How to Heal Trauma in Your Body (Anxiety, PTSD, Panic)
I am a trauma survivor suffering off and on from anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and PTSD for most of my life. I wasn’t diagnosed until my early 30s. I was high functioning living a highly stressful life being a young single mom, going to University, & working while living in NYC. I’ve experienced all types of abuse since I was a child, sexual violence, physical abuse, verbal abuse, & emotional abuse. The abuse continued into my adulthood with the abusers being family, friends, boyfriends, co-workers, bosses, and strangers. I’ve had people try to weaponize my disorders against me. I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to make sense of things and heal.
I’m grateful for Doctors like Bessel van der Kolk who wrote this life-saving book The Body Keeps the Score and Dr. Nicole LePera (@the.holistic.psychologist on instagram), & Dr. Peter Levine (@drpeteralevine on instagram) for their groundbreaking research and life-saving work!
“Trauma is an experience that overwhelms you, wipes you out and makes you want to collapse, makes you want to erase it as an experience. You don’t want to remember it or feel it. You can’t cope with it. It renders you completely helpless. Helplessness is a precondition to trauma like there is nothing I can do to change what’s going on here.
The past is over but the trauma sits in you it happens over and over again in the body. The brain doesn’t know it’s over, your system keeps reacting to all types of stuff as if it’s still happening because the brain changes the capacity to process the experience. Post-traumatic stress disorder isn’t really posted, it’s happening now. The body is on constant hyper-alertness. The perceptual system of the brain is rewired to overreact to current stresses. It affects your whole system. It reorganizes the brain. Many brain areas are changed by trauma & the longer it’s been going on the more it changes. You get stuck in fight, flight, & freeze. It affects all systems.
Blasting people with their past isn’t helpful. How can I help you feel safe inside & to have the courage to face very difficult things? The most important thing is to create an environment of safety & physiological calm so healing can occur. Not feeling safe in your body has intolerable physical sensations that cause people to take drugs.
Understanding why you’re messed up does not stop you from being messed up. Telling people it happened a long time ago doesn’t help. It’s not a problem you can rationalize because it’s your animal brain (survival brain), so sitting & talking about it doesn’t help.” - Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
Here is what the latest science-backed research says actually heal the nervous system and rewires the brain better than medication:
Self regulation practices like:
Yoga
Meditation
Chanting changes heart rate
Qi gong
EMDR
Somatic therapy
Psychedelics to help rearrange your system
Somatic experiencing to release trauma in your body
Having someone to talk to & tell the truth is really important
