What is Trauma?
Renowned Physician and Addiction Expert Dr Gabor Mate with over 4 decades of clinical experience says:
“Trauma is not what happens TO US, it’s what happens INSIDE US.”
Dr Gabor Mate can be found on social media talking about Western Countries investing billions in healthcare and yet chronic disease and mental illness are on a seemingly unstoppable rise. He goes on to talk about how the Health Systems neglect the role trauma exerts on our bodies and minds. Medicine often fails to treat the whole person he says, ignoring how today’s culture burdens our bodies and Immune Systems and undermines emotional balance.
Trauma is Largely Misunderstood
Many human beings and even therapists still consider trauma to be a taboo subject. Most people still believe trauma to be something only suffered by those who have experienced war, sexual abuse and other catastrophic events.
Trauma has to be one of the most misunderstood forms of human suffering and underlies many mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and addiction.
For a long time coaches, therapists, psychologists and other mental health practitioners have been attempting to resolve trauma using the cognitive mind, but recent studies have shown that the effects of trauma are stored within the body. Meaning trauma is not only a psychological issue, it’s an issue that affects the whole system.
Trauma is not a disorder, it’s an adaptation.
Our nervous system adapts to feeling unsafe, it adapts to traumatic circumstances until we are left with a baseline and undercurrent of impending doom and a deficient sense of self.
We have to redefine trauma, and we have to deepen our understanding of it if we are going to work with it in an effective way. It is the driver behind so much of our dysfunction as human beings, yet we are unaware of how deeply it runs within us as a collective.
Trauma is stored in our bodies, our Soma, our Neural Physiology & our Bodies.
Trauma – Origin
“Trauma” is the Greek word for “wound,” and “psyche” is the Latin word for “soul.” From these ancient words, we get both the clinical term, “psychological trauma,” and the poetic term, “soul wound.” The latter term conveys much better the deep anguish and suffering so commonly involved in trauma. The pain from these wounds – physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual can impact every area of human life, and the fallout is often devastating:
- Shattered world views
- A fractured sense of self
- Loss of Trust, Security or Meaning
- Low self Esteem
- A Lack of Belief or strength in self
- This list goes on…
Soul wounds may occur at any age. For some, the trauma starts in childhood, at the hands of abusive caregivers. For others, it’s not until adulthood that something tears their world apart. And when these life-shattering events happen, they can affect anything and everything:
- Relationships
- Work
- Leisure
- Finances
- Physical health
- Mental health even the very structure of the brain.
Trauma & the “Soma”
We crave and want more and more of the positive, or good emotions; however when we dip into guilt, shame, anger, fear, sadness, hurt we have a real aversion to feeling this end of the spectrum of emotions. That’s because our parents, the people that taught us about this stuff, they had no idea as well.
It’s no one’s fault, we’re just all doing what we were taught.
There is a generational un-awareness that has been passed down through the previous generations from generation to generation. So a lot of those heavier emotional states don’t get received well when we’re younger and anger is one of these, rage is another; as is grief and sadness.
A lot of parents and care givers have a lot of trouble holding space for anger in the home when we are growing up; so that emotion gets shut down within us. These are very natural emotions.
ALL emotions are natural; they’re part of the human experience and are to be ‘felt’ in the Soma – the body.
In Greek, the word Soma evolved to mean ‘the body living in its wholeness.’
This is what the term “Embodiment” means – when we can “BE” in our body IN wholeness and feel safe to “feel”. The “feeling – IS – the healing”.
A Nervous System in Overwhelm (FFFF – Fight Flight Freeze Faun) We go into a survival response, we start to get flooded with Adrenaline, Cortisol floods Nervous System – Fear, Guilt, Shame, Anger, Sadness, Hurt Anxiety, Feeling Unsafe – This emotional Energy or Survival Stress is stored in our body. Peter Levine – Pioneer in this field talks about this cycle being a loop. The trauma loop starts (FFFF). Ideally after the stress or the perceived threat leaves, we come back to a nice calm state.
Stored Emotional Energy/Survival Stress – But as human beings, that loop starts to open and we get stuck in these survival states. So all of a sudden, we start to hold onto these emotions and this survival stress. We never fully come back to calm. We may calm down a little bit, but there’s all this hum in the background or maybe we’re just a high level PTSD Symptoms where it never comes down at all.
We bounce up into overwhelm, into a stress response and that stress response never completes itself fully and returns back to REST & DIGEST (calm – the Parasympathetic Nervous System). “It’s over and I’m safe now” No matter the extremity of the event. We can come up half way or a full blown – “A lion is about to kill me” Or “Everyone’s laughing at me” and we go into dorsal vagal shame response. It’s when that never completes itself and that’s the imprint that’s left on us. If trauma was the event, the moment the event was over, the trauma would be gone. But trauma is what we carry inside of us as a result of the INCOMPLETE stress response. And then, in an attempt to regulate that stress response, or the stress playing out symptomatically is behaviours. This is when we can then fall into addiction and unhealthy behaviours.
Regulate Your Nervous System & Stay Open on Your Healing Journey
Feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or stuck in a cycle of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn? Learn natural, body-based tools like breathwork, movement, sighing, and humming that can shift emotional triggers and bring the nervous system back into balance—anytime, anywhere. These simple techniques support emotional well-being and help reset the body when it’s in survival mode. Alongside practical tools, this is also a gentle reminder of the power of staying open and curious during your healing and spiritual journey. When we lean into expansion and remain in the question, we create space for wisdom to drop in, for healing to deepen, and for awareness to grow.
Watch here
The Area of the Brain – The Amygdala
The amygdala is a region of the brain primarily associated with emotional processes, particularly fear and anxiety.
The Amygdala governs the fight, flight, freeze faun response of the Sympathetic Nervous System. Amygdala gets activated and it starts pumping Cortisol through the Nervous System to send a message to our organs that there is danger – send the blood to the limbs because we either have to fight or go into flight: need to run and hide.…
So this cycle never completes itself. It is a constantly open loop. And when that doesn’t complete itself – that’s trauma – when the Amygdala stays activated and Cortisol continues to pump through our system.
These are survival responses in all mammals. We see this in every day life. A cat after running from something, will often stop and shake itself while all it’s fur stands on end…Any cat owner would have witnessed this natural phenomena at some stage of their cat’s life.
So these survival mechanisms can show up – sometimes, the response is s “shut down” response – going limp – unable to do anything.
When the body shakes uncontrollably – it is releasing terror.
Many Somatic Forms of healing can bring this on –
Hands on Somatic Healing – people report feeling ‘energy moving’
Breathwork
Yoga (certain postures eg. Wall sits. Bridge pose…)
When the body can “shake out” the energy, the trauma response can be completed.
Medications like Valium shuts down the whole natural process of the body’s somatic release and inhibits the survival response so the loop cannot be completed.
We don’t complete these loops because we don’t go into our bodies; we disassociate; we live in our heads, and so these energies stay stuck in the body half way until we enter some form of therapy to release them.
So this is what we do in clinic in Somatic Healing and in our Breathwork Group – we release the stored trauma from the body!