“On occasion, our bodies speak loudly about things we would rather not hear. That is the time to pause and listen.”Verny, Thomas R
Somatic therapy, rooted in the belief that the body is where life happens, empowers individuals to take an active role in their healing journey. It harnesses body techniques to strengthen the evolving dialogue between the client and therapist, fostering a deeper understanding of the relationship between bodily experiences and mental states. By focusing on a holistic perspective, somatic therapy cultivates embodied self-awareness, guiding clients to tune into sensations in specific body parts. This approach has been found to be particularly beneficial for addressing issues such as eating disorders, body image issues, sexual dysfunction, chronic illness, emotion regulation, disassociation, and trauma.
Breathwork in somatic psychotherapy
Breathwork, a cornerstone of somatic therapy, has a rich and diverse history in the realm of physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing. Its transformative power can alleviate psychological distress, soften character defenses, release bodily tension, and foster a profound sense of embodiment and tranquility. Somatic therapists employ breathwork techniques, from energizing the body for emotional processing to soothing and grounding hyperactive body parts, offering a hopeful path to healing and self-discovery.
Conscious breathing practices are used:
to help couples and families to connect through touch
assist in recovering from trauma
to promote sensory awareness,
and to access altered states of consciousness for healing purposes
What is disordered breathing?
Disordered breathing, a term often used in the context of somatic therapy, refers to a state where the physiology and psychology of breathing intertwine. It’s characterized by irregular breathing patterns, which can trigger anxiety or panic and disrupt cognitive processes like decision-making. These patterns can vary based on emotional states, with sighing, increased depth, or rate of breath often associated with anxiety and anger.
Irregular respiratory patterns could be associated with anger, guilt, or deep, weeping sadness. Hyperventilation associated with panic or anxiety creates lower levels of CO2 in the blood, often leading to decreased attention and mental impediments. Loss of concentration, memory loss, poor coordination, distraction, lower reaction time, and lower intellectual functioning are all associated with low CO2.
Feeling anxious: produces a distinguishing pattern of upper-chest breathing, which modifies blood chemistry. This leads to a chain reaction of effects, inducing anxiety and reinforcing the pattern that produced the dysfunctional pattern of breathing in the first place.
Body Posture: has also been cited as a factor in breathing efficiency and patterns. Somatic therapy tends to operationalize posture as a function of personality or character. Somatic therapists often note how one’s posture is presented when describing the emotional state. They track feelings and sensations in the body to help the client make sense of their experience in connection with their body.
What are some benefits of somatic psychotherapy?
The body is not just a location for distress but also for pleasure, connection, vibrancy, vitality, ease, rest, and expansion. Somatic therapy could make this easier to achieve through processing and resolving difficult bodily experiences.
Positive self-image: Somatic therapy can help clients feel a positive connection to their bodies and promote self-confidence.
Positive body image: Somatic therapy can enhance body connection and comfort instead of disrupting body connection and discomfort by pairing difficulty with enjoyable sensations to increase tolerance.
Enhance the body’s ability to experience and express desire by encouraging the client to Stay with and expand enjoyable sensations.
Encourages attunement of the body and enhances self-care instead of self-harm and neglect.
Provides a protective space where clients can re-associate with their bodily experience.
In conclusion, our bodies contain a complicated, unified, multilevel cellular memory system that allows us to be fully functional human beings, and attending to our body’s needs could enhance our overall mental and physical well-being.
If you are interested in somatic psychotherapy, please contact our Client Care Team to connect with one of our clinicians.
References
Stupiggia, M. (2019). Traumatic Dis-Embodiment: Effects of trauma on body perception and body image. In H. Payne, S. Koch, and J. Tantia (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Embodied Perspectives in Psychotherapy (pp. 389-396). Routledge
Verny, T. R. (2021). The Embodied Mind: Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness, and Our Bodies. Simon and Schuster.
Victoria, H. K., & Caldwell, C. (2013). Breathwork in body psychotherapy: Clinical applications. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, 8(4), 216- 228. https://doi.org/10.1080/17432979.2013.828657
Director’s note: The following article is written by our Registered Clinical Counsellor, Marcia Moitoso, in conjunction with Bell Let’s Talk Day. If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll find out quickly that we’re about being real. We’re all here because we are on our own journey, and want to help others on theirs. Marcia’s article is a very real, personal account of her own journey with mental health and trauma and how it led her to where she is today. I want to express my gratitude to Marcia for being willing to share her journey with others, and I hope you find it helpful. Please be aware, the article describes some traumatic events that may bring up some emotions while reading. – Andrew
My Journey To Becoming A Counsellor
I came to a career in counselling as part of a long, arduous struggle with my own mental health. I want to share my journey with you as a way to show you that whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone, things can get better, and we’re in this together.
My Story
My story toward healing really begins at 20 years old, when I hit the lowest low and far more psychological pain than I could have ever predicted. Laying on the bathroom floor of the courthouse after a two-year court battle against the person who sexually assaulted me, I remember thinking this is it, I can’t imagine continuing to live at this point, how can I possibly keep going? Unfortunately, like many of us, I had been through a lot of sexual assault in my early years. I had always felt immense shame about everything that happened to me, believing it was my fault and so I never told anyone how I felt, kept it inside and instead coped with eating disorders, self-harm, and substance use. This last incident in my late teens was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t keep going like this, something had to change or I didn’t think I’d survive.
I wrestled a lot with the urge to give up and give in to self-destructive impulses. One part of me wanted to survive and get better, a second part wanted to give up, and a third part of me wanted desperately to change the world for other women like me. Frankly, that part kind of wanted revenge (or at least justice) too. I think that third part of me is the one that started to carry me toward healing. At this time in my life, I was learning about feminism, and while it made me confront some very difficult truths about myself and what had happened to me and what I was also complicit in, it made me get in touch with all the rage I felt, and my rage (though sometimes overwhelming) motivated me toward change.
It wasn’t – and still isn’t – a straight line. I remember sitting in my very first counsellor’s office week after week and refusing to speak. She was kind enough, she would recommend interesting female empowerment movies and give me little snacks. I liked her, I just wasn’t ready to talk, and I’d had years of learning to push all of my emotions way down and disconnecting from my body and myself. I wasn’t ready for her to change that. She gave me the notes I needed for extensions on my university assignments that I couldn’t write because the flashbacks were so overwhelming, and I was grateful for that. I don’t think I’d have graduated without her. At that time I also started kickboxing at a small gym that quickly started to feel like a family. I didn’t have to talk, which was important to me back then, but I could punch and kick and secretly cry my heart out. It was everything; I started to feel what powerful could feel like.
But as life goes, more devastations occurred that set me off balance and back into my self-destructive behaviours. I left kickboxing and withdrew into my own world ruled by fear and dissociation. My social anxiety got to the worst point it had ever been, and I lost the majority of my friends. This was another point where I could have lost myself completely, but I had managed to retain one friend who wouldn’t let me go despite the many times I disappeared and definitely let her down. During this time I had started to realize that my self-destructive behaviours needed to stop, but I was still unable to ask for help or admit that I had a problem. I got lucky though, one night at about 2am this friend of mine texted me asking if I’d want to go and travel South America for a year by bicycle. I wanted to get as far away from the place where I grew up as possible, so I didn’t even hesitate, I immediately said yes and with very little planning we got out bikes and just went.
The Ride That Changed My Life
Since that time I’ve tried to put my finger on just what it was about that year on my bike that was so healing. I think it was a combination of things. I finally really felt like I had a friend who loved me unconditionally (she also had no choice because we depended on each other for survival, traveling by bike with almost no money). I also started to feel powerful and connected to my body for what it could do for me for the first time, instead of focusing on what it looked like or what other people wanted from it. For the first time my body was mine and it was carrying me thousands and thousands of kilometres just by sheer force and will. I also learned to get in touch with my intuition and figure out which situations felt safe and which ones I needed to get out of right away. I experienced some luck, and happened to meet incredible people in every place I went who reminded me that people actually are fundamentally good and that those few who did some bad things to me are not an indicator of all of humanity. And bonus: I didn’t have access to my unhealthy coping means of choice, so my addictions started to fizzle away.
I met so many people from so many backgrounds, and heard their stories of devastation and transcendence, and slowly I started to share mine too. Hearing about the ways people make meaning from tragedy and find ways to survive and make life beautiful again after being in the absolute gutter of life was healing beyond belief. I learned that suffering is part of living and that it actually connects us to others. We suffer tragedies and then we find each other and we heal together. After hearing from these beautiful people in various towns, I’d always have a day or a few of riding my bike to the next place, getting in touch with my body and mind and processing everything I’d heard. It was in one of these in-between cycling times that I realized I wanted to become a counsellor. It was actually a need. I was in awe of how incredible humans are, and their innate urge to move toward growth and healing, and I wanted to be a part of that for myself and for others.
The Journey Is Ongoing
When I moved back to Canada, I spent several years in personal counselling before going back to school to become a counsellor. I was finally ready to talk and ready to continue the healing that had started on my trip. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and I knew the triggers would come back now that the excitement of cycling from country to country was over. I’m endlessly grateful for the counsellors who helped me. I started in CBT to rework my self-shaming thoughts and my social anxiety, then I moved into somatic trauma counselling to learn how to heal psychologically through the power of my body, and then I continued the trauma processing work through EMDR. I still have sleepless nights with flashbacks but they’re few and far between now, and when they happen, I know how to ground myself, breathe through it, and look for my body’s wisdom to heal and do what it needs to. I still sometimes get urges to go back into those self-destructive behaviours, but I now know what to do with those urges rather than giving in to them. I’ve developed great friendships, thanks to my counsellors who helped me get out of my own way and soothe my social anxiety. And every day I get the massive privilege of walking with my clients on their journeys toward healing. I’m still a work in progress and know I will always be, and so I continue to work on myself, see my counsellor, and challenge myself to talk to friends and my partner when I need to. I’m endlessly grateful to the people who have helped me along the way, and continue to help me. We’re all in this together and we all have the capacity to grow and heal even if it sometimes really doesn’t feel like it.
I hope my story encourages you, and reiterates that we are all on a journey toward hope and healing. If we can help you on your journey, please
This article talks about some skills and strategies to heal the traumatized part of your brain and move toward the intimacy you deserve. If you missed the last article about the ways that sexual abuse/assault impacts intimacy and sexuality, I’d recommend going back and reading that article before beginning this one.
Remedies
Every nervous system is a little different. What works for one person may not work for another. There are many options for healing trauma and developing a healthy intimate and sex life, so I encourage you to choose options that resonate best with you.
Shift Ideas about Sex
A good place to start might be with the ideas you and your partner(s) hold about sex. Often survivors of sexual assault hold negative beliefs about sex. These beliefs result from parts of our brains confusing sexual assault (violence) with sex (consent, pleasure, equality). The two are not the same, and we need to rewire our brains to reflect this. I recommend having a look at Wendy Maltz’s comparisons chart here https://healthysex.com/healthy-sexuality/part-one-understanding/comparisons-chart/. This will help explain the difference between ideas about sex that come from experiences of abuse, versus healthy ideas about sex.
You can continue to develop a healthy sexual mindset by avoiding media that portrays sexual assault or sex as abuse or talking about sexual attitudes with friends or with a therapist. You can also educate yourself about sexuality and healing through books and workshops. One book I strongly recommend is Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski.
Communication with Partners
This may be the most important recommendation in this article. You cannot have consensual sex without communicating about it. That’s true for anyone, whether they’re an assault survivor or not. Sex remains a taboo subject in our culture, even though sex is very normal and most people have some form of sex at some point in their lives. When things are taboo and not widely talked about and understood, people develop feelings of shame about the taboo subject. Shame lurks in the darkness. This feeling of shame or embarrassment or even just awkwardness keeps many people from talking about sex with their partners despite engaging in sex.
Consent is dynamic: It can be given and withdrawn at any time
All people, and especially survivors of assault/abuse need to be able to give and withdraw consent AT ANY TIME during a sexual or intimate act. Many survivors will experience flashbacks or triggers at various times through physical or sexual activities. Because they don’t feel safe to tell their partner to stop (often out of fear for making them feel bad), they will instead dissociate and push through the sexual experience. When you do this, you are telling your brain and body that what you feel doesn’t matter and that the other person’s pleasure or comfort is more important.
While it may feel frustrating to have to stop mid-sex or mid-kiss or mid-hug because something has triggered you, listening to your body will actually help the healing process go much faster. Each time you override what your brain and body needs, the trauma gets reinforced and the triggers continue to come back. Slower is faster when healing from trauma. This is something partners need to understand. If a survivor is saying no, it’s because they trust you enough to say no, not because they’re not attracted to you. Every “no” is sexy because it’s getting you closer to an enthusiastic, consensual “yes”
Understand and Communicate your preferences
In addition to understanding and respecting the need to withdraw consent at any time, it’s important to talk about sexual preferences. What feels good, what feels neutral and what doesn’t feel good. Communicate when something felt uncomfortable and explore together to find what does feel comfortable. When sex is approached with curiosity and exploration rather than rigidness and shame, it becomes increasingly safe and pleasurable for both parties.
The need to take a break
Sometimes survivors of sexual abuse and assault may need to take a prolonged break from sexual activity. This can happen when the individual is in a relationship or not. The break allows space to focus on healing and figuring out what feels good and what doesn’t without worrying about the anxiety of managing their partner’s advances. When you are ready to engage in sexual activity again, do so when you want it, not when you believe you “should.” You have a right to be an active participant in your own sex life. Communicate your likes and dislikes and give yourself permission to say no at any time.
How to Manage Triggers and Flashbacks
As mentioned above, some survivors will experience triggers or flashbacks during physical touch or sexual activity. Flashbacks and triggers are often thought of as images of the traumatic experience. But they can also be experienced as unpleasant sensations, or a lack of sensation, an experience of disconnection, or an experience of overwhelm. When this happens it’s important to stop whatever is triggering the flashback, i.e. stopping the sexual activity or the physical touch. When you have a flashback, a part of your brain thinks it is in the past when the trauma happened, You need to remind that part of your brain that you are in the present moment and that the danger has passed. Another word for this is “grounding.”
Grounding Strategies/Orienting back to the present moment
5,4,3,2,1
Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste
Deep breaths
Breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8 (or any variation of that where you breathe out longer than you breathe in
Box breaths: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4 (repeat 4 times)
Stand up and move your body – get the adrenaline out
Run on the spot, go for a walk, jumping jacks
Watch youtube video that makes you laugh (laughter is grounding)
Play a categories game
Say the alphabet backwards
Show these strategies to your partner and do them together
Once you’ve successfully grounded (and give yourself as much time as your nervous system needs for this, remember slower is faster), take some time to rest and find comforts. Your nervous system has just gone through a lot. It can also be good to think about what triggered you and to discuss with you partner how to change that in the future. You may want the help of a counsellor to determine this.
Counselling
Trauma counselling can really help you to overcome the impacts the trauma has on your life. You may also want to incorporate some couples counselling to help improve communication so that the two of you can work as a team on this.
There are 3 types of trauma counselling that can be beneficial. You may benefit from a mix of all three.
Top-Down counselling:
This type of counselling helps you to change the thought patterns and behavioural habits that have formed as a result of the trauma. You will learn to notice the emotions and to change the behaviours and thoughts that tend to come as a result of the emotions. Some examples of this include CBT and DBT.
Bottom-Up Counselling:
Emotions and survival responses are physiological. You may notice a tightness in your chest when you feel anxious, a lump in your throat when you feel sad, a pit in your stomach when you feel embarrassed, or any variety of physical manifestations of emotions. When we feel an emotion our bodies are automatically mobilized to do something with it. For example, if you see a grizzly bear, your body might instinctively run or freeze or even try to fight it. You don’t even have to think about it, your brain does it automatically! Your body also knows how to heal from the trauma, but often circumstances prevent us from being able to allow our bodies to do what they need to do. Bottom-up counselling approaches such as EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or Somatic Experiencing can help you to process the trauma by mindfully allowing your body and brain to do what it needs to do to heal. This will also greatly improve your relationship to your body
Mindfulness Counselling or Practices
Through mindfulness practices you can train your nervous system (brain and body) to become fully present. You learn to notice when triggers are happening while keeping a foot in the present-moment so that you don’t become overwhelmed. With mindfulness you can learn to allow emotions to come and go naturally without being swept away. If you’d like to start mindfulness on your own I’d recommend starting with short 2 minute practices and slowly working your way up. Examples of mindfulness-based counselling include Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
I hope these tidbits can help you get started, or to continue on your healing journey. You deserve a healthy intimate life that includes boundaries, consent, pleasure and joy. Slower is faster; trauma takes time to work through, but it is very treatable, and you don’t have to do it alone.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
Note: This article speaks in broad terms about sexual assault and abuse. If you feel overwhelmed at any point reading this article, I encourage you to stop reading (or skip to the section on “grounding”) and allow your body to do what it needs to do to come back to the present. Whether it’s going for a brisk walk, doing some deep breathing, or calling a trusted friend. As this article will discuss, there’s no need to push yourself past the point of overwhelm. Healing can only take place with patience.
Many survivors of sexual assault face difficulties with intimacy and/or sexuality at some point in their lives. While this is a very common experience, it’s certainly not the case for all survivors. Traumatic events affect people in a variety of different ways dependent on each person’s life experiences and their unique nervous systems. This article will focus on the people who do struggle with sex and intimacy after traumatic events. It will show that even though it can feel really hopeless at times, there are some amazing ways forward to achieving a healthy and satisfying sex life. We have some powerful innate abilities to heal trauma, but it often takes patience, support and work to get there.
Understanding the Impacts
Sexuality and the Central Nervous System – Stress and Love
Sexuality is impacted by the emotional systems managed by a very primal part of your brain often called “the reptilian brain.” This part of your brain is responsible for stress feelings as well as love feelings, all of which have helped us to survive as a species. Stress and love are also the main emotions that impact intimacy and sexual desire.
Stress responses are the neurobiological processes that help you deal with threats. Your brain prioritizes one of the following three main components based on survival needs: fight (anger/frustration), flight (fear/anxiety), or collapse (numbness, depression, dissociation).
Love is also a survival strategy; it’s the neurobiological process that pulls us closer to our tribes and bonds humans together. Love is responsible for passion, romance, and joy. It’s also responsible for the agony of grief and heartbreak.
Common Reactions
When a person lives through a traumatic event, the stress response in their central nervous system (brain and body) often gets locked into survival mode. It has detected that there is danger and so it learns that it must always be scanning for any sign of danger. As a result, there are two very common reactions to sexual trauma that affect a survivor’s sex life.
Sexual Avoidance/Difficulty Experiencing Pleasure
The main function of the central nervous system is to prioritize survival needs in order of importance. For example, if you can’t breathe, you’re unlikely to notice that you’re hungry until you get oxygen again. Similarly, although love is indeed a survival mechanism (bringing us together with our tribes), the brain tends to prioritize attention to stress over love because stress points to a more immediate threat: the possibility of another dangerous and violent act.
After a sexual assault, sensations, contexts and ideas that used to be interpreted as sexually relevant (like physical touch) may instead now be interpreted by your brain as threats. So sexual situations actually make your brain sound the “danger” alarm bell. Our central nervous systems confuse sex (an act of consent, equality and pleasure) with sexual assault (an act of violence and power over another). Remember, your nervous system’s primary function is to keep you alive and safe, so anything that feels in any way similar to a violent situation from the past will sound your brain’s alarm bell.
Basically, you may be experiencing love or desire, but your brain is still stuck on survival mode. This makes it almost impossible to experience pleasure, desire and closeness.
Engaging in Compulsive Sexual Behaviours
Remember how love is also a survival strategy? It draws us closer to others and makes us feel whole. So instead of stress hitting the sexual brakes, some people get locked into patterns of feeling out of control sexually and having multiple partners. In this case, sometimes the innate survival strategy prioritizes closeness for that feeling of being whole; however, when this is a survival mechanism, it’s often happening from that “collapse” stress response, or a more dissociated place. People stuck in this pattern may experience a brief feeling of relief but may still struggle with the deeper components of intimacy.
Additional common symptoms
sexual avoidance/anxiety
sex feeling like an obligation
dissociation during sexual activity/not present
negative feelings associated with touch
difficulty achieving arousal/sensation
feeling emotionally distant
flashbacks/intrusive thoughts or images during sexual activity
engaging in compulsive sexual behaviours
difficulty maintaining an intimate relationship
vaginal pain in women; erectile dysfunction in men
feelings of shame
negative beliefs about sex
This is a short list of reactions, there are many more impacts on a person’s sense of self and experiences in relationships. If you’d like to get a better sense of how your traumatic experiences may have impacted your sex life, you can have a look at Wendy Maltz’s Sexual Effects Inventory here https://www.havoca.org/survivors/sexuality/sexual-effects-inventory/
Remedies: Developing a Healthy Sex Life
This short article was just to give you an idea of some of the many ways that sexual assault can impact intimacy. These impacts sometimes show up directly after the assault and sometimes show up years later.
Stay tuned for the next article which will talk about some of the many ways to heal the parts of your brain that are impacted by the trauma and to help you to find safety and pleasure in intimacy.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
Many people feel apprehensive or intimidated when they hear the word “dance.” Movement is a beautiful and intricate part of who we are. We are in constant motion, from blood flowing through our veins to neurons firing during thought processes and through the simplicity of breath. Our very existence depends on the continuous movement happening within the body.
Therapeutic dance, or movement, is a mind-body approach for working with emotions towards holistic wellness. We often dismiss the subtle signs of stress from our bodies until it becomes a chronic issue, preventing us from functioning in our daily lives. Therapeutic dance and movement explores the presence of emotions within the body and shows us how to care for the emotional symptoms that we may find.
What do you mean by emotions living in the body?
Have you ever noticed sayings like, “I have butterflies in my stomach,” “That gave me the heebie-jeebies,” or “My blood is boiling”? These sayings are examples of how we experience nervousness, fear, and anger in the body. Some people describe these feelings in their body as “gut feelings.” We often override gut feelings using the mind and ignore what is happening in the body. Learning to trust in the body’s wisdom is an important skill to possess in today’s fast-paced world.
In therapeutic dance and movement, the connection between the mind and the body is facilitated as a conversation used to achieve a deeper understanding of the self. Emotions in the body are made aware by paying attention to the subtle shifts in the body and linked back to spoken language.
What does an appointment look like?
Clients are often surprised that a session does not have to involve dance whatsoever. Sessions are NOT like a dance class, experience in movement is not even required. Therapeutic dance/movement is an approach that gives your body the space to express what words cannot. Do you ever move your hands when you talk? That’s a form of therapeutic movement! A session can consist of talking to someone, along with the optional invitation of moving, breath-work, or spontaneous dance. It’s entirely up to you! Another way to interpret therapeutic dance/movement is as a counselling session. Your whole body is invited into the conversation, and expression is created from the inside to the outside.
There have been times clients have said, “I’m not sure why I just did that.” The body knows what the mind may not understand quite yet. Therapeutic dance/movement helps to bring understanding and self-compassion to patterns of being. Session goals are co-created between client and practitioner. With this, a therapeutic movement session becomes a journey of creative expression and experiential processing.
What can therapeutic dance/movement help with?
Therapeutic dance/movement can help with anything, such as stress, pain, difficulty sleeping, relationship issues, chronic illness, temper tantrums, developmental disabilities, and neurodiverse diagnoses.
Some other issues therapeutic dance/movement can support:
Feeling stuck
Feeling agitated or angry
Anxiety
Depression / low mood
Trauma
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Tantrums and intense emotional upsets
Strengthening relationships
How Can I Start Moving?
Whether you want to start moving by speaking, storytelling, writing, drawing, or dancing, get your emotions moving today by calling our office to book a therapeutic dance/movement session. Have a quick question about therapeutic dance/movement? Click here to email our therapeutic dance/movement practitioner, Stefanie.
In today’s world, many of us have experienced events that are deeply troubling. These include car accidents, physical assault, gruesome deaths, difficult childhoods, witnessing violence, working in fields where tragic things occur, etc. None of these experiences in themselves will result in post-traumatic stress disorder. Indeed, many events in life can be extremely upsetting but may not lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. For some, however, such events stay with the individual and change their ability to cope significantly.
Let’s begin with a bit of discussion about the difference between a difficult event and a traumatic one. I like to refer to difficult events as small-t traumas. These are events that can upset us for days, weeks, and even months. They take time to adjust to and with time and social support the individual is eventually able to function as well as they did prior to the difficult event. Capital-T traumas tend to be events that impact the psyche in ways that prevent us from returning to our previous ability to function. These tend to be events that are outside of the realm of normal human experience, i.e., they are statistically unlikely. Therefore, it is difficult for the sufferer to find social support as most people cannot identify with the events that have occurred. In addition, traumatic events tend to happen quite suddenly and therefore overwhelm the brain in terms of its ability to process what has occurred. There is a great deal of science that explains this but it is beyond the scope of this blog. Capital-T traumas can result in full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.
How do I know when I need to get help for PTSD?
How does one know if they have post-traumatic stress disorder and should, therefore, seek help? There are several factors that experts agree are consistent with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
The first of these is physical symptoms. Following a traumatic event, it is not uncommon for the sufferer to report extreme fatigue, dizziness, headaches, as well as a host of gastrointestinal difficulties. In addition, the event itself may have left the individual with chronic pain. For example, motor vehicle accidents often result in observable injuries that are painful. If these symptoms persist beyond the length of time in which healing should occur, this may be a symptom of PTSD.
Secondly, those with post-traumatic stress disorder typically report nightmares about the traumatic event and other flashbacks. Flashbacks sometimes called triggers, occur when something relatively small reminds the sufferer of the entire traumatic event and the sufferer experiences a very high level of distress. An example of this might be smelling alcohol following an event in which an assailant was intoxicated or smelled like alcohol. The sound of sirens can also be a common trigger.
In addition, PTSD sufferers tend to exhibit a specific form of anxiety in which they begin to avoid situations that might remind them of the traumatic experience. This is done so that the sufferer can avoid feeling the distress and pain that they felt during the initial event. For example, if the traumatic event involved harm coming to a child, the sufferer may begin to avoid settings where there are children. These avoidances can make it very hard to resume normal life as some of them are quite common settings and or objects.
The next symptom that commonly occurs with PTSD is social withdrawal. This can take the form of an otherwise friendly person who begins to decline invitations that they would normally attend. The sufferer may also begin to spend time alone and become very quiet even within their own family. Added to this, the sufferer may begin to use alcohol or drugs in an attempt to withdraw from the feelings and memories associated with the trauma. They may also begin to engage in risky and seemingly wild activities such as driving erratically, walking alone in high-risk situations, etc., as a means of distracting themselves from the traumatic memory.
Repression or trying to forget the event is another symptom of PTSD. This can take the form of the sufferer destroying anything that might remind him or her of the traumatic event. It can even go so far as to result in a memory loss wherein the sufferer does not have a conscious memory of the traumatic experience.
Folks with post-traumatic stress disorder often become emotionally numb. Their loved ones may begin to notice a difference in that the sufferer appears to have no feelings. Sufferers themselves often describe feeling numb. This is the mind’s way of protecting us from becoming overwhelmed when something horrible has occurred.
Another common symptom of PTSD is what is called hyperarousal. Basically, this means that the individual becomes very jumpy and is easily startled. They may be startled by a sound that was present during the initial event such as a loud banging sound or may as easily startled by anything that they consider sudden. Individuals with PTSD often appear to be on edge as if they are waiting for the next bad thing to happen.
With all of the triggers, nightmares, hyperarousal, attempts to avoid being reminded of the traumatic event, and physical discomfort that may be present, it is no wonder that trauma survivors are commonly irritable. Irritability is the final factor that is typically present in a person with PTSD.
Is there hope for me or my loved one if PTSD is involved?
If the above describes yourself or someone you love, there is much reason for hope. PTSD is not a lifelong condition. However, it can be life-threatening if it is not addressed because the suffering is so intense. Ways of addressing PTSD include talking about it with someone trusted and who can really listen. Formal help in the form of counselling is recommended. It is important to identify and work with a therapist who has expertise in the assessment and treatment of PTSD. Such a therapist is likely to use methods such as progressive relaxation, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), talk therapy, art therapy, or neurofeedback, and may work in concert with the sufferer’s physician or other members of a healing team.
It is possible to return to living a full and happy life just like before the trauma. While the traumatic event cannot be forgotten, it does not have to define or debilitate a person who has survived a terrible experience. With the right help, it is possible to learn from even life’s most terrible experiences rather than be controlled by them.
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Kathryn Priest-Peries is our newest Associate at Alongside You, starting in January. She has lived experience with, and a high level of expertise in working with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you identify with this article and would like to meet with her, please contact the office and we would love to set up an appointment for you.
