What Is Going On Inside of Me Because of What Happened to Me?

What if the behavior we see on the outside is only part of the story?

Last week on The Courageous Journey, I talked about changing the question from “What’s wrong with me?” to “What happened to me?” and eventually, “What happened inside of me because of what happened to me?”

This week, we start answering that question.

Trauma isn’t only something that happened in the past. Our experiences can influence how our brains and bodies respond in the present—including our nervous system, perception of safety, attention, memory, emotional responses, decision-making, sensory processing, and behavior.

In this episode, I break down what can happen when the brain perceives danger and why the danger can be over while the brain and body are still responding to what they learned during it.

I also share my own experience of beginning to understand reactions I once judged in myself, including the “Bob Evans story” I often use in my professional trainings. It’s an example of what can happen when the past and present collide—and why understanding what is happening underneath a behavior can completely change the questions we ask.

We also talk about an important distinction: understanding does not remove accountability.

The goal isn’t to assume trauma explains every behavior or to diagnose someone based on what we see. It’s to recognize that behavior is visible, while the mechanisms producing it often are not.

Sometimes the most important thing we can do is replace certainty with curiosity.

IN THIS EPISODE

• How trauma can affect the brain, body, and nervous system
• Why the brain prioritizes survival when it perceives danger
• Fight, flight, freeze, and survival responses
• How past experiences can collide with the present
• What we really mean when we talk about “triggers”
• My Bob Evans story and what it taught me about trauma
• How perceived danger can affect memory, processing, communication, and decision-making
• Why someone may appear difficult when they are actually having difficulty
• How understanding my own brain changed the way I approach healing and rehabilitation
• Why curiosity is not diagnosis
• Why understanding and accountability can exist together
• Questions professionals, families, and all of us can ask before judging behavior

CHAPTERS

00:00 — What happened inside of me?
Introducing this week’s question and why understanding what happens beneath behavior matters.

03:18 — What do we actually mean by trauma?
Moving beyond words like “triggered,” “dysregulated,” and “trauma-informed” to understand what may actually be happening in the brain and body.

04:05 — Your brain is constantly processing safety
How the brain takes in information and why survival can take priority over reasoning, planning, memory, and social expectations.

05:30 — Fight, flight, freeze & survival responses
Understanding these responses as protective mechanisms rather than simply personality traits or conscious choices.

08:14 — When the danger is over but the response remains
Why the end of an event doesn’t necessarily mean every system in the brain and body immediately returns to baseline.

09:46 — My Bob Evans story: when past and present collide
How the smell of bacon, childhood trauma, exhaustion, and a difficult EMS call came together in a reaction I didn’t understand at the time.

11:52 — What is a trigger, really?
How smells, sounds, voices, facial expressions, environments, medical procedures, and other sensory information can become connected to previous experiences.

13:44 — What perceived threat can change
Attention, concentration, memory, processing, emotional regulation, decision-making, communication, and the ability to organize thoughts.

14:44 — Looking at behavior in real life
Using real-world examples to understand what difficulty organizing thoughts and processing information can look like from the outside.

16:08 — What EMS taught me about the brain under stress
How even trained professionals experience changes in attention and priorities during critical situations.

17:43 — What might actually be underneath the behavior?
Anger, distraction, forgetfulness, shutdown, agitation, inconsistency, avoidance, and overwhelm may not tell us the whole story.

19:00 — Replace certainty with curiosity
Why “being difficult” and “having difficulty” can look remarkably similar from the outside.

20:08 — Behavior is visible. The mechanisms often aren’t.
Understanding why curiosity doesn’t require us to diagnose someone—it simply asks us to acknowledge what we may not know.

20:50 — Looking back at the version of me I didn’t understand
Reflecting on the years when my symptoms, reactions, and limitations were judged by me and by people around me.

22:09 — What changed when I started understanding my brain
Learning about trauma, brain injury, strangulation, sensory processing, memory, and neurorehabilitation helped seemingly random experiences begin to make sense.

24:03 — Learning to recognize my own patterns
Moving from “Why am I like this?” to asking what information my brain is receiving, what is overwhelming it, what it needs, and what I can change.

25:19 — Understanding does NOT remove accountability
Why understanding a nervous-system response isn’t an excuse for behavior—and can actually give us more opportunity to respond differently.

26:53 — Turning the question outward
What healthcare, EMS, law enforcement, courts, advocacy, schools, families, and relationships can learn from looking beyond behavior.

28:48 — Your challenge for this week
Don’t diagnose yourself or someone else. Start noticing. What are you assuming the behavior means, and what information might you be missing?

THIS WEEK’S TAKEAWAY

Behavior is something we can see. The mechanisms producing it often aren’t.

Curiosity doesn’t require us to know exactly what is happening inside another person. It simply requires us to recognize that we may not know.

Understanding isn’t where responsibility ends.

Sometimes, understanding is where responsibility finally becomes possible.

And sometimes the behavior is the part we can see.

The story underneath it is the part we still need to understand.

Healing begins with understanding.

— Paula Walters
The Courageous Journey