Trauma Aware
Identifying someone who has not experienced any kind of trauma during their lifetime would be rare. This could be prolonged exposure to anything that makes us feel unsafe, experience anguish or suffering, and in the extreme, life-threatening events. Either way, trauma takes its toll and is now universally recognised.
Trauma and dysregulation, alongside a distorted belief system and a lack of feeling contained and calm in our bodies and relationships, is usually attributable to an earlier lack of safety and relational disruptions which often go on to prevent us from excelling in many aspects of our lives.
Drilling down, trauma is frequently known as a distressing or disturbing event that can be either physical or emotional and result in significant damage to psychological development. It can occur as a result of either a single, long-lasting or repetitive event that is overwhelming, affecting the ability to cope or make sense of what happened.
Trauma, however, is not just about a significant event and what happened to us, trauma is as much about what happens inside of us and actually about what didn’t happen. Neglect, the absence of something crucial to the healthy functioning of the human condition, the lack of attunement or mirroring or simply, love, is experienced by a child as unsafe and therefore traumatic.
Often, what’s seen as ‘smaller’ traumatic events over a longer period can be more destabilising to the nervous system than bigger one-off events that we would clearly recognise as ‘traumatic’ later on in life.
What happens when you are traumatised?
This overloading can result in disturbing experiences becoming ‘frozen’ in your system which then remain ‘unprocessed’. These unprocessed memories and feelings are stored in the limbic system of your brain in a raw and emotional form, rather than in a verbal ‘story’ mode.
The limbic system maintains traumatic memories in an isolated memory network associated with emotions and physical sensations which are disconnected from the brain’s cortex where we use language to store memories.
These traumatic memories can be continually triggered when you experience events similar to the difficult experiences you have previously encountered. Often the memory itself is long forgotten but painful feelings of anxiety, panic, anger or despair are continually triggered in the present.
In real terms, this means our ability to live in the present and learn from new experiences can become inhibited.
In this case, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way.
What does this mean for health and wellbeing?
Renowned clinicians and leaders in the field of trauma research and care like Gabor Mate, Peter Levine and Bessel van der Kolk (among other notables) have devoted their careers to understanding the link between trauma and physical repercussions and how this can impact daily functioning and general quality of life.
With the world becoming increasingly more unsettled and conflict-filled, left untreated, the effects of trauma could have wide-reaching ramifications for society including increased drug use, neglect (both of self and others) violence and mental and physical illness (‘dis-ease’).
Hard science has discredited the notion that ‘it’s all in your head’ with innumerable neurological studies irrefutably demonstrating discernible effects on brain processing and healthy functioning caused by trauma.
Identifying the root cause for damaging behaviours or put another way, establishing the link between trauma and ill health - on whatever level - is key to finding a path to recovery.
Thankfully, trauma survivors can now benefit from increased awareness and understanding around trauma and if fortunate enough, can gain access to experts.
With the right tools and knowledge, counsellors, coaches, clinicians and mental health professionals can hone their skills and develop the capacity to transform their clients’ lives through trauma-informed practices, encouraging lasting resilience and healing.
On the path to healing, we uncover the significance of honouring our lived experience, fostering resilience and embracing our unfettered potential.
