Healing Isn’t Linear: Trauma, Neuroscience, and the Soul
We live in a culture that prizes resolution. Stories must conclude, pain must pass, and healing is often spoken of in stages, as though it were a checklist. But healing from complex trauma does not follow this script. It is not tidy, not quick, and not always visible. For those of us living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), the healing process is neither linear nor complete. It is cyclical, sacred, and for me, deeply rooted in both science and faith.
Unlike standard PTSD, which typically follows a single, identifiable traumatic event, C-PTSD arises from repeated, sustained abuse or neglect. It is often the legacy of a childhood where safety was uncertain, trust was betrayed, or the emotional environment was chronically unstable. While not officially recognised in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), it is acknowledged by the International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision (ICD-11), and increasingly recognised by clinicians around the world (World Health Organization, 2018).
C-PTSD affects how we form relationships, how we respond to stress, how we perceive ourselves, and how we process emotions. It often includes symptoms of dissociation, emotional numbing, chronic shame, persistent anxiety, and a fragmented sense of identity. These are not character flaws. They are neurobiological adaptations to chronic danger.
As a former paediatric neurosurgeon, I have seen how delicate and vulnerable the brain is. I have also seen its power to rewire and adapt. But adaptation comes at a cost. Trauma leaves fingerprints on brain structures that shape our thoughts, feelings, and bodily responses.
Three areas of the brain are especially impacted:
Amygdala: The amygdala processes fear and threat detection. In trauma survivors, this region is often hyperactive, leading to a persistent state of hypervigilance or emotional overwhelm (Shin et al., 2006).
Hippocampus: This region governs memory and context. In C-PTSD, the hippocampus can shrink, impairing memory formation and distorting time perception, which is why flashbacks feel so vivid and real (Bremner et al., 1995).
Prefrontal Cortex: Responsible for logical thinking, impulse control, and emotional regulation, this area becomes underactive in trauma, making it harder to self-soothe or respond rationally during stress (Koenigs and Grafman, 2009).
These changes are not imagined. They are physically observable through imaging technologies like fMRI and PET scans. Trauma, especially prolonged trauma, rewires the brain to survive rather than thrive.
Operating on children's brains taught me something secular medicine rarely admits: that healing is more than physiology. I have operated on infants whose brains were riddled with glioblastomas, aggressive tumours that infiltrate white matter with devastating speed. Even after successful resections, many of these children faced uncertain futures. Some recovered beyond expectation. Others did not. The outcomes were not always predictable based on scans.
I learned, time and again, that healing is not simply a matter of tissue. There is a mystery to it. I could excise the tumour, but I could not restore hope to a grieving mother. I could monitor a brain’s swelling, but I could not mend the fracture of a family’s spirit.
The same is true for trauma. Psychotherapy, medication, and neuroscience offer us powerful tools, and I am grateful for them. But I have also learned that the soul needs tending. What we cannot repair biologically may only be restored spiritually.
There is a growing awareness among trauma theorists that recovery must be holistic. Dr Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, notes that healing from trauma requires integration not just of memory, but of bodily experience and meaning-making (van der Kolk, 2014).
Meaning-making is where faith enters.
Faith gave me a language to name what could not be explained by neurology. When shame overwhelmed me, Scripture reminded me that I was known and loved. When dissociation fractured my awareness, prayer brought me into real presence. When I could not trust myself or others, I trusted God.
Catholicism, in particular, offers a theology of suffering that does not pathologise pain. In Christ’s Passion, we see a God who does not remove suffering from the world, but who enters into it. This understanding allowed me to stop seeing my wounds as things to be ashamed of and start seeing them as places where grace could dwell.
Saint John Paul II once said, “In suffering, there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ.” I have found this to be true. It is in my weakest, most disoriented moments that I have drawn closest to God.
Healing from complex trauma is not like recovering from a fracture. It is more like learning to walk again after spinal surgery. You have to retrain your nervous system, your perception, your capacity for safety. Sometimes, you regress. Sometimes you break down. And still, you continue.
I have had good months, followed by hard years. I have had days where prayer felt like lifeline and others where it felt like dust. But over time, something in me shifted. The faith that once felt like effort began to feel like home.
Healing, in my experience, is a slow re-weaving of everything that was unravelled. It requires truth. It requires silence. It requires the mercy of God. And, perhaps most importantly, it requires that we do not do it alone.
If you are someone living with complex trauma, I want to tell you this:
You are not broken beyond repair. Your trauma is not your identity. And your brain, though changed by pain, is capable of renewal.
You are not weak for needing faith. You are not foolish for seeking God. You are not wrong to grieve the time it has taken to feel whole again.
Healing is not linear. It is sacred. And you are not alone.
Further Reading and Sources