Trauma Therapy
What Causes Trauma?
Trauma can occur from any distressing experience – often an unexpected, dramatic and isolating event – in which we feel powerless and have no control or strategy to cope with what is happening.
Trauma doesn’t lie in the distressing experience itself but in the body’s response to the experience.
The Survival Response
When there is a threat or a perceived threat we orient, rapidly assessing the situation, then the emotional brain and nervous system activate a hierarchical system of survival responses.
Fight or Flight
If we are able to fight the distressing situation or escape it, we experience an act of triumph, and this allows us to process the event after it has happened. We go into the recovery phase where emotional energy is discharged through shaking and crying.
Then we go into the integration phase where the memory is processed and consolidated and we make meaning of our experience. During the period of integration, we might not sleep well and still find ourselves bursting into tears until the response settles and is integrated into the whole.
The integration of the experience re-regulates the nervous system so that we re-enter the window of tolerance feeling restful, safe and okay in the world.
Fawn or Freeze and Shutdown
However, if we are not able to confront or escape the situation, we might fawn by appeasing or placating the threat, and if that doesn’t work, we freeze, a state of intense overwhelm, where we become completely jammed, before shutting down and immobilising.
In shut down/immobilisation the front brain (prefrontal cortex) and body shuts down. The mind dissociates and the body ‘plays dead’ to give us the best chance of survival.
Freeze/shutdown is an entirely appropriate and normal reaction to an overwhelming experience and the brain doing its job to protect us in the moment.
However, the result of this reaction, and the front brain shutting down, is that the event isn’t processed properly. It remains ‘live’ in the body and mind. This then leads to an array of stressful, traumatic symptoms.
So therefore, trauma lies in the consequences of the freeze/shutdown response to the distressing event.
Symptoms of Trauma
- Insomnia and restlessness
- Depression, anger, anxiety
- Self-hatred, shame
- Hypervigilant, jumpy
- Easily triggered into fight/flight or freeze/shutdown
- Panic
- Dissociation
- Depersonalisation
- Mood disorders
- Addiction
- Intrusive thoughts
- Nightmares and flashbacks
- PTSD
- Dissociative disorders (Inc DID)
- Personality ‘disorders’
- Insecure attachment
- Physical illness
Complex PTSD
Trauma is particularly damaging when experienced in childhood, and especially during the first six years of life. Usually when a child has experienced an unstable, abusive and neglectful environment where the boundaries of the emerging self are violated, and the attachment to the parent is damaged. Persistent trauma in childhood is also known as complex trauma and disrupts a child’s development, sense of self and the ability to form securely attached relationships.
Trauma Therapy
Unprocessed trauma and its resulting symptoms are inevitably re-triggered by similar situations or people. It’s important to note that as an adult we can perceive an event quite differently to our childhood self. To the adult it might seem insignificant now but to the child it was frightening and threatening.
Trauma ultimately cuts us off from the roots of our deepest Self, so we feel disconnected and orphaned from our centre. Healing trauma involves the safe reprocessing and integration of all the unresolved feelings and sensory information which may include memory reconsolidation, so we are no longer triggered. It is also about recovering and healing the parts of us that still hold the wounds, and transforming the insecure patterns of attachment to that of earned secure. When we are healed, we feel more regulated, reconnected to the body and spirit and to a greater sense of safety in the world.
As trauma lives in the body, traditional talking therapy sometimes isn’t enough to access the deep wounds left behind. This is why I am trauma-informed and follow a three phased approach (1. Safety/ stabilisation. 2. Processing. 3. Integration.) incorporating the following evidence-based, somatic therapies that are gentle and effective for the healing of trauma:
- Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
- Matrix Reimprinting
- Matrix Birth Reimprinting
- IFS (Internal Family Systems)
Useful Reading
Waking the Tiger, Peter A Levine
The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk