Author of The Body Keeps Score; Bessel van der Kolk speaks with Krista Tippett @ the On Being Podcast about Trauma, The Body and 2021. You can listen to the episode or read the full transcript here or read on for my key takeaways.
Important things to remember if you have experience trauma, traumatic stress or working in trauma populations - which is most of us these days.
Recovering from trauma happens overtime when someone or the people you love and trust come to your help, support, contain you emotionally and love you. This changes your experience.
Sensory impressions of trauma experience are imprinted in the body with no access to cognition and the ability to develop new narratives overtime. This is why body and embodiment work is an essential part of therapy and recovery.
Traumatic stress is non-verbal in the sense it’s not connected to language and cognition. To overcome traumatic experience or stress you need help bypassing the verbal need to be reasonable or articulate the trauma.
Trauma can cut off your relationship with your body. If you’re in a constant state of heart break and gut wrench you may cut off your emotional awareness or turn to drugs/alcohol and other addictions to soothe. This is why as a culture we're so addicted to alcohol and pills.
Healing happens when you reestablish your relationship with the body and the life of your organism to regain ownership of yourself. This includes feeling your substance, feeling yourself move and feeling the sensory life inside yourself.
We need to be mindful we now live in a world where nothing belongs in the past and there is low level of constant threat and at the same time we are killing the living planet.
While trauma is a living testimony to something that happened in the past it is very difficult to feel safe now for all of us and more so if you have experienced trauma.
We overcome trauma when we are still enough to notice a different experience compared to what we have had in the past.
Body based practices like breathing, yoga, dance, movement, psychodrama, chi gong can help you feel more embodied.
Trauma informed psychotherapies can help you evolve your narrative, develop self compassion and feel more connection to yourself and others.
If you're interested in doing trauma recovery work you may like to check out my holistic counselling and psychotherapy offering here.
