When your brain and body stores shock, trauma, overwhelming emotional experience, your nervous system works hard to try and cope with these experiences by mobilising a stress response, but often without time, space and support we can get stuck in a protective stress response, that, over time, will cause disease.
Overwhelming memories, unmet needs and emotions can take physical form and move through your body in ongoing waves of disquieting sensations, fatigue, sensitivity, discomfort, or pain. Sometimes a virus, environmental exposure or period of stress is the straw that breaks the camels back in mind-body system already in a chronic stress response; and the chronic illness cycle begins.
In other words, trauma and repressed emotion actually hurts. If after treatment and trying multiple things, the body is still speaking - it is our invitation to listen. Physical pain and emotional pain map through the same brain areas. So we need to go deeper than symptoms to understand the true nature of our pain and dis-ease to resolve them.
Restoring the inherent safety and security of your body is at the core of the healing process. Your body and mind thrive together. United, they synergistically spur each other toward optimal health and resilience. Repressed emotion, trauma, shock, chronic stress and ancestral trauma mean we develop a disconnect between our innately self regulating body and mind. We will notice this as symptoms in both mind and body. So, talk therapy is not the sole path to recovery. If trauma is stored in the body too, easing trauma must involve the body, the brain, the mind, and the seat of our wisdom - our heart.
Taking a bottom-up somatic approach to relief, starting with the discomfort we consciously feel, is crucial. We don’t want to leave stuck, tense, painful places in our bodies unrecognized and unaddressed. We need to bring support and compassion to where we hurt. Notice I do not say fix, the drive to fix ourselves adds to much more inner tension and symptoms. This is why ll our work at Befriend is compassion based.
That is of course, until the ache, pains, and spasms are chronic and debilitating. Truthfully, many people who don’t benefit from somatic (body-centered) support live with a growin list of health conditions that they never link to their stress or trauma. The result? People addressing their health conditions and mental health or trauma separately, not realising they are one and the same.
Doctors are happy to slap multiple diagnosis onto people until they are walking around with various syndromes, auto immune dis-ease diagnosis, chronic infections, and other chronic ‘itis’ and ‘incurable’ ailments. This adds to the existing burden of helplessness and overwhelm. It is also deeply incorrect as once the nervous system heals - most of these symptoms simply resolve (with daily choices aligned with good health of course - sleep, sunlight, movement, nourishing food, connection) Noticing your body is the link to peace. If we don’t take heed you may find the toll trauma takes includes the following:
The effect of trauma on kidney function is worth mentioning first. The kidneys filter blood and are responsible for effective circulation. Research tells us that kidney function is impacted significantly by trauma-related stress responses.
If you’ve been traumatized, your muscles are probably tensed around your kidneys so that they are positioned high in your body, perpetually ready for fight or flight. Such sustained states of anxiety can raise blood pressure, elevate your heart rate, and keep too much sugar in your blood. Unaddressed chronic conditions like hypertension, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease could result.
Trauma in the body can show up as, a highly sensitive startle reflex. Your body overreacts to perceived threats, big, small and imagined. Essentially, your sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive. Soon your high alert state leads to fatigue and exhaustion, and a continual startle reflex that does not come back to a relaxed baseline.
Traumatic energy stuck in your body will often show up as back or joint aches or tension in the neck, face, brow, or jaw, even chest tightness.
Some people complain of throat pain or a sense that they are choking, others experience shaking hands, tremors or strange numbness in various extremities, and heart beat irregularities. Recent research on women with fibromyalgia and chronic pain indicates a connection to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well.
Trauma can be rough on your gut too. Your gut biome and gut motility (ability to digest and process) can be significantly disrupted as a result of impaired function due to stress. The vagus nerve is also crucial for good digestion and this can be functioning less well until addressed and supported. This often leads to weight gain, diarrhea, bloating, food intolerances, constipation and more.
It's not much of a leap to recognize how traumatic memories, conscious and suppressed, may manifest in nightmares, night terrors, disrupted sleep, and insomnia. The resulting exhaustion and fatigue can affect cognitive ability and physical coordination as well as your ability to heal from bodily wounds.
Unaddressed trauma has been shown to increase the odds of experiencing high levels of inflammation and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, celiac disease, or psoriasis. On a more everyday level, you may deal with more colds or infections, and have difficulty recovering from either. The body keeps under or over reacting until the nervous system is settled and can regulate immunity.
At Befriend we have taught hundreds of people simple, evidence based and cumulative ways to:
Bring self-compassion to themselves, which heals the nervous system and brings relief from suffering
Befriend their body and sensation with Somatic Experiencing and toning their vagus nerve
Nourish themselves mindfully both physically and emotionally in their daily life, in unique ways as we all have different needs (neurodiversity, physical needs, core unmet attachment needs to care for)
Build compassionate relationship with their body and all parts of them (internal family systems)
Re-wire their sensitised stress response with compassion-based brain-retraining
Respond to their symptoms in new ways that soothes the brain and body instead of creating more tension with fighting, fixing and over focusing on symptoms.
Over time this breaks and heals the cycle of chronic illness and help the body return to a self-healing state. On a much deeper level it also encourages us to deep self-acceptance and changing our lives in often transformational ways
No one path fits all. This is part of learning to listen inwards - so that we can find how our body and felt senses find relief and release.
Those who stay attached to their multiple illness labels, or refuse to acknowledge the mind body as one complex interdependent system, have a tendency to stay stuck in the paradigm of symptom treatment. I mention this not to be unkind - just to be honest that people that heal have taken the time to learn about the mind body connection, they accept that it applies to them, and they practice ways to heal this this daily in their choices and way of life and with appropriate support.
The body will re organise when there is safety. Safety in the nervous system is not the absence of threat. It is the presence of attuned connection. This is our work at Befriend with our members.
That is the ultimate goal of our work and indeed any work to heal these conditions. To re establish safe connection between mind and body, safe reconnection to ou authentic self, and reconnection to life, community and the wider world. Over time we slowly regain the nervous system response flexibility and resilience that was lost through trauma, we regain our connection to our body, the present moment, and the wider world. This is possible for all.
It does take time so please do not buy into 30 day courses to 'release' trauma. Often the road is deeper, much more gentle, and goes at the pace of trust with your unique system. We have a tremendous capacity to self heal when we stop trying to ‘do’ the ‘right’ thing and we stop trying to ‘fix’ ourselves. We have to instead begin a compassionate inquiry into our sensations, the story of our mind-body-being system, and bring regulation, play, and support to what we find.
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