Working with Trauma?
It can feel challenging, in fact threatening, to even consider the idea of working with your trauma. Trauma is a terrible thing, so to the logical mind it would seem absurd to even contemplate this!
It may even feel like, that’s the past, why bother with that, let’s just get on with life and focus on the future. Many people indeed do that and go through their life keeping the past firmly in the past. The problem with this approach is that it also entails living with the ramifications of the trauma in the here and now in the form of various types of suffering that inflict individuals, families and groups of people.
Thankfully, working with trauma effectively has become more exact and nuanced, in line with the increased knowledge of the nervous system, brain functioning and the interrelationship between mind and body. These days there are a number of methodologies that can work with trauma effectively.
psychotherapy
Somatic Experiencing
I will discuss my understanding from a Somatic Experiencing (SE) perspective as this is the method I have been trained in. SE works with the nervous system as its doorway to healing by releasing the trauma energy held in the body that was generated at the time of the traumatic incident/s. SE does this through a gentle method of processing the trauma material little by little by working with the body by initiating it’s natural ability to discharge the held in traumatic charge generated at the time of the trauma.
What’s interesting about this process is that the trauma story, i.e., the trauma event, plays a much-reduced part in SE. In short, the horror of somebodies past doesn’t have to be verbally spoken about overtly as the body is one of the gate ways to working with trauma. If the narrative of the traumatic event is spoken about, this is only done when there is a sense of safety, as well as, a significant felt experience of capacity and resource to manage the feelings in a mindful way.
Somatic Experiencing
I will discuss my understanding from a Somatic Experiencing (SE) perspective as this is the method I have been trained in. SE works with the nervous system as its doorway to healing by releasing the trauma energy held in the body that was generated at the time of the traumatic incident/s. SE does this through a gentle method of processing the trauma material little by little by working with the body by initiating it’s natural ability to discharge the held in traumatic charge generated at the time of the trauma.
What’s interesting about this process is that the trauma story, i.e., the trauma event, plays a much-reduced part in SE. In short, the horror of somebodies past doesn’t have to be verbally spoken about overtly as the body is one of the gate ways to working with trauma. If the narrative of the traumatic event is spoken about, this is only done when there is a sense of safety, as well as, a significant felt experience of capacity and resource to manage the feelings in a mindful way.
So why does SE work with trauma via the body, and much less with the story of the trauma? This is because the consequences of trauma, from an SE perspective, are held in the body via physical and mental health symptoms. Therefore, working with the body and its nervous system allows the symptomology created by the trauma to be processed in small increments without the need to go immediately and directly to the ground zero of the trauma itself.
Why Use the Body?
So why does SE work with trauma via the body, and much less with the story of the trauma? This is because the consequences of trauma, from an SE perspective, are held in the body via physical and mental health symptoms. Therefore, working with the body and its nervous system allows the symptomology created by the trauma to be processed in small increments without the need to go immediately and directly to the ground zero of the trauma itself.
Trauma and a Balloon
When something traumatic is about to occur, the body prepares itself by flooding the system with adrenalin and cortisol in preparation for fight or fight or freeze response. This is automatic and instant with no conscious thought involved. An analogy could be a balloon (imagine a much bigger version of the average party balloon) where the balloon is empty of air when we feel safe, but as soon as threat is perceived or an overwhelming event is taking place the balloon fills immediately – this is the energy generated by the nervous system to support its instinctual response to either fight, run away or freeze. After the trauma event the body’s natural process is to release this energy, that is, let the air out of the balloon, so the body can return to a homeostatic state. Unfortunately, this natural release is mostly skipped due to various reasons, such as our minds overriding what our body wants to do. Now this balloon that is full of ‘charge’ has to go somewhere, which it usually does by being held in our bodies and limbic systems in the brain, resulting in a plethora of symptoms of various kinds. SE approach is to release this pent in trauma charge sequestered in the body. Going back to the balloon analogy again, the air is systematically released incrementally thus relieving the symptoms of the trauma.
Anxiety
A very common symptom of trauma is anxiety. This feeing arises when there is a sense of threat in the environment. In one sense this is useful feeling to have, say, if you were walking down a dark unfamiliar street then some anxiety is helpful as it keeps you alert and ready to act if need be. However, for those who experience anxiety on a daily basis this feeling can seem illogical as the environment is perfectly safe yet their body is responding to it anxiously. Why is that? One reason is that the anxiety could be more of an echo from the past where unresolved trauma is being felt in the here and now. You could say that part of the nervous system is locked in an ‘on’ position and isn’t able to switch off. The ‘on’ switched was flicked at the time of the trauma or the repeated trauma events and wasn’t allowed to be switched off. The SE process is to turn this switch off. This is done by teaching or allowing the nervous system to re-regulate itself via releasing the unfinished business of the past and regain a healthy regulatory system that doesn’t experience the here and now as a threat, thereby stop feeling unnecessary anxiety.
This same SE process of trauma release is used for other ailments that could be products of trauma, such as depression, PTSD, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia etc. Some folks in the trauma field have posited that nearly all mental health diagnosis have trauma as the root cause! If true then from my perspective this offers a ray of light as trauma doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence.
All the best
Rob