Trauma
How do you know if you’re carrying trauma?
Most of us will have experienced some trauma in our lives. Therefore, maybe the question should be “have I processed my trauma?” and if I haven’t, “does the unprocessed trauma I carry hold me back?”
Trauma happens in the body
We don’t choose what our bodies will lay down as a trauma memory, and once that memory is filed, how our bodies will react to that once we’re triggered.
You can identify a trauma trigger by how your body responds.
Phobias can also come under the trauma trigger umbrella.
In the history of psychology, trauma theory is very new. We’re still learning how it affects us long term and how to treat it.
When our bodies are triggered into reliving trauma memories, either through body response or through body response and replayed memories, it puts our brains into an altered state.
You don’t need to relive trauma to process it
Whilst some people do feel they benefit from reliving memories (sometimes over and over until they feel they’re desensitised to them), I have found through my work it’s not necessary to take a client back through a traumatic memory.
If a client wishes to use regression to process, I will take them back to the point after the trauma when they did not have time or opportunity to process. This is the point where they can process, with support.
I believe the build up of emotion and energy from the trauma can be released and healed using hypnosis and somatic work.
Trauma builds like the layers of an onion
Once we have trauma triggers we’re likely to lay down more trauma memories on top.
This is also how phobias can become embedded.
We may have had a bad experience driving, the next time we drive our nervous system may become activated causing a fear response. This makes it more likely we’ll make mistakes and find ourselves more afraid and therefore laying down more trauma memories. Next time we drive we have two bad experiences our bodies will be reminding us of.
This can happen when we’re searching for comfort and safety due to being triggered too. A trauma response is linked to the back of the brain, which acts without the conscious mind making a decision. This can affect the quality of our ability to think before acting and put as at additional risk of danger and making mistakes.
Your symptoms may be trauma related without you even realising
Many people come to hypnotherapy because they have a problem which they need to solve.
Trauma can manifest as physical ailments, as anxiety and depression, or as coping strategies like habits and addictions, or as phobias.
Working with a trauma informed hypnotherapist means if your subconscious does take you to a trauma memory whilst it searches for the root cause of an issue, you’re with a professional who can keep you safe and calm and can help you process and release that trauma.
Different kinds of Trauma
Because our understanding of trauma is still so new, the diagnostic criteria is still being formed, and some of it debated.
The diagnosis of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is mostly used to specify trauma related symptoms after a single event, although it is widely acknowledged PTSD is more likely if this is the second trauma of the kind you’ve been through.
A newer diagnosis of cPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) that hasn’t made it into the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic Manual yet recognises that consistent or continued trauma creates a difference in symptoms which may benefit from a difference in treatment.
Some practitioners, including myself, see Developmental trauma, where the trauma has been consistent or continued whilst the brain is developing (for example during childhood and puberty) as distinct again.
Ideally, hypnotherapy should be a complimentary therapy used alongside traditional mental health care.
Feeling safe again with Polyvagal Theory
One of the techniques I use for working with trauma is Polyvagal Theory which works to understand and calm the autonomic nervous system.
This basically means it helps us to know our own fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses and work to learn how to bring the body back into a place where emotions are regulated.
A healthy autonomic nervous system moves through these states with ease, whilst a nervous system carrying trauma may not. Polyvagal Theory is a newer modality that can help us train the nervous system to become healthier.
Trauma can be inherited
Trauma can be passed down through the generations in different ways.
We understand that parents can pass down their fears and beliefs to their children (transgenerational transmission) and also through exposure to stress within the womb.
However, we are also finding out through important research that parents who have undergone trauma before having children (both fathers and mothers) can pass this on within their epigenetics (intergenerational transmission)
You may also find that cultural and collective memory can affect your fears and beliefs, almost as though your soul holds a store of the energy created by the experiences and stories of your ancestors.
All of this means your trauma symptoms, fears, and beliefs may stem from further back in history than your own lifetime.
Hypnotherapy is a great way to work with transgenerational trauma and to create healing within yourself by working with the experiences of your ancestors.