Trauma and the Nervous System
What is trauma?
trauma is the result of the body's protective response to a single overwhelming real or perceived external threat such as an earthquake or a car accident, or to a prolonged overwhelming situation over time such as unsafe living environment. It can show up in early age or adulthood.
nervous system survival responses and window of tolerance
How one integrates the response to threat is unique to each individual, their events and relationships in their personal history, and the resources they can access; for example after an earthquake some people will feel shock for a few days and then settle back to their status quo, and for others the impact will remain in their system, unable to release the memories, emotions, and sensations associated with the event.
How does trauma develop?
For those whose early development was characterized by precarious provision of basic needs, including caregivers with unpredictable emotional states, the impact can be less obvious. The organism is wired to have its basic needs met – food, shelter, warmth, and human connection. It will adapt to the environment to survive. That may mean fight, move towards, flight, move away, freeze, to immobilize, and fawn, to collapse or submit. These states override the capacity to connect to others, to think and feel simultaneously, to be playful, to problem-solve. This capacity is called the window of tolerance and can be strengthened with compassionate practice.
When is anxiety a symptom of trauma?
Once the overwhelming threat has passed, the organism aims to return to its status quo. However, the body may not register this and remains in survival mode.
Small stressors in day to day life, or events or perceptions that connect to that past threat cause strong survival reactions of fear, rage, dissociation, or appeasement. It's like doing a bicep curl when your arm is already tensed halfway up. The mind is in constant motion, replaying over past interactions and going through all possible future interactions, in an attempt to keep the organism safe from harm. The heart beats quickly, the breath is shallow. Sometimes heat rises in the body. Long-term this can contribute to inflammation, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, and hypertension.
Am I relaxed or dissociating?
To find relief from this chronic stress, people may seek out activities such as TV, substances, social media, eating, sex, which seem to be relaxing inn that they seem to take away the painful symptoms of being in stress, but can send the organism into the numb dissociated shutdown. The environment around the person seems distant or muted. The body is heavy and exhausted. The attempt to reach the window of tolerance is thwarted as the organism spikes down into shutdown, and then when the next stressor presents itself, rockets painfully back up to fight/flight.
How do I get out of fight or flight?
How we handle conflict in relationship is often an old program running, installed in early development. Reactions that feel out of our control can be reprogrammed by attuning to the process of your internal sensory reaction to the external environment, to be able to put techniques in place that offer space to choose your external response/action. This attunement to yourself builds your window of tolerance, to tolerate the ups and downs before they overwhelm, and to move the feeling through you when overwhelmed, so you are not stuck in one state.