Dr. Peter Levine on working through a personal traumatic experience

[Music] it was a perfect February winter day in Southern California I was going to go up to La my friend's 60th birthday and as I was crossing the street a teenage drive there was a truck at the stop sign and there's a teenage Drive driver she didn't see me because of the truck and she went right through the stop sign and she hit me about 25 M an hour and I was thrown in the air thrown first into her windshield the windshield spider shattered I was thrown back into the street and I was of course completely dazed and I I didn't know what was happening I couldn't collect my thoughts I couldn't understand what was happening then I saw her run out of the car open the car door and I saw Terror on her face and I realized that I'd been hit by the car and but of course I had no idea how seriously injured I was no idea and uh a par a off duty paramedic came and he announced himself I'm a paramedic and uh I turned my head to or Orient towards where the voice was coming from his voice was coming from and as soon as I started to move he yelled stop don't move your head your neck could be uh your neck could be broken yeah and so I went back into a deeper shock and I went in so deeply that I left my body which is an experience that traumatized people have I mean it was as though I floated above my body and I was looking down at this whole event seeing my crumpled body laying there and and and and seeing him you know commanding me what to do and then he started firing questions questions I me you know what was my name where was I going what's today's date and I said please just leave me alone I'll answer your questions later and in being able to do that I felt a little bit less helpless then some and he took my pulse and some little time later a woman came by and she said I'm a doctor I'm a pediatrician actually is there anything I can do and I said please sit by me and she did and she grasped my hand and I could feel her hand and I could smell the scent of her perfume and the soothingness of her voice and all of that gave me this feeling that I'm not alone and by having that feeling I was able to go into my body into my body and feel where the shock was locked in my body and then I was gradually able to let the shock move through listening to my body in its unspoken voice and I experienced waves of shake shaking and trembling I felt my left hand wanting to go up as as it had done to protect my head from hitting on the car the windshield and then after a little while more shaking more trembling more waves of heat waves of Rage Red Rage and the the the words how could that idiot how could she go through a stop sign I mean always trauma you have to have somebody to blame and but then I started and then feeling my hand come out to protect myself to from hitting my head against the the the the the the road Highway one and um then the ambulance came and the the the woman was very nice she let me use her cell phone uh to call somebody to meet me at the hospital hospital and I had asked can we go to the the local hospital cuz it was one Hospital a mile or two away and she said no no no we have to go to a major Trauma Center because you very likely have internal bleeding internal injury so I said well what are uh and she took my my pulse and my heart rate and she took it again and I said can you tell me what the pulse what it is what my vitals are and she said no I'm sorry I can only tell that to the doctor and I said well actually I am a doctor half truth right I mean I a doctor of one kind and she said well I have to check again she said something must be wrong I said what do you mean she said well your heart rate is 74 your pulse your uh heart your um blood pressure is 120 over 70 he said well when I talk to the paramedic your heart rate is about 160 I don't understand and so then of course I never miss an opportunity to teach and so I explained to her what I was doing and she said and when we just arrived at the hospital she said you know a few weeks ago we had a a course in in critical incident debriefing where we all had to talk about you know the horrible things that we had experienced and I felt so much worse after it but it seems like you didn't do anything like that at all would you be willing to come and teach us a class and I said sure and I gave my contact information but this was I was greatly relieved that my method worked for sure and but there was another thing that important you know it's nothing that we no no body can do it for us but we really can't do it alone I mean even with 40 Years of developing the methodology and working literally with thousands of clients thousands um I don't think I could have done what I did certainly not as effectively had that pediatrician had that woman come there and sat there with her warmth with her presence and actually this conference that we're tomorrow it's really a lot about the presence that the analyst the therapist brings to bear as a critical component maybe even the critical component in what happens in the person's healing so you know there's a mtown song it goes something like it takes one to stand in the dark alone it takes two to let the light shine through so I think this is and a number of my students have you know uh taken this work and developed it in ways that people use it in their own communities so that when there's a disaster they are uh empowered to help each other because there's not that kind of mental health capacity and most of the mental health capacity really doesn't even understand about how to do this work like like this so by by empowering people to help each other I think we have another tremendously important application of this body of knowledge is this way of attending to and working with the organism and helping people contact that unspoken voice The Voice without words that voice which is so profoundly wise and Timeless and which will guide us back towards [Music] wholeness

Channel: PsychAlive

Views: 222,736

Keywords: Dr. Peter Levine, Psychological Trauma (Disease Cause), personal traumatic experience

Id: 9hP2KJ3UgDI

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2014