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Humans have two main drives, the drive to physically survive and the drive to emotionally connect. If you grow up in secure attachment, you learn life is about connection. If you do not grow up in a secure attached environment, you learn that life is about survival.1
When we carry unresolved trauma, we may not even be aware that it is driving our current behaviours. It can show in many different ways, such as not feeling safe in our bodies, presenting as a lack of trust in people and being hypervigilant, living in fear and disconnecting from ourselves and retreated into our minds. In this paradigm we may lose sight of our own intuition, listening to our bodies, our innate internal compass. Perhaps, it is showing up as unhealthy behaviours or addictions, where short term gratification feels good, as it provides relief and nulls the pain of our realities, or perhaps we lack self-compassion with our greatest ally, ourselves.
Until we work through trauma it keeps us stuck in the past, robbing us of richness of the present , limiting who we can be. It represses our emotions and feelings and fragments ourselves.2
“Trauma is not what happened to you, it is what happens inside of you, as a result of what happens to you”.
So, what is trauma?
The meaning of the word trauma in its Greek Origin is “wound”. Renowned trauma expert Gabor Mate says “Trauma is a psychological wound lodged in the nervous system in mind and body. The degree for which you are wounded affects how we live and think and relate to the world. Trauma is not what happened to you, it is what happens inside of you, as a result of what happens to you”.
There are two types of trauma and they both result in automatic responses and mind-body adaptions. The 1st type of trauma is to a specific, identifiable, hurtful and overwhelming event, whether in childhood or later, such as child abuse, violence in the family, a rancorous divorce or a loss of a parent. The 2nd type which is more common, typically occurs over a longer time period and includes bullying, repeated harsh comments or a lack of sufficient emotional connection with nurturing adults. This 2nd type does not require overt distress or misfortune but can lead to disconnection from the self, occurring because core needs were not satisfied.3
The good news and what is important, as quoted by Gabor Mate is “if it is not what happens to you but your response to what happens to you, then you can also heal from it”. Dr Susanna Petche defines trauma as “A normal response, to an abnormal event, which is no longer serving you”4. So, we are not abnormal but we may have experienced an abnormal event.
Trauma responses
Humans have three main responses to trauma, fight, flight or freeze. So, we either fight or we flee or we can freeze which means frozen in fear. If the trauma cycle does not complete which can happen if you are human, then we can get stuck in this freeze response and the body perceives the threat as still occurring. In the freeze response the muscles can work against each other and can become locked, contracted together and we become, scared stiff. If we are in the fight or flight response, we perceive the world as threatening. If we are in the freeze response, we feel helpless and energy becomes stuck5. What is important about the freeze aspect of the trauma response, is that it is allowed to discharge so that the body believes that the trauma is over.
Trauma can be pre-verbal or post-verbal. When it is pre-verbal we are not old enough to fight or flight (flee) and so we can sometimes freeze if that experience overwhelms the body, particularly when there is not a caregiver present who can self-soothe and lesson the trauma response. Additionally, in the pre-verbal years our brains are not capable of formulating any narrative and when we are language endowed some wounds are imprinted in regions of the nervous system, including the brain and body where words and thoughts cannot directly access. So, this is embedded as an emotional memory not a memory of recollection as that part of the brain is not online at pre-verbal age1.
Trauma becomes embedded in the older, more primal parts of our brain that don’t have access to conscious awareness and that means two things simultaneously, first, that trauma lodges in the body, and second, we carry a physical imprint of our psychic wounds. “The body keeps the score” or as Bessel von de Kolk has requoted “the mind hides the score”. It obscures the memories, or convinces us our victimization was our fault, or covers the event in shame so we don’t discuss it.6
“Trauma is re-experienced in the present, not as a story but as profoundly disturbing physical sensations and emotions that may not be consciously associated with memories of past trauma”.
So, how can we heal from it?
As we can still be triggered in the present by past trauma, if our bodies feels it is still present, healing has to incorporate brain and body, which is the benefit of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).7 EFT contains inherent procedural elements that are designed to minimize the danger of re-traumatization by approaching the traumatic memory in graduated steps and reducing arousal at each step, making EFT unusually gentle and safe.8
Befriending our bodies and integrating them into the recovery process is an essential part of healing from trauma. Trauma is disconnection from our bodies and healing is reconnection.9
Let me help you re-connect to your authentic self!
References
1 Kennedy, R (2020) Anxiety RX. Awaken Village Press, United States of America.
2 Janina Fisher (2017) healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors. Routledge, UK.
3 Gabor Mate (2022) The Myth of Normal. Penguin Random House, UK
4 Petche, Dr S (2023) Trauma Sense Programme. Retrieved 6 September 2024, from https://www.trauma-sense.com/training
5 National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioural Medicine (2023) Working with the freeze response. Retrieved 3 September 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/watch
6 The New York Times (2021) Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Bessel van der Kolk. Retrieved 3rd September 2024, from: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bessel-van-der-kolk.html
7 Scaer, R (2012) 8 Keys to Brain-Body Balance. W.W Norton & Company, Inc., United States of America.
8 Compassion Prison Project (2021) The Wisdom of Trauma today. Retrieved 6 September 2024, from https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1489901271346559
9 Church, D., Stapleton, P., Mollon, P., Feinstein, D., Boath, E., Mackay, D., & Sims, R. (2018) Guidelines for the treatment of PTSD using clinical EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). In Healthcare (Vol. 6, No. 4, p. 146). MDPI.