Trauma occurs when ordinary coping mechanisms are overwhelmed by helplessness and / or terror. The Fight or Scuttle survival response is engaged without resolution. There is an ignition of the response ( chemical / neurological ) ( fight / fall / freeze ) but when it fails to avert the danger and the body does not discharge / complete the cycle, the reaction is uncertain and sits idle in the body, ready to be reignited by other ‘ triggers’ – consubstantial experiences ( or what we even perceive as consonant ). This is a survival / attentive response. But when it fails to avert danger, the deed becomes a trauma.
The body treats physical and emotional traumatic events the same way. The body / mind reacts – the body reacts – the physiological and neurological systems respond – the fight or canter – adrenaline response. But many other things are happening in the brain ( most importantly, the most primitive area, the limbic system ). The amygdala and hippocampus are overstimulated, which can payoff in memories that aren’ t pure correctly – and can look like flashbacks, nightmares, etc.
As ‘ civilized’ humans, we have overridden the unbeautiful behavior which can help us process and complete this experience. Accordingly, the chemical residue from the event ( adrenaline, etc. ) remains in our body, trapping with it the energy that would be expelled if we allowed the cycle to complete. Suppose you’ re in a dangerous bearings and you were prevented from fleeing or defending yourself. The movements of escape or defense – which your nervous system has prepared for – need to be concluded. This energy needs a way out. Common body signals of this share are restlessness, clenching, pulling away, bouncing feet, and twitching.
If you were in a station direction you had not been able to escape, the body’ s defense is to ‘ freeze’ ( play dead ) - which deceives the predator. When the body awakens from the ‘ freeze’, it shakes. We have inhibited this mechanism as well.
Although trauma arouses strong emotions, many of its remote effects are physical: sleep problems, hypervigilance and / or high startle response, numbness or hypersensitivity to touch, etc.
We last to behave even when the event ( s ) has passed seeing of ‘ triggers’ ( i. e., sounds, congruent events / situation, smells, lights, voices, etc., ) and the cycle reignites in our bodies, retraumatizing us, since the cycle hasn’ t concluded the first time.
Traumatized people nurse to overinterpret in the direction of threat and fear, thus their physical bodies respond, not just their minds. Their nervous system tends to stay on alert all the time after a while, even when they are not in danger. ( The sympathetic nervous system as opposed to the parasympathetic nervous system.
) They are always on the ‘ accelerator’, there are no brakes. Their body seems stuck in the traumatic response and physical experience and they become disconnected from real life.
Unhealed trauma can generate conditions such as ‘ redundancy compulsion’ latitude the person engages in agnate behavior to the traumatic event. Why? The body continues to traverse a discharge from the overstimulation of chemicals and dearth of release so the mind unconsciously reproduces situations kin to the prime traumatic event. It is the mind’ s one's darnedest to replay the summary to complete it and get it right and no longer be the victim.
People are physically organized to respond to things that happen to themselves with actions that change the stage, but when they’ re traumatized and can’ t do information to stop, reverse or correct the footing ( helpless ), they freeze, explode or give blessing in insensate actions. Then, to discipline their flummoxed, shook up physiological systems, they start drinking, taking drugs, or enchanting in cruelty.
When there is husky energy trapped in the body the emotional and thinking parts of the brain tell this into either intense emotions such as antipathy, rankling, dishonour, etc., or ideas of anathema, waver or negative ideology.
How Can We Help?
Educate! Normalize the experience. Diagram what is happening. True, it will still hurt and still be a painful experience, but it does not have to be a fearful, dark experience.
Work with the body! Since trauma affects the body, the healing of trauma begins in the body. The body holds the memories and the scars of trauma. Methodical psychological counseling puts emphasis on the mind, when the body, the physical, is bearing much of the difficulty. ‘ Something’ s missing’ if you just hub on the mind.
Speech is not always effective considering the prerogative of trauma doesn’ t sit in the spoken understanding part of the brain. It sits in the limbic system and brain stem – whereabouts somatic ( physical ) memory lies.
No ‘ stories’ are told or asked for. The work is done slowly, releasing a bit at a time so it is not lively. We can reteach the body / mind to process events / thoughts properly.
Safety is the first step in releasing this trapped energy. A therapist trained in body - centered therapy knows how to curb what comes up and what they’ re looking at. We help build trust and security, build healthy boundaries, reduce potency of triggers, build new management skills ( ‘ traumatic brakes’ ), and build awareness.
There is no ‘ stigma’ attached to working with the physical body.
‘ Bodywork’ ( therapeutic after or qualification of the body by using specialized techniques ) deals with somatic issues. Many people are not propertied speech about their problems.
You keep on clothed at all times.
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