We are beginning to realize, as a result of studying how the human brain and the rest of the human body work together, that we have no real chance of healing our trauma and living the life that we want unless we understand why and how our brain and body defends itself from the pain of trauma and how to help our brain and body heal by restructuring these energetic defenses once they are no longer needed. We do not have a full and complete understanding of how the brain and body work together, however, we have discovered through neuroscience enough evidence about how they do work to handle trauma that we are now able to help clients heal from it so that they can live the lives that they want.
Here is a brief review of what we have learned, as Energetic Therapists, from neuroscience about this trauma healing process. First, we must study and understand the recent research on how the brain functions, especially how the emotional brain—the amygdala—triggers an automatic alarm when it senses danger to a person’s well-being by preparing the body, via the limbic system, for fight or flight. The problem with this emotional alarm center is that it is a quick and dirty system that, more often than not, triggers false alarms, thus preparing trauma victims to fight or flee when there really is no danger and need to do so. This tends to cause them to overreact and stress out especially in social situations and close relationships, in a myriad of ways that interfere with their health, well-being, and happiness.
Second, we must examine and understand the new brain research on the role that crisis and trauma play in creating an over reactive emotional brain. Crisis situations tend to put trauma victims on high alert, with every muscle and cell of their body geared up for fight or flight action. If they do not act to flee or fight but stay in a high state of tension for a prolonged period of time, which is quite common in our high stress culture, then their muscles and cells become chronically tense, and this has a negative effect their brain. Trauma occurs when their fight and flight responses shut down because there is no chance for them to defeat the threatening circumstance or flee from it; as a result, they go into freeze mode or a state of shock depending upon the circumstance. Brain researchers are discovering that crisis and trauma tend to create deeply hewn neural pathways in the brain which then make the likelihood much greater that the trauma victim’s emotional brain will trigger false alarms. Since it is estimated that nearly everyone suffers from some form of unhealed trauma, whether we are aware of it or not, as well as great amounts of chronic tension in our body, this greatly increases the chance that you have an over reactive and problematic emotional brain alarm system.
Third, we need to understand the negative effects that unhealed trauma has on the trauma victim’s body, mind, health, well-being, and happiness. Post-traumatic symptoms which surface as a result of unhealed trauma are well known and documented. Depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, mood swings, inability to deal with stress, sleeping difficulties, feelings of helplessness, panic attacks, phobias, chronic fatigue, immune system problems, psychosomatic illnesses, and muted ability to feel are only some of the left-over reactions to unhealed trauma. Trauma comes in a wide variety of threatening events, many of which we don’t even recognize because they are so commonplace. Of course, we all recognize that physical abuse, rape, incest, abandonment, neglect, and natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, fires, and war can be traumatic. However, few of us think about how traumatic the loss of a loved one can be in terms of causing post-traumatic symptoms, or how physical injuries such as accidents and falls, or illnesses and high fevers, or surgeries, aesthetics, and medical/dental procedures, or loss of limbs and prolonged immobilization of our body can produce post-traumatic symptoms. Add to this list fetal and birth traumas, the trauma of witnessing serious accidents, violence, and death, and trauma caused by the lack of blessing during childhood as well as having our natural childhood developmental progress interrupted by poor parenting and situational crisis, and we can begin to realize that we all have suffered trauma in our lives. Unless we have healed that trauma, we still suffer post-traumatic symptoms. Further, post-traumatic symptoms can remain hidden for months and even years following the triggering event, and then suddenly show up, thus making it difficult to connect them with their true cause.
Fortunately, these new discoveries about the problems with our brain and body also point the way toward correcting them. To this end, we need to examine the great strides that have been made in understanding the role of energetic health to our well-being. As well, we need to be aware of the enormous progress that has been achieved in mental-emotional health care—in understanding how trauma victims’ own internal cellular wisdom can help them rewire their brain and emotional alarm center as well as unlock and release the chronic tension in their bodies and heal from the trauma and post-traumatic symptoms that they suffer. We must help trauma victims learn to tune into their bodies so that they can allow its natural healing and brain rewiring propensities. This means that we must help trauma victims be in touch with their body sensations and feelings so that they are aware of body’s natural and energetic movement toward healing their trauma.
