Releasing Trauma from The Body
In my work as a Life & Mindset Coach, my clients often have to deal, at one time or another, and in one form or another, with trauma.
In the past, I’ve written blog posts about Trauma; what it is, Big T and Small T trauma and more. Read blog posts: Talk About Trauma, parts 1 & 2, My Her-Story (a bit of my personal story of trauma), and Living Well with Trauma: Post-Traumatic Growth.
Over time and with the growth of my practice, I’ve understood how important it is to be trauma-informed, no matter what field of healthcare and healing you’re a part of. These days, we are fortunate to have so much knowledge and understanding when it comes to anxiety, trauma, PTSD, body/mind connection and more.
For so many decades, we had talk therapy alone, which could help with some trauma but wasn’t quite helping patients and clients to live the somewhat contented lives they wanted to live. In recent years, we have learned more about the vital connection of body/mind/brain, when it comes to trauma and many exercises and techniques have come into being, to really help people to release (at least, partly) their trauma from their body and to help regulate their nervous system. In this way, they’re able to live with more peace, understanding, self-esteem, self-love and joy.
As humans, we are the only animal species that doesn’t shake out their trauma….. so, it stays within our bodies. Let’s say, a deer is attacked by a tiger in the wild and the tiger sees a friend in the distance and prefers to be with that friend than have the deer for lunch. So, the tiger just drops the deer and walks away. Once the deer realized that fight or flight wouldn’t help, it froze to protect itself from the pain of sure death. Now, the deer realizes, “I’m alive,” and it shakes its whole body out and, in this way, releases the trauma from its body.
We humans don’t do this; we don’t know to do this. You may even notice that after an incident, accident or traumatic event, your body may tremble or shake; this is nature’s way of letting go of the trauma. Often though, EMT and/or healthcare people are just trying to stabilize you and don’t allow you to express, physically, emotionally or verbally, your stress, anxiety or trauma. (I’m not blaming these helpers but, we may want to learn more about trauma and teach them how to respond and be there for victims, in a helpful way). We may not be able to avoid accidents and trauma but we may be able to avoid PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder, which is what disables people in many ways and does not allow them to, safely, release their trauma, in a somewhat healthy manner.
This is an important subject to discuss, particularly in light of the Covid pandemic, which we are still in the midst of.
“Trauma is a fact of life. It does not, however, have to be a life sentence.” --Dr Peter A. Levine
So, let’s go into some techniques now being used by therapists, coaches, somatic practitioners, to help to release trauma from our bodies, so that it doesn’t become PTSD, and to learn to self-regulate and co-regulate our nervous systems.
The interrelationship of trauma and PTSD (‘Somatic Experiencing: A Body-Centered Approach to Treating PTSD”)
Put very simply, a traumatic event, either experienced or witnessed, will happen before PTSD can set in. In other words, PTSD doesn’t happen without a traumatic event to trigger it, but at the same time, just because someone experiences trauma isn’t a guarantee that they will also experience PTSD.
Whether or not they do will depend on the individual because we all respond differently to trauma.
The good news: you can develop the resilience needed, so that trauma does not become PTSD.
PTSD Treatments: Common Forms
1)Exposure therapy: this entails having a client confront the trauma directly in a safe environment to reduce fear.
2)Cognitive Therapy: its origins are in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and entails modifying the pessimistic evaluations and memories of trauma, to interrupt the behavioral and/or thought patterns that have been interfering in the person’s daily life.
3)EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing): Rather than focusing on changing thoughts, emotions, and responses associated with a traumatic event, EMDR focuses on specific memories and how they’re stored in the brain. Initially, this was accomplished with rapid left-right eye movement while focusing on a particular memory, but other forms of bilateral stimulation, like alternating taps or tones, have proven to be equally effective.
These modes of treatment can be successful in eliminating or diminishing the effects of PTSD, but they’re not always for everyone. For some, because these methods engage trauma more directly, the treatments themselves can become another source of trauma.
So, let’s discuss:
4)SOMATIC EXPERIENCING (SE) and how it’s different.
Just the word somatic lets us know that SE is ‘of, relating to, or affecting the body…’
What is SOMATIC EXPERIENCING?
It’s aimed at treating trauma and stressor related disorders like PTSD. Its primary goal is to modify the trauma-related stress response. To achieve this, its major interventional strategy builds on bottom-up processing (unlike the top-down of talk therapy alone).
SE expands the focus of therapy to include the bodily energy created by trauma and seeks to repair and complete the natural cycle our bodies possess to release it. It also follows a less direct and more incremental approach to revisiting trauma (ie: in comparison to Exposure Therapy).
SOMATIC EXPERIENCING (SE):
Dr Peter Levine developed SE from his observations of how wild animals recover from repeated trauma experiences like attacks by predators. He saw that, after a threat was gone, the animals experienced a physical release of their fight or flight energy by trembling, shaking or sometimes, running. With completion of the physical release, these animals quickly returned to their normal state.
Dr Levine believes that humans also possess the same ability to release physical energy from stress but often thwart it by “keeping it together” through a difficult experience. The ability to override what is an innate mechanism for self-care is what may set the stage for PTSD.
When stopping this natural cycle of release, the energy becomes STUCK, so that we stay in a perpetual state of fight or flight. We are unable to return to our relaxed, balanced state (homeostasis).
This SE is based on the idea that traumatic experiences can lead to dysfunction in your nervous system, which can keep you from fully processing the experience.
By the way, a perpetually dysregulated and on-alert nervous system, is not only exhausting, distressing and dis-ease-producing but is also one of the SIGNS that you have had trauma, whether Big T or Small T trauma.
The goal of SE is to help you notice bodily sensations stemming from mental health issues and use this awareness to acknowledge and work through painful or distressing sensations.
SE is based around the idea of a FREEZE RESPONSE.
In the next blog post, we’ll continue this discussion about one of the fascinating somatic treatments (body/mind) that utilizes bottom-up processing: body first, then mind…….SOMATIC EXPERIENCING (SE).
We’ll go over the body’s typical response to stressors and trauma. In this understanding, we can start becoming aware of, learn about and, hopefully, change our responses to these.
What a help for all of us……..to understand more about trauma and how it also gets stored in our bodies,,,,,,,and how to release these stressors, and trauma. In other words, we don’t have to get PTSD.
This can have positive consequences and results for those of us who have experienced trauma, and/or PTSD and ways to prevent PTSD, if you do experience trauma. To be honest, the vast majority of us experience some kind of trauma or another, within our life spans.
With smiles and love,
Dr Gigi
PS: Sign up to learn more about Body/Mind Connections and somatic work @www.gigiarnaud.com
If you’ve experienced trauma or think you might have, and/or have questions, please sign up for your Free Clarity Call with me @www.gigiarnaud.com, to see what we can do to help……..:
Change your Thoughts, Change your Mind, Change your World