Trauma and Your Body
In Spanish, there is a word “susto” which refers to the experience of fear getting trapped in the body after a traumatic or scary experience. One of my great-grandmothers was a “curandera”, or healer, and she essentially helped her clients get into states of deep relaxation where they could feel safe and held enough to release their “susto”. When my dad worked as a farmer, he would often go to small towns in Mexico. One time, he was stopped along the highway and was robbed at gun point. His attacker shot bullets all around him while my dad laid face down on the floor. This experience shook his sense of safety to the core, he felt scared for days, unable to shake this experience. Shockingly, a visit to my great-grandmother, his grandmother, gave him the safety he needed to reconnect with himself.
Nervous System
People naturally cycle between states of activation and deactivation, which are both part of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). For example, play and socializing would be states of activation while sleeping and meditating would be states of deactivation. When these states occur within a range that is tolerable and manageable for us, they are within the “window of tolerance”. The window of tolerance is concept invented by Dan Siegel, MD. Above the window of tolerance exists a state of hyperarousal where emotions and sensations are no longer manageable or tolerable for us. In hyperarousal we might feel anxious, hypervigilant, or overwhelmed. On the bottom side of the window of tolerance is hypoarousal, where it is really hard to feel anything at all aside from depression and numbness. In this post, I will mainly be focusing on hyperarousal.
You actually might know hyperarousal as “fight, flight, or freeze”, which are all controlled by the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS), a part of ANS. The other part of ANS, the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS), helps us to feel safe, calm, and relaxed, particularly when we are in connection with others. A traumatic event, however we might define it, sends our SNS response into overdrive, pushing us outside of our window of tolerance and forgetting all about the PNS, or relaxation. The SNS also pushes out a bunch of hormones like adrenaline throughout our body so that we can be ready to respond to the treat. However, this can be problematic because the SNS can “keep secreting large amounts of stress hormones long after the actual danger has passed” (van der Kolk, 2015, p. 30). As a consequence, people’s window of tolerance might shrink, sending them into hyperarousal more easily than before their traumatic experience. This constant awareness of things outside of the body, makes it hard to connect with what is going on within us.
Sense of Self
People who go through traumatic events, often lose a sense of themselves and who they are. Instead, their attention might be turned outward as they become highly sensitive to triggering stimuli, or things that remind them of the traumatic event. In fact, their energy is nearly completely consumed with maintaining their own safety and suppressing uncomfortable sensations. So, while the SNS is busy keeping them safe, they begin to lose their sense of self in favor of awareness of what is going on around them. And when you are constantly in this state of hyperarousal and vigilance, it can be hard to rest because the PNS cannot be engaged at the same time as the SNS.
The SNS is engaged through inhaling and the PNS is engaged through exhalation. The PNS “promotes self-preservation functions like slowing the heart down, relaxing muscles, and returning breathing to normal” (van der Kolk, 2015, p. 79). When we are able to slow down and identify the sensations we feel in our bodies, like shivers, tingling, heaviness, tightness, etc., we can increase our self-awareness. Awareness of our body sensations allows us to identify what we are feeling, which we can then explore in more depth. Things like meditation, yoga, and mindful breathing can help us get in touch with our body sensation and in turn give us self-awareness. And in order for our bodies to feel safe enough to let go of the “susto” or traumatic experience, we need to feel a visceral sense of safety, such as what you might feel in therapy.
Internal Family Systems and Trauma
Learning to breathe through hyperarousal can help us “unblend” or separate from wounded or traumatized parts of us. In IFS this is called, “mindful separation”, which is the ability to be with rather than to be overwhelmed by a wounded or traumatized part. When we separate from this wounded part, we approach it from our self-energy which includes the 8C’s: curiosity, calmness, clarity, connectedness, confidence, courage, creativity, and compassion. And I believe that this is really the first step to healing from trauma, nurturing our wounded parts with connectedness and compassion.
Further Resources:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van Der Kolk
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard Schwartz
Grounding Technique (YouTube short)
Safety Technique by Peter Levine
References
Anderson, F., Sweezy, M., & Schwartz, R. (2017). Internal family systems skills training manual trauma-informed treatment for anxiety, depression, PTSD & substance abuse. PESI Publishing & Media.
Bessel van der Kolk. (2015). The body keeps the score: Mind, brain and body in the transformation of trauma. Penguin Books.
Buczynski, R. (2022, November 21). How to help your clients understand their window of tolerance. NICABM. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.nicabm.com/trauma-how-to-help-your-clients-understand-their-window-of-tolerance/
The Trauma Foundation. (2021, February 22). Trauma and the nervous system: A polyvagal perspective. YouTube. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIQRxwT1I0
