TRAUMA/OVERWHELM

What is it and how can SE help?

• Trauma is not necessarily a huge drastic event, but “too much, too fast, too soon” for our system to cope with, causing overwhelm.

• Trauma is not held in the story, but is held in the body.

• SE can help with:

  -Unrelenting stress, anxiety, work, bereavement, divorce, loss of a loved one or a pet

  -Physical trauma as in car accidents, whiplash, sporting accidents, high impact falls

  -Development trauma such as childhood neglect, abandonment or betrayal

  -Surgeries, medical interventions, anesthesia, prolonged illnesses, high fever, poisoning

  -Inescapable attack, mugging, threat of violence, abuse of any kind, rape, molestation, incest

  -Drowning, suffocation or choking experiences

  -Emotional and domestic abuse, bullying

  -Relationship and sexual problems

  -Birth trauma, pre and peri-natal experiences

  -War or conflict, torture, terrorism

  -Natural disasters, fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis,

  -Horror, being a witness to any of the above

  -Physical pain, digestive disorders, sleep problems, headaches, immune disorders, syndromes, etc.

• ”Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the event itself. They arise when residual energy from the experience is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds.” (Levine)

• “Trauma originates as a response in the nervous system, and does not originate in an event. Trauma is in the nervous system, not in the event.” (Levine) Similar symptoms can develop from a wide variety of events. New York hospital research by David Levy in 1946 showed that children’s responses to hospitalization were similar to, and as severe as, the experience of shell-shocked veterans.

• Trauma is “a breach in the protective barrier against (over)stimulation, leading to overwhelming feelings of helplessness.” (Freud) SE adds “over” to this definition and relates this to a loss of resiliency in the nervous system (SOSI).

• “Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life… the common denominator of trauma is a feeling of ‘intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and threat of annihilation.’” (Herman)

• The DSM-IV definition begins: “The person has been exposed to a traumatic event in which both of the following were present: (1) the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of self or others. (2) the person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.”

• “Trauma is an internal straitjacket created when a devastating moment is frozen in time. It stifles the unfolding of being, and strangles our attempts to move forward with our lives. It disconnects us from our selves, others, nature and spirit. When overwhelmed by threat, we are frozen in fear, as though our instinctive survival energies were ‘all dressed up with no place to go.

  Somatic Experiencing offers a new and hopeful perspective on trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity to heal, as well as the intellectual spirit to harness that innate capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: Why are animals in the wild, though routinely threatened, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually “immune” to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is unveiled.

  Somatic Experiencing is a short-term naturalistic approach to the resolution of post-traumatic stress reactions. It is based upon the ethological observation that animals in the wild utilize innate mechanisms which regulate and neutralize the high levels of arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors. Somatic Experiencing normalizes the symptoms of trauma, which bind this arousal, and offers the steps needed to resolve activation and heal trauma.

  Although humans possess regulatory mechanisms virtually identical to those in animals, these systems are often overridden by neo-cortical inhibition (through the rational mind). This restraint leads to the formation of a constellation of symptoms, including pain, patterns of bracing and collapse, cognitive dysfunction, anxiety, and a sense of intrusion. Through the focal awareness of bodily sensation, individuals are able to access these restorative physiological action patterns. This allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely and gradually neutralized. Unregulated arousal previously “locked in” the neuromuscular and central nervous systems can be discharged and completed, thus preventing and resolving traumatic symptoms.”

Peter Levine, Ph.D