This month Bristol Counselling and Psychotherapy collaborated with Kirsty Mackenzie from Body Fulness because we recognise that talking therapy and body based therapies can go hand in hand with each other especially when working with unprocessed trauma. Below is an article written by Kirsty.

When an overwhelming experience happens to us, which we are unable to process at the time, our body protects us from it. It does this by storing the emotions, memories and experience under our conscious awareness and out of sight. The experience becomes frozen in time in our body. It’s an incredible survival process which has evolved to keep us alive.

However, whilst the trauma is stored under our conscious awareness, it can still affect us. Our nervous system at a fundamental level is still protecting us from that experience or experiences. We may feel triggered by situations which remind our nervous system of the original experience. We may find safety really hard to access or completely unavailable. We may become stuck in a chronic state of dysregulation as our body works on overdrive to protect us from the emotions and reality of the experience that could still overwhelm us. The symptoms we can experience from a dysregulated nervous system are vast.

Image text: The conscious mind is only the tip of the iceberg: With most of our emotions, beliefs and thoughts coming from below the surface, our unconscious. Image credit: Unsplash.com (Simon Lee)

In childhood trauma, many infants’ default response to an overwhelming event is shutdown, dissociation and withdrawal, a response of the parasympathetic nervous system. For babies and children, this unconscious response occurs because their capacity to process what is happening or respond is not yet available. 

This parasympathetic state then remains in the body as an automatic response to challenges or it can become the dominant experience. As adults this can manifest as numbness, disconnection, poor motivation, oversleeping and tiredness. This dysregulation can also compromise the immune system, as low levels of cortisol and adrenaline in the body lead to inflammation, low resistance to illness and muscular connection tissue breakdown.

Image text: Feeling overwhelmed. Image credit: Unsplash.com (Hulki Tabak)

The mind often has no understanding of the processes that our body is undertaking to protect us from the trauma. We are just flooded with feelings that can be overwhelming, confusing or completely disproportionate or perhaps there are no feelings available at all. So whilst psychotherapy is important for supporting our mind and what we are aware of at a more conscious level, it is also necessary to support the body to process, integrate and discharge the experience/s which it has been protecting us from.

Without this healing at an embodied level, the body continues to function from its state of protection and the mind’s capacity to control and rationalise the unconscious responses is limited. It is, therefore, essential to cultivate a sense of safety in the body for the nervous system to regulate. As our body feels safer, so does our mind, overthinking, anxiousness, fear based thoughts, self-judgement and other mindbased symptoms of dysregulation decrease. The health of our body and mind are inseparable, and to heal we need to support them both.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and looking to connect to a sense safety at an embodied level there are a few practices you can try:

1. Making physical contact with yourself. That could be gently squeezing down each arm, supporting the front and back of your head with your hands or resting your hands on your belly and feeling it rise and fall with your breath.
2. Slowing down your breathing. Coming into awareness of your breath and consciously slowing it down and seeing if you can deepen it and draw it down into your belly.
3. Thinking of a place, person, memory or pet that supports you or gives you a sense of safety. Noticing how it feels in your body to think of this. Where do you feel it the most in your body?

If you are looking to support yourself with nervous system regulation, more long term options can include body based therapies such as Craniosacral Therapy and Somatic Experiencing. These assist the body to process overwhelming experiences in a way that is safe. Healing trauma safely happens when the body is resourced and in connection. 

Kirsty Mackenzie RCST 

www.bodyfulness.co.uk