Psychological Trauma: The Way Out And The Key To Healing - Self-development

In your life, it would seem, everything is going well, but you are overwhelmed by a feeling of not understand where the anxiety came from. You cannot relax, trust people, try to control everything. Or maybe in some situations of the same type you feel dumbfounded or very embarrassed. And you've already started avoiding situations like this. But anxiety does not go away, on the contrary, it grows. Perhaps all these consequences are related to the fact that once you faced a traumatic event and the situation actually ended, but due to the fact that the trauma was not digested, internalized, in your inner reality this situation is still alive.

Trauma is the price to pay for rejecting our animal part

In metaphorical language, a girl who was raped in an elevator until she integrates this trauma, psychologically and physiologically, will be locked up in the elevator in that situation, no matter how many years have passed since then. Her body will produce the same mixture of hormones, generate energy in order to run, fight or freeze. All this will be stored in the body, accumulating with characteristic feelings of fear, panic, and anger. Which will periodically seep out of the blue (hysterics, panic attacks), since the process is not completed at the physiological level.

What prevents us from finishing, integrating the trauma?

Let's take a look at how injuries are dealt with in the wild. It's no secret that animals sometimes face danger almost every day, or even several times a day. Their body also triggers a mechanism: fight, run or freeze. But unlike a person, if they freeze, then when the situation ends, they come to life and return to a full life. In a person, these states of fading and tension penetrate into the body and into all corners of his life, if the injury is not closed.

The fact is that when the body is faced with danger, it begins to produce a lot of energy so that, for example, an antelope can run at 100 km per hour, escaping death. And if death, in the opinion of the antelope's instincts, is inevitable, then it freezes and falls.

1. This mechanism allows you to get into an altered state of consciousness so as not to feel pain during death.

In humans, this mechanism often remains after trauma, which gives poor contact with the body, its resources, power, instincts, life, and also does not allow you to feel pain. Unfortunately, this “not feel” applies to everything, including pleasure.

2. There is a chance that the predator will decide that the antelope is dead, will not eat it like carrion, or drag it to a safe place in reserve, where it will have a chance to run and escape when it wakes up. She will not reflect on the fact that pretending to be dead was cowardly of her, she will not feel guilty about this. Her instincts will work in such a way that they will choose the option where she is most likely to stay alive.

Since life for the body is the greatest value. Life is just for life itself

What does the antelope do with the energy that has accumulated in its body. She literally shakes her out of the muscles. An animal, after experiencing stress, can shake for hours, removing this energy from itself, and then returns to normal life. Peter Levine in his book "The Awakening of the Tiger" describes that some animals of these stages: danger, tension, discharge - pass many times a day and remain alive, without any traumatic consequences.

By the way, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations use this technique in relation to children who have been in shock. They wrap the child in something soft, for example, take a blanket from different ends and shake it for a long time.

In humans, this final cycle is most often absent. It is this mechanism that triggers the traumatic reaction. Energy continues to remain in the body, the body spends enormous resources on its conservation. Not unpacked energy is transformed into psychosomatic symptoms, and physiological reactions of the body (tension, overcontrol) tell the person that he is still in danger, although there is no real danger. And here we have a lot to learn from animals.

Reptilian brain is the key to healing

Our brain has three parts: the reptilian brain, the limbic brain, and the neocortex.

Once, at a lecture on psychology, the teacher decided to show us the difference between the neocortex, which is responsible for conscious thinking, and the reptilian brain, which is responsible for instincts. He drew a small line on the door with a pencil and said: "The whole door is the period (millions of years) of training and testing of the reptilian brain, and the barely noticeable line in pencil is the period of development of the neocortex."

The reptilian brain is directly responsible for the physiological response (hit, run, freeze) to danger. This system works flawlessly. And the neocortex cannot break it. But he is able to interrupt the final process, the process of discharge.

It is not the trauma itself that leads to traumatic consequences and symptoms, but the incomplete process of mobilizing the body, the lack of discharge

The key of healing is in the body

Trauma lives in the body and the key to healing it is also in the body. It is necessary to gradually regain contact with your body, which was severed in the process of trauma. This will give us access to our instincts, which know how to complete the mobilization process.

All exercises for body awareness, for accepting your body, feeling and contact with it are simply necessary. Coming into contact with your body, you can gradually, in portions (prerequisites), unpack the energy accumulated during the mobilization of the body. And thus connect with our animal strength and vitality.