A bodily reaction to traumatic events
Trauma is not defined by what happened to you; it is about how your body reacts to those events. As one of my great teachers, Peter Levine, the legendary Somatic Psychotherapist, recently stated, “In the absence of a benevolent other.” It means that overwhelming the system tends to occur more when people are alone or do not have somebody else with them. In addition, being with someone is a very important concept in the therapeutic relationship. When you are working through something, you are working through it with another nervous system and you are not alone – that itself can be so healing and therefore so powerful.
We cannot undo events like bomb blasts, attacks, car accidents or negative childhood experiences. However, the good news is, when we understand the patterning of what is happening in the body, it is not just limited to the nervous system. There is a lot more to trauma than just the nervous system and this belief underpins my therapeutic approach because trauma also affects the fascial system and cellular communication throughout the body.
The Biology Of Trauma, as my good friend Dr Aimie Apigian – an expert in trauma, attachment and addiction medicine – talks about, involves all sorts of changes that occur in the body in response to traumatic events. Understanding and seeing the impact on the body, then understanding how these issues in the body are related to one another – that is fundamentally what I do. The key is then to be able to work with them to reverse patterning.
Reversing or shifting the patterning in any of the body’s systems is possible and not hypothetical. I do it every day with my patients. I am living proof of it. I was a sufferer of a chronic autoimmune pathology, when my body produced excess amounts of swelling in the pericardium around the heart which is now reversed. I had pericarditits for several years but now I am no longer medicated and all the swelling has gone. All the pain has gone. All the fatigue has gone and it has been gone for 12 years. This is not just about coping – this is reversible physiology.
I am passionate about this because so often people talk about living with chronic pain or living with these conditions. I am not saying that everyone gets fully resolved, but there is huge potential. I want to reach out and say, “If you’re living with chronic pericarditis, come and see me.” I healed myself from it. It took me a long time, but it is possible. You do not need to take life-long steroids. Chronic autoimmune diseases and irritable bowel syndrome – these are just some of the far-reaching physiological aspects of trauma. It is a lot more than just mental health.
So, it does not matter what happened to you. It is what we do with it, how we understand how it impacted your body, and what we can do to reverse those changes.
You can watch my video on this on my YouTube channel. Just click on this link: https://youtu.be/5lp7gMABqKg?si=JZ1XJLv7ywoNXR8j
