neuroscience; it’s a practical tool for understanding why we do what we do, especially when we’re struggling.
Hopper describes how these circuitries interact to create what he calls “cycles of suffering” – self-perpetuating patterns where our seeking circuitry (which drives all motivated behavior) gets focused on avoiding pain rather than pursuing genuine satisfaction. But he also describes “cycles of healing” – ways to redirect these same brain systems toward actual recovery and lasting happiness.
Reading his work, I realized he was describing exactly what I’d been living but couldn’t name. Here was a way to understand not just trauma itself, but how it shows up in the mundane moments of daily life – in that instinct to reach for the wine bottle, in that body-level shrinking when criticized, in those hours lost to distraction, in the mornings I couldn’t get out of bed.
His framework gave me language for patterns I couldn’t see before, and more importantly, it suggested these patterns could actually change.
The Fear Circuitry: Always Scanning
The fear circuitry is like a smoke detector that never turns off. It’s constantly monitoring for threats – not just physical danger, but anything unpleasant or unwanted. For someone with trauma, that smoke detector can be oversensitive, trained by past experiences to see danger everywhere.
When my boss gives me feedback, my fear circuitry doesn’t distinguish between “constructive criticism” and “threat to my safety/worth/survival.” It just registers: Unpleasant. Unwanted. Danger. My body responds before my conscious mind can even process what’s happening – muscles tensing, breath shortening, that instinct to make myself smaller.
But the mornings I can’t get out of bed – that’s the fear circuitry at full volume. The thought of walking into a workplace that feels unsafe triggers such an extreme response that my entire system shuts down. It’s not a choice. It’s my body saying: I cannot do this. This is not survivable.
What’s hardest to explain to people who haven’t experienced this is how physical it is. It’s not just worry or dread in my mind. My stomach churns. My chest feels like it’s caving in. I’m exhausted before the day even begins. Sometimes I genuinely feel like I might throw up. My body has decided this situation is a threat, and it’s responding accordingly.
I’ve realized my fear circuitry has been shaped by experiences where certain situations were dangerous, where someone’s disapproval did mean I wasn’t safe, where staying in an unhealthy environment did cause real harm. My brain learned well. Maybe too well. Now it sounds the alarm even when I’m not sure there’s a fire.
The Seeking Circuitry: What Am I Really Looking For?
This was the revelation that hit hardest. The seeking circuitry drives all motivated behavior – everything we want and pursue requires this circuitry. The question isn’t whether it’s active (it always is), but what is it seeking?
When I reach for that bottle of wine after a hard day, I’m seeking escape. When I scroll mindlessly for hours, I’m seeking distraction. When I overwork to the point of exhaustion, I’m seeking… validation? Worth? Proof that I’m not what the trauma told me I was?
Hopper writes about how trauma survivors often get stuck in a pattern of seeking “quick fixes” – any experience that offers immediate escape from suffering. That’s me. The wine, the scrolling, the workaholism, even the ruminating and replaying conversations in my head. All of it is my seeking circuitry trying desperately to escape from something.
But here’s what I didn’t understand before: seeking escape is still seeking. My brain’s powerful drive to want and pursue things hasn’t disappeared – it’s just been redirected toward avoidance instead of toward what might actually heal me or make me happy.
The question I’m learning to ask myself: What am I actually seeking right now? A brief escape, or something that will genuinely satisfy me?
Cycles of Suffering I Recognize
Hopper describes two common cycles of suffering that perfectly map onto my experience:
The Fear/Anxiety Cycle: My fear circuitry activates (boss’s feedback, social situation, quiet moment where memories surface – or just the thought of walking into an unhealthy workplace). Immediately, my seeking circuitry kicks in: escape this feeling.
Sometimes that escape is the wine, the distraction, the overwork, the rumination. But sometimes the fear is so overwhelming that my body’s only escape option is to shut down entirely. I can’t get out of bed. I call in sick. I avoid the situation completely. And while this brings temporary relief – I don’t have to face the thing that terrifies me – it also brings shame, more anxiety about consequences, and a deepening sense that I can’t handle my own life.
The behavior ends, and the anxiety returns – sometimes worse, because now I’m also anxious about the drinking, or ashamed of calling in sick again, or exhausted from overworking to “make up” for the day I missed.
The Depression/Defeat Cycle: Sometimes the seeking circuitry just… shuts down. I can’t imagine things getting better. I don’t expect good things. I’m not motivated to pursue anything meaningful. The only seeking that remains is low-level escape – scrolling, sleeping, numbing.
And then comes the shame. The crushing feeling that I’m a failure. That I should be able to handle this. That everyone else manages to get out of bed and go to work and I can’t even do that basic thing. This shame makes me withdraw completely – I go into myself and hide from everyone. I stay in bed, don’t leave the house, don’t answer texts.
This suppression of seeking, combined with zero satisfaction and overwhelming shame, creates this terrible demoralization. I can’t live up to my own values, can’t be the person I want to be, and that makes everything worse.
Reading Hopper’s descriptions, I felt seen in a way I hadn’t before. These aren’t character flaws. This is my brain trying to protect me with strategies that once helped me survive but now keep me stuck.
The Embodiment Circuitry: Living Outside My Body
One insight that’s been both difficult and illuminating: trauma has affected how I experience my own body. Hopper talks about the embodiment circuitry – how we process sensations from within our bodies.
I’ve realized I spend a lot of time not really in my body. When difficult feelings arise, I disconnect. I go into my head. I become numb. It’s protective – if I don’t feel it, it can’t hurt me.
Sleep has become one of the clearest windows into this. When something triggers bad memories – a conversation, a situation at work, even just a smell or sound that my brain connects to the past – my body won’t let me rest. I lie awake, heart racing, replaying things, or I fall asleep only to wake up at 3 AM with that familiar tightness in my chest. My embodiment circuitry is flooded with sensations of threat, and my body stays vigilant even when I’m exhausted.
But this disconnection creates a problem: all the truly good things in life also involve bodily sensations. Connection, love, peace, joy – these aren’t just thoughts. They’re felt experiences. By disconnecting from uncomfortable sensations, I’ve also disconnected from the possibility of feeling genuinely satisfied or content.
The wine helps with this too, I realize now. It’s not just about escaping anxiety; it’s about creating pleasant bodily sensations when I’ve lost access to natural ones. And when I can’t sleep, sometimes I drink hoping it will quiet my body enough to rest.
What Healing Might Look Like
Hopper describes two fundamental healing cycles, and for the first time, I can see a path forward that makes sense:
Seeking to Engage and Transform Suffering: Instead of seeking escape from pain, seeking to understand it. This terrifies me, honestly. The whole point has been to not feel these things. But Hopper emphasizes this has to be done safely, with support, with new skills for managing difficult feelings.
Understanding that my withdrawal and hiding is my body trying to shield me from the world has helped me become more aware of the pattern. I can notice now when I’m starting to spiral – when the shame begins, when I want to disappear from everyone’s life.
And I’ve started doing something that feels incredibly difficult but also necessary: being honest. When I’m struggling, I tell my partner. I tell my friends. I tell my family. Not in a dramatic way, just: “I’m having a hard time right now. My anxiety is high,” or “I’m in that place where I feel like a failure and want to hide.”
Just the act of sharing helps. Shining a light on what’s happening makes me feel less alone. It also makes me feel like I’m taking some control of my own spiraling emotions instead of just being swept away by them. It’s a form of seeking – but seeking connection and support instead of escape and isolation.
Maybe that means therapy. Maybe it means learning to sit with discomfort for even thirty seconds before reaching for my phone. Maybe it means actually feeling the tightness in my chest when my boss gives feedback, and noticing it’s just a sensation – intense, but survivable. And maybe it means being honest when I’m not okay, even when shame tells me to hide.
Seeking True Goods: This is about redirecting my seeking circuitry toward what actually brings lasting satisfaction. Not quick fixes. Not escape. But real connection, real meaning, living according to my actual values.
When I’m in deep distress, my seeking circuitry often fixates on one fantasy: running away. Moving across the country to live in a cottage in some remote coastal village where no one knows me and I can start fresh. It’s so vivid – I can see the cottage, imagine the quiet, picture myself finally at peace.
But I’m learning to work with this fantasy differently. Instead of just escaping into it (which is its own form of avoidance), I’ve started asking myself: okay, if I did run away, what would I actually do there? What would make that imagined life meaningful?
And when I let myself daydream about the best possible version of that future – not just the escape but the actual living – something shifts. I would build community. I would garden and grow enough to share with neighbors. I would host dinners. I would read. I would work in a field that let me share my empathy and desire to help others.
These are the true goods I’m seeking, I realize. Not the cottage itself or the geographic distance from my problems. Connection. Generosity. Meaning. Using my pain to help others. These are what would actually satisfy me.
And here’s what I’m starting to understand: I don’t have to run away to a coastal village to seek these things. I could start building community here. I could start sharing what I have. I could start looking for work that aligns with my values. The seeking circuitry doesn’t have to be focused on escape – it can be focused on building the life I actually want, right where I am.
I’m not good at this yet. The fantasy of running away still feels easier than the work of building something real. But redirecting my daydreaming toward what I’d actually do with a life – any life, anywhere – helps me identify what’s truly worth seeking.
The Questions I’m Sitting With
Hopper’s framework has given me new questions to explore. Not questions I can answer easily or quickly, but ones that feel important to live with:
In this moment, what is my seeking circuitry focused on?
This is the question I’m trying to remember to ask myself throughout the day. When I reach for my phone, when I think about pouring that glass of wine, when I feel the urge to say yes to something I don’t actually want to do – what am I seeking?
Usually, if I’m honest, I’m seeking escape. Relief. Numbing. Distraction from something uncomfortable. But sometimes – and this is new – I catch myself and realize I could seek something else. I could text a friend. I could go for a walk. I could just sit with the uncomfortable feeling for sixty seconds and see if I survive it.
I’m not good at this yet. Most of the time I still reach for the escape. But asking the question itself feels like progress.
When I feel that familiar tightening, can I pause?
That tightening in my chest, the shrinking feeling, the nausea before going into work – these are my fear circuitry activating. For so long, these sensations just were danger. Body says danger, therefore danger.
But Hopper’s framework helps me see: my fear circuitry is doing its job. It learned to protect me. It’s still trying to protect me. But maybe – maybe – it’s protecting me from something that isn’t actually dangerous anymore, or at least not as dangerous as my nervous system thinks it is.
Can I pause when I feel these sensations? Can I notice them without immediately seeking escape? Can I say, even just to myself, “This is my fear circuitry. It’s trying to help. But I might be safe right now”?
Some mornings when I can’t get out of bed, this feels impossible. The fear is too big, too physical, too overwhelming. But other times – when the trigger is smaller – I’m starting to practice this pause. It doesn’t make the sensation go away, but sometimes it loosens its grip just enough.
What would it feel like to occupy my embodiment circuitry with something other than fear?
This question breaks my heart a little, because I realize how much of my life my body has been occupied with anxiety, with the aftermath of triggers, with the vigilance that keeps me awake at night replaying conversations and scenarios.
What would it feel like to experience safety in my body? Contentment? Peace?
I’m not sure I know. Or maybe I’ve felt it in brief moments and didn’t recognize it because I’m so accustomed to the other sensations.
I’m curious about this, though. What if I could learn to notice moments when my body isn’t tight? When my breath comes easily? What if I could spend even five minutes occupying my embodiment circuitry with pleasant sensations – warmth of sun, comfort of a soft blanket, the satisfaction of a good meal?
It sounds simple, but for someone whose body has been on high alert for so long, it feels almost revolutionary.
What are the “true goods” I actually value?
This is the question that keeps me up at night – and not in the triggered, anxious way. In a yearning way.
I know what I’m seeking now isn’t it. The wine bottle isn’t a true good. The endless scrolling isn’t a true good. Avoiding situations that scare me brings temporary relief but not genuine satisfaction.
So what do I actually value? What would bring me lasting satisfaction rather than just brief escape?
I think it’s connection – real, honest connection where I don’t have to perform or hide. I think it’s creating something meaningful. I think it’s living according to my actual values instead of just surviving. I think it’s being able to sleep through the night because my body feels safe enough to rest.
But here’s what’s hard: my seeking circuitry has been focused on escape for so long that I’m not entirely sure how to redirect it. How do I seek true goods when quick fixes are what my brain has learned to reach for?
I don’t have the answer yet. But asking the question feels important. And maybe recognizing that the wine, the avoidance, the distractions aren’t actually what I value – maybe that’s the first step toward seeking something that is.
Trauma’s Invisible Impact
I’m learning that trauma doesn’t have to be dramatic to be real. It shows up in how I reach for the wine bottle. In how I physically contract when criticized. In those lost hours of distraction. In the constant, exhausting vigilance of my fear circuitry. In a seeking circuitry that’s been hijacked toward escape instead of fulfillment. In the mornings I can’t leave my bed. In the nights I can’t sleep.
Understanding these brain circuitries hasn’t fixed anything yet. But it’s given me a map. A way to recognize patterns I couldn’t see before. A framework for understanding that these aren’t failures of willpower or character – they’re my brain doing what it learned to do to keep me safe.
And maybe, with support and practice and patience, I can learn to work with these circuitries differently. To redirect my seeking toward what might actually heal me. To feel my feelings without being destroyed by them. To occupy my body with sensations of safety and satisfaction instead of fear and craving.
Writing this post – starting this whole blog – is itself a form of redirecting my seeking circuitry. I’m learning about trauma and how to heal from it, and I’m sharing it with the world in case it helps someone else recognize their own patterns. Sharing helps me. It’s a way of taking control of my spiraling emotions, of transforming my own suffering into something that might have meaning beyond just my pain.
It’s seeking connection instead of isolation. Seeking understanding instead of escape. And maybe, in some small way, it’s seeking to engage and transform suffering – mine and possibly others’ – rather than just running from it.
That’s what I’m working toward. One moment at a time. One choice at a time. Learning to notice when trauma is showing up in the invisible ways, and choosing – when I can – a different response.
If you’re recognizing yourself in these patterns, please know you’re not alone, and this isn’t something you have to figure out by yourself. Working with a trauma-informed therapist can provide the safety and support needed to engage with suffering and redirect seeking toward genuine healing. Dr. Hopper’s complete framework is available at jimhopper.com.