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For a long time I thought trauma is something you have when you experienced something really severe. Like an accident, death of loved one, extreme bullying and other things of that sort. Although knowing that "severe" can be perceived quite differently to each individual. Trauma can also occur through an innocent comment from your mother when you were a child or that a friend from kindergarten forgot to invite you to her birthday party and you felt tremendous rejection. It can have quite the same traumatic response and impact on your system
Struggling myself with stress - no matter how hard I try, I just can't calm my inner hamster down for nothing until I hit the wall again and again. A forced shut down so to speak. I honestly had enough and went on a deep dive healing journey. The area of trauma release. The more I learned the more I thought that this is essentially the key to my personal freedom.
When I read the book about trauma informed yoga by Psychologist and Yoga Teacher Eva Weinmann with the Title "When the body remembers", I truly was shocked to learn that what I struggle with is not my own incapability of living but a trauma response.
Developmental Trauma
The author described it as a developmental trauma. This means that if the child is growing up in a perceived dangerous environment it cannot feel safe enough to relax, thus the child does not learn the ability to self-regulate and cannot relax itself. If the child has not received enough feelings of safety during its childhood, it learns to better not trust others, and therefore, does not seek help from other adults. Which is a mechanism the child keeps also when becoming an adult. Based on this experience the child struggles to develop self-trust and a bond with itself. Later on in life the person is not used to seeking help and rather "suffers in silence". People with the tendency of burnout lack the ability to self-regulate and thus struggle to stop until the body pulls the plug. It is not so much that the person itself is too ambitious or weak but rather a trauma response rooted in stress.
Tolerance Zone
One way to work with our stress response and trauma is well illustrated by graphic below for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine:
This shows and explains quite nicely how we end in fatigue or anxiety based on our personal tolerance zone. The goal would be to work with your personal tolerance zone and slowly expand it rather than constantly cross the zone.
How this awareness helps?
For starters if you are like me you can actually understand that its not just you being weird that relaxation is so difficult for you but essentially that it can be a trauma response because your body and nervous system have learned its not safe, so relaxation is a no-no. With this you can start looking into working with a specialist or embarking your investigation on the journey of self healing when it comes to trauma release. It does not necessarily require pills, and allows for the harsh self-criticism to find an end. This shows us that stress can sometimes be disrupted and be indeed a trauma response that is sabotaging us in our effort to live a healthy and happy life.
There will be more articles coming on this matter and how to work with the body to release stress and trauma. However, should you be keen on learning more yourself about the matter the following book recommendation might come in handy:
When the Body says No by Gabor Mate
How to do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera
The Energy To Heal by Lauren Walker
Much love,
Claudia
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