Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) When in a traumatic situation the brain doesn’t have time to respond in the way it usually processes information, because the situation may be life threatening or challenge fundamental beliefs about ourselves. What the brain does is release a chemical that shuts down communication to the thinking part of the brain, from the instinctive part that controls fight/flight. The part of the brain called the thalamus triggers this as it is like a gate keeper, watching out for threat, problems occur when threats are perceived where none are present. We want this to happen if we are in a life or death situation as we need to just react, not think about what we have to do to react, i.e put one foot in front of the other to run, we just want to do it, in order to save our lives. What that means is the events that happen just get ‘filed’ anywhere and not stored through the usual process of committing something to memory, for example, you can reme