Although trauma symptoms may make you feel depressed, symptoms of PND and traumatic stress are very different. Women with post-traumatic stress symptoms do not suffer the feeling of lethargy and lack of motivation, experienced by those with PND. They are more likely to often feel on high alert. They may experience anxiety and panic attacks, nightmares and flashbacks to their experience. They may find their experience too distressing too talk about, or they may actively avoid conversations, people and places that trigger their memory of their traumatic experience.

Birth trauma can occur in anyone who has experienced or witnessed a traumatic labour, birth or postnatal incident, where there is fear for the safety or even the life of the mother and/or baby. Birth trauma can also develop due to a feeling of lack of control, loss of dignity, exposure, not feeling listened to, feelings of violation, lack of effective pain relief, staff attitudes and perceived poor care. Any of these experiences can lead to birth trauma and we all experience things differently. What may be perceived from the outside as a straightforward birth may be experienced by the woman and her partner as extremely traumatising.

Birth trauma can also affect birth partners and staff members who have witnessed the event. Left untreated this vicarious trauma may lead to anxiety, depression, trauma symptoms and can contribute to changes in relationships.

When a traumatic event happens, around 80% of affected people will naturally be able to process their trauma memories, and this usually takes place over a few weeks. Memories of their trauma will now no longer cause unpleasant and unwanted symptoms. However, the remaining 20% may be left with symptoms of trauma, such as:

• Flashbacks (reliving the event in your mind)
• Nightmares
• Anxiety
• Avoiding places, people or conversations that trigger negative feelings or memories
• Sweating
• Raised heart rate
• Shaking/trembling
• Intrusive thoughts
• Difficulty sleeping
• Difficulty concentrating
• A feeling of detachment from reality

The neuroscience behind how memories are stored plays a large part in how we can develop post-traumatic stress symptoms. The brain is amazing in the way it works, it has so many functions. One is to process and store memories so that we can revisit them whenever we want, another is to keep us safe. The way we understand this is by thinking of it as three main parts.

The first part of the brain acts like our personal secretary (the hippocampus), filing the events we experience into the second part, a place where memories are stored (the neocortex); we like to think about this second part as a big filing cabinet. The secretary knows what is going on and is able to add the narrative/story to the memories and put it all into context, such as time and place. So, for example, all your holiday memories will be filed together in your holiday memories file, where you went, time of year, good and bad, even if it was a really awful holiday and it rained for a fortnight!

However, during times of stress the third part of the brain (the amygdala) takes over and the brain processes what is happening in a different way. This area of the brain acts like a body guard, it is there to activate your fight, flight, freeze response to keep you safe. You have a surge of stress hormones throughout your body to prepare you to take the necessary actions. When this happens, your personal secretary goes off-line, so you are unable to process memories of this event in the normal way.

Following the event, when things are calm again the brain is usually able to process these memories and file them correctly. However, sometimes these memories remain stuck with the body guard, they are not filed away and the emotions attached to that experience, such as fear and anxiety remain with them. Thinking back to these memories causes you to feel the attached emotions. In addition, because the body guard is always on high alert, if anything reminds it of the traumatic event, however small, it could just be something like a sound or a smell, even someone’s hair colour – something you may not consciously have noticed. This causes the body guard to trigger that fight, flight freeze response, and because there is no context attached to that memory it could trigger flashbacks and anxiety attacks, seemingly out of the blue.

Birth Trauma Resolution uses a range of gentle therapies to enable your brain process your trauma memories and file them away in their rightful place with your other normal memories. These memories will now be in context, complete with the narrative/story attached to them. They will no longer have emotional connections attached, so that you can revisit them whenever you wish, without experiencing the unpleasant symptoms that they used to make you feel.