Why knowing about early trauma is good for our health!

• 11 February 2017
• Jane Evans
• no comments

Medicine and medical science ARE wonderful but…..

Without medical knowledge and medical practice the human race would surely have died out by now, or be in a much, much worse state than it is. However, the degree to which medicine and medical practice still isn’t very trauma-aware is VERY concerning as it can lead to miss-diagnosis, or a revolving door experience of repeatedly presenting with similar ailments and being given similar treatments without any bigger-picture thinking.

For example: someone with ongoing, repetitive lower back pain, or even compressed discs in their spine, needs a medical practitioner who is curious about how much stress, anxiety, and even trauma, they have experienced in their life. Long held anxiety gets trapped in the body and can create pressure in the spine.

This failure to look beyond the presenting symptoms, coupled with a lack of understanding of how childhood trauma presents in the body, has the potential to create ongoing suffering, and even to put lives at risk. Bold statements from a non-medical person I grant you, so I will explain and hopefully offer a useful perspective for those of you who’ve lived with early childhood trauma, or are raising children who have.

What the childhood trauma experts are telling us

The work of Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score, Peter Levine In an Unspoken Voice, David Berceli Trauma Releasing Exercises TRE , Pat Ogden Trauma and the Body, and many others has delivered us to a place of understanding about how trauma during early development can be stored and held in the cells and muscles in the body. You will see examples of this body-memory in daily life, as once we have learned to ride a bike, or drive a car, or which draw in the kitchen to get a teaspoon from, we do these things without thinking because our body remembers and automatically gets on with them. It also does this in response to threat and fear. It will react in the same way we did when we were smacked as a 2 year old, or left to cry ourselves to sleep throughout the night, or lay frozen in fear listening to arguing and fighting downstairs at night.

How and why does early trauma make us sick?

Essentially the human body and brain has not changed much since dinosaur times when daily life was full of threat as we were literally meat on feet. Fortunately, our survival systems can cope well with such short bursts of fear and threat, when the body and brain systems are automatically flicked into fight/flight/freeze, followed by the return to feeling safe again. What doesn’t work well for us, is being stuck in a hyper alert state without much relief and relaxation.

In moments of perceived threat, (nowadays that can be getting stuck in traffic, no Wi-Fi signal, or an argument on social media etc.) our bodies and primitive brain are designed to respond very quickly and in a similar survival focused way:

• Eliminating or shutting off any bodily functions we don’t need in order to survive, such as saliva, poo or wee
• Digestion shuts down
• Sight and hearing become survival focused, no need for wide-vision, or to focus on high sounds, as mostly its low ones which mean danger
• Blood is drawn in to the major fight/flight muscles in our core body, arms and thighs, also the face to make threatening grimaces (hence flushed faces)
• The heart pumps blood rapidly around the body
• Breathing is shallow and fast
• The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system releases adrenaline and cortisol, and other action hormones to enable survival

This automatic process transforms us into lean, and sometimes mean, fighting or fleeing machines. If neither of these survival f’s are an option, which as a baby or child they rarely can be, our automatic, autonomic system flicks us into freeze, shut down, zone out. In this state, we can ‘t feel and are not present in the current situation, its numbs us out temporarily. Any of these survival states should last around 45 minutes then our body and brain systems should settle again and return to a comfortable balance, or homeostasis. Staying in fight/flight/freeze too often for too long is what makes us sick.

In our dinosaur-free world, most of us should experience less fear and threat, unless that is what our early life prepared us to expect. Pre-birth and early years’ experiences of high anxiety or trauma mean that our body and brain structures are repeatedly flooded with action and reaction chemicals, such as cortisol and adrenalin, which is exhausting. It has a similar effect to repeatedly driving a car too fast in a low gear, burning the engine out. Repetitive long-term stress, anxiety and fear burn us out, from the inside-out.

This can result in any, or all, of these showing up on a repetitive basis:

• Heartburn
• Food staying undigested or not moving through to the small intestine – gastroparesis
• Sluggish/superfast digestion
• Blood sugar irregularities – crashes and peaks
• Irritable bowel or constipation
• Sensitive bladder – incontinence – repeat infections
• Bloating, stomach pain
• Nausea
• Stiffness, inflammation and soreness in the joints
• Lower back pain and compression of spinal cord
• Shoulder, neck and head pain
• Jaw pain
• Teeth grinding or jaw clenching (especially during sleep)
• Restless leg syndrome
• Migraine, stress-headaches
• Food intolerances
• Dizziness, loss of balance
• Reduced immune system
• Poor co-ordination
• Poor short-term memory
• Sensitive skin
• Over-heating/often very cold
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Post-traumatic stress
• Panic attacks
• Dissociation
• Poor concentration
• ADHD behaviours
• Breathing difficulties
• Blood pressure problems
• Heart irregularities

The great news is…..

So much more is now understood by neurobiologists, neuroscientists and neurophysiologists, body workers, and trauma-informed folks like me and we will keep on keeping on about it!  Also from amazing research findings from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which shows how adversity early on affects our mental and physical health.

There is an urgent need for this understanding about the effects of early trauma to be common knowledge, especially in the medical world. A look at Stephen Porges polyvagal theory which explains the rolls of the vagus nerve, the parasympathetic, sympathetic systems and the enteric system and mental and physical illness all make sense, honest!!

In a very small nutshell

The vagus nerve goes from our body into our lower, survival brain and face. It is the second biggest nerve in our body and allows ongoing information sharing between our body and brain which is what our survival, and our health depends upon. When we tune to into our body via our vagus nerve we can calm ourselves down, we can tell if we are hungry, full up, or thirsty. We can use our body’s vagus nerve to convince our whole being that it is safe to come out of fight/flight/freeze.

When we can get the balance between the parasympathetic rest and digest lower system and the sympathetic, upper fight/flight system we feel calm and well! It is simple to do (not necessarily EASY to do) but it needs attention to our inner sensations and knowledge about how to switch on rest and digest and turn down fight/flight/freeze.

Good health means connecting with the regulatory abilities of our bodies

Our brains can only do so much, especially if there have been early stressful experiences or trauma. The medical world is slow to catch on to this. Your doctor, or even a consultant is unlikely to be well-versed in polyvagal theory or the health benefits of increasing and maintaining good vagal tone. One day they will be, a few are already, but until that time, it is up to us to become better educated so we can offset the effects of stress responses and trauma trapped in our cells and muscles.

Wellness really is possible

For many years, I suffered with terrible lower back pain, IBS, gastroparesis, repetitive headaches, jaw pain, broken teeth from jaw-clenching, crippling shoulder and neck pain, and be on a range of medication, including periods of time for depression and anxiety. Nowadays I rarely take a pain killer. I have daily body-based practices such as yoga, and TRE and I go for a walk most days. I use doTERRA therapeutic grade essential oils, I tune into my body via cranio-sacral therapy and massage, so I can sense tension, and I can even fathom out some of my emotions now all by myself!!!

I love the sense of wellness I have created, and the feeling that I am much more attuned to my body and see it as a safe and courageous body, rather than spending my days at war and odds with it. This can be your story too.

“Look at the symptoms of people who have had shut down experiences, irritable bowel, digestive problems we see all these issues here and that’s because the neural regulation below the diaphragm has been recruited for defense and not for homeostasis.”

Stephen Porges

 

For more information on how Jane can work with you, or your organisation:

Janeevans61@hotmail.co.uk

M: 07455281247