Healing from Trauma(53 slides)

creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

“In order to stay healthy, our nervous systems and psyches need to face challenges and to succeed in meeting those challenges.

When this need is not met, or when we are challenged and

cannot triumph, we end up lacking ability and are unable to fully engage in life.

Those of us who have been defeated by war, abuse, accidents and other traumatic events (and processes) suffer far more severe

consequences.”

p. 43 Waking the Tiger

Please read:

Walking Home in the Dark

(Waking the Tiger, p.51)

In a more complex example, I was told the following story by a woman: she is walking home in the dark when she sees two men coming towards her on the opposite side of

the street. Something about their demeanor doesn’t feel right, and the woman becomes immediately alert. As they come closer, the two men split up, one angles

toward her across the street, the other circles around behind her. What was suspicious before is now confirmed, she is in danger. Her heart rate increases, she feels suddenly more alert, and her mind search wildly for an optimal response. Should she scream? Should she run? Where should she run to? What should she scream? Choices tumble through her mind at a frenetic rate. She has too many options to choose from and not enough time to consider them. Dramatically, instinct takes over. Without consciously

deciding what to do, she suddenly finds herself moving with firm, quick, steps straight towards the man angling across the street. Visibly startled by her boldness, the man

veers off in another direction. The man behind her melts into the shadows as the man in front of her loses his strategic position. They are confused. She is safe.

Thanks to the ability to trust her instinctual flow, this woman was not traumatized. Despite her initial confusion about what to do, she followed one of her innate defense

action plans and successfully avoided the attack.

When we meet life’s challenges we feel empowered and a sense of deep satisfaction flows over us but when we are overwhelmed

by them we can become frozen in fear and in need of a healing from the energies that become stuck within our energy systems.

“Healing from trauma can be blocked in several different ways…

1. by using drugs to suppress symptoms, 2. by over emphasizing adjustment or control or by

3. denial or invalidation of feelings and sensations.”

Peter A. Levine, p. 37

Although these attempts are well meaning, and in some cases, necessary for the functioning of the person– they do not address the origin of

trauma– only its symptomology.

Healing at best, is delayed and the person is left feeling abandoned in the land of limbo: not fully

alive or dead.

Please Read:

A Traumatized Person’s Reality

(Waking the Tiger p. 47-48)

"I don't know of one thing I don't fear. I fear getting out of bed in the morning. I fear walking out of my house. I have great fears of death... not

that I will die someday, but that I am going to die within the next few minutes. I fear anger... my own and everyone else's, even when anger is not present. I fear rejection and or abandonment. I fear success and failure. I

get pain in my chest, and tingling and numbness in my arms and legs everyday. I almost daily experience cramps ranging from menstrual-type

cramps to intense pain. I just really hurt most of the time. I feel that I can't go on. I have headaches. I feel nervous all the time. I have shortness of

breath, racing heart, disorientation, and panic. I'm always cold, and I have dry moth. I have trouble swallowing. I have no emery or motivation, and

when I do accomplish something, I feel no sense of satisfaction. I feel over whelmed, confused, lost, helpless, and hopeless daily. I have uncontrollable

outbursts of rage and depression."

In our culture we do not need another intellectual definition of trauma but rather a heart felt sense of what trauma feels like

and its consequences in our life!

In the animal kingdom, when wounded in a fight or accident the wounded animal withdraws from life and conserves its energy in

a protected shroud of resting and healing.

Time is essential in the healing process for animals.

Time is essential for the healing of humans as well.

“You have come in like a wounded animal that crawls into a log to die.

Now do not think me unfeeling. It’s just that I have been through it so many times and seen it so many times and know

I’ll see it again.

I will hold your hand. But if you see me smiling just a little while you’re writhing and torn, please understand that I know

labor pains when I see them—

and frankly I can’t wait to see what is struggling to be born.”

(Labor, by Carol Lynn Pearson)

This poem by Carol Lynn Pearson captures the essence of that discharge of generated survival energy which needs to occur

for recovery and healing to work their magic.

Peter Levine explains that a cast does not mend a broken bone, it just provides the support for the body to mend itself.

Sometimes we may need additional support from our friends, family and helping professionals so that our own body can

mend from the wounding effects of trauma’s frozen energies.

The key to healing from trauma is the felt sense wisdom of the body!

The body has a wisdom, that if we learn to honor it, will lead us down the healing path to wholeness and

awareness.

But the pathway can be scary.

The healing pathway can be scary because our body needs to discharge the very energies that are bond and frozen in the

fear and terror of the original trauma.

This frozen state of self perpetuated arousal has set off a domino effect of nervous system adaptations which keep the

trauma alive and which gives birth to a series of psychosomatic symptoms.

It becomes a vicious cycle.

Please read:

“Nancy and the Imaginary Tiger”

(Waking the Tiger p. 28-30)

Trauma was a complete mystery to me when I first began working with it. My first major breakthrough in understanding came quite unexpectedly in 1969 when I was asked to see a woman, who was suffering from intense panic attacks. The attacks were so

severe that she was unable to leave her house alone. She was referred to me by a psychiatrist who knew of my interest in body/mind approaches to healing ( a fledgling and obscure at that time). He thought that some kind of relaxation training might

be helpful.

Relaxation was not the answer. In our first session, as I naively, and with the best of intentions, attempted to help her relax, she went into a full-blown anxiety attack. She appeared paralyzed and unable to breathe. Her heart was pounding wildly, and then

seemed to almost stop. I became quite frightened. Had I paved the yellow brick road to hell? We entered together into her nightmarish attack.

Surrendering to my own intense fear, yet somehow managing to remain present, I had a fleeting vision of a tiger jumping towards us. Swept along with the experience, I exclaimed loudly, "You are being attacked by a large tiger. See the tiger as it comes at you.

Run towards that tree; climb it and escape! To my surprise, her legs started to trembling in running movements. She let out a bloodcurdling scream that brought in a passing police officer (fortunately my office partner somehow managed to explain the

situation). She began to tremble, shake, and sob, in full-bodied convulsive waves.

Nancy continued to shake for almost an hour. She recalled a terrifying memory from her childhood. When she was three years old she had been strapped to a table for a tonsillectomy. The anesthesia was ether. Unable to move, feeling suffocated (common

reactions to ether), she has terrifying hallucinations. This early experience has a deep impact on her. Like the traumatized children at Chowchilla, Nancy was threatened, overwhelmed, and as a result, has become physiologically stuck in the immobility response.

In other words, her body had literally resigned itself to a state where the act of escape could not exist.

Along with this resignation came the pervasive loss of her real and vital self as well as loss of a secure and spontaneous personality. Twenty years after the traumatizing event, the subtle and hidden effects emerged. Nancy was in a crowded room taking the Graduate Records Examination when she went into a severe panic attack. Later, she developed agoraphobia (fear of

leaving her house alone). The experience was so extreme and seemingly irrational that she knew she must seek help.

After the breakthrough that came in our initial visit, Nancy left my office feeling, in her words, "like she had herself again." Although we continued working together for a few more sessions, where she gently trembled and shook, the anxiety attacks she

experienced that day was her last. She stopped taking medication to control her attacks and subsequently entered graduate school, where she completed her doctorate without relapse.

At the time I met Nancy, I was studying animal predator-prey behaviors. I was intrigued by the similarity between Nancy’s paralysis when her panic attack began and what happened to the impala described in the last chapter. Most prey animals use

immobility when attacked by a larger predator from which they can’t escape. I am quite certain that these studies strongly influenced the fortuitous vision of the imaginary tiger. For several years after that I worked to understand the significance of Nancy’s anxiety attack and her response to the image of the tiger. There were many detours and wrong turns along the way.

I now know that it was the dramatic emotional catharsis and reliving of her childhood tonsillectomy that was catalytic in her recovery, but the discharge of energy she experienced when she flowed out of her passive, frozen immobility response into an

active, successful escape. The image of the tiger awoke her instinctual responsive self.

The other profound insight that I gleamed from Nancy’s experience was that the resources that enable a person to succeed in the face of a threat can be used for healing. This is true not just at the time of the experience, but even years after the event.

In analyzing the story you just read of Nancy, Peter Levine writes (p.159):

Typically when we use our cognitive abilities to figure out what the source and cause of our fear is (and give it a name) we separate ourselves further from

the experience.

In that separateness the seeds of trauma have fertile ground in which to root and grow.

The animal that is unable to locate a source of arousal will freeze rather than flee.

When the freezing response begins to override Nancy’s extreme impulse to flee, she rationalizes (using her neo-cortex) that she will die if she tries to escape

from her house.

She then enters into a tight self-made web of fear induced immobility.

The moral of the preceding slide is that our New Brain, the neo-cortex, often gets in the way of our dealing with being

traumatized.

We think that if we can label something or intellectualize it to our understanding then all is well when the truth of the matter is that rationality and logic cannot heal trauma never has and it

never will.

What intellectualism can do is contribute to our disassociation, denial and defendedness!

The physical and mental symptoms of the vicious cycle of traumatization include: p.132

1. Hyper-arousal looking for the threat.

2. Constriction of our bodily systems (breathing, blood and viscera) and our life activities.

3. Disassociation from our body feelings and denial about the problems and symptoms.

4. Feelings of helplessness and immobility that overlay everything we feel and think.

5. Addictive maladaptive activities used to escape the unwanted feelings of anxiety, fear, anger and depression.

These symptoms act as a safety valve for the traumatized organism and is nature’s way of attempting to balance the

stuck energy frozen within the Autonomic Nervous System of the person.

But instead of releasing it the energy stays in our bodies and keeps re-circulating.

The person’s nervous system still believes it is in danger because of the immobility response so it has to maintain a

heightened level of preparedness and arousal.

How the Autonomic Nervous System compensates for frozen energies in its bio-fields. P. 147-149

Excessive shyness Diminished emotional states Inability to commit Chronic fatigue Depression Feeling of doom Feelings of detachment Frequent crying Abrupt mood swings Fear of going crazy or dying Feelings of shame Forgetfulness

Difficulty sleeping Inability to love and nurture Isolation: living dead Psychosomatic illnesses Immune system problems Mental spaciness Avoidance behaviors Hyperactivity Nightmares Panic-anxiety attacks Intrusive flashbacks Rage reactions

Unresolved trauma often invites a disengagement from life it can create a death wish where the traumatized person longs for escape from the pain, anxiety, hurt and loss of

this world.

Their stuffed and frozen energy can create an altered state of existence where instead of living they merely survive

because that is the only thing their body can do.

This is the message from trauma

Trauma is not caused by events but by the organism’s survival response to them based on their unique history of survival.

Trauma is defined by the cluster of resulting symptoms that occur in relationship to an event that overwhelms the person’s coping mechanisms not by any specific event in and of itself!

Healing from trauma is not to be had by reliving the energies of the event or by talking about them cathartically but by engaging the felt sense of the body!

“Many of us have the faulty and limiting belief that to heal our traumas we must dredge up horrible memories from the past.

What we know for certain is that we feel damaged, fragmented, distressed, shameful, unhappy, etc.

In an attempt to feel better we search for the cause of our unhappiness, hoping that finding them will ease our distress.

Even if we are able to dredge up reasonably accurate memories of an event, they will not heal us.”

Peter A. Levine, p. 207

Healing comes by reconnecting to the felt sense of the body.

Trauma is quintessentially (at its core) physiological (body) not mental (mind) and healing has to tap into the physiological

response of the body to heal and to release the stored energies.

The felt sense of the body holds the truth of what happened to us.This felt sense is described by Eugene Gendlin in his book: Focusing

A felt sense is not a mental experience but a physical one. Physical.

A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event.

An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by

detail.

It is this felt sense that we need to reconnect to!

It is this felt sense of the body that holds the key to healing and releasing of the energies that have become trapped within the

Autonomic Nervous Systems of our bodies!

This trapped energy fuels our compulsions, addictions and idiosyncrasies.

The trapped energies keep us running scared.

They keep us helpless.

“Like hyper arousal and constriction, helplessness is an overt reflection of the physiological processes happening in the body.

When our nervous systems shift into an aroused state in response to danger, and we cannot defend ourselves or flee, the next strategy the

nervous system employs is immobilization.

Nearly every creature that lives has this primitive response wired into its repertoire of defensive strategies.”

Peter A. Levine, p. 143

“It is in your body with the nervous system fully engaged and accessed through the felt sense that you will be successful in

working with them.”

Peter A. Levine, p.152

*But herein lies a problem:

The Autonomic Nervous System is beyond our conscious control.

So the paradoxical reality for many of us who have learned to live with the consequences of trauma is that we are clueless

about the need for anything to be done.

We shut down and withdrew from our bodies years ago and now have found a comfortable (albeit dysfunctional) addictive lifestyle

that keeps the felt sense of our body pretty much a distant mystery.

We live in a denied, disassociated, defended and diminished state of being.

And because it works for most of us, most of the time we are willing to continue.

Because we are afraid to try anything else.

Trauma symptoms flourish in the state of not feeling safe!

So here is the conundrum (riddle).

We need to reconnect with the energies that we may have spent years afraid to embrace so how does one do that?

It takes courage and often times that courage can be fueled by the sadness of the lost sense of self and frustration of living a life trapped in the land of limbo between the living and the

dead.

But there is hope.

There have been some wonderful unions between Eastern and Western healing philosophies that have introduced a

whole new field of healing energy psychologies and therapies!

These Energy Psychologies, also referred to as Bio-Field Therapies, tap into the body in marvelous ways that Western

talk therapies cannot even come close to duplicating.

They are wonderful and effective healing therapies that are non-evasive, simple, long lasting, self-learned and have little

to no reported side effects.

These bio-field therapies help the body to release the stuffed and frozen energies that are trapped in the Autonomic

Nervous System.

This lesson will introduce two of them to you:

Tapas Acupressure Technique (T.A.T.)

and

Emotional Freedom Technique (E.F.T.)

In each case, the bio-field therapies of TAT and EFT, seem foreign and strange to our Western, mechanistic,

intellectual minds.

Tapping on parts of the face and body or holding a strange acupressure pose is not common western fare for our

scientific medical mind sets.

But they are amazingly effective, quick and easy to do.

TAT and EFT allow the Autonomic Nervous System to recalibrate itself and is shown to be effective through Heart Rate Variability

Testing.

These energy systems (Chakras and Meridian) have a long and noble history in the Eastern part of the world that we are just recently

beginning to appreciate and accept.

Alternative medicine is an option more and more frustrated people are exploring.

The other interesting part is that these therapies are not dependent upon your intellectual evaluation or belief in them.

You can believe anything you wantabout them (like this is all bogus and stupid)

and they will still work because they don’t need your intellectual approval or permission.

The therapies access the bio-fields of your body and release the stuck and frozen energy from your Autonomic Nervous

System by passing your conscious mental mind to do so!

Each therapy (TAT and EFT) require the energy fields to be brought up so that they can be thawed and released from the

Autonomic Nervous System.

This is where the courage part comes in.

The person will have to mentally focus and feel the energies from the wounds of past trauma.

It will not be necessary to recall the details but it will be necessary to engage the energy fields of thought and emotions that have become frozen and stuck within the energy fields of

the person.

“If we allow ourselves to acknowledge these thoughts and sensations using the felt sense and let them have their natural flow, they will peak, then begin

to diminish and resolve.

As this process occurs, we may experience trembling, shaking, vibration, waves of warmth, fullness of breath, slowed heart rate, warm sweating,

relaxation of the muscles, and an overall feeling of relief, comfort and safety.”

Peter A. Levine, p. 128

There is often resistance and fear to engaging the energy fields that one has been hiding from and it may be important to understand where a portion of

the resistance is coming from.

It may seem that the negative energies not only have a life of their own.

They have also developed a mean spirited voice that talks to you in the third person (i.e. You are so stupid- why would any body even want to be around you!?).

The voice is hateful, critical and contemptfully judgmental.

I would suggest you give it a name so you can at least interact with it as you become more conscious. Don’t be mean back.

Just acknowledge it and let it know you are now awake to its nature.

Peter explains the genesis of the negative energy in the next slide and the psychological reversal

that often results when we want to do something good to change but end up sabotaging ourselves instead!

So please pay close attention.

“In its pure form, the energy generated by our nervous system to protect us from danger is vital.

It feels alive and exhilarating.

When this energy is thwarted in its attempt to protect us, a significant portion of it is re-channeled into fear, rage, hatred, and shame as part of the constellation of

symptoms that develop to organize the un-discharged energy.

These so-called negative emotions become intimately associated with the vital energy itself, as well as with the other symptoms that form the cluster of traumatic after

effects.

When we suffer from trauma, the association between the life energy and the negative emotions is so close that we cannot distinguish between them.

Discharge is precisely what we need, but when it begins to happen, the effect can be terrifying and intolerable, in part because the energy released is perceived to be

negative.

Because of this fear, we typically suppress the energy or at best discharge it incompletely.”

Peter A. Levine, p. 151-152

The negative energies that Peter is talking about have been identified in Jungian Psychology as the Shadow energies.

They are an unacceptable construct of our personality that we try to keep hidden and that’s what gives them their energy.

When they are embraced they lose their negative power in our lives and actually become our guide and teacher.

(there are multiple lessons on the Shadow to be found on my web site- if you are interested in exploring more)

If you are tired of fighting the energies of fear, hatred, anxiety and sadness and feel as if the time might be right in surrendering to a higher wisdom and

truth than your own intellectual defended self

Then I would invite you to explore your own heart and where the surrendering might lead you.

“Sometimes what seems like surrender isn’t surrender at all. It’s about what’s going on in our hearts.

About seeing clearly the way life is and accepting it and being true to it, whatever the pain, because the pain of not

being true to it is far, far greater.”

Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer

Please read:

“The Journey”

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice—

though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles."Mend my life!” each voice cried.

But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones.

But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as you own, that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save the only life you could save.

the end