MARCH 12X12 #3: "Trauma and the Story of Your Body"

This is part 3 of a Saturday-long Conference I attended with Adam Young and a guest speaker for the month of MARCH. This one was entitled: "Trauma and the Story of Your Body." I will be breaking this down in parts. I am attending one of these on the first Saturday of each month for a year and taking notes for my own references. This talk was by Hilary, the guest speaker.

Hilary begins by discussing getting a piece of glass in her finger that she could not get out. She had to find ways to do many different things without using her middle finger. As months went on, the wound on her finger healed, and you'd never know there was a wound even though inside of her finger was indeed a piece of glass. She could feel there was something not right even though nothing was visible. Things that felt very normal for other people (shaking hands or typing on a keyboard) was really bothering her. And, months later, a few months later, a small mound began forming on her finger below the spot where the glass went in. And, months after it first slid in, out popped a piece of glass. This excited her because: (1) it was out and (2) it was indeed real!

This story is such a metaphor for trauma. How we develop a whole way of coping and working around the trauma. This is what living with trauma is like. What it is like living inside of us. What it is like adapting around us. What it is like to avoid touching the thing that hurts. And it is a reminder, that there are reminders in our body constantly and that those reminders know that there is unfinished business inside of our bodies. We all have ways of adapting around what hurts. And sometimes we have done this for so long, we forget that it was ever any different. We move through the world trying to do the best we can. And things that don't even phase other people, affect us greatly.  

The shard of glass still lives in our body.

Our body communicates through sensation. Sometimes it is hard to know whether it is about right now or back then. But, if it hurts at all, it is worth listening to. 

When we say trauma, we mean so many different things! Trauma can be ...

• The bad thing that happened.
• The thing that is living inside of me as a result of the thing that happened.
• The thing that shouldn't have happened but did. 
  
• The thing that never happened at all and now we are feeling the impact of it.  
• And even now, people use the word trauma to refer to the things that are just disappointing or unpleasant or difficult. It is so traumatizing. (Those of us who have faced trauma know that this does not compare to the real thing.) We should learn to tell the difference between uncomfortable and actually being trauma. 

So what does the word TRAUMA actually mean?

Trauma comes from the Greek word meaning wound. A wound is something that has been pulled apart or injured or sensitized. It is an injury to a system that was otherwise intact. These traumas are usually things that overwhelm our ability to cope. Too much, too fast, too soon. 

And what does this trauma do to us?

When something is overwhelming, confusing, and leaves us feeling powerless ... when it is too much for us ... the nervous system's response is designed to protect us and so it does something it doesn't normally do. There is a separating or shattering or fragmentation that helps us. Neurobiologically, this is called cortical phylamic uncoupling. This coupling occurs. This is a mouthful which actually says that the part of our brain that is in charge of story and sense-making and time-sequencing stops talking to the part of our brain that does the feeling, emoting, and reacting. 

The brain honestly splits in half in how it is speaking to itself. Our feeling brain stop talking to the part of our brain that encodes and make sense of threat and memory systems. When this happens, it becomes incredibly hard to rationalize and think our way out of what is happening to us. When we are so overwhelmed that our brain wants to change the way we are storing memory. Fragmentation thus occurs. The brain says: I want to move all of my resources toward keeping you alive. Sometimes that means shutting things off. It means shutting down awareness of sensations. It stops feeling certain parts of our body at all. We omit parts of our feeling and narrative and identity to get away from things that have happened. It can be very hard to feel the body at this point.

Trauma results in a loss of connection

Trauma, however, is not just happening at the level of the individual because we, as bodies, are never truly fragmented from the community around us. When it is hard to be in touch with our feelings or the wisdom inside or we feel stuck in the reality that this is still going on in our bodies, it becomes very hard to connect and be related to other people. The fragmentation not only happened because those injuries that occurred to us become something we are carrying around and it is then very difficult to feel safe and trust other people. 

"Trauma is about a loss of connection to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us."

This loss of connection is often hard to recognize because it doesn't happen all at once. And we adapt to these subtle changes without even noticing them.

Think about Hilary's subtle adaptations to the glass in her hand over time. She developed different ways of coping and doing things she had always done over time. Can you think about that happening to those of us carrying these big wounds around inside of ourselves? That was just her finger! Patterns of avoidance. Fear. Changing our daily normals!

"If my body is a house, than the house is haunted." Inside the body we are left with the legacy of the terror of the overwhelm as if it is still in there and still happening.

She asks us at this point to stop and notice our bodies. Do you feel scared, overwhelmed, wanting to check out? Your body is communicating about this right now. And it might tell us something by listening. Something that feels hard to be with? Because it is possible to talk about trauma in a way that is actually retraumatizing.  

Animals know how to release trauma

The thing that happened to us early in our life got "stuck" inside of ourselves. Imagine, in the middle of the night, hearing something crash. You run out of your room and turn on the lights and really wake yourself up. Trauma is like that has happened, but the light doesn't get shut off. The lights never get shut off. The body never goes back to sleep. That activation lives inside of us and shows itself in many different ways. 

The energy of wanting to protect us, comes in the shape of a wave. The energy that wants to protect us, pauses. The wave is paused. If someone you loved was walking in front of a car, you'd have all this energy mobilized to grab the person and pull them back onto the sidewalk. What would happen if your arm got stuck and didn't get to reach out? If the process got stopped midway inside of you? 

Trauma is wave forms that never complete. The body isn't doing anything wrong by that happening. In fact, usually why the wave doesn't get to complete is because we were alone and it was too overwhelming and we were never taught how to trust it. Our body had to shut everything down just to keep us alive. 

 

Check this out. This is an example of "mammalian stress response." You can see how it de-regulates stress after his fight or flight response. Every mammal owns this way of de-stressing the nervous system. The thing is, we de-learned it because of our social group behavior. We do not express ourselves when we want to. Result? Repression of emotions and trauma's that get stuck in the body. Animals do not have these human filters. What needs to get out, goes out. It's depression VS expression. He is actually RELEASING TRAUMA.

 

The body isn't doing anything wrong by shutting off! It is how we have evolved to make sure we don't face any more threat. This might seem easier to think about with an impala or polar bear. 

Numbing out or blanking out helps us not retain memory. Many of us may remember being in a conversation that feels very emotional and we all of a sudden we start to feel tired or sleepy. That is a smaller version of this mechanism. Our body is saying, "This is too much. Go away."

People who struggle with depression may have an issue with the nervous system. "Being with myself is too much so I am going to shut everything off." 

Trauma is lingering! It is reminding you to pay attention!

Lingering cases of effects of trauma are the reminders and the activation that says, "I am overwhelmed. This is too much, I am not safe." It may be a sensation reminder or a story reminder that reflects back to how we felt before. This is the body's way of sending a reminder notice about unfinished business. It's like a parking ticket reminder. "Hey, this isn't finished yet."

Out body gives us sensory messages that tells us that there is some unfinished business. We might take this as proof that our body is bad. Why am I scared? Why can I not remember something? This is proof that my body is bad. 

Ahhhh, but this is actually the body's healing tendency that says, "We need you to look at this!" This is our body's way of saying, "I want to get to the other side. I will never be complicit in forgetting about this. I will not ignore." Our body almost knows better than our mind about what we need to do to heal. 

If your body is handing it to you, it is meaningful. 

Community in the event, may stop the lingering effects!

Why do things get stuck? Why does the wave form come up? 

Some people face traumatic events and they can move through seemlessly. But other people cannot. Why? Well, there is one specific variable that separates the two. What is the difference? Two people go through the same kind of event. Some develop stuck responses and some of them don't? Let's assume that the two people are coming into the event with the exact same history of trauma. 

RELATIONSHIP! SOCIAL RESPONSE! How people listen to us and value what has happened. You must have relationship and someone to process these events with. Because if we believe we are safe and seen in that moment, our body gets the signal that "the trauma is over!" We are saying, "You can turn the switch off. The threat is over." And the proof that is over? I am here. And I believe you. Relationship is that important for our nervous system response. We can't know we are safe if we are alone. Many of us have needed to feel in the moments when our bodies were overwhelmed that the fragmentation is not happening at the level of the relationships around us. 

If no one ever said that to you -- even in the little moments, the ones that seemed invisible, I am so sorry that no one was there. You deserved to have connection in that moment. You deserved to have someone stay with you in that moment. 

The Homeostatic Self-Correcting Mechanism is a neurological principle that says our body knows how to move us to stability. Our body can move us into balance innately. Think about the last time you were thirsty. Your body sent a signal to you that told you, I need some hydration. Our body sweats because it knows it needs to. We all know that on some level in our day to day. You don't have a thirst sensation and think I need to suppress this right away and take a medication to make it go away. We know how to listen to our body telling us it needs to go to the bathroom. 

But in the big emotions, we have encoded in us we say, "I won't survive this. I didn't survive it then and I won't survive it now. If I go toward it, it will never end." The emotions become really scary territory. Most of us have had to do a big feelings alone. They become very hard to process through. We need connection to stay with the hard. Emotion is part of the mechanism. It is part of the way our body regulates us toward balance. If we can't feel it all the way through, it is hard to get back to the place where our body can function properly. 

If every time we felt the need to drink, we cut that off, there would be a consequence to our body. And we are inhibiting what our body is telling us all the time. Trauma makes it hard for us to stay with us because the emotion is very big and very young. 

"It's about unwilled and unwanted aloneness in the face of overwhelming emotion." Somewhere inside of us we felt something so big and no one would stay with us so we developed all kinds of strategies to get away from it." Our body wants us to move toward flourishing and get to the unfinished business. 

Research indicates that bout 70-90% of the things that bring a person to their family physician are usually unfinished trauma. 

Disassociation

Disassociation is when our body completely shuts off to get us away from the trauma. It is the body's goodness to us to help protect us. The body feels blank. The blankness is also a message! The body is saying something through the blankness. Disassociation is an invisibility cloak that our body wraps around us when it is so, so, so much. Our body, even in the nothingness is doing our best to talk to us about it. 

So what do we need around this? We need to feel things all the way to the other side. This is nearly impossible to do this on our own. We need someone to hold our hand or guide us toward the sensation. You are not alone. I here with you and I will stay with you until the other side. 

Trauma is not proof our body is bad. It is proof that bad things happened and our bodies are doing very good things to help us survive. 

Hilary concludes this lecture by sharing a story about how she only remembered through EMDR that someone came and sat alongside her when Hilary was in a terrible accident. The woman climbed into the car with her and promised to stay with her until the ambulance got there. Her name was Page. She even told the EMT to be more kind when he was being too rough. She was with her in that accident. Don't be afraid to call into the bigness. It makes all the difference to undo someone's aloneness!

I needed a Page.  

Don't we all need a Page?

The presence of another caring person with some measure of a regulated nervous system is imperative for healing. We need regulation for our overwhelmed body in a moment of intensity. 

In an Unspoken Voice by Peter Levine is another book that will tell you more about this.