What is Trauma and Who is Impacted?

Trauma is anything that disrupts our ability to cope. With trauma comes the feeling of helplessness or feeling out of control. We are reactive to certain situations rather than responsive as a way to protect ourselves.

Physiologically speaking, trauma is residual energy that becomes stuck in our system rather than released or discharged following a traumatic event. Traumatic events include shock trauma (ex: car accidents, child surgeries, etc.), developmental trauma (ex: an infant doesn’t receive the proper responses from a caregiver when communicating its needs or emotions), and systemic or institutionalized trauma (ex: incarceration, racism, etc.).

We’re wired to notice danger as part of our stress response. We have to notice and respond to negativity in order to survive.

The Stress Response

When the brain experiences a threat, an instinctive process of protection occurs. Neurochemistry turns on the Sympathetic Nervous System or fight or flight, and the body’s intelligence kicks in-heart rate goes up, blood pressure spikes, more adrenaline is produced, digestion is put off for later, and muscles contract and are literally ready to fight or flee.

We must then discharge this energy once we are safe in order to come back to homeostasis and into the Parasympathetic Nervous System (the rest and digest state). But if a freeze response occurs due to helplessness as a result of being threatened and unable to fight or flee, the non-discharged energy has nowhere to go and the cycle is disrupted.

Instinctively, we know to “shake it off” after a life threatening event. You can observe animals doing this. Tiger cubs are encouraged by their mother to play after a life threatening event to move the extra energy through them. A possum shakes after a threat to complete the fight or flight impulse. In carrying out the physiological response, these animals complete the entire cycle of the stress response and return to a state of balance.

Well, why don’t we do that? Most of us are socially conditioned to suppress energy so the energy becomes stuck. Consequently, trauma reshapes the brain and body, (van Der Kolk, 2014).

The part of our brain where the stress response is controlled is the reptilian brain, which is the most primitive part of our brain that involves involuntary responses and instinct. The reptilian brain learns to associate many things with a traumatic event, things that may not be truly threatening. Out of survival, it becomes sensitive and reacts at the slightest hint of danger. A perceived threat triggers the same physiological response as a true threat. So someone might see danger where other people might see manageable stuff.

The nervous system’s ability to distinguish events or people as safe or unsafe is called neuroception. Faulty neuroception can look like someone overreacting in a safe environment or not acting appropriately in an unsafe environment. It is clearly beneficial at times to have this automatic response of the body, but if there is no true threat, the body is undertaking stress rather than performing the rest and digest activities that are essential for recovery and long term health.

In his book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, Teleaven (2018) highlights the words of psychiatrist Stephen Cope, “Sometimes we encounter experiences that so violate our sense of safety, order, predictability, and right, that we feel utterly overwhelmed-unable to integrate, and simply unable to go on as before. Unable to bear reality. We have come to call these shattering experiences trauma. None of us is immune to them," (2018, p. 3).

Everyone is affected by trauma-our friends, our families, our neighbors. We experience trauma personally, interpersonally, and as a collective. Everybody is out there with varying levels of non-discharged energy. They’re "stuck on" or "stuck off" or somewhere in between. Trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive. The state of hypoarousal, being "stuck off," is what we know as depression. "Stuck on," or hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system, is experienced as anxiety or being overly sensitive to traumatic reminders. We can also swing uncontrollably between the two. It's a spectrum.   

Symptoms of trauma can be:

Emotional

Mental

Behavioral

Social

Spiritual

Experienced at the Family Level

Experienced at the Collective Level

According to van der Kolk (2014), there are three avenues to healing:

1. Top down-talking, reconnecting with others, and allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us

2. Medication

3. Bottom up-allowing the body to have experiences that deeply contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that results from trauma

In my next blog, I will present on how we can help the body learn to feel safe and empowered with the support of embodied practices like yoga.

My intention as a yoga teacher and goal for humanity is that we can all learn to see ourselves and others not as victims, but as sacred, and in this sacredness, choose to lead with love and compassion; to value human beings and develop collective awareness and healing.

References

Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma-sensitive mindfulness: Practices for safe and transformative healing. New York, NY, US: W W Norton & Co.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York, NY, US: Viking.