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Body sensation, rather than intense emotion, is the key to healing trauma.
The three parts are commonly known as the reptilian brain (instinctual), the mammalian or limbic brain (emotional), and the human brain or neo-cortex (rational).
Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the “triggering” event itself. They stem from the frozen residue of energy that has not been resolved and discharged; this residue remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and spirits. The long-term, alarming, debilitating, and often bizarre symptoms of PTSD develop when we cannot complete the process of moving in, through and out of the “immobility” or “freezing” state. However, we can thaw by initiating and encouraging our innate drive to return to a state of dynamic equilibrium.
A threatened human (or impala) must discharge all the energy mobilized to negotiate that threat or it will become a victim of trauma. This residual energy does not simply go away. It persists in the body, and often forces the formation of a wide variety of symptoms e.g., anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic and behavioral problems. These symptoms are the organism’s way of containing (or corralling) the undischarged residual energy.
Many war veterans and victims of rape know this scenario only too well. They may spend months or even years talking about their experiences, reliving them, expressing their anger, fear, and sorrow, but without passing through the primitive “immobility responses” and releasing the residual energy, they will often remain stuck in the traumatic maze and continue to experience distress.
I now know that it was not the dramatic emotional catharsis and reliving of her childhood tonsillectomy that was catalytic in her recovery, but the discharge of energy she experienced when she flowed out of her passive, frozen immobility response into an active, successful escape.
In fact, severe emotional pain can be re-traumatizing.
Until we understand that traumatic symptoms are physiological as well as psychological, we will be woefully inadequate in our attempts to heal them.
The image of the mature tree, full of character and beauty, will serve us better than denying the experience or identifying ourselves as victims and survivors.
post-traumatic symptoms are, fundamentally, incomplete physiological responses suspended in fear.
Anxiety and despair can become a creative wellspring when we allow ourselves to experience bodily sensations, such as trembling, that stem from traumatic symptoms.
To complete its biological and meaningful course of action, the organism requires the spontaneous shaking and trembling that we see throughout the animal world.
Whether the restorative response is suppressed by drugs, held in frozen fear, or controlled by sheer acts of will, the innate capacity for self-regulation becomes derailed.
Old trauma symptoms are examples of bound-up energy and lost lessons. The past doesn’t matter when we learn how to be present; every moment becomes new and creative. We have only to heal our present symptoms and proceed. A healing moment ripples forward and back, out and about.
Most modern cultures, including ours, fall victim to the prevailing attitude that strength means endurance; that it is somehow heroic to be able to carry on regardless of the severity of our symptoms. A majority of us accept this social custom without question.
Nature has not forgotten us, we have forgotten it.
A traumatized person’s nervous system is not damaged; it is frozen in a kind of suspended animation.
this function is impaired, any amount of new information leads to confusion and overload. Instead of being assimilated and available for future use, new information tends to stack up. It becomes disorganized and unusable.
In this state, I am not able to learn, not able to acquire new behaviors, not able to break out of the debilitating patterns which will eventually dominate my life.
bypassing our other emotions as well as the normal sequence of responses. We become victims, waiting to be victimized again and again.
Arousal leads to immobility. Period.
This anxiousness serves as the backdrop for all experience in the severely traumatized person’s life.
They become so identified with helplessness and shame that they literally no longer have the resources to defend themselves when attacked or put under pressure.
The drive to complete and heal trauma is as powerful and tenacious as the symptoms it creates.
Much of the violence that plagues humanity is a direct or indirect result of unresolved trauma that is acted out in repeated unsuccessful attempts to re-establish a sense of empowerment..
A majority of people attempt to control their undischarged survival energy by internalizing it.
…“the attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo or prevent injustice, is the one and only universal cause of violence.”
A transformed person feels no need for revenge or violence-shame and blame dissolve in the powerful wake of renewal and self-acceptance
When people are overwhelmed and cannot successfully defend themselves, they often feel ashamed. When they act violently, they are seeking justice and vengeance for having been shamed.
The three little cheetah cubs mentioned earlier knew when the real event was over. The human being, with its vastly “superior” intelligence, often does not.
In many cultures, the internal world of dreams, feelings, images, and sensations is sacred.
In the theater of the body, trauma can be transformed. The fragmented elements that perpetuate traumatic emotion and behavior can be completed, integrated, and made whole again.
Trust, rather than anxiety, forms the field in which all experience occurs.
I must confess that the miracles of healing I have seen make some higher form of wisdom and order hard to deny.
Societies with diminished or punitive physical contact with their children showed clear tendencies toward violence in the forms of war, rape, and torture.
Disconnection from our felt sense of belonging leaves our emotions floundering in a vacuum of loneliness.
