Trauma Resilience

After a recent training with folks who have done Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing work, I’m excited to be learning new skills to pass on to patients to help people anchor treatments and get more out of them. The skills are based on the idea that our nervous systems can naturally heal from traumatic events given gentle attention to subtle, internal, felt sense. I love the emphasis on the incremental, gentle approach.

The key piece is strengthening things that help us feel good inside, or at least neutral [in the worst of situations]. Of course, we’ve all heard that we need to focus on the positive, which isn’t so easy when we’re in pain. So a lot of time is spent on really building up one or more chosen good feeling[s], so it becomes a resource to go back to as needed, sort of like saving something to your hard drive. Any surgery would considered a “traumatic event” because we record it unconsciously in the reptilian, nonverbal part of our brains. Nonetheless, any pain condition can benefit from this approach.

Certainly most of us have bravely coped with physical pain by learning to ignore it. By enhancing the relaxed, good feelings within, either with our attention, or the help of acupuncture, bodywork, or herbs, we develop the ability to pay a little more attention to the painful part. That in turn allows us to adjust our actions which keeps us from re-injuring a chronic limitation and notice what strengthens it. This usually includes more range of healthy motion with musculoskeletal concerns.

The trainers of this “Trauma Resiliency,” who are long time therapists, have worked with vets, victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse, as well as abroad in the Congo, Sechuan, and Thailand with much success. They’ve honed their methods to make them quickly accessible to people regardless of their work or cultural background, by basing  them on new findings about brain and nervous system anatomy. I look forward to seeing how sharing these skills might help my patients.