How is Trauma Stored in the Body?
Our nervous system is the way in which we take in the world around us, it judges if we are safe or not, if we need to be paying closer attention or if we can relax, if we need to move further into survival physiology to keep us safe and alive.
When the nervous system decides we need to move into survival physiology (fight/flight/freeze) our physiology shifts and adapts to protect us (muscular system adapts, heart rate adjusts up or down, certain hormones flood our system to name a few things). In a healthy and responsive nervous system once it has detected safety it then brings itself back into the ventral vagal connection and back to a place of ease and connection.
Trauma can be defined as anything that is too much, too soon, too fast and when this happens our system is not given the appropriate amount of time needed to process and integrate what has happened - causing the survival response to become “stuck on” or “stuck off” leaving a charge of fight/flight/or freeze active in our physiology. (This can look like feelings of anxiety, hypervigilance, depression, numbness, overwhelm.) This can skew our neuroception and our perception of safety moving forward.
So we need to create a felt sense of safety and give the space and time afterward for our nervous system to move through what it never was able to move through at the time. Chronic stress can also be a trauma on our nervous system - Often in our modern life we are constantly faced with stimulation, and stressors over and over and over again with very little space in between, causing us to begin to live in these survival patterns which keeps our nervous system on over drive. So the trauma is active for us in our body even though we may cognitively understand the threat has passed, or the thing that happened was in the past, or that we are technically safe - the threat is still very much alive within your nervous system.
Through Somatic Experiencing we support you and your nervous system in creating a felt sense of safety in order to process and integrate the trauma and survival responses that may be “stuck”. Allowing your autonomic nervous system to return back to regulation, back to balance and flexibility, giving you more capacity to navigate the ups and downs of life. Allowing a greater sense of felt aliveness, and greater access to awe and wonder. As your autonomic nervous system comes back into regulation the other systems in your body that have been under stress from the survival response being “stuck on” will begin to find homeostasis- this can look like the releasing of muscle tension, chronic pain, digestive issues, and hormone imbalances to name a few.
JOIN WOLF WOMAN NOW TO BEGIN URAVELLING THE TRAUMA AND STUCK CHARGES IN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM
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