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Courtney Weatherburne Reporting
It's lunch time in the city and Belizeans are going about their day quite normally. Buying lunch, going home from school or simply walking and chatting with friends and co- workers.

But what's really happening in their brains? Although these interactions seem harmless, the dynamics of their thought process can be harmful.

Tina Augustus, Director of Project Heal, St. Martin De Porres
"She goes and she talks about the physical and I think sometimes when we start talking about the emotional effects of trauma, people don't always fully understand because what everybody carries is different and how trauma affects everybody is different. But when you actually start talking about the physical make up of our brain and how if you do a brain scan, you can see how your brain is being affected and you can see the actual effect of it physically. People seem to be connecting with it and one of the biggest message she is sending home is that there is a small part of the brain called "Amygdala," it's about the size of an almond and once that is activated in a child and an adult, it doesn't really matter who you are talking about, it's very hard for that person to learn, because what happens is it blocks the connection to the frontal cortex of our brain, which does the thinking, the decision making, the reasoning and so forth."

"So, she keeps on telling teachers and mental health professionals that of we don't spend the time to calm down ourselves, our children - our Amygdalas, we don't necessarily have our full learning capacity."

And this issue affects people from all cross sections of society.

Tina Augustus
"The most of our forte has been really dealing with survivors. She has worked in Uganda, in Nicaragua and various different areas that have had a lot of trauma, war trauma particularly. But she says a lot of the times you don't necessarily have to be exposed to war trauma to have the same level and effects and sometimes our streets alone can be like that. Like a kid might be scared, I want to go to that school, but it means crossing that street and the other street and that is traumatizing because I might be sitting at school thinking oh crap, I am going to go home, which street am I going to use, I don't want to get beat up today, I don't want to get harass today - it is definitely ongoing trauma. She use a very good word recently. She said we are saturated in trauma."

In order to deal with this trauma, you must strive to stay in the window of tolerance.

Tina Augustus
"Everybody window is vary. So, you might have a small window. Babies have the smallest, but as individual your window size varies and the window basically is we are all emotional beings. We all have an emotional brain, so we all go through the process. So it's not to say that we don't get emotional, we don't get angry, we don't get sad. The window of tolerance is a variance, so it goes up, it goes down. Now when you are outside of your window of tolerance, you have been triggered essentially. You've been triggered and so you are outside and the more somebody triggers you, the more you continue going up and the more defensive you are. Now when you are below, in my opinion, it's a little bit more alarming. Because when you are below, nothing really matters. You are at that point where well lash me if you want, hit me if you want, if I fail, I fail. So there becomes what we refer to as depersonalization, whereby it's like I really don't care what happens to me and it's also where we are talking about depression and that is a really scary part to be at. But it does happen to people. Some people go really up and they drop right down. Where you healthily want to be is within the window, where you can have your variance, but you have the ability to come back up, bounce back up essentially."

Through this experience, these participants are able to bounce back up in their personal and professional lives.

Joyce Ellis, Administration, Welcome Resource Center
"For the professional life, I must say that I really need it because of the participants who work it from day to day at my center. They come with a lot of ills and we have to help them through it and like what the sister is saying, that we need to strike a balance and we if we are able to strike a balance, then we will be able to help others and help our self also."

Lucia Ellis, Owner, Numasa Wellness Resource Center
"What I like is the reinforcement of self-care. Working with counselors is very important that we take care of ourselves, because we are bombarded with the experiences of young adults, children, families who are traumatized. We in Belize are very traumatized people, to the point where we are numb and we are not aware of the impact that this is having on us. So, definitely this exercise is going to help us to go back into our core and to draw out those things that will make us become alive and vibrant and positive."

Errol Longsworth, Out Reach Case Worker, Drug Abuse Control
"Its main focus on self-development and we as front line workers, especially working with drug substance abuse people, we need to be aware of traumas that we went through in our lives, so that we can be able to better help somebody trying to seek a change in their lifestyle."

Jean Abbott has been here for a month. She has done presentations at various schools in the city.