Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Healing Trauma or Processing Trauma?

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Definition of heal

1a : to make free from injury or disease : to make sound or whole 

…

3: to restore to original purity or integrity 

Definition of process

…

2a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular results (2) : a continuing natural or biological activity or function 

2b : a series of actions or operations conducing to an end; especially : a continuous operation or treatment especially in manufacture

Merriam-Webster online dictionary, December 2017

I stopped using the word healing as related to trauma over a year ago.  I did this mostly in response to what felt like an onslaught of trauma coaches and therapists talking about how by working with them you can heal your trauma and everything in your life will be all flowers and sausages because of it.

These messages impacted me in a very negative way.  At first I didn’t understand why I found the message so irritating.  I mean, I used the term “healing trauma” too.  So why did it bother me so much that these other folks were using this very common term?

With some quiet and self-reflection I found my answer.

My own personal experience of trauma therapy didn’t seem to “heal” my trauma in the ways that I thought about healing.  Using Merriam-Webster’s definition above, if we heal our trauma, we make it go away, disappear, no longer exist.

Working with my own therapists, this was not my experience.  My trauma still existed, even after years of therapies.  The events didn’t miraculous not happen.  The ways that they impacted me didn’t disappear. I still had memories, I was still triggered, I still had certain behaviors-some innocuous, some relatively harmful-that grew from these experiences.

My trauma was not healed. My trauma is not healed.  It still exists.  It’s still in me in a myriad of ways, some of which I am conscious of and I am sure some I am not.

This may sound rather hopeless.  If we can’t actually heal our trauma, if we can’t actually undo what was done to us, what is the point?

What has occurred for me, through years of talk therapy, EMDR, Sensory-Motor approach, and most recently CIMBS (Complex Integration of Multiple Brain Systems – a body-centered mindfulness/somatic approach), is that I can process and learn to mitigate the impact trauma has on me and my life.

The events still happened.  I am still sometimes triggered.  My physical health is still impacted.

And.

I have learned how to become aware of some of my triggers. I have learned to listen to my body when a trigger is starting and then can slow down and calm my nervous system so I don’t move into a fully triggered (and out of body, back in reptile mind) state.  I have learned how to actually feel comfortable in my own body, to enjoy pleasurable sensations and to tolerate uncomfortable ones.

I have not healed my trauma.  And I have processed much of it and learned and am learning so much more about myself as I do it.

The processing of my own personal and ancestral traumas has been progressive.  It has been both incremental, with the tiniest, almost imperceptible, shifts and it has also in some ways happened all at once, with seemingly huge changes happening in very short periods of time.

It has been a process.  It will likely be a process for the rest of my life. A process of coming home to my body, of reconnecting with my Self and the world, a process of self awareness, a process of learning and unlearning, a process of soothing my nervous system, connecting to my boundaries and resources, finding my center and ground, and creating new neuro-pathways.  A process of shifting and transforming into new ways of being.

I have witnessed similar experiences with my clients when we utilize my Trauma Informed Embodiment™ approach.  The process is slow and gentle and also results can sometimes be seen rather quickly.  This approach doesn’t make your trauma “go away,” it will not magically turn you back into the person you were before the traumatic events happened.  It will give you tools and new ways of entering into your Self and your life that are more mindful, pleasurable, and joyful.

I talk more about all of this in the 13 minute video below.

This essay is the fourth and final 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.

Additionally 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.

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.

If you missed the first three essays and videos their links are below ::

The Traumas Living Within Us

The Physiological Impacts of Trauma

The Psychological & Emotional Impacts

Processing or Healing Trauma (this essay)

The Psychological & Emotional Impacts of Trauma

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In PTSD a traumatic event is not remembered and relegated to one’s past in the same way as other life events. Trauma continues to intrude with visual, auditory, and/or other somatic reality on the lives of its victims. Again and again they relieve the life-threatening experiences they suffered, reacting in mind and body as though such events were still occurring. PTSD is a complex psychobiological condition. 

~Babette Rothschild, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment

It is true that our minds and bodies are connected.  What our body experiences impacts our emotional and psychological states.  Consider how when you have a cold or the flu you also feel crabby or irritable.  Or how when you physically feel good generally your mood is also good.

The unprocessed traumas that live within our bodies also impact our moods and ways of being and connecting with our world, including the people in it.  Some of the ways trauma appears via our emotions and mental state are:

• Unexplained or “illogical” fear

• Anxiety, including “panic attacks”

• Depression

• Hyper-vigilance (also related to fear and anxiety)

• Extreme (for you) irritability

• Emotional dysregulation (mood swings; cannot soothe self easily; once triggered into anger or sadness or fear cannot easily come out of it)

• Disassociated from the present (stuck in past and or future thinking)

• Inability to concentrate and stay focused on one thing for an extended period of time

• Self-isolation (withdrawing from or not connecting to others)

• Feelings of shame and self-blame and claiming responsibility for things that are out of your control

• Addiction

• Inability to trust others, even those you are in intimate relationships with

• Struggle expressing your feelings in a calm or non-agitated way; often “lash out” at others when feeling hurt

• Anger tends to be the “go to” response to emotional pain including sadness and grief

• Hyper emotional defensiveness

Our pasts impact our present and future, this is true. Our experiences impact the ways we interact with our world.  And while it is true that our traumatic experiences were out of our control, it is also true that we have a choice as to how much we allow those experiences to determine our path.

Often when we have experienced a trauma our sense of choice is altered.  Because the experience was out of out control, and not our choice, our brain shifts into thinking-both un/subconsciously and consciously-that we have no control over the impact of the traumatic events.  The event actually impacts our neuropaths and our ways of thinking and the more we think we are stuck and don’t have choice, the deeper those paths become and the more ingrained those thoughts are.

I often think of entering into trauma processing or “healing” in relation to the Physical Law of Inertia :: A body in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.

In addiction circles this “outside force” is called “hitting rock bottom” – something so awful happens to us that it is a wake up call to seek help and change.

I believe trauma works in the same way.  We will be willing to live with the impact of trauma, physical, emotional, psychological, until something happens that “forces” us to move towards processing and shifting.  This could be something huge or small, some action we take or path we start down that is so very much not who we are that we are left looking at ourselves and making a decision to change.

Unfortunately, many people do not understand that it is unprocessed trauma that is driving them through their unconscious.  Perhaps a person’s mind has blocked the memory of a traumatic event so they don’t even know it happened, or perhaps a person doesn’t understand the wide impact trauma has on the mind and body.  Because of this many people are left scrambling for help – going to medical professionals seeking relief from physical impacts and or to mental health professionals seeking relief for their depression or anxiety and not seeing the connection between the two.

Again, this is why it is vital we seek professionals who are trauma informed.  It is also why we ourselves need to better understand the far reaching impacts of trauma.

The more we are willing and able to learn about our Self, the more we are willing to bring our unconscious into consciousness, the more we are willing to face our fears of the discomfort and change that comes from processing our trauma, the more we will be able to reconnect to our Self and our world, in meaningful, loving, and compassionate ways.

I talk more about all of this in the 10 minute video below:

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

Additionally 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.

If you missed the other essays and videos in this series their links are below ::

The Traumas Living Within Us

The Physiological Impacts of Trauma

The Psychological & Emotional Impacts (this essay)

Processing or Healing Trauma

The Traumas that live within us

By

(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

Learning the difference between emotional and physical safeness

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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.

Safeness vs. Safety

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The pearls weren’t really white, they were a warm oyster beige, with little knots in between so if they broke, you only lost one. I wished my life could be like that, knotted up so that even if something broke, the whole thing wouldn’t come apart. ~Janet Fitch, White Oleander

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

We live in a world where mass shootings at schools is almost a weekly occurrence.  A world where children are being torn from their parents with a flimsy reason given of “immigration status.” A world where women are still raped daily.  A world where women are killed by their intimate partners daily.  A world where black boys and men are murdered by the police daily. A world with war, poverty, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism… you get my point, I’m sure.

For those of us living with trauma in our bodies, minds, and being, it is validation for our anxiety and other trauma symptoms.  Each of these types of events is like a nod to our own individual systems saying “See!  I’m not paranoid!  The world isn’t safe!! Being in hyper-arousal is the ONLY way I will survive!”

It is true that the world is not safe.  It is less safe depending on the color of your skin or perceived gender or sexuality or ability or class or age.  It is less safe for some than for others, and it is not 100% for anyone.

The first phase of trauma processing work, no matter what kind of work/model/approach you are using, is always developing stabilization and a sense of safeness.

But how can we feel safe when we know we are most definitely not actually safe?

First, there are degrees to safety itself.  Living in a home where there is physical, sexual, or psychological violence is not safe, and also living in such an environment does not allow for developing a sense of safeness.

And, living in the world is not safe.  However, it is a different level of not safe, it is a different level of constant threat.  It is an unknown (whereas living in an abusive home is a known).  We cannot predict when we will be mugged or be in a car crash.  Often, when living in abusive environments, we can become very good at predicting when shit is going to go down.

Second, there is a difference between being actually safe and having a sense of safeness within our body, mind, and being.

Anxiety has physical manifestations.  For some people it shows up as a vibrating feeling or like your skin is crawling.  For others it’s stomach pain or feeling like your stomach is tied up in knots.  For some it’s headaches.  For others muscle tension.  Rapid heartrate and shallow breathing are also symptoms of anxiety.  These are all also signs that our sympathetic nervous system – the part of our system responsible for fight-flight-freeze – has been activated.

When our body systems are in a state of hyper-alert, our systems are constantly telling each other we are not safe.  We are not safe in our environment.  We are not safe in relationship.  We are not safe within ourselves.

It means we constantly second guess ourselves.  It means we don’t trust ourselves.

Having a sense of safeness within ourselves means that we trust our Self – it means that we know we’ve got our own backs.  It means we can confidently tell ourselves that should something happen out in the world, we will survive it.  It means being able to detect, hear, and respond to the subtle messages our bodies give when we are actually in physical danger.

It is knowing that we live in an unsafe world and still being willing to walk out into it without constant fear and anxiety.

Developing a sense of safeness within our Self requires having a relatively safe space to explore this idea.  It requires having our home be a safe space (where abuse is not currently happening). It requires being in relationship with another that is safe enough (more on this in a few), be that person an intimate (sexual or not) partner or friend or a trusted therapist.

What do I mean by safe enough?  The reality of being human is that sometimes we unintentionally cause harm to others.  When in relationship – be this parent child or intimate friend or partner, we call this misattunement.  It means we are not attuned.  Someone said something they thought was funny and we internalized it as very hurtful.

Misattunement happens.  In all relationships.  With our children, with our parents, with our best friends, with our lovers, with our therapists.  Misattunement happens because we are all human and each of us carry our own unique set of stuff, and no one can ever know all the stuff another person carries.

This is where re-attunement comes in.  It is where we apologize for harm we have caused.  It is where we state in a non-blaming way that we feel hurt by the other persons words or actions.  It is where the opportunity to repair is present and it is vital for the relationship that both sides take full advantage of that opportunity.  This is when a relationship is safe enough: that when harm does happen (and it will), we are able to repair in honest and loving ways.

We live in an unsafe world.  This is a fact.

We can still develop a sense of safeness within ourselves, within specific environments, and in relationship.

We do this through connecting with our body, its sensations, its emotions.  We do this through trial and error.  We do this by learning ways to calm and soothe our nervous systems when we are in safe enough environments.  We do this by learning to sense our physical, emotional, and psychological boundaries and how they interconnect.  We do this by learning to find center and ground and be present in the here and now with ourselves, with our environment, with our relationships.  We do this by acknowledging our own inner and outer resources.

We do this slowly and by being brave.  We do this by not gaslighting ourselves.  We do this by becoming curious.

As we each learn to develop our own sense of safeness within ourselves, we can then begin to help others do the same.  This shifting allows us to move from the reactive states of fight-flight-freeze into the intentional, mindful active state of creativity, empathy, and compassion.  This shifting within ourselves allows us to create shifts within our world.

Perhaps the world will never be 100% safe all the time for all persons.  And we can sure make it more safe for all persons, including ourselves.  But first we need to have a sense of safeness within so we can more fully connect with our frontal lobes and create change out of love and curiosity instead of fear.

…

Originally published on February 18, 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.