When you experience trauma, whether it’s a Big T (single event) or complex trauma (repeated or prolonged traumatic experiences, situations or relationships) it can create intense ongoing physical sensations of threat and unease; you may no longer feel safe within your body, leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable.
One of our first steps in working together with trauma in the counselling room is stabilisation; supporting you to reconnect with your body and developing helpful coping strategies to regulate your nervous system so that you can reexperience your body as a place of safety. This is especially important before we start processing any traumatic experiences as it will help you manage difficult sensations and emotions to feel more in control.
This Reclaiming Your Body series will look at ways to regulate your nervous system so that as you gently start to process your experiences and/or encounter trauma triggers, you will be able to bring yourself back into the present and to a state of safety and peace. Developing a toolkit that you can integrate into your daily routine can support you to feel empowered and reclaim a feeling of bodily safety in the world that may feel as if it were stolen or ripped away.
How Trauma Impacts Your Nervous System
Before our series gets underway, let’s firstly look at how trauma impacts your nervous system. As you experience threat of any kind your nervous system moves from Rest and Digest (Parasympathetic Nervous System) into your Stress Response (Sympathetic Nervous System).
Ordinarily, with everyday stresses such as a presentation at work or school, when the threat passes your Stress Response turns off and you move back into Rest and Digest Response.
Trauma is an extreme threat to your sense of self and your safety in the world; your Stress Response turns on intensely as you move towards a response to escape the danger.Freeze (orient to the situation e.g. deer in the headlights)
Flight (mobilisation to escape danger)
Fight (no escape so fight our way out)
Fright (abrupt alternation between flight, fight and freeze)
Fawn (inability to fight so move into pleasing/appeasing/complying)
Flop (intense freezing, disconnection from reality/disassociation)
Faint (faint, vomit, loss of control of bowels)
Most importantly, you do not choose your response; the process is completely unconscious. Your responses are often formed by your previous experiences of survival and much shame can be experienced because you feel you did not respond the way you felt you ‘should’.
Stuck in Danger
Unfortunately, your Stress Response can remain on and be easily triggered; you can feel ‘stuck’ experiencing the uncomfortable and disorientating symptoms making it feel like the trauma is still happening to you.
Depending on your trauma response, you may feel stuck in hyperarousal (racing heart, breathing, and thoughts; unable to relax; nauseous; unable to sleep; shaking; unable to think clearly etc) or hypoarousal (numb; empty; disconnected from your body; flat; heavy; depressed; disconnected from others and the world around you etc). Or, you may flit between the two states rarely experiencing a sense of wholeness, calm and peace.
The Window of Tolerance is a great way to visualise this. Everyone has a different sized Window of Tolerance; the space you sit in where you feel regulated and at peace. Your window is unique to you, the size and space within born from your history, personality and experiences; trauma can shrink your window and you can easily fall out. I love these images from Beacon House and Neurodivergent Insights and they can be great to bring to mind when you feel yourself falling out of your window, remidning yourself of tools to calm or energise, and help you climb safely back inside
Finding Safety
This series aims to support you in a finding the tools and strategies that feel good for you – remember this is your personal journey and what works for some may feel uncomfortable for you. Building a daily routine incorporating simple strategies to practice moving your nervous system back to Rest and Digest, and developing a tool box of strategies to use to counter triggers or flashbacks, you can experience more prolonged moments of safety. As with anything, practice makes perfect and the more you bring your nervous system back to a regulated state, the more flexibility and control you have over it. Most importantly, you can reclaim you body and find an inner calm.
Our next post will look at your first tool: breathing. Many clients I work with are initially sceptical about breathing strategies as previous advice to ‘just breathe deeply’ has felt ineffective. However, once they learn different breathwork tools and how to incorporate them (amongst other tools) into their daily routine their scepticism melts away. I’m curious about how you feel towards breathing strategies – have you ever tried them? How have they worked out for you? Let me know in the comments!
Add comment
Comments