The Why of Trauma
Human beings have been designed over millennia, through natural selection and social evolution, to live with and to move through extreme events and loss, and to process feelings of helplessness and terror without becoming stuck or traumatized. When we experience difficult and particularly horrible sensations and feelings, our tendency, however, is to recoil and avoid them. Mentally, we split off or “dissociate” from these feelings. Physically, our bodies tighten and brace against them. Our minds go into overdrive trying to explain and make sense of these alien and “bad” sensations. So, we are driven to vigilantly attempt to locate their ominous source in the outside world. We believe that if we feel the sensations, they will overwhelm us forever. The fear of being consumed by these “terrible” feelings leads us to convince ourselves that avoiding them will make us feel better and, ultimately, safer.
There are many examples of this in our lives: we may avoid a café or certain songs that remind us of a former loved one or avoid the intersection where we were rear-ended a year ago. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. When we fight against and/or hide from unpleasant or painful sensations and feelings, we generally make things worse. The more we avoid them, the greater is the power they exert upon our behavior and sense of well-being. What is not felt remains the same or is intensified, generating a cascade of virulent and corrosive emotions. This forces us to fortify our methods of defense, avoidance and control. This is the vicious cycle created by trauma. Abandoned feelings, in the form of blocked physical sensations, create and propel the growing shadow of our existence.
When we focus in a particular way on physical sensations, in a short period of time they shift and change; and so do we. Our thoughts about the what and why of what happened (though largely subconscious) are efforts to understand, to make sense of the experience and to help us justify why we feel so bad. These “explanations” will do nothing to help us move through her fright response and complete the inhibited actions that form the basis of our continued trauma response (the how). Thought, at this stage, only interferes with resolution. For this reason I coach you to resist the seduction to understand and, instead, to fully engage with what you are now physically feeling in your body. The consequence of “premature cognition” is to take the person out of his or her sensate experience before it completes and has the opportunity to generate new perceptions and new meanings.
The Experience of Anxiety Is Not Universal If you ask several anxious people what they are feeling, they may all say that they are feeling “anxiety.” However, you are likely to get several different responses if they are then queried with the question, “How do you know that you are feeling anxiety?” One may state, “I know because something bad will happen to me.” Another will say that he is feeling strangulated in his throat; another that her heart is leaping out of her chest; and yet another that he has butterflies or a knot in his gut. Still other people might report that their neck, shoulders, arms or legs are tight; yet others might feel ready for action; while still others might sense that their legs feel weak or that their chests are collapsed. All but the first reply are specific and varied physical sensations. And if the person who feared that “something bad will happen to me” was directed to do a scan of her body, she would have discovered some somatic/physical sensation driving and directing directing that thought.
With a little practice we can actually start to separate out emotions, thoughts and beliefs from the underlying sensations. We are then astounded by our capacity to tolerate and pass through difficult emotional states, such as terror, rage and helplessness, without being swept away and drowned. If we go underneath the overwhelming emotions and touch into physical sensations, something quite profound occurs in our organism—there is a sense of flow, of “coming home.” This is a truth central to several ancient spiritual traditions, particularly certain traditions in Tibetan Buddhism.
The Transformative Power of Sensation To understand the transforming power of direct sensate experience, it is necessary to “dissect” certain emotions such as terror, rage and helplessness. When we perceive (consciously or unconsciously) that we are in danger, specific defensive postures necessary to protect ourselves are mobilized in our bodies. Instinctively we duck, we dodge, we retract and stiffen, we prepare to fight or flee; and when escape seems impossible, we freeze or fold into helpless collapse. All of these are specific innate bodily responses, powerfully energized to meet extreme situations. They allow a woman weighing 60kg to lift a car off her trapped child. It is the same primal force that propels a gazelle to sprint at seventy miles per hour in order to escape the pursuing cheetah. These survival energies are organized in the brain and specifically expressed as patterned states of muscular tension in readiness for action.
However, when we are activated to this level and are prevented from completing that course of action—as in fighting or fleeing—then the system moves into freeze or collapse, and the energized tension actually remains stuck in the muscles. In turn, these unused, or partially used, muscular tensions set up a stream of nerve impulses ascending the spinal cord to the thalamus (a central relay station for sensations) and then to other parts of the brain (particularly the amygdala), signaling the continued presence of danger and threat. Said simply, if our muscles and guts are set to respond to danger, then our mind will tell us that we have something to fear. And if we cannot localize the cause of our distress, then we will continue to search for one.
We see this in Vietnam vets who are terrified by the sounds of the 4th of July fireworks, even though they “know” rationally that they are not in any danger. Other examples are people who fear driving a car after they have been involved in an accident or people who fear even leaving the house because they do not know where these danger signals are originating from. In fact, if we cannot find an explanation for what we are feeling, we will surely manufacture one, or many. We’ll often blame our spouses, children, bosses, neighbors (be they next door or another nation) or just plain bad luck. Our minds will stay on overdrive, obsessively searching for causes in the past and dreading the future. We will stay tense and on guard, feeling fear, terror and helplessness because our bodies continue to signal danger to our brains. Our minds may or may not “agree,” but these red flags (coming from nonconscious parts of the brain) will not disappear until the body completes its course of action. This is how we are made—it is our biological nature, hardwired into brain and body.
Adapted from: Levine PhD, Peter A.. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness (pp. 180-182).
