Giving up control in a controlled way
In 2007 I came in contact with trauma healing for the first time; actually by chance. I was following the NLP Practitioner training and the trainer at the time suggested to skip the NLP Master training and should go for the training for trauma healing. It would suit me more. I had no idea that I had also to deal with certain traumas myself; this became clear quickly. Between 2007 and 2017 I followed three trauma healing training. I received wonderful tools to help clients understand more and on a deeper level their own path to health.
You don’t have to know
A sentence that immediately offered me great relief in 2007: you don’t have to know! I sometimes suffered from the compulsive tendency to check out everything before I took action. First expand my knowledge, for self-protection, to prevent to fail. Being tensed, overactivity, being nauseous … .. signs of a traumatic experience: if I don’t get that knowledge, then I am dead. What a relief to find out that it is not necessary. I’m okay!
So trauma healing. What is meant by trauma? What symptoms does trauma have? What does it mean in your daily life? And should you continue to live with it, or can it be different?
Trauma is not a disease
During the first trauma healing training the name of Dr. Peter A. Levine moved forward fairly quickly. He has conducted trauma research for decades. He says about trauma: “Trauma is initially not a psychological but a biological phenomenon. A trauma is like an inner straitjacket, which causes a person to freeze inwardly and freezes a lived moment in his memory. A trauma suppresses the development of life. It interrupts the connection to ourselves, to other people, to nature and to our spiritual source. The trauma is not stuck in a certain event, but in the nervous system of the person involved. By learning the language of our body, we can help our body to heal itself. By listening with compassion to your own body, you enable it to release blocked energy. ”
So the following involves trauma healing: the language of your body, the role of the nervous system, the consequences of a trauma, releasing blocked energy.
The event does not cause trauma
Suddenly more is required of you: a part of the brain gives a signal, and your nervous system is strongly activated. Now it depends on your own abilities whether you can regulate this (sudden) activation. If this fails, your nervous system is still full of this energy and this remains trapped in your nervous system. It causes chaos in the body and the mind. Trauma characteristics: too early, too fast, too suddenly.
Trauma can lead to chronic activation of the nervous system. Your body remains constantly activated. You continue to respond physically as if you are still experiencing the traumatic event. And this can go on for years! The trauma is pushed away cognitively or physically… .. but the activation of the trauma is present in the nervous system of your body. Without being aware of it, a minimal stimulus can activate the trauma again.
Traumatic events
There are a range of possible events that can be traumatic. Obviously when a situation is life threatening, or extremely violent. A prolonged period of overwhelming stress can also lead to trauma. And for example a medical intervention, bad news or an accident can trigger traumatic reactions! The consequences may only be felt much later and may then, often misunderstood (!), cause physical, emotional and mental ailments. Moreover, it does not have to be that the traumatic experience itself must have been experienced: it may be that you have seen or heard it.
A bicycle accident as an example: before you realize, a car hits you. Part of your brain gives a signal at lightning speed to the nervous system to react (flight), but it is all going too fast! You fall to the ground, you get bruised and a sore arm. However, the so-called “flight” energy remains stored in you. For weeks, months or maybe years later, your body can suddenly respond erratically to a car driving close by, while there is no acute (life) danger.
Symptoms
Trauma has various symptoms, which often manifest themselves when it is not “logical”. The part of the brain that deals with emotions has a strong connection with your body and thus expresses emotions in physical responses. For example, the knot in your stomach when you find something difficult. Or holding your breath when something exciting is happening. The body of a traumatized person is like a ping-pong ball: you have no control over it. You often have no idea where your intense emotions and the tension, that you sense, come from. Often you don’t know at all what you are feeling. Your sense of safety is affected on a very deep level.
A number of examples of symptoms:
- Severe abdominal pain, nausea
- Breathless, suffocating or stuffy feeling
- Very hot or very cold, or sweaty
- Extremely tense, very stiff, trembling or vibrating
- Feeling numb, experiencing nagging or stabbing or sharp pain
- Fast or runaway heartbeat, or on the other hand super calm heartbeat
- Extremely reactive, anxious, panicky
- Existential helplessness and despair
- Depression, deep feelings of alienation, dissociation
- Overactivity, commitment issues, hypersensitivity
- Insomnia, tiredness
- Chronic pain, neck and back trauma
Let’s go back to the example of the bicycle accident: for example, when taking rest, your arm makes strange and unintended movements. A vibration that you cannot place or understand: energy trapped in your nervous system.
Consequences in your daily life
In the meantime, you understand that a trauma may have a major impact on your daily life. You wonder why your body sometimes reacts differently than you expect. How do you explain it to your environment at all, because there is “nothing wrong with you” anyway. Your confidence is dented. Your resilience has decreased. Your sense of certainty sometimes abandon you without reason. You find it difficult to watch over your boundaries. You miss orientation in space and time. You miss complete control over yourself. You lack connection with yourself or others. You feel totally powerless, helpless. You suddenly have to deal with exhaustion or the imminent death of yourself or someone else. You feel totally fixated, frozen.
In the example of the bicycle accident, it may mean that you feel insecure at certain times. Suppose it was your left arm, you may be more sensitive on the left side of your body to people or objects than usual.
Controlled release of the stored energy
There are different approaches to trauma healing. Through the various trauma healing trainings I have become accustomed to the somatic approach: getting the stored energy moving very slowly, in a safe setting, without the risk of re-traumatization, so that this energy can start to leave the body. This is called titration: like water dropping slowly, Then the symptoms gradually disappear, and you can live your life again with more enjoyment.
Trauma healing involves the body and understanding the language of the body: sensations, posture, movement, images, sound, smell, touch, focus (the direction of your eyes) and also emotions and breathing. Checking out which parts of your body language are perceptible. And which are connected to each other in a healthy way and which are contradictory.
Coming back to the example of the bicycle accident, a trauma healing session would start with getting yourself orientated in the room where you are. Whatever your eyes are attracted to, it may help you to find inner peace, to feel more at rest, as it becomes a practical ressource for during the treatment. Getting to know healthy parts of your body may be the next step. When you feel safe in this setting, attention goes to the left arm for a moment, then returns to the resource or anything else that the therapist brings in. This back and forth movement of attention to the traumatized part of you and to a healthy part invites the stored energy to move slowly and leave the body. It is likely that the arm wants to move which could not do so at that particular moment of the accident. A healthy trauma healing leads to the completion of this unfinished response, the discharge of retained tension.
Creating a win-win situation
- Integration of the experience
- Increased resilience
- Larger ability to regulate yourself
- Back to your healthy vitality