SOMATIC TRAUMA HEALING
TRAUMA: TOO MUCH, TOO SOON, TOO SUDDEN, TOO LONG
Trauma is a result of major adverse events that were too much, too soon, too sudden or too long. Even years after the event(s), you may still notice the effects of it in your daily life.
When thinking of trauma, many people think of Trauma with a capital T: heavy accidents, war, natural disasters, rape, violent attacks, domestic abuse, neglect, and so on. But more ‘everyday’ adverse events can also cause trauma: gynecological or other medical procedures, a difficult birth of labor, a fall off the stairs of your bike, the loss of a loved one, losing your job, or other sudden major changes in your life. These kinds of events can also disrupt your system significantly.
You may feel that you have never been the same “since then”, and that your life and your person have changed forever.
Not every person who has experienced an adverse event will develop symptoms of trauma (with a capital T or lowercase T). In fact, trauma symptoms are not caused by the event itself, but by what happened afterwards: whether you were able to process the experience(s) you went through, and whether you processed them through and with your body, rather than in your mind.
How unprocessed trauma AND PTSD can show up
Common symptoms of unprocessed trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) include:
Continuous worrying and grinding thoughts
- An almost permanent feeling of agitation, anxiety, fear or stress
- A feeling of exhaustion, lacking energy, and that nothing can really motivate you
- Feelings of shame, guilt and negative thoughts about yourself
- Never being able to fully relax
- Difficulty connecting with others, difficulties in intimacy
- Feeling disconnected from your body, or from specific parts of your body
- Often crossing your own boundaries, allowing others to cross them, or not even knowing your boundaries.
- Feeling very little connection to your body, experiencing numbness.
- Unexplained pain and physical complaints
Talking about it helps, but often just a little bit.
People who experienced trauma or live with PTSD often try to ignore or live around the symptoms for a long time before seeking help. Conventional therapy is often the first resort. Talking about it with a professional can bring relief and can lead to an understanding about your own situation.
At the same time, classical talk therapy often does not help enough to reduce or remedy symptoms. Talk therapy focuses on our thoughts and actions and how to change them. But trauma affects so much more than just our thoughts and actions. It affects the entire being and cuts deep into the depths of the nervous system, far beyond the reach of rational thinking and acting.
SO WHY ARE TRAUMA AND PTSD SO CHALLENGING?
During a major adverse event, the body feels so threatened that a fight, flight or freeze response is automatically set in motion to defend yourself. Whether you were actually in mortal danger during the event or not doesn’t even matter: it’s about how your nervous system interpreted the traumatic event – your ratio played no role in this!
If the event was not processed afterwards through and with the body, you can get stuck in the survival responses your body initiated. An enormous amount of energy of stress and tension then accumulates in the body with nowhere to go, and the body continues to receive signals that it is still in danger. In this way, the fight, flight or freeze modes will persist long after the danger has passed, leading to some, all or similar things to the abovementioned symptoms.
If you’ve experienced trauma in your life (and chances are that you did, as 50-60% of the global population is estimated to suffer significant trauma at least once in their life…) and you want to heal it, then you need support that addresses your entire body-mind, NOT just your thoughts and behaviors. This is where Somatic Experiencing comes in.
Somatic Experiencing SESSIONS
With Somatic Experiencing I will guide you gently, slowly and step by step, helping you to learn to follow the language of your body. Instead of going through all the excruciating details of the event(s) through talking, we investigate and examine how unprocessed parts present themselves in your body.
We work through the physical sensations, movements and experiences in the body, through which the stress in your system can finally be released. This tackles the root cause of trauma symptoms.
We will go at a pace that is nourishing for your nervous system. Often that means: we will go slow. Somatic Experiencing is about slowing down, and approaching trauma gently.
Where suitable and desired, I will weave in somatic coaching to help you take steps towards living life to the fullest, regardless of your past.
WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT FROM WORKING WITH ME?
Let me be clear up front that trauma healing is not a straightforward process (which you’ve probably already figured out on your own), and that it will also not make you immune to the challenges of life (this may be a disappointment to you). You will still feel all the feelings that any human being can experience in life, including things we may find uncomfortable and unpleasant, such as sadness, grief, anger or rage, and so on.
But what trauma healing will bring you, is a much vaster ability to be with those so-called ‘negative’ emotions, while expanding your capacity to experience the vast range of positive emotions as well.
Somatic Experience can bring more resiliency to those suffering from trauma or PTSD, helping people regain a greater sense of self and empowerment, and can much increase your experiences of well-being, with (sometimes significantly) reduced trauma symptoms, overall improving your quality of life.
While not a single trauma (his)story is the same for any my clients, and the journey of trauma healing is therefore never a copy/paste process, I have noted over and over how beneficial this work truly is.
“Elisabeth is incredible at what she does. She has incredible instincts that allows her to choose the perfect intervention for me time and time again. I’ve had more breakthroughs in a few months with her than previous years of therapy combined.”
– Snow, Melbourne, Australia