Trying To Overcome Trauma? You Might Be Going About It The Wrong Way
Overcoming Trauma: There is increasing evidence that the most efficient and effective ways to treat trauma in our lives is by including how our bodies have held onto these life experiences and keep a person locked in a fight flight or freeze state. As Peter Levine states: “(When) we have a person who is locked in the fight-or-flight response, a person who is functioning primarily in the brainstem, and the language of the brainstem is the language of sensations. So if you are trying to help the person work with the core of the trauma response, you have to talk to that level of the nervous system,” (Levine, 2013). The primitive part of the brain does not have verbal language, it does not use words but instead holds these traumatic messages in our nervous system.
One of the foremost experts in the field, Bessel Van der Kolk describes trauma as a breakdown of the attuned physical synchrony, and is quoted in the New York Times, “Trauma has nothing whatsoever to do with cognition. It has to do with your body being reset to interpret the world as a dangerous place,” (Interlandi, 2014).