Category: Embodiment

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The Traumas that live within us

(This is a revision of a post originally published in December 2017)

The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

~Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

~Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

Let’s talk about trauma.  Because it lives within all of us.  Whether it is trauma from our own lived experiences, trauma from our ancestors, or trauma from our oppressive culture, we each carry trauma in our bodies and psyches and spirits.  So let’s explore the different types of trauma that we each have within us to better understand what I mean when I say “we all have trauma” and so we can all better understand our own Self.

TYPES OF TRAUMA

Lived Experience Trauma.  This is the trauma that lives within us as a result of the traumatic events we personally experienced in our lives.  It can be chronic (multiple events, like ongoing childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse by a caregiver or later in life an intimate partner, neglect, living in poverty, etc) or acute (one time events like a surgery, car accident, a one time assault like a rape or mugging).  This trauma is based in our own personal history and story.  We may remember or not remember events consciously, and either way they occurred during our lifetime, and our body very clearly remembers them.

Ancestral and Inter-generational Traumas.  These are the traumas that are passed down to us from our family.  Ancestral trauma, in my definition, is what is passed down through our bloodline – it appears in the epigenetic markers of our DNA and our cellular memory.  Inter-generational trauma is passed down by our family too, however it is passed down through actions.  The impacts of a trauma experienced by a mother for example would include how she was able to care for her children, and could impact attachment bonds.  Additionally inter-generational trauma can also be passed down through language (we all have specific “trigger” words that either we don’t want to be associated with or we desperately do want to be associated with and our reactions to these words influence our own actions and thoughts; these words are often passed down through generations).

Cultural Relational Trauma.  This is the trauma of living in a white-supremicist, misogynist, ablist, homophobic, capitalist, patriarchal culture.  It is a trauma that lives in all of us, but to varying degrees.  It is the trauma we need to explore when considering intersectionality and remembering that not all of us are having the same experience in our world.

All of us carry at least two of the three traumas in our own bodies and being : inter-generational and ancestral trauma and cultural trauma.  Most of us also have our own lived experience traumas coursing through us too.

Having an understanding of these different types of trauma allows us to begin to understand what is impacting us, what our triggers are, how some of the ways we view world are from our own experiences and also much of how we view the world is from those who came before us.

As we are able to unravel and decipher our traumas, we are able to dismantle and process them out of our bodies and being.  This is intense work and cannot be done alone in a vacuum.  It is work that needs to be done in community, with some parts worked through in settings with only one other person and others in larger groups.

We are relational beings and trauma impacts our ability to relate with each other.  As we learn more about trauma and our own trauma we can also begin to understand how others are also impacted and influenced by trauma.

I talk more about this in the 7-minute video below.

This essay is the first of a four part series I have written exploring trauma, what it is, how it impacts us, and how we can begin to process it.  I hope you find it helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the topics we will be exploring in my new six month program Trauma Focused Embodiment Level 1.  We begin August 1.  You can learn more here.

Also the main focus of my individual work is trauma and utilizing trauma informed embodiment with my clients.  If you are looking for an individual therapist, you can learn more about me and my individual therapy work here.

And finally, I facilitate a free online group on Facebook where we explore trauma, grief, embodiment,and their intersections.  It is called Trauma Informed Embodiment and you can join us right here.

Links to the other essays in this series:

The Traumas Living Within Us (This Essay)

The Physiological Impacts of Trauma

The Psychological & Emotional Impacts

Processing or Healing Trauma

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Learning the difference between emotional and physical safeness

Unlike other forms of psychological disorders, the core issue in trauma is reality. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society

One of the things we’ve been talking about lately in a few of the groups I facilitate, is learning to differentiate between emotional safeness and physical safety.

In other words, the difference between the potential for our feelings to be hurt in some way and our bodies to be harmed, tortured or murdered.

Reading those words, I’m guessing some of you may be wondering why we would need to differentiate these things.  In so many ways we are all logically aware of the difference between these two very different types of situations. Most of us can look at different events in our own lives and be able to determine in which ones we were in actual physical danger and in which ones the risk was more about being told no, or being wrong, or not feeling heard or understood.

In our logic brain, we can completely understand the difference.

And.

Our primal brain, or reptilian brain as some call it, doesn’t know the difference.

So, when our frontal lobe (where logic and empathy live) isn’t able to communicate with our limbic brain and brain stem, our systems see any type of “threat” as life threatening.  When we are in a trauma state, when we are in that elevated state where we are almost always in fight, flight, or freeze, our logic brain can’t communicate with our primal brain, because our logic brain has pretty much gone “off line” so our primal brain can try to keep us alive.

Because that is the role of our primal brain: to literally keep us alive.  To make sure we physically survive a situation.

Our primal brain isn’t actually concerned with our “feelings” such as shame, emotional hurt, embarrassment, etc.  It only cares that our hearts keep beating, our lungs keep working, and we are physically functioning enough to potentially procreate (regardless of whether we are within the years that procreation is actually possible.)

When the trauma that lives within us has not been processed, our nervous systems stay in a state of hyper alert.  This shows up in various ways, most commonly as anxiety, and can show up as irritability, moodiness, being “overly” emotional, etc.  When our sympathetic nervous system is in a heightened and activated state, when it doesn’t have the opportunity to calm down and allow our parasympathetic system to come online, and a traumatic event occurs, it affects our systems exponentially.

When we consider that we have not only the trauma of our own lived experience within us, but also that of our ancestors and we are constantly being re-traumatized to varying degrees by our culture, it is no wonder that our systems are on over-drive.

When our systems are in this constant state of over-load, we begin to be unable to differentiate between an actual physical threat and a perceived emotional threat.

This is why we get nervous speaking up to that racist uncle or aunt at the holiday dinner table.  It is why we don’t speak up. It is why we don’t share our intimate details or inner most thoughts with those who can hold them.

It’s why we isolate.

Perceiving emotional risk – from speaking up at the holiday table, to sharing our deepest self with a lover and all things in-between –  as life threatening is what perpetuates our isolation.

Our nervous systems and fight/flight/freeze responses are so over stimulated and over activated that any situation that is remotely uncomfortable emotionally, yet completely physically safe, is perceived as a threat to our lives.

To say this is problematic is an understatement.

This is why it is so important for the first step of processing our trauma to be integrating tools, techniques, and practices to soothe and calm our nervous systems (i.e. self regulate) and bring our “baseline” back down to a non-activated state.

It is why I share nervous system soothing (self-regulation) exercises on social media and in my weekly newsletter.  Because truly, this is where we need to start.

We literally are incapable of doing any deeper trauma work until we are able to soothe our sympathetic nervous system. Without that first step we only re-traumatize ourselves and keep ourselves on a very painful and frustrating treadmill.

The good news is, there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to begin the work of calming our systems.  When we look at our Self from a holistic lens, we can then find the different combination of ways that work for us.  For many people taking supplements, vitamins and or herbs, is incredibly helpful.  For others, pharmaceuticals are necessary.  For all of us having a somatic approach of some kind, anything from a somatic trauma therapy like my TIE™ approach to massage, acupuncture or chiropractic work, is incredibly beneficial.

In the end, it doesn’t matter which approaches you use, it only matters that they work for you, are nourishing, and allow for the space in time for you continue on to the deeper work of processing the trauma that lives within you.

I don’t believe in a “one size fits all” approach to trauma processing and healing.  We are each unique, and therefore the ways our systems respond to different exercises, practices, approaches, and modalities is unique to each of us.

And.

I also believe that the very first step we all need to take is in calming our elevated and activated systems into a more stable and steady state.  So we can then dive into the deeper work.  So we can truly connect with our body and the present moment.  So we can internally and systemically understand the difference between an actual physical threat and a perceived emotional one.

I believe this work is not only part of the ways we find healing for our individual selves, but is also part of the way we find healing, growth, and change in the greater collective and in our society.

The individual is part of the collective and the collective is part of the individual.  We need each other for greater internal and external change to happen.  And our ability to connect and be in right and meaningful relationship is dependent on bringing our nervous systems down from an elevated and threatened state and being more in our frontal lobes so we can respond to situations mindfully and intentionally instead of reacting to them from a state of fear, anxiety, and stress overwhelm.

…

Originally published on January 28, 2018 as a weekly newsletter and revised for publication here.  Did you enjoy reading this?  If so, I invite you to sign up to receive my weekly love letters right here.

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On Safeness, Stabilization, and Self-Care :: Shifting from Overwhelm to Safeness & Stabilization

…repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.
~Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.
~Bessel A. van der Kolk

For those of us who live with trauma, and are in a state of constant feelings of overwhelm (thanks to being in that fight/flight/freeze response), the idea that we can find a sense of calm, safeness, and groundedness can feel incredibly foreign, if not impossible. Many of us have bought into the narrative of “this is just the way I am” or worse, that we are broken and can’t be fixed.

I understand.  I’ve been there.  When we are in that constant state of overwhelm, and especially when we are deep in it, we can’t see a way out.  What I mean is, we literally cannot imagine other ways of being – our brain will not allow it.  When we are in the fight-flight-freeze state our ability to be creative, imaginative, or problem solving oriented simply isn’t there, that part of our brain isn’t online, only the part of our brain focused on immediate survival is.

I’m writing all this to say – it is not your fault that you aren’t able to see a way out.  It is how we as a species are made.

And because we ourselves are unable to see that way out, we need our outside resources to help us find ways to learning to calm our systems, learn about feeling that sense of safeness, and find our ways to our own center and ground.

For me, I had a few outside resources to help me find my way out of overwhelming and crushing anxiety, depression, and being in a constant state of feeling highly triggered.  One was my therapist, another my husband, and also a couple good friends.

But my true motivation to do this work was, and is, my daughter.  I wanted to be a different mom for her.  I didn’t want to be yelling all the time.  I wanted to be able to sit with her loudness and not feel overwhelmed by it.  I wanted to be able to hold space for her big emotions (quite a feat since I couldn’t hold space for my own).  I wanted to be present with her, to have fun with her, to not constantly be looking for distractions from the here and now.

Where the journey truly began for me, even after literally decades of talk-therapy, was in learning how to self-soothe and self-regulate my system in non-harmful ways.

Once I began to learn about self-regulation, through various body centered mindfulness approaches, my life oh-so-slowly began to change.  But it did begin to change.  In time my automatic reactions (yelling) to triggers and feelings of overwhelm became a little less automatic.  I began to learn to anticipate by listening to my body when I was beginning to move into that state of extreme overwhelm and could distract myself, and then in time I was able to incorporate exercises to actually calm my system in the moment without distraction or dissociation. In even more time, I adopted and developed my own practices to help regulate my system even when it wasn’t triggered to help bring my base-line state back down and out of constant fight-flight-freeze.

After I  gained the tools to self-regulate, I began the journey of connecting to my boundaries and reclaiming my body and deeply learning where I actually end and another begins.  Eventually I found my way to centering and grounding and then acknowledging my resources.

Then, and only then, was I in a place to truly begin my own trauma processing through somatic therapy.

My own journey has been literally decades long in some ways, and yet the real work of learning to self-regulate and come into my body is something I truly embarked on in the last eight years.  And the last two years have been when my own personal trauma processing has actually (finally) been occurring and I have developed my inner sense of safeness, peace, and groundedness and my ability to be present in the moment, in my environment, in relationship with another, and within myself (all at once!).

All of my individual clients as well as most of the folks who participate in my online programs, have been on similar journeys.  Most have had years of talk therapy, some of have had some experience with somatic therapies or approaches.  Each step along the way a building block to help them prepare for this deeper body-centered trauma processing work.

We come to this work in our own ways.  And rarely, if ever, is it a direct path from point A (traumatic event(s)) to point ZZZZ (trauma processing).  It takes time, patience, bravery, and curiosity to do this work.  And it also requires that we have the tools to self-regulate, and that we use those tools when we need them.

This work can feel so overwhelming (and perhaps more so because we are already in a constant state of overwhelm).  Because of this, I feel it is vitally important for us to approach it in small steps, at our own pace, and always where we start is learning to self-soothe, self-regulate, and develop our own rituals and practices of self-care.

The only way we can move through any of this work is at our own pace.  It can never be forced.  And I deeply believe that our very first steps are learning to self-regulate and calm our nervous system, connecting to our boundaries, and finding our ways to center and ground, and all of those are acts of self-care.

I talk more about all of this in the 8-minute video below:

This essay series is to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the spring program Trauma Informed Embodiment™ : Basics. We begin May 1.  You can learn more here.

You can find the other essays in this series at the links below:

On Safeness, Stabilization, & Self Care :: Definitions

Self Regulation as Self Care

Shifting from Overwhelm to Safeness & Stabilization (this essay)

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On Safeness, Stabilization, & Self Care :: Self Regulation as Self Care

When we self-regulate well, we are better able to control the trajectory of our emotional lives and resulting actions based on our values and sense of purpose.

~ Amy Leigh Mercree, A Little Bit of Meditation: An Introduction to Mindfulness

Self regulation is, quite simply, the ability to regulate our Self.  This includes our ability to soothe and regulate our nervous systems and our emotional states.

Regulating is not stuffing down, ignoring, or dissociating.

Regulation allows us to stay present, to tolerate uncomfortable feelings (sensations and emotions) and situations.

Regulation is about learning how to titrate our emotions, to recognize when we are at the very early stages of moving into overwhelm, and utilizing tools to help calm and soothe ourselves in ways that are not harmful either immediately or in the long term.

Knowing how to self-regulate is a vital tool to have when we are in a crisis situation, and to utilize long after the crisis is over so the trauma or pain of the even doesn’t get stuck in us.

Being able to self-regulate and self-soothe is part of our ability to be resilient to chaotic and traumatic events in our lives.

Most of us who had chaotic childhoods didn’t learn how to self-regulate in a way that would be beneficial for us long term.  Most of us learned how to dissociate and are pretty darn good at it.  Most of us learned how to stuff down our feelings (again, bodily sensations and emotions) and to not experience them or allow them to be expressed.  For most of us, our caregivers didn’t model self-regulation in any truly beneficial ways.

Because we all carry so many generations of trauma within us, I believe it is safe to say that most of our ancestors didn’t know how to self-soothe either, at least not once became “civilized”.

Our inability to self-regulate, our not learning it as children, is not our fault.  However, I deeply believe it is our responsibility to our Self and to our loved ones to learn how to do so.

When we learn to self-regulate, we are offering nurturing and care to our Self.  We are showing love to our Self.  We are showing our Self that we matter and that we don’t have to go into overwhelm.

Self-regulation also helps with our relationships.  It allows us to become present in the moment, as well as learn to tolerate uncomfortable conversations and situations with those we care most about.  It helps prevent us from “flying off the handle” or “losing our shit.”  It is a tool that helps to experience our feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them and losing connection to our frontal lobes.

We can self-regulate in a variety of ways.  All of the Nervous System Soothing Exercises I offer in your weekly love letter are one way to learn how to self-soothe and self-regulate.  Being in nature is another.  Moving our bodies.  Creative expression (painting, writing, sculpting, coloring, drawing in sand, etc).  For some people having a glass of wine or a cup of herbal tea.  Seeing our therapists regularly.  Playing or listening to music or singing or humming.  Cleaning (one of my personal favorites!).  Physical contact with another person, sexually or non-sexually (also known as co-regulation).  Weekly body work of some type (massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, etc). These are just a few ways, there are many, many more.

I recommend that we all have multiple ways to self-soothe and self-regulate ourselves.  I also suggest we have daily (or semi-daily) practices or rituals that help to calm ourselves and dissipate the stress we experience throughout the day so that it doesn’t build up and turn into overwhelm.

It is vital to our own care that we find these ways to calm our nervous systems, and to learn to not be in a constant state of overwhelm – it is vital for our physical health, for our mental health, and for our relational health.

This work is not always easy or glamorous or fun.  In fact I would argue it is mostly hard, messy, and often daunting.

And.

As with learning anything new, any new way of caring for ourselves and being in the world, the more we practice, the better we get at it and the less hard, messy and daunting it becomes.

I talk more about all of this in the 9-minute video below.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the spring program Trauma Informed Embodiment™ : Basics. We begin May 1.  You can learn more here.

This essay is the first in a three part series I have written exploring the ideas of safeness, stabilization, and self-care..  I hope you find it helpful and informative. To read the other essays in this series, click the links below:

Definitions

Self Regulation & Self Care (this essay)

Shifting from Overwhelm to Safeness & Stabilization 

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On Safeness, Stabilization, & Self Care :: Definitions

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.

~Fred Rogers

Welcome to my new educational essay series On Safeness, Stabilization, & Self Care.  Over the next three weeks I’ll be talking about these ideas, what they are, why they are important, and how they relate to our trauma processing work.

I believe it is important to start with defining what exactly I am talking about, so this is where we start.  These are my own definitions (formed and influenced by my education, my clinical work, and my life), and while there are other therapists who would agree with these definitions and who use this same language, others may not.  I don’t believe there is only one way to define these ideas, however so that you can understand what I mean when I use these terms, I’m sharing these definitions.

Safeness

Safeness is not the same as safety.  Safety is an outer state, more of an absolute state (we are either physically safe or we are not), whereas safeness is an inner state of being and feeling.  Safeness is a way of feeling (sensations & emotions) and sensing internally.

There are three aspects to our sense of safeness: safeness in our environment, in our self/body, in relationship with the person(s) who is (are) in the room with us.

Having a sense of safeness in our environment means that we can feel calm and at ease in the space we are in.  It is knowing we aren’t likely to fall through some hidden hole in the floor, that the roof over us will protect us from the elements, etc.  It is an inner knowing that we are okay in the physical space we are in and that no harm will come to us..

Our sense of safeness within our Self (including in our body) is about trusting our Self (including our body).  It means that if something dangerous should crop up, our bodies know what to do and how to respond.  It is trusting that “gut feeling” and trusting that we will not only hear it but also honor it.  It means trusting that we will make the right (conscious intentional or automatic depending on the circumstances) decision for that moment.  It is also about feeling good within our own skin.

The idea of our sense of safeness in relationship can be a bit trickier, in part because for many of us the idea of a “safe relationship” is confusing.  We may think that to be in a safe relationship means that the other person will never ever cause us emotional harm.  Here’s a thing though, we are all human.  Which means the people we are in relationship are human, with their own traumas, their own conditioning, and their own unconscious motivations.  Which means, other people, given enough time, will cause us some emotional pain.

Where the idea of safeness in relationship comes in, is when this time the other does cause us emotional pain occurs, that we, together, can come through it.  That we can work it out.  That we repair.  And through the repair process the relationship is then made stronger, and our sense of safeness in the relationship grows.  Our sense of safeness in relationship also means that boundaries are respected, that we are able to say no and have that no honored, that we can share ourselves and not be punished for who we are in some way.

(Please note that I specifically named emotional pain and not physical or psychological.  If someone is causing you physical or psychological harm, that will never be a relationship where you can grow a sense of safeness, and when you have the resources I would encourage you leave that relationship and find your ways to processing the pain caused.)

Stabilization

Stabilization is when we feel steady and secure in our emotions.  It means we are not flooded or overwhelmed by feelings of sadness or anger.  This does not mean we never feel sadness or anger; it means that they don’t overwhelm us.  For many of us living with trauma in our bodies and minds this differentiation may feel impossible.

I’m here to tell you it is possible. More on that in the coming weeks.

Stabilization is also not living in that state of overwhelm, it is feeling a sense of calm, much of the time, and sometimes even when things outside of our control happen. It is in the not having big reactive responses, and instead being able to respond to outer chaos intentionally and thoughtfully.

Again, this doesn’t mean we never feel angry or sad or frustrated or misunderstood… it means that we recognize those feelings (physical sensations and emotions) and do not act out mindlessly or thoughtlessly from those feelings.

Ultimately stabilization is about having a really great relationship with our frontal lobe (where logic and empathy live) and having all the parts of our brain working together instead of our amygdala always being in charge and running rampant.

Self Care

In a nutshell, this is caring for our Self, for our Self.  What I mean by this, is that many of us have received the message that we need to fill our own cup so we can be of service to others.  I don’t consider that self-care.  That is caring for our self for others.  To me, that is not true self care.

True self care is when we nourish our self in some way (from drinking enough water during the day to seeing our therapist each week to getting enough sleep to finding ways to calm and soothe our nervous systems) because we want to care for our Self, because we believe that we are deserving.

This can be a pretty big leap.  I think many of us have (and I include myself in this in the past) grudgingly done “self-care” so that we can be better parents/partners/workers; so that we have the energy and resources to be of service to others.

There is nothing wrong with being of service to others.  And. There is nothing wrong with taking care of our Self for the sole reason of caring for our self.

What does any of this have to do with trauma, grief, or embodiment?

Fostering a sense of safeness and stabilization are the “first phase” of any trauma processing work. This is work that needs to be done before you dive into the deeper processing work.  Once we have developed a sense of safeness and feel emotionally stable, we then have the inner resources to truly do the deep, challenging, and messy work of trauma processing and in depth embodiment work.

Coming to the idea that we are an interconnected (to others) yet autonomous Self, and that we are deserving of care because we exist not because of how we care for others, is revolutionary and also a part of our trauma processing work.  Even the idea of claiming our autonomous Self, which includes our body, mind, and spirit, as ours, is pretty revolutionary, and is also part of our trauma processing work.

I talk more about all of this in the 8 minute video below.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the spring program Trauma Informed Embodiment™ : Basics. We begin May 1.  You can learn more here.

This essay is the first in a three part series I have written exploring the ideas of safeness, stabilization, and self-care..  I hope you find it helpful and informative.

Definitions (this essay)

Self Regulation as Self Care

Shifting from Overwhelm to Safeness & Stabilization