Trauma resolution

Trauma results when overwhelming life experiences cannot be properly integrated by the nervous system and the psyche. In the face of events that are experienced as “too big, too fast, and too soon” the intelligence of the mind/body system comes up with it’s own response, to compartmentalize, to wall off, or numb-out from these kind of overwhelming experiences outside of conscious awareness in the implicit memory system of the body. Like an electrical breaker in a house, the circuit-breaker “pops” in response to a surge in energy, leaving one unable to assimilate or make sense of what is happening.

There are one time traumatic events like car accidents, rape, and acts of violence. Big T trauma’s.

Then there are the small t trauma’s, less well understood in our culture, but much more prevalent, where the overwhelming events happened over time as part of the fabric of a persons childhood or family life. Here the developmental needs of the young child were unable to be met, resulting in an overwhelm that could not be tolerated by the nervous system. Imagine the constant stress, and lack of safety of a child growing up in an alchoholic family, not knowing when the next shoe was about to drop. Or the distress of a child that comes home from school repeatedly into an environment of neglect where he/she learns to fend for themselves and that support cannot be relied upon. Trauma become walled off in the body’s own tissues, in what is described as implicit memory, where past events continue to give off a signal of stress and unease outside of conscious awareness.

Trauma resolution work proceeds by first creating a relational container between client and therapist, of care and attunement. Then, by skillfully working directly with the implicit structure of memory in the body to safely release the holding patterns and activation of past traumatic events. Trauma is carefully allowed to dissipate and find resolution while resources are established and embodied that give clients a newfound ability to hold in a healthy way what has previously been intolerable. Life can proceed, open to new possibilities without being rigidly shaped by the dictates of the past.