I once worked with a client who I'll call
Mary. Mary grew up in an abusive home. Her biological father was imprisoned for molesting
her when she was little, and her stepfather had sexually abused her for years. And from her
perspective, her mother's abuse was the worst. Her mother was emotionally abusive, calling her names
and degrading her and telling her she was a slut. So her childhood was difficult, to say the least.
In her twenties, she came to therapy to work on anxiety, self-esteem, and to process through all
the old trauma. In this video, we're going to talk about how trauma showed up in her body and
some of the things we worked on to resolve it. To be honest, I really don't like most of the
pop psychology out there about self-esteem. All the exercises that have you look in the mirror
and say nice things to yourself, they just really don't work for me. But at the same time, when
you have low self-esteem, you feel like you're never good enough. And your thoughts lie to you,
and they tell you that you're a horrible person. And that can really contribute to
poor mental health and depression. So if talking into a mirror isn't enough, what do
you do? I've collaborated with Dr. Carly LeBaron, and she made this amazing course on
overcoming low self-esteem. In her course, you'll learn seven practical strategies
to restore your sense of confidence and to let go of your negative labels
and to feel worthy of love and belonging. Since this course is brand-new, I've
got a special link in the description, and you can get lifetime access to the course for
only $49 this week. So don't spend another day beating yourself up. You can start to learn these
seven principles today and turn things around. Trauma is very common, but despite how common
it is, trauma treatment is complicated. And complex trauma stemming from years of abuse
really impacts the brain in long-lasting ways. So I'm not going to pretend that I can just
teach you how to fix it in one short video, but we can break trauma treatment down into
practical steps. It's not that hard to learn how to release trauma in the body. So let's talk about
that. But first, just take a few slow breaths. Now, just like that, you sent a message to your
body that it can turn on the parasympathetic response. Now, in my previous video, I talked
about how trauma gets trapped in the body. The fight/flight/freeze response
gets kicked on over and over again, and it doesn't get resolved. And eventually it
becomes habitual, essentially a muscle memory that turns on that physiological response. Adrenaline and cortisol flow into the
body. The pupils narrow. The muscles tense. The heart and lungs pump faster.
The immune system and digestion turn off. When it comes to trauma, our body is not only
reacting to the present-moment sense of danger or safety but the memory of past danger that
has basically been stored in our nervous system. This activated, stressed-out, hypervigilant
response becomes habitual. And when it's chronic, the toxic stress harms your body. It makes it
difficult to function mentally and emotionally. But your beautiful, brilliant body
is not designed to just leave you trapped there. It's designed to heal, to repair,
to connect, and to restore its sense of safety. According to the polyvagal theory, there
are three states of the nervous system. Our default mode is this safety-and-connection
state. But when faced with a perceived threat, our nervous system kicks on the fight-or-flight
response. And this activates you to fight off danger or escape it. But when a threat seems
impossible to escape and there's no hope in fighting it off, your nervous system
enters the freeze state, shutdown mode. You numb out and freeze up. When treating trauma,
our goal is to transition the nervous system from being stuck in fight-or-flight or shutdown to
a calm state of safety and connection. The more time we spend in that state, the more we train the
body to return to a sense of calm and security. The healthiest people can
actually transition between that activated response and the
safety response quite quickly. We don't have to suppress the
fight/flight/freeze response; we just need to add an additional skill to
our tool belt. And there's actually a way to measure your nervous system flexibility.
It's called vagal tone, and you can measure it with heart-rate variability. So you can learn
a lot more about that in another video I made. But you don't need a machine to tell you what
state you're in. Your body has a built-in monitor. It's called neuroception. Your brain is constantly
monitoring what state you're in. You can, you can learn to become more aware of the state you're in.
And when you do, you can consciously choose action that helps release this tension. So this is why
therapy is really helpful, because an observant therapist can help you notice what state you're
in and then help you transition back to safety. And it's easier to calm the mind by calming
the body first. So when I do trauma work, I always start with the body. Okay. So let's start by talking about the shutdown response.
Okay. So the oldest, most primitive response is the dorsal vagal response. This is the
freeze-and-immobilization response. When we perceive an overwhelming threat that we can't
fight off or escape, this is what we default into. So an example of this is how animals play
dead or freeze when they can't escape. When it's chronic in humans, it looks like feeling
exhausted, detached, numb, disconnected, or mentally foggy. This looks a lot like depression
too. So in one session with my client, Mary, she was going through the process
of the trial of her stepfather. And she was sitting on my couch, and
she was just saying over and over, "I'm so angry at him. I'm just so mad," but
her face was completely flat. Her eyes were downcast. Her body was tense and frozen
and rigid. She said she was feeling anger, but her body was responding with
immobilization. And you'll see this a lot with trauma survivors. They get locked
up, they shut down, they get overwhelmed. They collapse into a feeling of helplessness
that sometimes gets diagnosed as depression. So with Mary, I asked her to start
patting her hands on her legs. Then I asked her to start stomping her
feet. Pretty soon she started loosening up. And as she started to notice her surroundings,
I reminded her that she was safe in this room. Her face became more expressive. She
started smiling and laughing a little bit. But then she was also able to actually feel
her anger, and, and she was actually mad. By moving her body around, we were able to shift her
from shutdown mode into a more activated state. We also really bugged the
therapist in the office next to me. She barged into my session, and she's
like, "Is there a therapist in here?" And me and my client kind of laughed our heads off
about it later. So. Anyways. You may need to find a quieter place to do that kind of activity,
right, to get out of that freeze response. But movement, just even like shaking your hands out,
patting, tapping, touching, or just getting back into connection with your body can help you
get out of that freeze-and-shutdown response. So the second level of trauma is being
stuck in the fight-or-flight state or the sympathetic state. And this can look like anxiety,
hyperactivity, hyper-vigilance, over-sensitivity. So your body is mobilized to manage threats. So
most of the time when Mary came into the office, she was stuck in this mode. Her hands jiggled,
her legs jiggled, her hands never stopped moving. She had a hard time concentrating.
She was jumpy. She didn't sleep well. So in this stage we worked on
soothing her nervous system. We practiced tapping, slow breathing, yawning,
stretching. Sometimes we danced or yelled. And once she was triggered, she learned
to calm down and get centered in her body. Sometimes she would use a grounding
skill or she would hold a heavy object, but each of these activities gradually
helped her feel a sense of calm. Okay. The third state is the ventral vagal
state. This is the safety-and-connection state. Some people call it rest and digest.
Others call it feed and breed. But this is the state, it's where your body
rests, it heals, but it also gets excited and engaged. You experience joy. Right? Your
blood pressure drops, your body relaxes. This is the most flexible state. It can be
playful, adaptive, curious. You can connect to others. It's both active and restful. As therapy
with Mary progressed, she spent more and more time in this state, and she was able to process
through and resolve some of her painful memories. We also started doing some work with Mary
and her husband. So he would come in, and they would talk about trauma
or some problem in her family. And then if she got upset, Mike would soothe
her. He would look her in the eyes and tell her, "It's going to be okay." And he would
hold her hand or he would hug her. Now, eye contact and hugs actually change
brain chemistry. They release oxytocin, which is one of the attachment hormones. And
they send a message to your nervous system that you are safe. Mary and Mike would cry
together and they would laugh together, but they were safe together. He treated her well,
and they worked that healing process together. So you really can learn to release trauma from
your body by retraining the nervous system to spend more time in that state of safety.
And just to overview some of the body-based treatments for each state, here are seven ways
to restore a sense of safety to your body. And I've got videos on each of these if you
want to learn and practice each exercise. So first one is perceived safety. You
say, "In the present moment, I'm actually safe." The exercises are all about reorienting
to the present and grounding with the five senses. Number two is connecting with your body:
patting your legs, patting your hands, tapping. Right? Just reconnecting with your body
movement. Number three is taking the body through its cycles - shaking, dancing, exercise,
yoga, laughter. Right? So if you're feeling tense, let yourself tense. If you're feeling shaky,
exaggerate those shakes. Your body's trying to tell you something and have you work
through and resolve something inside of it. The next level is to soothe the body, so to
go from an activated state to a calming state. You can use your five senses. You can use
gentle breathing. You can use progressive muscle relaxation or paced breathing. And then you can
learn to turn on the parasympathetic response. You can try exercises like the yawn, softening your
gaze, pelvic-floor relaxation, and deep breaths. And basically any activity that regulates
breathing, like swimming or playing a wind instrument, each of these can help turn
on that parasympathetic response as well. And then connect with others
who make you feel safe. Eye contact, hugs, listening to the human
voice, looking at an expressive face, emotional intimacy, sexual intimacy - these
all trigger a chemical change in your body. And then after we soothe the body, we're going
to engage in cognitive reprocessing of trauma: drawing, talking, writing. When your body's in
a state of calm, you can work through the old, painful memories and sensations and essentially
reinterpret them from your new sense of safety. So for example, "That hurt really bad when I
was little. It wasn't my fault. And now I'm an adult and I'm safe." Etc. Okay. I hope this was
helpful. Thank you for watching, and take care.
