Resources for Traumatic Stress
As traumatic events happen to us, during or after, it is NORMAL to experience feelings of confusion, sadness, fear, anxiety, panic, irritability, agitation, anger, and despair. It is also normal to experience physical symptoms like a rapid heart rate, sweating, shakiness, nausea, or dizziness. These are all signs that your innate stress response has kicked into the gas pedal. You might feel an urge to run away or fight, or you might find yourself wanting to curl up like a turtle in a protective shell and never come out.
While these symptoms feel unsettling, it’s important to recognize that these feelings are expected and are normal sequences to abnormal events. In fact, they are your body’s natural way of digesting traumatic stress.
If you notice that you are having intrusive thoughts, nightmares, frozen from fear or you find it hard to sleep, this is a sign for you to seek support with a licensed psychotherapist. Make sure that the professional is TRAUMA TRAINED, otherwise work directly with a somatic therapist or trauma-informed yoga teacher if you would prefer a more body-based approach rather than traditional talk therapy. If you choose not to seek help, you might find yourself begining to feel stuck. This stuckness may lead you to experience not wanting to go to places, participate in activities, or see people that are associated with your trauma and overtime, these symptoms can inhibit your ability to live a happy and healthy life.
Your Body’s innate Wisdom
As human beings, we are equipped with a physiology that has built-in protective mechanisms to helps us survive threatening situations by mobilizing our defenses or disconnecting us from our pain. When we experience a threat or danger, our sympathetic nervous system helps us to move into a self-protection response through the release of adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine throughout the bloodstream. Just as animals seek to flee or fight a predator; we too, might rely upon these defense mechanisms to survive.
However, when there is no way to escape an ongoing threat, we tend to rely upon an older evolutionarily expression of the parasympathetic nervous system which leads us into an immobilization response. We can see this “feigned death” in animals who stop moving or faint in hopes that a predator will lose interest in them; for, unlike scavengers, predators will typically not eat animals who are already dead. This immobilization response is accompanied by the release of endogenous (naturally produced) endorphins that have a numbing effect on pain.
Having an understanding of the physiology of trauma helps guide the healing process.
Engaging your BODY to help you Heal
Our bodies are essential for releasing traumatic stress and helping ourselves to heal. You may start by exploring how your body wants to move by simply asking it. Yep! Ask yourself how do I want to move right now? How does your body want to move? Simply asking, and coupling your curiosity with a SLOW, a more mindful invitation to move so that it doesn’t respond by tensing up. What is the motion that feels just right? Find the freedom of knowing there is no RIGHT movement, just THE movement. How do you want to move? Let it FEEEEEL good!
Suffering doesn’t have to meet with suffering, no! suffering needs to meet with well-being and goodness and a NOURISHED nervous system and that comes THROUGH THE BODY. And so that invitation, and that it’s okay to feel well and become a coherent nervous system - that’s how we become of service to OURSELVES first and then others
Explore movements such as pushing, reaching, shaking, curling up, rolling or rocking. Begin with micro movements first, and if those feel good notice if you’d like to grow them!
Try these movements and notice how you feel:
Stand facing a wall and push your arms firmly into it. Press and release several times. Imagine that you are setting a boundary and pushing away anything that you do not want or that was a source of threat. There is nothing the wall cant handle to go ahead a really push!
Stand up and walk slowly and mindfully in place, like a cat that is kneading. Imagine that you are leaving that situation which isn’t safe or healthy for you.
Sitting down allow yourself to rest into the connection and support of your chair or couch. Notice if you feel an urge to collapse. If so, see if you can find enough muscular engagement to help you feel relaxed yet alert.
Emotions and Traumatic Stress
It isn’t strange to feel angry after experiencing a traumatic event. Anger and rage are not bad emotions. Having said that, we need healthy outlets for these feelings so that the emotion does’t get pushed into the shadows and create harm.
Feelings of guilt and shame are also normal after traumatic events. Some of you may have experienced asking “Why did I survive when others did’t?” Some of you might feel ashamed as though you were at fault even if you were only a witness or a victim.
Grief is also a normal response, as we must process the way that difficult life event changed our familiar orientation to the world. There’s adaptation to the new and unwanted reality.
It is essential to acknowledge the sad and painful parts of traumatic events. To give yourself time and space to tender your vulnerable emotions. The good news is, trauma is NOT a life sentence. As Deb Dana says “hopefulness lies in knowing that while early experiences shape the nervous system, ongoing experiences can reshape it.”
If you havnt already, gift yourself a session with a trauma-informed yoga teacher, coach or somatic therapist!
You can also find my list of recommended books here.
Source: Somatic Experiencing International, Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy
