Imagine you’re sitting around a campfire with friends on a cool summer evening. The fire is warm, inviting, and comforting. As the night goes on, you get distracted, lose your balance, and stumble too close to the flames. The intense heat burns your leg. Instantly, your body responds.
Nerves in your skin send pain signals racing to your brain. Stress hormones like adrenaline flood your bloodstream. Your heart begins to race. Your muscles tense. Your attention becomes completely focused on the threat. In a matter of seconds, your brain starts recording everything about the experience and not just the physical pain, but the emotions attached to it as well.
The brain is constantly asking questions like:
- What just happened?
- Am I safe?
- How do I prevent this from happening again?
The stronger the emotional experience, the stronger the memory often becomes.
Months later, when you walk toward another campfire, something interesting happens. You may find yourself automatically keeping a greater distance. You may become more alert around the flames. Your heart rate may increase slightly as you get close. You may even feel a moment of caution or uneasiness before you’ve consciously thought about the previous burn.
Your body remembers.
Your brain stored the experience and created associations designed to protect you in the future. The sight of flames, the smell of smoke, the crackling sound of burning wood, or the sensation of heat on your skin may all serve as reminders that activate the body’s protective systems. This is actually a gift from God. Our brains were designed to learn from danger. The memory of pain helps keep us safe from future harm. But what happens when the danger isn’t a campfire? What happens when the experience involves violence, neglect, addiction, abandonment, abuse, chronic poverty, or years of instability?
The same God-designed systems that protect us from physical danger also learn from emotional and relational pain. The brain and body begin creating protective responses to those experiences as well. Long after the original danger has passed, a person may still experience heightened alertness, fear, anxiety, distrust, emotional numbness, or a constant sense of being on guard.
Researchers call this the impact of trauma. In other words, experiences don’t simply live in our memories. They can become embedded in our nervous systems, relationships, behaviors, and physical health. Author and psychiatrist Dr. Bessel van der Kolk summarized this reality in the title of his bestselling book, The Body Keeps the Score.
What this means, is that long after the original danger has passed, the body may continue responding as if the threat remains. Understanding this reality helps explain much of what we see, and seek to heal, on Billings’ South Side.
Trauma Is More Than a Memory
For decades, scientists believed trauma was primarily an emotional issue. Today, we know it affects the entire person. Research has linked significant adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) to increased rates of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, sleep disorders, relationship challenges, and even reduced life expectancy.
Trauma changes the way the brain interprets danger. The nervous system can become stuck in survival mode long after the original threat has passed. As a result, someone may overreact to conflict, struggle to trust others, feel constantly exhausted, become emotionally numb, have difficulty concentrating, or turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms.
What looks like a poor decision or bad behavior on the surface is often rooted in a nervous system that learned survival before it learned safety.
The ACE Study Changed Everything
One of the most influential studies on trauma is known as the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. Researchers discovered a direct relationship between childhood adversity and future health outcomes. The study examined experiences such as physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, neglect, domestic violence, substance abuse in the home, mental illness within the household, incarceration of a family member, and divorce or abandonment.
The findings were striking. As ACE scores increased, so did the likelihood of serious physical health problems, emotional struggles, relationship difficulties, and economic challenges later in life. The study fundamentally changed how many professionals view human behavior. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with this person?” the better question became, “What happened to this person?”
The good news is that there have been more studies in how healing is possible for people with poor scores! We recently wrote 2 blogs referencing a new study that was published and the approaches to restorative healing and building resilience. Read those blogs here and here.
The South Side Story
Many families on Billings’ South Side have experienced multiple layers of adversity, including generational poverty, housing instability, addiction, violence, family disruption, and educational barriers. When these challenges persist across years and generations, they create what researchers call toxic stress.
The result isn’t simply financial hardship. It is often a community carrying a significant trauma burden. At CLDI, we regularly encounter individuals whose ACE scores are far higher than the national average. Many have experienced multiple forms of adversity before reaching adulthood.
Yet their stories are not defined by trauma. They are defined by resilience. The challenge is that resilience grows best in environments where healing, support, and hope are present.
Scripture Has Been Describing This Reality All Along
Long before neuroscience existed, Scripture recognized the interconnectedness of the human person. David wrote, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Psalm 32:3). Notice the connection: emotional suffering became physical suffering.
Likewise, Proverbs teaches, “A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot” (Proverbs 14:30). The Bible consistently presents people as integrated beings with physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual dimensions. When one area suffers, the others feel the impact as well.
This understanding aligns remarkably well with what modern science continues to discover. God never intended healing to be fragmented because human beings were never created as fragmented people.
Why Information Alone Doesn’t Heal Trauma
Many people assume healing happens when someone simply learns better habits or receives more information. Trauma research tells a different story.
A person can know they are safe and still feel unsafe. They can understand what healthy relationships look like and still struggle to trust. They can desperately want change while remaining trapped in patterns that were formed years earlier.
Healing requires more than knowledge. It requires experiences of safety, connection, belonging, purpose, and hope. In other words, healing often happens in the context of healthy relationships and supportive communities. This is what they found in the recent study we mentioned above. Read it here and here if you missed it!
This Is Why CLDI Exists
CLDI’s work goes far beyond meeting immediate needs. We are helping create environments where restoration can take root and flourish.
Through youth development programs, mentoring relationships, community engagement, leadership development, educational support, and relationship-centered ministry, we address the deeper roots of brokenness rather than simply the symptoms.
Our goal is not merely to help people survive difficult circumstances. Our goal is to help people flourish. Every person bears the image of God, possesses inherent dignity, and deserves opportunities to heal, grow, and thrive. Through the power of Christ and community, stories can be rewritten and futures can be restored. Not by might, not by power, but by HIS Spirit!
A Question for All of Us
Before we view trauma as someone else’s issue, it’s worth remembering that many of us carry our own wounds. Our stories may be different, our circumstances may vary, and our experiences of adversity may not look the same, but all of us understand loss, fear, disappointment, betrayal, or pain. The science of trauma simply confirms what Scripture has long taught: our experiences shape us. Yet they do not have to define us.
Healing is possible. Restoration is possible. Hope is possible. And when communities come together to create environments where healing can happen, entire neighborhoods can be transformed.
Moving Forward Together
At CLDI, we believe restoration happens one relationship at a time. Every mentor, volunteer, donor, and community partner helps create spaces where healing can take root and people can move from survival toward flourishing. Together, we can help restore shalom to the South Side and partner with the Lord to Re-Story the 406!
Have you taken our “Trauma Assessment” to see if your body is remembering stress, trauma or negative experiences and holding onto it? If not, you can find it here.
