Trauma is something that we all go through at times, and can actually help to shape our levels of resilience if we can manage to navigate through it, and allow it to lead us to a place of growth.
Trauma is also subjective, so what might not affect one person may seriously hinder another, so it’s important to take it on it’s own merit.
Think of it as ‘you grow through what you go through’. which links really well with a construct from positive psychology called post traumatic growth, which again links really keenly with having high resilience. Having views or beliefs about being highly resilient can sometimes be the barrier to healing though, because if we view ourselves as highly resilient, we sometimes struggle to see ourselves as having been the victim to a trauma, and so we absorb it and move on whilst carrying it.
Trauma can and does also cause numerous things to happen to a person at both a psychological and physical level, as well as at a soul level, where we can also carry wounds.
You may not be recognising these symptoms such as anxiety or panic attacks for example as traumagenic in nature, and yet a point or origin of pain may well be present. This links back to whatever event caused the trauma to become stored, sometimes the brain will hide this trauma so that you don’t recall it, or that you recall it but have intellectualised it, which means that you can talk about the event as though it happened to someone else, without emotion.
Which doesn’t always mean that it has been managed and moved through. If you are recalling a painful event fairly regularly and talking about it without emotion, it probably hasn’t actually been healed yet.
However trauma may be an underlying cause of symptoms that you have been carrying without realising that they are related to something that has happened to you previously, that you have stored in the physical body or as emotions.
We can sometimes be attributing symptoms such as anxiety for example to just being how we are, and labelling ourselves as anxious, without recognising that those roots may be linked to a previous experience.
Any life altering event or trauma can cause you to feel a disconnection either to the people around you or your everyday life experiences. You may experience numbness and lack of wanting to do things, or irritability, anxiety, tearful and reclusive.
Conversely you may keep yourself so busy that you are having very little down time in which to think about how you feel. Lets not forget that one of the by products of trauma: anxiety, often dominates your life, leaving you feeling hopeless and helpless.
When we are in a state of anxiety due to trauma, it often heightens our senses to the point where we are triggered so much more easily. This then becomes a cycle that we find we can’t easily get out of. Our cortisol levels rise, and we react much more acutely to sensory sounds in our environment, such as loud noises, sirens, even people raising their voice can trigger a psychobiological response.
It is also recognised that after trauma there will be attempts by the brain to re-wire in an attempt to immunise you against it, but it can actually cause more harm and even depress the immune system, making you more likely to become physically ill. The brain naturally seeks to minimise the trauma we experience and tries to divert around it as a protective mechanism.
Post traumatic growth allows you to grow as a result of your experience, and re-wires the brain back to a state of balance and harmony, leaving you feeling whole and well again.
In order for this to happen it is important to bear witness to your trauma. Experience it in a gentle way by means of revisiting it, and move through the process of unpacking and reframing it. When we do something on purpose, and do it often, we send new signals down pathways which will become the preferred route taken by the brains processing. This is also how we form habits, because when we pay attention to something, the brain perceives it to be important and stores it as a new route whilst making it readily available. We will look at how help can be accessed to help with that in a moment.
If something we are paying attention to more often, such as is seen in anxiety, is due to a stored trauma, we just begin to experience more physiological responses as the body sends out traumagenic signalling. If this is happening, a person needs to begin to gently find new ways of being, or feeling, that allow room for growth conditions, whilst allowing for release from the trauma. When trauma has occurred, it is common for the brain to hold on to the physiological responses, and send triggers to the autonomic and sympathetic nervous systems. This leads to hyper-arousal states such as being jumpy, irritable, weepy or very reactional. Traumatised people can also sometimes become aggressive, which is then often misinterpreted by others, because the two aren’t thought of as related, but of course adrenaline is known as ‘fight or flight’ and people under stress will default to one or other, or even both.
There are many ways in which we can move through this: a trauma focussed therapist or counsellor can help, and there is a method of trauma clearing known as somatic psychology, which focuses on trauma stored in the body to release it. A great complimentary therapy to go with this can be shamanic soul retrieval, to cleanse and guide the pieces back that were lost at the original point of pain or trauma. The soul is just as affected by trauma as the body and mind, and so soul healing can also be a great way to release yourself from it.
Most importantly perhaps, it’s crucial to begin to bring the body and mind back to feelings of safety. When we do this, the brains alarm system that has been triggered by trauma begins to reset. For this to happen we also need safety resources.
Feelings of safety are imperative to emotional well-being after trauma, so knowing what your safety measures are that work can really help. Some people use things such as weighted blankets to promote a sense of calm, which is likened to having a hug and releases oxytocin (the love hormone) as well as dopamine and serotonin (the sunshine drug) that all help in promoting a sense of calm and feelings of well-being. Another way to do this is with regression hypnotherapy, to go back and heal yourself at the time the trauma happened. A trusted and sympathetic hypnotherapist can do wonders to help release and heal a traumatised client.
Most important is finding a way to bring meaning to what has happened, either to you, or someone you care about. When you can do this, you bring yourself back to safety and feeling safer.
When you take steps to release yourself from trauma, you take steps to feeling that you are home.
Caralyn Bains AFBPsS
To work with Caralyn please visit her site: https://bestofyouconsultancy.co.uk/
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