During New Year’s last week, I was fortunate to be able to visit with my sister. She and her partner came up for a visit from southern Ontario. We don’t often get a chance to be together for longer periods of time so I really appreciated being able to spend time with her.
We spent time catching up, reminiscing about our childhoods as well as spending time solving the world’s problems:).
One of the things that came out of our conversations for me is how important an effect trauma can have on our present and future lives. Trauma can affect the quality of our relationships. Trauma can influence our level of life satisfaction. Trauma can impact how much we let others in and how close we allow ourselves to be with others.
Then there’s the many ways that we learn to adapt to life with trauma. Beyond the obvious strategies of addiction, over-analyzing, and being overly self-controlled, there’s the more subtle strategies of having a hard time asking for help, feeling like you have to do everything yourself and neutralizing your emotions.
A lot of what I’ve written may seem obvious to you and it’s not that through my discussions with my sister, I was discovering this for the first time; in fact, throughout our discussions, I was appreciating the role of the nervous system in trauma and in the adaptations to trauma.
Trauma in fact is the nervous system’s way of protecting us in the moment. And how we adapt to trauma, and how it permeates our lives, is all mediated by the nervous system.
The fact that trauma is rooted in the nervous system is a message of hope, since the nervous system is changeable and malleable.
There are so many ways to access change in the nervous system: Breathing, focus, movement, state of mind/consciousness for starters.
When we can change and shift the nervous system out of a protective trauma response, or when we can free up the adaptations to trauma, we become more our natural selves, we free up energy for life and healing and we derive a better quality of life.
If you are curious about learning new ways to create more change and shift in your nervous system and in your life, you can join me starting Wednesday, January 22nd for a biweekly complementary class called Shift: New Perspectives and Healthier Outcomes.
To register, email Ceci at frontdesk@thehappyspine.ca.