Desensitisation — an example of warming up slowly in Trauma and PTSD.

melting the ice, starting with luke warm water.

Externally, a trauma survivor might look unbroken and quite healthy with a very bold beautiful smile, with the personality that constantly reassures that everybody around them is happy. Sadly that same person may go home and weep alone for a similar assurance but unsure of how to receive it due to intense trauma conditioning.

Perhaps not. There is no pre-defined criterion for what a trauma warrior/survivor ought to look, act, or be like.

Nevertheless, there is no defined face for trauma and there won’t be unless you do an MRI brain scan. We tend to think of trauma as a physical manifestation, scars following the war, or a car crash. Basically, a physical wound the naked eye could witness.

Trauma is also a chemical, biological, emotional and spiritual wound. These scars are deeply sowed within us, a naked eye wouldn't be able to see, these wounds (altering our chemicals and biology) how the power to influence our entire physiology. Being the invisible would trauma is. It’s pretty a funny one too, swelling up each time a person is triggered. Beautifully though, trauma wounds can be safely healed and dissolved (which they can be, keep reading).

And your physiology restored, your brain can be altered, again turning off all the sirens.

Trauma negatively influences our brains' recollection and processing network naturally dysregulating us.

There are three major areas of our brain that are shaped by these stressful experiences:

• The hippocampus, controlling memory, learning, and interpretation of information. This hippocampus can reduce its activity under stress and, in fact, it can actually shrink. If not healed, a smaller and less active hippocampus entails we are less able and likely to process new information once we are experiencing traumatic stress.
• The amygdala, the part that processes our emotions and the part of our brain responsible for perceived fear. Throughout periods of chronic intense stress, the amygdala’s plays a role in the brain to serve as an alarm system (fight or flight). Alerting the rest of the brain that there is indeed a potential risk! a fight-flight-freeze reaction creates a domino effect and many physiological changes occur. So, this reaction begins in your amygdala, then the amygdala responds by sending signals to the hypothalamus, stimulating the autonomic nervous system (ANS). However, this is pretty useful in life-or-death situations, but the amygdala is also triggered by traumatic stress. The brain enters fight and flight, but a chronic fight and flight, over and over and over again. We call this sympathetic nervous system dominance. This is what happens.
• The prefrontal cortex, the region regulating fear that occurs when confronted with specific stimuli. ‘’Severe emotional trauma can create lasting changes in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex region of the brain. Which is responsible for the regulation of emotional responses triggered by the amygdala. PTSD patients show a marked decrease in the volume of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the functional ability of this region (S. Stevens et al., 2013). Explaining why people suffering from PTSD are prone to exhibiting anxiety, fear, and extreme stress responses even when faced with stimuli that are not correlated — or only remotely connected — to their experiences from the past.

But, wait. The brain does this, in attempts to protect you, today.

You can heal and unlock trauma out of the body

Yet, your body remembers, your cells do, the body transforms trauma through a degrading process. Trauma ultimately weakens the body’s natural defences until it manifests itself in the form of a disease eg. Lowered immune response, psychological distress, triggering Autoimmunity, chronic physical pain, headaches, heart diseases (atherosclerosis), lack of focus and attention, depression etc.

Post-trauma – our body degrades to an easier yet not so comfortable norm. The brains documents clues of our trauma by encoding traumatic events as body sensations or random pictures (that we see/disturbing us throughout the day). The precise memory network ceases to function, although, interestingly, the traumatic memory actually isn’t logged in and stored appropriately in your brain.

Trauma screams ”help me” and knocks ”please listen to me”.

This continues to manifest as tummy aches, headaches, tears, uncontrollable laughter, isolation, body pain etc (the above). Nobody can hear though. How would we know that’s trauma stuck – response – stuck in the body? How would we if we were desensitised and disassociated from our painful wound? We shut down, pulling attention and awareness away from ourselves.

In severe circumstances, it resembles playing dead whilst we evacuate from our body, mentally and emotionally closing down until the body is ”safe” to function again and recall what won’t paralyse us.

Interestingly, healing involves breathing, through the belly. Breathing=suggests the body is safe. This is one way trauma is unlocked and freed.

Brutal crumbs might manifest as symptoms generally known and linked to post-traumatic stress. Still the body nudges but louder, chronic headaches, chronic IBS, chronic pain.. etc «listen, again”. Nothing happens, trauma shuts us down and screams louder with a chronic illness to bring you to attention that your dear body is desperately longing for comfort and solace.

Traumatic memories imprint in the brain like a shovel stuck in cement, inhibiting what the brain knows as “normal” and diminishing its biological healing system.

How does this make sense? When we’re ill we’re forced to nurse our precious selves, were compelled to attend to ourselves and slow down. Hence, giving our bodies the care and time it desperately sought.

Healing trauma. Bringing The Body To Awareness.

What can you see? What can you hear? What do you feel? Is your nose cold? Crisp? Wet? Is your mouth dry? Are you sitting on something warm? Does it feel good? Is it cold?

Be gentle. painting, art in any form, embodying techniques that engage the body such as yoga, (my friend taught me a Sufi grind to stimulate serotonin and engage digestive organs) compassion meditation, touch, connection, journaling, therapy, Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), somatic bodywork and so on. These techniques all reassure the body it is here. And safe. You don’t have to be stuck.

The mind can heal, the body can let go and heal. Throughout the path of therapy, people become more conscious and mindful of their feelings and their sensations. Post-therapy it’s as though you start to feel your fingers not knowing they were ever really there? Connections to initial experiences are remembered and here you are realising that your body can actually feel sensations and you’re not stuck in just surviving but rather actually living. Feeling safe and comfortable may feel extremely, extremely threatening, start slow. It is ok to open up slowly and it’s ok if anger comes up it is a sign you’re breaking – the trauma wound. For all, you knew feeling threatened was safe and feeling safe was unknown.

Healing is non-linear and things come up before the dust settles.

“Imagine you have been out in the snow and cold without gloves on for a while. Your hands will start to feel ice cold. As you enter the warm house to warm your hands over the fire, you might feel some pain as your hands receive the warmth they so urgently needed. To titrate the pain, you approach the fire slowly so your hands can slowly absorb the warmth. It is like a temporary pain of healing, that is, in and of itself, is not harmful. The warmth is what you need to survive in the long term. Starting with lukewarm is perfectly okay and wise.” Christine Braehler, DClinPsy, PhD