Trauma and the Nervous system
Imagine yourself as a little kid, playing in the park. In the distance you see a dog. You get excited and jump and down all you can think now is “I want to play with that cute dog” but today is going to lay the pathways of how you process anxiety and trauma into your adulthood. This cute dog is none to happy to play, and he bites you. Years later as an adult you go to a different park in a different state, you hear a large dog bark in the distance, in that moment you feel your heartrate speed up, breathe rate increases and your start to perspire you know you are feeling anxious or stressed. You are totally safe and yet you feel stressed, anxious and maybe even traumatized being pulled right back to that moment as a child when you were bite.
Why does this happen you may wonder? Your nervous system is a beautiful and intelligent system that is designed to help you know when it is time to fight or flee and when it is time to calm down. Unfortunately trauma and chronic stress out this system under such load that it starts to go into overdrive.
A little stress can be very healthy for our central nervous system and help the system to function well so we can workout effectively and stay safe. However when we stay stressed, maybe due to lack of sleep, hectic work or personal life schedules and demands, or even trauma the issue changes from acute to chronic and this is where we will start to experience health concerns such as intestinal issues, inflammation, headache, disturbed sleep patterns, even depression.
Let us take a moment and examine what is happening behind the scenes here. With trauma our responses are fast tracked and go straight to the amygdala (your emotional processing center of the brain) bypassing logical processing. At this point the brain can no longer reason logically when it perceives a threat and stops functioning because the body is sending less blood to the brain. Our brains cannot process trauma in this chaotic emotional state. Think back to how we felt when we heard a dog bark after being bitten. We had no control over the fear that set in, it was an autonomic reaction (non- voluntary or non-conscious). We’ve all experienced this type of reaction at one point or another. And again in small doses this protection from our nervous system can be beneficial but when it happens and we have no control over it like in the work place or at home and we find ourselves feeling out of control, we are often left feeling impulsive rather than logical.
So what can be done? Therapeutic yoga with a focus on CNS (central nervous system) and restorative practices are designed to help reset this system to recalibrate how the body processes automatic emotional response and stress. By developing non- judgmental awareness (interception) in a safe and calm environment we have the capacity to change or influence the messaging system, so the next time we hear a dog bark it does not unravel our entire day.
Would you like to learn how to process trauma and stress in a healthy way? Click here to work 1:1 with the therapeutic specialist
