Scientists have made a fascinating discovery about the way animals in the wild let go of fear and stress.

Because they are able to release it and move on, they are free of PTSD like symptoms. Without this ability in the wild, they would wander around shut down, uptight or confused . . . and they would not survive long. Wild animals release their trauma. Humans think about their trauma and recycle it, never realizing their body has a secret weapon to let it go.

Non-human animals lack higher brain functions that humans utilize to explain reality. We ask why. We make up theories. We think “if only” or “what if” and the painful memories take up residence in our bodies. Our language, thoughts and feelings are like the “save” function on a word processing program.

Unlike humans, wild animals find a safe place, experience the trauma from start to finish and their nervous system discharges the fright. And this is what scientists like Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, have discovered: when a trauma is contained and experienced start to finish, the nervous system discharges the memory, like erasing an Etch a Sketch.

The Body Is Like a Photo Plate

You may know someone who has had a car accident, experienced fright as a child, or has had a scary medical procedure. These traumatic events are embedded in the body like image on a photo plate. And each time we think about fearful experience, we anchor it more deeply in our bodies and nervous systems. With severe trauma, flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive memories take over and we feel them in our bodies as if we were re-living it physically. These re-enactments take up enormous amounts of energy, and we use a lot of energy avoiding people, places and things to detour around these triggers.

The compulsion to repeat.

When trauma has been blocked from conscious awareness, we may find ourselves in similar situations over and over again as we attempt to work through painful experiences. We may think of ourselves as unlucky in love, or accident prone or start to feel defeated because we can’t break the pattern of challenging behaviors. Or we may use alcohol, drugs, over work, over eating to try to calm the pressure cooker of anxiety inside us.

So how do we get free?

For Peter Levine the answer is not just talking or thinking about painful memories. This can sometimes deepen the trauma. Our memories are shaped and reshaped by thoughts and experiences. They may not be an accurate record of past events. Our thoughts especially, may be an interpretation of what happened as a way to try and explain and distance ourselves.

Unfortunately talking does not change the “photo plate” of our nervous systems. To discharge these body memories, understanding how the nervous system works will can help us “complete” rather than block or try to get fid of the emotions arising for accumulated stress. Your symptoms will be a combination of either the alarm response or or freeze, to dampen feelings of overwhelm.

Alarm: When we are stressed, the fight or flight part of our sympathetic nervous system turns on and we feel:

• Hot, tense, tight jaw, twitches, itchy, sweaty, rapid heartbeat, shallow breath
• Heightened sense of alertness, like something bad is going to happen and our muscles are gearing up to respond
• Emotions such as excitement, fear, anxiety, annoyance or anger

Freeze: When stress overwhelms us, we may feel stuck. Some people refer to this slowing and shutting down as depression. Like an animal in the teeth of the lion, struggling but about to die, the parasympathetic nervous system turns on and we notice the symptoms of shut down:

• Cold, sleepy suddenly, slower heart rate, nausea, heavy limbs as if gravity increased
• Tunnel vision, difficulty seeing,
• Feeling depressed, blank, numb, detached or dissociated. In the initial stages of freeze, the mind may be very active and you may experience anxiety but feel somewhat paralyzed.

So armed with this knowledge you can take your foot off the brakes and learn to set the conditions so your body can release these patterns. Then the mind can follow. Our bodies store the problem. And they also hold the solution. We can use our minds to access the solution rather than playing an endless loop in the projector of our minds.

Things to do

• Find a calm and grounded place where you will have no interruptions, sit comfortably, and start to simply observe what is happening inside. Common experiences may be some of all of these: pressured thoughts, tight or braced feelings, numbness, no awareness of having a body, pressure or heaviness in the upper chest, difficulty breathing.
• Be curious about what you notice and especially curious to see what happens next.
• Bookmark your thoughts. Take your attention to what is arising in the body.
• Notice how the bottoms of your feet feel. If you don’t notice anything, press your foot against the floor a little until you notice your leg muscle engage. And be curious to notice what happens next.
• Notice your connection to the earth, either through your feet, your hands or your sitz bones.
• If you have pet notice how your pets breaths . . . many pets breath very deeply and rhythmically into their belly’s. Try to match the breathing.
• Instead of thinking, use your thinking to remember activities that leave you feeling safe, happy or/and relaxed. Remember places where you feel grounded, favorite memories, people who make your body smile or relax.
• Feel deeply into your present experience, describe and track what happens as you simply observe your body without trying to fix or change it.
• Notice thought and emotions as they simply flow through your awareness like clouds in the sky. Just observe.

Play with the Power of Observation

When you can comfortably do some of these things, invite a stressful thought come to mind. Start with something very easy. Use the tools above to witness and observe, being curious to notice if the stress increases, decreases, stays the same, or changes to something else. Toggle back and forth from the stressful image to a pleasant memory or image.

It may take a few minutes with something simple. And it could last for a much longer period of time for a complex intense memory. Notice the feeling of spaciousness in your body as the nervous system discharges the pattern. Place your hand on the skin of your upper chest and notice a subtle flow of well being come into your body.

Suffering can be transformed and healed and we all have the means to do it ourselves. For low level stress, this simple method can that the edge off stress, and let your body move toward more aliveness and rhythmicity and help you feel more Ease.

Resources

Focusing, Eugene Gendlin
Healing Trauma, Peter Levine
Trauma Through the Child’s Eyes, Peter Levine & Maggie Kline

The post Healing Trauma: Wild Animals Know the Secret appeared first on Oregon Somatic Therapy.

• You have a medical or dental procedure and you try to calm yourself but you notice fear getting the best of you. Afterward you feel numb, spacy and disconnected from yourself.
• You work in an office where no matter how hard you work, it will never be enough, and you have to be accountable to your supervisor for your productivity and accuracy. You meet the weekend exhausted and spend your free time recovering.
• You’ve just been rear ended, and though you don’t feel hurt badly, you’ve never been quite the same since.
• You were a shy child and felt like few people understood you, though they took care of your bodily needs. You had an incident of bullying and you’ve been struggling with feeling like you never fit in.
• You’ve had an argument with your partner, and learned that they have been keeping a secret from you. You suspected something but were never sure. Afterward you feel anxious, angry and fear trusting anyone again. You try to move on, but the thought of this secret betrayal plays over in your mind like a broken record.

These common experiences have touched most of our lives. We make the best of our circumstances and try to move forward. How can you tell if it’s just the stress of challenging life events or trauma?

Here’s the critical difference.

In stress we believe that we can do something about our situation. In a traumatic event we feel helpless to change the outcome, because it was unexpected, uncontrollable, and inescapable. We feel stuck. Stress turns into trauma especially when we feel shame or guilt. The unresolved situation becomes stagnant energy in the body, and flares up when similar experiences trigger the feeling of helplessness. The result is trauma and it stays in the body.

In both stress and trauma, cortisol, the stress hormone, floods into the blood stream, preparing us for action. Constantly present, cortisol suppresses our immune system and can lead to chronic disease. It also interferes in the creation of new synaptic connections that could change stuck behavior patterns. Too much cortisol makes it difficult to be mindful, so we react rather than respond. Our reactions become automatic, like playing out an unconscious script from the past. We repeat the same behaviors even if they don’t work.

In these double binds, your nervous system responds in one of three ways: fights, flees or freezes. In the language of emotion, you feel angry, anxious or numb. These states bind up a lot of energy, and over the course of our lives, these patterns become ingrained. Stored trauma keeps us from making positive changes, feeling like we keep repeating the same lesson. Each new trigger adds to our trauma load, making us less resilient. The good news is that trauma symptoms are caused by our reaction to the event not by the event itself. We can change our reaction and we can help the nervous system recover and discharge these patterns.

Fight, Flight or Freeze

Unlike our wild animal cousins, our sophisticated brains override the organic intelligence of the body. The fixed trauma states show up in observable gestures, body sensations and emotional states for those trained to see them. For example:

Fight response: restlessness, clenching, pulling away, bouncing feet, protection gestures, irritation, anger, twitching, cold sweats, muscle tension, jaws clamped, rapid shallow breathing, jumpy and reactive

Flight response: hyper vigilance, exaggerated startle response, sleep problems, restlessness, feeling trapped, sense of urgency, holding the breath, anxiety, hypersensitivity to touch, chronic pain

Freeze Response: numbness withdrawal, confusion, shock, shyness, memory problems, tired all the time, poor muscle tone, apathy, feeling disconnected, disoriented, depressed

As these uncompleted trauma patterns accumulate, you may find it difficult to be present in your life. In its wisdom, the nervous system may draw you to people and events that reenact the dilemma to try to complete and discharge these stuck patterns.

Healthy responses let you know you are releasing trauma or stress.

• Yawning, sighing, heat or hot flashes, warm perspiration, colors look brighter, feel like you have options again, goose bumps, interest in people and relationships.
• You may find your head moves easily and your eyes want to look around. You feel relaxed and alert. Your shoulders relax, or your blood pressure decreases.
• Your nose may run, eyes water.
• Your digestion starts working again and you notice happy gurgling sounds.
• When the body unthaws from the freeze state it shakes, releasing the effects of stored trauma.

These hard wired responses to trauma are all useful and important ways the body recovers. Most of us have been socialized to suppress these normal, healthy behaviors thinking they are weird. Our head takes over, leaving the body’s wisdom behind. The good news is that with help we can embrace the body’s intelligence and not just manage trauma, but recover.

Talking about it may NOT help.

Common sense would suggest that we should talk about these painful experiences. However talking about trauma can actually make our feelings of helplessness more intense, and reinforce our dilemma. The imprint of the trauma is buried deep in the brain nowhere near the language center of the brain so talking rarely discharges these patterns. Many people find that talk about it over and over again, they feel worse with every telling. I’ve noticed that combat veterans instinctively avoid talking about their traumatic active duty experiences. They either to shut down or can re-enact them without ever intending to do so.

“Sarah”and her birth experience

“Sarah” had been working with me for a few months when she decided she wanted to try the Somatic Experiencing approach. She had been having feelings of anxiety alternating with feeling too busy and then tired and unmotivated. She felt she was a good mother to her 3 teenage children, but felt as if she was just going through the motions of her life and her job.

She noticed she tended to keep people at arm’s length and wondered if being so busy was an unconscious strategy to avoid something. In the initial Somatic Experiencing sessions, she learned how to observe body sensations and stay with them as they “thresholded” and then discharged. She noticed an amazing, but common result of doing Somatic Experiencing: she felt calmer and more balanced and colors looked brighter. (This results from accessing the calming effect of the parasympathetic nervous system, relaxing chronic tension in the eye muscles and effectiveness of the optic nerve).

In one of her last sessions, Sarah came in particularly tired and disjointed feeling. As she observed the sensations in her body she said “I just feel kind of numb, like I’ve been anaesthetized.” She observed her body while it seemed like relatively little was happening. I helped her stay focused on the “nothing” that was going on.

Finally she started to feel a new sensation. Without going into all the details, she was re-living her birth as her little infant body inertly passed through the birth process as a life less object. “I have the feeling of needing someone to touch me, but no one is noticing or perhaps caring. . . . Then I feel this anger go through my body, and something in me decides to never need or want anyone. I will be the one to take care of myself.”

She continued to observe and felt a huge sense of relief as she felt surrounded by a palpable presence of light and love, which she interpreted as an angelic presence that has comforted her throughout her life, when she felt people had let her down.

Afterward, she realized how touch deprived she felt and unconsciously placed her right hand tenderly on her upper chest. A gentle smile came to her lips as she started to release a small part of her lifelong pattern of being fiercely independent.

She realized she wasn’t broken or crazy. She experienced the organic wisdom of her body and how it was only trying to protect her instinctively. This self-protection had been making decisions for her before she could talk or think.

Sarah brought the trauma of being anaesthetized during birth, and then isolated after birth into conscious awareness, a common procedure at the time. She safely relived the experience without feeling helpless. In a safe, supportive environment using Somatic Experiencing, she upgraded this old program for a new more alive engagement in life.

After that session, she started to notice the body sensations that arose when people invited her for coffee, or if someone misunderstood her. She could feel a slight stiffening in her muscles that reminded her to observe rather than act on this deeply imbedded instinct. And after a while she started saying “yes” to life more often. She was optimistic that she could work through this life long pattern, byobserving her body and letting these impulses arise, and naturally complete, freeing her to choose instead of react without thinking.

What you can do to support the organic wisdom of your body.

• Let your eyes look for beauty. Notice what your eyes want to see. Look around. Take in the world and relish what you enjoy.
• Touch. Experience touch that is safe and enjoyable: pets, massage, dancing, holding hands, hugs
• Come to your senses. Observe your body sensations with curiosity, watch and wait to see what happens next as the wisdom of your body is engaged. Your body speaks the language of sensation, and you can learn this language by being a good student of your body’s wisdom.
• Full belly breathing. Notice how your pet or children breath while they are sleeping and match this deep intake of breath down to the pelvic bones. If you prefer technology instead, take a look at the Emwave device to help restore healthy breathing patterns: http://www.myemwave.org
• Touch: Oxytocin. Place your hand over your heart or upper chest. Notice what happens. It can be a bit magical. Touching your skin calms the nervous system and releases a small burst of oxytocin, which helps you feel a sense of belonging and comfort. See the sidebar article.
• Music and creative expression. Writing poetry and singing can calm down the overheated brain, listen to music and watch the magic that unfolds in your body.
• Gratitude. Saying thank you is a prayer that says “yes” to life, and takes your brain out of fight or flight mode.
• SoulCollage®. The simple act of looking at images, cutting them out, moving them around in a way that is pleasing to you, gluing them down unleashes a tide of well-being in the body.
• Buddha Smile. Let your lips curve up in to a tiny micro smile, and notice the wave of relaxation that slides down into your body. Watch a funny movie and notice the feeling of heightened alertness you feel. Laughter releases endorphins, the body’s natural pain reliever as it outsmarts cortisol, reduces your blood pressure and softens pain.

Saying “Yes” to Life instead of playing it safe.

As you learn to observe body sensations, you start to “renegotiate” and heal traumatic experiences rather than relive them over and over again Your body’s instinctive organic intelligence has a built-in immunity to trauma.
This intelligence developed over 500 million years of evolution, helps you safely and gradually discharged stuck survival patterns in the body. As Peter Levine says, stuck trauma reactions create “an internal straight jacket created when devastating moments are frozen in time.” They stifle our authentic selves and keep us from moving forward. They block healthy relationships, creativity and aliveness.

When these energies are discharged, you start to feel relaxed, at ease, alert, responsive. You increase your capacity for healthy authentic relationships, feel emotionally stable and optimistic.

You can say “yes” to life again. Like a wild animal, our own innate animal instincts give us a natural immunity to stress. Knowing how to access the body’s wisdom, we can bounce back into the game of life, resilient, alert, relaxed and looking forward to what will happen next.

If you’d like some help with any stuck patterns, whether it is a car accident, surgery, family difficulties or abuse, Somatic Experiencing can gently return your well being, like the neighbors cat, go back to the business of living life fully. Most people find it easy, enjoyable with results the first time.

The post Is It Stress or Trauma? Learn the difference and outsmart anxiety appeared first on Oregon Somatic Therapy.

What is Grief?

Grief happens when we experience the death of a loved one or pet. And grief also takes up residence in our bodies when we experience any type of loss. Grief can even visit when good things happen that change our lives. When we experience a change and we are forced let go of familiar patterns, our nervous system has to adjust, and we experience conflicting and confusing emotions. Grief is an emotional experience, as well as a neurobiological event happening to the nervous system.

Cycles

Unlike some popular philosophies, grief does not proceed in a predictable linear fashion but rather evolves through a series of cycles that the body experiences at its own rhythm and pace. And everyone has a unique way to move through grief.

Disbelief

Most people experience disbelief first, because our bodies experience a sort of shock. People freeze up at the news of a death or impending loss. To support yourself or another, spend some time simply identifying feelings and notice what’s happening in your body. You’ll notice a lot of shifting and changing, so there will be a lot to take in as you learn to be a curious, compassionate observer of your body, mind and emotions.

Emotions

After the shock wears off, you’ll probably experience the emotions we commonly name sadness and grief as well as anger and resentment. Most people find that these two sets of emotions alternate for some time. And because they are so different, it can be confusing to feel loss and abandonment one minute, then irritation or frustration the next.

When loss happens, the nervous system is working constantly to adapt to a world with a new “geography” where the old familiar internal landmarks are forever changed. It’s like driving to what you thought was a familiar road to return home, only to find the road has been removed. Every time to drive “home” you have the confusion and frustration of having to find a new path.

Trying to change the story

Next people start to mentally try to change the past or create an explanation that makes sense of it. “If only I had . . .” or “If he would have just . . .” or “They should have . . .” More complex emotions emerge during this phase, such as guilt, remorse, blame as our nervous system tries to find a way to outsmart the loss in order to avoid it.

Acceptance

Gradually people come to accept “what is” and start to move on. When this feeling of acceptance grows, the event turns into a part of our history, something that happened in our lives rather than a crisis of loss. It stops being a tragedy and becomes part of our life’s story. It has affected the course of our lives, but it no longer feels like a current event.

Acceptance feels very different than leaving the emotions and thoughts behind; different than burying our feelings. Many of us tell ourselves to “just get over it.” Instead, when we are finally ready to move on, the nervous system has adapted successfully to the new conditions. Our minds and hearts have made meaning from the loss and are looking forward once again, naturally.

What doesn’t work with grief.

• Replacing the pet, or the loved one with another cherished person
• Trying to outrun grief by being busy
• Burying the pain of loss. It will come back when triggered by seemingly unrelated events. Trying to bury grief only blocks our ability to bond with others, to keep from triggering the pain of caring. And third, it takes enormous resources to bury these raw emotions.
• Thinking that time passing will be enough to heal grief. When grief is stuck, the sense of unfinished business mounts, like rocks in our back packs, dragging us down day by day, week by week, until it turns into depression.
• Getting medications for depression. Many people mistakenly confuse grief and depression. Depression occurs when the nervous system shuts down. Grief, on the other hand is an active, healthy process of healing and revising the nervous system. Stuck grief however can turn into depression.
• Keeping your thoughts and feelings bottled up. Once the funeral is over, many people expect that they should “just get over it” after a few weeks and then keep their sorrow to themselves. Sadly, this does not work. Grief support groups help so that people can talk and talk until they are done talking.

What to do to support the grief process.

The Life Review

It can be very helpful to do a life review, listing experiences and memories with the loved one or pet. Some people make a timeline from the first memory to the last. Things to write about, draw or find photos for include:

• Happy memories in chronological order
• Things you have appreciated
• Things you wished you had said or done but did not, anything you feel guilty about
• Things that your loved one did that upset, disappointed or hurt you.
• Your regrets

You might use a large piece of paper with a lifeline, writing or drawing things above the line that where happy and pleasing and things below the line that were challenging or painful. One client found an old player piano role and used that to collage pictures, words and drawings that captured her life with her husband. Over the years she has looked at her scroll and with each year her feelings change, where she feels more joy and gratitude with every anniversary that passes. Her husband’s death has become a meaningful part of her history, not the tragedy it once was.

Sharing the Life Review

When you have completed the story of your relationship, it is time to share this record of your life experiences with your loved one with others. Do it as often as you need to until you feel complete. Let people know that you mostly want them to listen without correcting you or giving advice.

Saying Goodbye

Then at some point, that only you will know, you’ll feel ready to say good bye. And you can do this in a letter written in first person. It will bring up emotion. And in the final sentence, say “good bye.” When you’ve written it, share it with a trusted person or a therapist by reading it out loud. Be sure to choose someone who can support you in a loving, caring neutral manner, honoring the powerful process you have just completed.

Additional ideas

· If you’d like help processing grief, a psychotherapist trained in somatic methods can help you move through grief, particularly if it has gotten stuck. I am in a three year training program with Peter Levine in Trauma Healing. This method can smooth out the difficult journey through grief if you get stuck in a deep rut.

To work directly with your nervous system, read Eugene Gendlin’s book “Focusing” that gives you an easy to use tool for personal transformation. His research at the University of Chicago, led him to create a 6 steps steps that identify and change the way thoughts and emotions are held within the body. You can use this tool in just 10 minutes and feel results right away. You may notice less tension and stress in your body. And you may experience insights and understanding as your body releases energy bound up in old beliefs and makes room for self-awareness and inner wisdom.

Life after Loss

In the middle of a terrible loss, most people feel like they will never recover. They fear they will never have any energy to enthusiasm again. It helps to think of grief like surgery. You wouldn’t expect yourself to have heart surgery and be up and running again in a week or two. The same with grief. Only there is no scar to show, no indication that anything has changed. But if we could see a map of the heart, we would see it has a entirely different landscape, that is invisible to everyone. In any difficult transition, it’s helpful to remember that if we trust our bodies, feel the challenging feelings with love, the invisible wounds will close and heal.

The post Grief and Loss: How to Move Through Grief and Heal appeared first on Oregon Somatic Therapy.