It Might Not Be What You THINK
May 24th, 2010
By Sherry L. Osadchey, MA, LMFT, SEP, Somatic Experiencing Topic Expert Contributor
Click here to contact Sherry and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile.
“Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the event itself. They arise when residual energy from the experience is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds.” – Peter Levine
Life unfolds in its many textures with mystery, unpredictability, and at times shocking and disorienting jolts. We have been given a design that allows for the negotiation of the unexpected. Our hard-wiring provides a simple and elegant instinct to navigate the journey as it unfolds. Yet sometimes the unexpected is accompanied by factors that impede our nature’s blueprint for processing and completing the vast spectrum of events that cross our path.
It has become more common for people to understand and accept that their childhood experiences can have an impact on their ability to navigate life. The struggles we find ourselves having in our relationships, places of work, social environments, can indeed reflect the limitations of our parents and caretakers. We have all had imperfect parents and we become imperfect parents. Some of us have more severe and traumatizing experiences. Some of us are more sensitive by nature and more easily impacted by our environment than others. This perspective on nature and nurture has become more accepted and psychotherapy has lost much of the stigma once attached to it. But the story is broader than this. When we include the role that the nervous system plays in storing overwhelm and trauma another picture can emerge of other potential origins in our struggles and stuck places.
We are hard-wired to respond instinctively to anything that is perceived as threat. Perceived is an important word here. The higher brain’s perception of an experience can be dramatically different from the lower brain’s call to register all things as safe or not safe. While the lower brain is processing information on the basis of life or death the higher brain is gathering the data and analyzing our experiences with its more sophisticated level of cognitive function. This is where the benefits of having a more evolved brain can also become our challenge. We can override our hard-wired instincts with over-thinking. The physiological response generated in the Autonomic Nervous System can then become stored rather than released.
Certain circumstances can produce inability to follow our lower brain’s imperative to fight or flee (e.g. a surgical procedure requiring stillness, or an assault where we are overpowered). The higher brain’s tendency is to think rationally, or follow what is deemed right or wrong for a situation, rather than react. This, too, can lead to the storing of excess energy (e.g. jumping up after falling in public to show others that we are fine, or staying in place to wait for the arrival of the police rather than bolting in a terrifying situation like a car accident). It is this particularly human condition that led to the development of Somatic Experiencing. Animals in the wild operate according to instinct. Humans think and develop social mores and operate within complex situations that require counter-instinctual behavior.
We are a species that has a high propensity for storing trauma because of the many circumstances that generate immobility on our more primitive instinct to fight or flee. Our physiology can become overwhelmed and disorganized within the very system that enables our managing and surviving stressful and threat producing events or experiences. Our hard-wiring in combination with our social and environmental circumstances, our stage of development, the critical incidents we encounter, and the sometimes seemingly innocuous events that occur, all shape our degree of resilience and ability to navigate the course of our life. This may seem an obvious statement. What is not as obvious are those unresolved pieces of our history that our higher brain could not yet record because of its lack of development or did not note as having significant impact. For example, the cord wrapped around one’s neck at birth, or the car accident written off as “nothing”, or the “routine” tonsillectomy that involved ether, and the list goes on.
History questions that include pre and peri-natal experience, critical incidents, injuries, surgeries, dental procedures, and more have the potential to facilitate the course of treatment and healing. These circumstances can actually be the underpinnings of the challenges and obstacles that often seem to recycle throughout ones life — circumstances not always appreciated or understood fully for the part they can play in the storing of overwhelm and trauma.
Sometimes our interpretations on our actions, feelings, and patterns of thought prove to be accurate and helpful in making the changes we desire. Sometimes they are not. Sometimes we need to be able to let go of over-thinking and expand our awareness to what the body is giving voice to below the stories and interpretations of the higher brain. What has not been considered or was lost in dismissed significance may provide some valuable pieces to the unraveling of the body’s hold on its unfinished business.
I offer this invitation to slow down….. and notice….. the subtle places that may be driving behavior, feelings, patterned thought that may not be at all what we think.
Acknowledgments:
Peter Levine, PhD; Raja Selvam, PhD, SEP; Diane Poole Heller, PhD, SEP; Nancy Napier, MA, SEP; Yiri Dollekamp, CMA, SEP
© Copyright 2010 by Sherry L. Osadchey, MA, LMFT, SEP, therapist in Farmington, CT. All Rights Reserved.
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Comments
I always try and talk to my mom about anything outward that happens to me or that I see.This is my way of getting the thought out of my mind and not letting it reappear sometime later.If I don’t do that,it so happens that it troubles me later.I am very close to my mom and thankfully I’m able to let go of everything negative and traumatic when I talk to her about it.
Thank you for your comment. What a great example you give about how important it is for us to have a good external system of support. Your having someone you go to who is positive and caring really helps your physiology have a way to process rather than store your reactions and feelings. Good for you!
I realized one thing recently- It is not what it all seems to be.
I recently had an awards function in school and when i was on the stage to receive my award, I somehow slipped and fell… right in front of the entire audience! I was so embarrassed.
After that, my friends and people who would generally talk nicely to me just didn’t seem to observe me…or was I invisible?! I was sure that it was all due to me falling on the stage and it kept bothering to me when my friends didn’t talk to me for a second day.
But what happened on the third day gave me a real lesson – My friends came to my place before I started for school and wished me…it was my birthday! I had forgotten about it in the mayhem of the fall! They had stopped talking so that they could surprise me for the birthday and not because I fell!
It may seem a little funny but had it gone on for a little longer, I would have lost me mind ;)
very insightful article
To R. Davidson: What happens immediately following something that our lower brain and body are needing to process can be very important for us. You provide a great example of how the context of an event can get connected to the event. If it had gone on longer it sounds like the two things that got connected together (your fall and your friends seeming to be unaware of you)would have sent you into overwhelm. Two hard things all at once can be too much for our lower brain to process. Overwhelm in the nervous system can feel like losing your mind. Thankfully it got corrected before it all became too overwhelming! Thanks for helping me say more about my topic.
To barb: Thanks for your comment! Stay tuned. Hopefully next month I’ll have more insights to share.
I become very cautious and kind of superstitious if something bad happens…I stop whatever I’m doing and I just sit at home, not wanting to get into more trouble or causing any more problems, either to others or to myself. i don’t know if this is the right thing to do, some people say I overdo this, but it has worked so far so i continue to do so.
Julianne: Sometimes circumstances are such that our instinctive reactions can’t be followed and we end up immobilized. Even though it might not look like we are immobilized sometimes that is the state that gets stored in our physiology. Later on that can be the same pattern that we go into when something else happens. We sit still and stop being totally alive and operate from fear that is no longer necessary – - but it can feel like it still is. You present another great example of how unresolved reactions can get stored in our physiology and limit our options later on. It sounds like it’s working for you in some way and maybe not totally satisfying. Good luck with making your way through that. And thanks for your comment.
life’s what you make it, so thinking it is what you want it to be might not be such a bad thing
I loved this article – I have long been in jobs in which I sought to fulfill my sense of meaning through helping others…, as many people in health care know, this was very often at my own expense. I was recently in a job where almost 100% of my case load consisted of children who had lived or/and where living through unthinkable things… when I asked for support from my employer I received the opposite – more worthless meetings (ironically there was a very helpful workshop about vicarious trauma and burnout – the presenter offered research as to what the organization needed to offer to protect its’ employees – nothing was done) and pressure about useless paperwork… after watching all my co-workers and myself experience about 3- 5 burnouts in a year I came up with solutions and asked for help once again – our plea for help was responded to with suggestions of insubordination — time has passed and my stress has been alleviated – still I hold something and your article just cleared it up for me — my body and my “lower brain” was well aware that I needed to quit. the organization was oppressive and my instincts new that I was experiencing unsafe levels of stress – I did not leave because my mind kept telling me not to (the ration was – “yes this is harmful to me but what about the children… it is not their fault that the organization is broken”) – I was trying to stay consistent with a sense of meaning and purpose that I was attached to (still am) … the energy that I carry is most definitely related to my inability to flee when I was supposed to … I ignored my instincts to protect myself from unhealthy levels of stress … I now can fulfill the same purpose without the added detriments of a failed organization (private practice with some reduced fee options)… I have forgiven… and with the guidance of this new lesson I will seek to release. Thank you… any suggestions on how to release energy related to ignoring an instinct?
sue richards: I totally agree with you. Positive thought and intention attracts good things. When we find ourselves not able to do that it can indicate some unresolved overwhelm or trauma that needs help processing out of our physiology. And then we can better get about the business of making life positive and more productive for us. Thanks for the comment.
William: What a GREAT example. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. You recognize you wanted to flee. Important awareness. How do you know that? What parts of your body tell you that? Do you remember a particular moment of wanting to run from there? Image yourself doing so. As you image running sense into your legs and feet. Do you notice anything in your legs and feet as you’re imaging running? Any twitches or vibration or heat? If you do sense something opening in your legs and feet just let it happen. And just keep running for as long as it feels good for your body. If this doesn’t begin a process of dissipating the bound flight you might need some further assistance with it. Good luck with trying this. And thanks so much for the perfect example!
This is interesting. I am wondering where Mr. Levine gots his training? I am compelled to inform him that the central nervous system has no storage capacity for “energy”. It has no storage capacity for anything- and fully discharges its electrical impulses as they fire from cell to cell. This is science – not speculation and philosophy. It is critical in scientific investigation and the pracice of scientific disciplinesthat facts are verified and the proved. Otherwise the public becomes disoriented and misled. After readingthese posts I am startled at the observations and philosophic musings that are actually embraced by others as fact or science. (Ok, its a blog, I know. This is not a place to expect diagnostic precision). However, what most medical practitioners know now about what is being called post-traumatic stress disorder is actually a persistent or recurring memory. We do not know if it is a disorder becasue we cannot claim to know its pathogenic sequences or causes – as not everyone exposed experiences it (tauma) in the same way. You do not have to have a trauma to experience a stressor (not necessarily as disorder at all) and not all persons who experience trauma experience a stress reaction. However, what is alarming is the magical jump to “diagnose” this as a problem “treatable” with philosophic “talk through” methods and by the use of unscientific terms like “energy” “processing” or “getting connected to the event”. (Seriously, you can’t be serious? Can you?). It is my hope that practitioners of the counseling trades there is more scientific understanding and grounding in the work claiming to be done that what is expressed here.
Gary: Your angry comment is the perfect lead in for the beginning of my next article. I am starting with the acknowledgment of my not being an Expert. I think Expert is a word that should be used with great intention. You seem to have not done your homework on “Mr. Levine” who has a PhD in medical biophysics and a PhD in Psychology. His work is taught around the world and there is a very good reason for this. The theory he developed from a vast breadth of study does in fact work. I assume you realize that science is always changing. What seems to be true can later be deemed false. We are all just trying to understand to the best of our ability what seems to be true and to bring that understanding to the work we do in our pursuits to help with healing, whether we are talking about medicine or psychology or the gray area where those overlap. I understand that you have disagreement with my article.I’m not clear about why you express it so angrily, though.
Sherry: Thank you for a response. However I would point out that my bluntness is not a cloak for anger – but perhaps a little frustration at the broad brush of what is often framed as scientific methodology – as practiced by licensed people. It is my firm belief that the resource of help be well grounded in science. To be clear, I did a brief investigation of the “somatic experiencing” website operated by Dr. Levine. Like many websites it offers guidance and help, but no clear references to what is actually taught, learned or how it is connected to the practices that licensed persons are sanctioned to do by state licensing boards. In talking with others I find that while there are clear rules on what can be claimed as professional practices by licensed marital and family therapists, the reality is that there is little policing of actual practices (unless a complaint is filed). Simply put, I do not see the connection between what the AAMFT (yes,I looked up thier guidelines)outlines as the fundamental work and expertise of an MFT and what Dr. Levine does. It appears that he would allow anyone in for training. That is not bad, but when the training results in some for connection to a licensed professional service the whole things rings of snake oil. In addition, you still did not address my comment regarding the clearly religious aspects of the claims – or perhaps that is more your personal take on how you provide services (?). I do not understand how those references and wordings are connected to marital and family therapy. Please do not confuse my legitimate questions and concerns regarding professional boundaries and scientific practices with anger. If you do, you are chasing a false ghost – and not looking closely enough at my sincere inquiry. there is no reason to be defensive if you hav nothing in need of defending. I really would like to know how this training and practice are extended into and legitimized as a licensed professional practice. I have not asked this of any regulatory board – maybe that is where I could inquire?
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