Owning Your Self
Van Der Kolk articulates trauma with deep clarity when he writes that the past cannot be changed but what can be dealt with are “the imprints of trauma on the body, mind and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being” (p. 203). When one is in the midst of trauma or the repetition of the trauma cycle — one is reliving the trauma itself in real time without language to describe their interior. If one were to ascribe an artistic expression to this feeling, it really would be the piece by Edvard Munch named the Scream attached above.
When language cannot be located, this leaves one feeling even more isolated and confused. The hope when working with both our own trauma and that of our clients is to recover their agency over their mind and body so they feel back in control of themselves. A person that has regained some integration within their personality framework can experience the feelings without it leading to a total collapse, being ashamed or enraged.
In order to feel what you feel and know what you know, you need to (and these are not required to happen in order, they may overlap or happen at distinct times):
- Find a way to be calm and focused
- Learn to maintain calm state in response to past reminders.
- Find a way to be fully alive and fully engaged with those around you
- Not having to keep secrets from yourself, including those about how you’ve learned to survive. (p.204).
Limbic system therapy harkens back to Van Der Kolk’s chapter 4, when VDK talks about top down or bottom up approaches to trauma response regulation. ”Structures in the emotional brain decide what we perceive as dangerous or safe. There are two ways of changing the threat detection system: from the top down, via modulating messages from the medial prefrontal cortex (not just prefrontal cortex), or from the bottom up, via the reptilian brain, through breathing, movement, and touch” (p.63). “Top down regulation includes strengthening the capacity of the watchtower to monitor your body’s sensations. Mindfulness meditation and yoga can help with this. Bottom-up regulation involves recalibrating the autonomic nervous system, (which, as we have seen, originates in the brain stem). We can access the ANS through breath, movement, or touch. Breathing is one of the few body functions under both conscious and autonomic control (p.63).
This is when it becomes important to really be attuned to your client and their trauma experience in order to know how to approach their integration. For example, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is more effective vs. exposure therapy for dealing with fear and anxiety and getting the brain back online. However once the brain can operate online and person has learned to move beyond collapse, psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapies are highly effective for long term change.
By integrating our traumatic memories through our stories we are able to feel our past traumatic events without them leading to an emotional collapse. However, it is worth noting that we do not typically remember the sensory experience of an event (i.e. emotions, images, smells or sounds related to the event). Van der Kolk talks about how when one fully remembers their trauma, they are overwhelmed by the emotional elements of the past. Memories do not hold the chronological framework of an event, but only contain fragments of sensations, images, and emotions (p. 221). Van der Kolk understands that a trauma can be successfully integrated if all of the senses are engaged while the memory is being processed. While there are successful therapies that account for this mode of recovery (like EMDR), there is curiosity about how the natural world can function as a therapeutic treatment. Van der Kolk emphasizes how “When the brain areas whose absence is responsible for flashbacks can be kept online while remembering what has happened, people can integrate their traumatic memories as belonging to the past” (p. 222).
When one is outside in the natural world, the body is alerted and awakened to all senses. One engages more than just the primary five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and feeling. Proprioception and anticipation also come on board. If in this context, the primary brain structures are engaged so comprehensively, can it be considered that by having sessions in a natural area such as a forest, or beach, or meadow be considered as a potential therapy for the integration of traumatic memories? This possibility becomes all the more compelling when one considers the impact of drugs on the long-term well being of a patient. The pharmaceutical options are many and all with significant side effects. There are no negative side effects to being outside in a natural environment that stimulates all the senses. This perspective alone makes the potentials for eco-psychology very convincing for the remembering and recovering from trauma.
In VDK section titled, “No Mind Without Mindfulness,” VDK outlines the steps in becoming aware of our traumatic experiences. First, he states that, “Traumatized people are often afraid of feeling.” Second, “Once you pay attention to your physical sensations, the next step is to label them.” Lastly, “A further step is to observe the interplay between your thoughts and your physical sensations” (p. 208).
What makes this work so challenging both for the clinicians and the clients is how terribly slow the process of recovery from trauma is. While there is great hope for future healing, it takes years of hard and painful work and we do not live in a culture that is comfortable with this notion. Those willing to undergo this courageous work are absolutely swimming upstream in a river of culture that wants to keep a maniacal pace. Trauma therapy often begins by simply identifying certain feelings or a feeling. Even after many years into trauma work, those who have been traumatized are still often afraid of their feelings. Those with past trauma learn to shut feelings down (in the form of dissociation, food, shopping, tv or anything else that can be used for numbing). Part of learning how to feel the feelings means also believing that what is happening in one’s body is real — not imagined, and that the feelings exist because something really happened, not due to one’s fault or as a result of being defective. Often, one will internalize the shaming received from parents or caregivers making these abusive voices their own internal voice and critic making it hard to escape from the abuse as lives inside one’s being. In learning to label the feelings, and then connect them to specific thoughts is the result of years of work. This work is repetitive and as said by many, takes years.
Developmental trauma is a beast. When one gets a handle on one emotion in one setting, circumstance or with one particular person, the scenario can change ever so slightly (as life does) and one can be placed right back in a place of terror as though the trauma had never been dealt with in the first place. The key to this, is in loosening the idea that one will ever be completely “cured” of their trauma. This does not mean a hopeless life, but rather it is a reminder that like Jesus, we rise again with our scars. When developmental trauma occurs as a result of being terrified over and over again, never in ways that one could anticipate (being a child of abusive alcoholic/addicts), there is no existence of structure, certainty, only chaos which leads one to hypervigilance waiting for the next eruption. Terror happened anytime, anywhere, and often when least expected. We are reminded of Shelly Rambo’s concept of “Tracking the Undertow.” She states, “The image of the undertow is a helpful one for thinking about the ways in which death persists. An undertow refers to an underlying current that lies beneath the surface of the water. Though waves move toward the shore, the undercurrent pulls in the opposite direction. This pull is not visible, but its force can be great.” (160). Although the undertow cannot be stopped, there is great relief in knowing understanding the reason for it, and knowing that one can continue to gain tools to deal with it.
Learning to give one’s feelings legitimacy is challenging, because it is in this place that feelings must be tolerated. Often traumatized people are told that their feelings are their fault and the problems were in their imagination (It’s very difficult to continue to be an abuser or an addict while acknowledging that what you’re doing is harming someone else). In these situations, the traumatized one feels it’s no use in feeling one’s feelings because shame teaches them to shut down. In quoting Taylor on tracking, Rambo states, “Tracking involves discerning what does not rise to the surface. It accounts for the force of institutions and persons that do not want certain truths to be told.” (161). While Taylor’s discussion is focused culturally, it also can work individually and familially as well. If the movement of the Spirit is in witnessing the death that remains (Rambo, 160) it is done both in terms of witnessing the suffering that is there and remaining in it even if no one else wants to believe that it’s there. The traumatized one often becomes the scapegoat of the family, carrying the family’s ‘badness.’ It is also said that the scapegoated one is the strongest member of the family (Dr. Allender
2013). This witnessing, is the road to recovery. Being willing and able to see the suffering that is there, feel it, understand where it comes from, and care for oneself (which includes allowing others to care for us) is brings healing. The triggering will happen, and it will be terrifying, but there will be a known sense as to what is happening, and the new knowledge of what to do when it does happen.
Van der Kolk, Bessel. Chapter 13. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2014
