If movements make you feel great that’s a sign your body is releasing traumatic energy. But a person who’s struggling with trauma will feel even better when they move because they’re releasing extra energy. When you cry, you let go of the energy with which you bind your trauma in your psyche. You cryĬrying is the most conspicuous acknowledgment of pain and sadness. Some of the greatest artistic and musical masterpieces were created by people trying to resolve their traumas. Emotional expression can take the form of: This completes the incomplete traumatic event in their psyche. You express your emotionsĮmotional expression is a common way for people to release their trauma energy.Įmotional expression helps a traumatized person make sense of their trauma. You appreciate the guidance systems emotions can be without judging them or trying to get rid of them forcefully. You’re able to label your feelings and acknowledge their complexity. When you’re releasing trauma, you’ll find that you can feel your emotions more deeply. Shutting down emotions is often how the mind copes with the pain of trauma. Peter Levine, the developer of somatic experiencing therapy, explains it well: With the help of relaxation techniques, a person can slowly release the tension stored in their body. If we can move a person from a trauma-induced tense state to a relaxed state, they may be in a better position to do the cognitive work required to heal trauma. That means releasing tension from the body. The reverse approach would be to heal the body first and then the mind. When you resolve or heal your trauma, you feel better. This requires a lot of inner work, but it’s effective. The way to heal trauma is to resolve it mentally. You’ll often see them avoiding eye contact and hunched over as if trying to protect themselves from a predator. This is evident in the body language of people struggling with trauma. Trauma-induced fear and shame may, therefore, get stored in the mind and the body. Our feelings and emotions generate physical sensations in the body. Seeing the mind and body as separate, independent entities isn’t beneficial most of the time. Exercise leading to a good mood is a body-mind connection. Chronic stress leading to physical ailments is an example of a mind-body connection. Just as there’s a mind-body connection, there’s also a body-mind connection. To your mind and your body, you’re still in danger years later. This trapped traumatic energy lingers in the mind and the body because the dangerous event is unresolved and unprocessed. You detach from the painful emotion or dissociate to cope with the situation. The stressful event shocks your nervous system. When you freeze in response to danger, you trap the energy the body had prepared for fight or flight. Fighting the abuser could prove to be dangerous, or it was simply impossible. They did nothing because they couldn’t do anything. Some even feel guilty that they could do nothing. It often becomes an inappropriate response to danger.įor example, many who were abused in childhood remember being ‘frozen with fear’ when the abuse was happening. In humans, the freeze response causes trauma to linger in the psyche and the body. The freeze response or immobilization allows an animal to avoid detection or ‘play dead’ to fool the predator. The freeze response, on the other hand, is different and is usually responsible for trauma. You may even feel good about doing so and tell everyone how bravely you faced the situation. Similarly, if you get mugged and manage to overpower the mugger (fight) physically, you’re unlikely to get traumatized by the event. You responded to the danger appropriately. Both strategies are ways to avoid danger.įor example, if the place you’re in right now catches fire and you manage to escape (flight), you’re unlikely to get traumatized by the event. When we fight or take flight in response to a stressor, the event gets quickly resolved or processed in our minds. Humans, like other animals, have three main responses to threats or stressful events: Trauma is likely to happen when stress is intense or chronic, and a person cannot cope with that stress. Trauma usually occurs in response to a seriously threatening event.
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