Building Therapeutic Presence: The Art of Showing Up for Clients
By an Embodywise Teacher and Somatic Practitioner Why Presence Matters More Than Technique Imagine that you are in a therapy session and your therapist is deeply engaged with you. Their body language is calm. Their eyes meet yours with sincerity and interest. You can tell that your therapist is not distracted by the next client, is not looking at notes, and is not planning what to say next. They are merely there. They listen not only to the words you speak but also to the feelings behind them, the silence, and the shake in your voice. They see it when your shoulders droop or when your breathing becomes irregular. You feel secure because you are truly recognized. Now imagine the other way around. A therapist who is only physically there but mentally absent. A therapist who is more focused on the therapy protocol than on the client. A therapy session “at” the client rather than “with” the client. The difference is so clear that it determines everything about the possibility of healing. In a profession that is overwhelmed with new manuals, evidence-based protocols, and digital tracking systems, one can easily be tricked into thinking that the main thing to focus on is the technical precision of the method. However, thousands of research studies have shown a simple and deeper truth: it is the person of the therapist, especially their ability to be genuinely present, that is at least as significant as any method they use. The truth is, one study that is often cited showed that the therapist’s inner state and the way of being accounted for the results of therapy eight times more than specific techniques. This is not to say that one should devalue skills or methods. But therapeutic presence, a deep connection with the body and nervous system, is still the cornerstone. Presence, unlike personality, is something that we can work on and can grow stronger during our professional journey. What Is Therapeutic Presence in an Embodied Frame Therapeutic presence, from a somatic and Hakomi-informed perspective, is not a performance or a posture we adopt. It is the capacity to bring your whole self into relationship with a client while remaining grounded, regulated, curious, and open to what is emerging in the moment. This capacity has several dimensions that work together: Grounded in your own body. Presence begins inside you. It means you have some awareness of your feet on the floor, your sitting bones in the chair, your spine upright but not rigid. You notice your breath without trying to control it. You are familiar with your own inner landscape. This groundedness is not about achieving a particular state of calm or zen-like detachment. Rather, it is about being oriented and home in yourself, so that you can stay steady while your client’s material moves through the room. Attuned to the client’s lived experience. Presence means you are tracking what is happening for the other person on multiple levels: the words they speak, the emotions in their voice, the micro-expressions on their face, the tensions or ease in their posture, the quality of their breath. In Hakomi language, this is called tracking. You are not interpreting or analyzing. You are witnessing and reflecting what you observe, so the client knows they are truly being seen. Mindful and nonjudgmental. Drawing on Hakomi’s principle of mindfulness, presence means you are held in a state of relaxed, curious awareness. You are observing what is happening without immediately trying to fix it or fit it into a theory. You are staying with uncertainty. There is gentleness in this attention. There is space. Regulated in your own nervous system. This is essential and often overlooked. Presence requires that you are not flooded, shut down, or reactive. You have some capacity to notice when your own nervous system is activated, and some ability to pendulate (move back and forth) between your internal experience and the client’s. This does not mean you are always calm. It means you can stay in relationship even when things feel activated or heavy. You do not disappear into your own overwhelm. Grounded in loving presence. This is a core Hakomi principle. Ron Kurtz, the founder of Hakomi, described loving presence as the compassionate, open stance that a therapist brings to the relationship. It is not sentimental or “nice.” It is deeper. It is an attitude of profound respect for the person in front of you and an appreciation for their inner wisdom, their protective strategies, and the courageous work they are doing just by showing up. When you bring this quality, clients sense that they are safe to explore what is usually hidden. The Hakomi perspective emphasizes that “who we are and how we show up is at least as important as what we do.” This is the essence of therapeutic presence. It is an inside-out orientation. The quality of your inner state radiates outward and shapes the therapeutic field. Somatic Foundations of Showing Up for Clients To embody therapeutic presence session after session, it helps to understand the somatic building blocks that make it possible. Presence is not a mental achievement. It is a nervous system state. Grounding and self-orientation. Before you are ready to attune to a client, you need to be oriented in your own body and the space around you. This means you have basic proprioceptive awareness. You can sense where your body is in space. Your feet are in contact with the ground or your seat is in contact with the chair. There is a sense of containment and support underneath you. This anchoring allows you to remain present even when the client’s material is intense. Breath and micro-attention. Throughout a session, your body is constantly speaking. Your breath may quicken when a client touches on something triggering for you. Your jaw may tighten. Your chest may collapse slightly when you hear about someone’s loss. Presence includes a gentle internal awareness of these shifts, without judgment or attempt to control them.
Trauma-Informed Care: Creating Safe Spaces for Healing
By an Embodywise Teacher and Somatic Trauma Therapist Beyond the Buzzword “Trauma informed” has become almost a clich. It is everywhere from job announcements, organizational websites to training programs. The word is so widely spread that it can become meaningless, just a badge one shows without a real commitment to the practice. However, if trauma, informed care is truly the core of ones practice, it changes the whole concept of healing. It changes our ways of listening, planning and organizing spaces, and using power in relationships. It not only focuses on the symptoms that survivors show, but it also looks at the systems and places that most likely continue to cause harm. This piece of writing will lead you to understand the concept of trauma, informed care more deeply which is based on somatic wisdom, relational practice, and the understanding that establishing safety is both a technical skill and a personal quality. We will delve into the actual definition of trauma, informed care, its practical applications, and the expectations it puts on us as practitioners and communities. What Is Trauma-Informed Care (From a Somatic Lens) Trauma, informed care revolves around the principle that trauma deeply affects the whole systems and safety in body and mind. It goes beyond viewing trauma as repressed memories and stories; traumatic events get imprinted in the body through various mechanisms such as protective behaviors, dysregulation of the nervous system, hypervigilance, dissociation, and survival strategies that last long after the original event. Trauma, informed care, from a somatic point of view, simply means that we look at the whole person: not just the story they narrate, but also how their body carries that story. We see the tension in a person’s hesitant shoulders; they look threatened and their breath is shallow; their eyes keep scanning the environment. We recognize that a person’s resistance, anger, or avoidance behavior should not be taken as defiance. It is their system functioning in the precise way that it was programmed in order to survive. Hence, we equip our environments, the way we communicate, the timing of our interventions, and our relational approaches to nurturing their nervous system that safety is real and can be experienced. It is crucial to differentiate trauma- informed care from trauma-specific therapy. Trauma, informed care refers to the whole relational and environmental context being sensitive to trauma such that healing is facilitated. The concept applies to clinical settings, schools, medical offices, community organizations, workplaces, and, in general, any place where humans come together. Whereas trauma-specific therapy is basically a clinical treatment completely focused on dealing with traumatic memory and helping the nervous system to heal. Both are important. Yet, trauma, informed care is the container that enables trauma, specific work to be carried out. Core Principles of Trauma-Informed Care (Through a Somatic Lens) SAMHSA, the U. S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, gives a clear outline of six main principles of trauma-informed approaches. Now, let us see how these principles unfold when we consider them through an embodied, somatic perspective. Safety: Physical and Psychological. It is not by simply reassuring that one can make a person feel safe. Through the nervous system, survivors get safety signals which are confirmation of reoccurring experiences. Hence, safety for them would imply that their inside world would not go into a state of alert when they are in a certain place. Body goes on a process of learning: this is a place, these are people, this is a rhythm. I do not have to look for danger every moment. Besides physical safety which we all know is freedom from violence and threats, psychological safety is much more profound. It covers issues like having actual (not just verbally stated) boundary limits, very regular habits so that the nervous system can know what to expect, and being on the lookout for sensory safety. This involves taking into account the lighting, noise level, temperature, odors, and availability of exits. This is also about understanding that the nervous system condition of the staff itself can be felt in the room. You can tell if your practitioners are dysregulated or burnt out. As a result, the environment can never be 100% safe. Trustworthiness and Transparency. Trust can be a major issue for victims of trauma. Most survivors, have compelling reasons for not trusting. For instance, they may have been disloyal to by their closest ones, the very people who were supposed to protect them, or they may have been let down by the authorities, the very institutions that should have served them, or even by their own bodies that failed to protect them. Trust is not something that one gets through grand gestures only. It gets accumulated through numerous small acts of honesty and being consistent. Being trustworthy implies that one keeps other people informed about what is going to take place during a session or an encounter. It entails giving a detailed explanation of the steps involved in the procedure one after another. Being trustworthy implies keeping one’s word in all situations, even if the matter is trivial. Being trustworthy is also about admitting to not knowing something or acknowledging one’s mistake. It means that one does not try to conceal behind the use of jargon or professional status. It means that one says it openly: this is the reason why I am asking you this question. This is what I am about to do. This is how you can stop me, if you want to. When therapists are reliable, patients’ brain and body reactions slowly get to know: these agents really mean what they say. Therefore, the world is no longer so frightening and full of surprises. Choice and Control. Trauma, at its essence, is the experience of having choice taken away. The body immobilized. The voice silenced. The right to say “no” erased. Recovering from trauma means gradually restoring agency: the felt sense that one has influence over what happens to oneself. This principle means offering genuine options, not
Transgenerational Trauma: How Inherited Trauma Affects Families
Warning: This article is a discussion on trauma, non-graphic. It brushes on family suffering, past injury, and hereditary patterns. You are welcome to read at your own speed. You can always take a break, jump or quit altogether. Just reading and getting curious is in itself good work. A lot of individuals enter into therapy with a silent feeling that they are bearing more than themselves. They may say things like: The weight that a person felt at times did not start with the experiences of the person. It can be connected to the experiences of parents, grandparents, or ancestors who were war victims, displaced, poor, oppressed by the system, or victims of violence in the family. This article is a sympathetic, somatic and relational examination of transgenerational trauma, also referred to as intergenerational trauma. It is addressed to practitioners seeking a more body-based comprehension, and to thoughtful readers and survivors already involved in the healing process and interested in how patterns of trauma are transmitted across families and bodies. It is not meant to blame families or pathologize cultures. Rather, it is to celebrate the clever survival strategies that have been bequeathed, and to investigate how embodied practice, conscious presence and supportive community can be used to disrupt and repair inherited patterns. What Is Transgenerational Trauma? Transgenerational trauma is a term that is used to refer to the effects of the trauma that started in the past and is still being experienced by the current generation. This may involve trauma due to: The events that took place might have occurred decades or even centuries ago. The tales are occasionally discussed freely, occasionally whispered and occasionally never told at all. Yet the effects can live on in: New studies are also indicating that trauma may occasionally affect the expression of the genes in new generations, a process commonly referred to as epigenetic change. It is a complex and developing science. This is what is important in healing. Although individuals themselves may not have experienced the initial trauma, their bodies, beliefs and relationships may have some remnants of that past. It is not the realization that parents or ancestors are to blame. They tried to make the best out of the situation they had to endure. Their survival mechanisms might have been critical during their era. The question now arises: what patterns are still useful to life today, and what are pleading to be brought up to date. How Inherited Trauma Shows Up in Bodies and Families? Transgenerational trauma may manifest itself in numerous subtle and not so subtle ways. Each family and culture is different and the same pattern may have very different interpretations in various situations. They are not rules, but common examples. 1. Nervous System Patterns A person might notice: There is a great desire to perform better or to be always on the move, as to take a rest would be harmful. As an illustration, a grandparent who had survived war may have been required to be vigilant at all times. Their nervous system got to know that relaxation was not safe. They may impart a sense of urgency, fear, or strict regulations regarding preparedness to their children without ever having to put this into words. The children are brought up in a safer world but the old alarm system is still present in their bodies. Somatically, these are not the symptoms of a fractured individual. They are guardian designs that had a rationale to exist. They may simply be out of date. 2. Relational Patterns Trauma tends to impact the way individuals relate, bind, and secure one another. Patterns that could be inherited may include: Sometimes families communicate, “We do not talk about certain things.” The silence itself becomes a transmission. Children sense that something is missing or forbidden, and their nervous systems adapt to the invisible tension. Again, these patterns are usually attempts to keep the family safe. Silence may have been necessary in a regime where speaking openly was dangerous. Emotional distance may have helped earlier generations survive overwhelming grief. Seen through this lens, even painful patterns carry the mark of care. 3. Somatic Habits Inherited trauma can also live in postures, gestures, and body habits. A person might notice: Sometimes, several members of a family share a particular body shape or way of moving. While some of this is genetic, some is learned somatically. Children copy the adults around them, not only in language but in how they breathe, stand, and respond to stress. From a Hakomi informed and Innate Somatic Intelligence perspective, these habits are living records of the body’s learning. They show how the nervous system tried to keep belonging, safety, and dignity intact in the face of hardship. A Somatic Perspective on Transgenerational Trauma At Embodywise, trauma is understood as something that lives in the body and in relationship, not only in thoughts, labels, or diagnoses. This applies to transgenerational trauma as well. Several core somatic principles can help practitioners and clients work with inherited patterns. Present Time Body Awareness with Kindness Before exploring family history, it is essential to come into the present moment. This means: The emphasis is on kindness, curiosity, and non judgment. The body is not a problem to fix. It is a living field of information, including information from previous generations. Tracking Activation and Settling Over Time In somatic work, practitioners pay attention to how the nervous system shifts. For example: This tracking happens over time, in small, manageable steps. A client learns to recognize their own signs of activation, and equally, their signs of settling. Both are important. The nervous system begins to experience that it can touch a difficult theme, then return to safety, then touch again. This is how integration becomes possible. Recognizing “Older Layers” of the Story Often, people notice reactions that feel bigger than the present moment. For example: With support, they begin to sense that some of these reactions may belong to older layers of the family story.
PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): Symptoms and Recovery
By Embodywise Somatic Practitioners Trauma is not an idea or a memory that you keep in your head; it is something which is stored in your body. When the situation is so overwhelming that you cannot cope, your nervous system sees it as a threat and thus stays in survival mode. This is essentially what happens in PTSD. After a traumatic event, most people will only suffer for a short period of time in which they feel shock, fear, and disruption. Slowly, they are able to come back to normal as their nervous system goes through processing what took place and regaining safety. However, some people have their nervous system stuck in this state. Their threat response does not go away. In fact, their body reacts as if the danger is happening even after many years of the event. This is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And it is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign that your survival system got triggered so hard that it didn’t go through its normal cycle of release. We at Embodywise use somatic methods to assist people whose nervous systems are traumatized and have trauma patterns. This guide dives into the trauma definition, how trauma affects the body, and how somatic therapy helps people heal. What Is PTSD? PTSD is an acronym for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is a condition that arises when the nervous system fails to recover from a very overwhelming situation. When traumatic events happen, the body enters the survival mode. The nervous system gets into the fight-flight-freeze response. The heart rate goes up, muscles tighten and thinking gets sharper for quick action. This response has been instrumental in saving humans for thousands of years. Usually, the nervous system becomes less active and returns to calmness after the danger passes. The body sends signals of safety. The brain stops issuing warnings. The person returns to normal functioning. Sometimes however, the nervous system can be stuck. The body does not get the signal that it is safe. Even months or years after the event, the system is still in a state of threat. Survival responses are still triggered by situations that are not dangerous at all. This is what PTSD is. It is the nervous system being stuck with the past and not being able to see that the threat has gone. How Trauma Gets Stuck in Your Body When a traumatic event occurs, your nervous system operates at a very high level. However, what is really significant here is that the activation of the nervous system is only partial. Your body attempted to handle the danger, but the reaction was interrupted or overwhelmed. Imagine an animal running away from a predator. After it is safe, the animal still quivers, shakes, and lets go of all that nervous system activation. Its body gets rid of what was energized. Then it relaxes and returns to its normal state. Humans choose to do something different. We inhibit these natural discharging responses. We think that being strong is the right thing to do. We keep it together. We do not allow the activation to flow through us. This partial activation is stored in your body. Your nervous system associates the different signals with danger. An odor, a sound, a certain time of day, or a particular situation can make your survival response come up again and again. After a while, your nervous system becomes very sensitive. Things that are not supposed to be threatening, scare you. Your body is in a constant state of preparedness. This is very tiring. PTSD Shows Up in Many Ways PTSD is not a single event that only happened to you. Different people suffer from it in different ways. But it has common patterns. Re-experiencing the Trauma The traumatic event keeps playing over and over in your mind. You have flashbacks and it feels like the traumatic event is happening again. You smell what you smelled originally. You hear what you heard. Your body reacts as if the danger is still there. Very often, it is the traumatic event that you see in your nightmares. Maybe you wake up terrified, soaking in sweat, and your heart is racing. Intrusive thoughts about the trauma will happen anytime throughout the day without giving you any warning. You were going on with your day and suddenly you found yourself there again. Avoidance You stay away from locations, individuals, or circumstances that remind you of the trauma. You refrain from discussing the incident. You avoid the thoughts and feelings associated with the event. There are those who dissociate. They go numb. They separate from their body and emotions. Dissociation is a response to survival. It is your nervous system’s method of shielding you when the activation is too much to. Changes in How You Think and Feel Your concept of life globally changes. Maybe you would think the world to be unsafe. Maybe you would think that people cannot be trusted. Probably you would experience an excessive feeling of guilt and blame yourself for what happened. There is also a possibility that you feel negative constantly. No longer does anything seem interesting. Things that used to bring joy seem to be at a standstill. You are emotionally numb. It might also happen that you feel estranged from the people that you love. Being together seems to be dangerous. Trusting seems to be absolutely out of the question. Changes in Your Nervous System Your body is not the same: Your nervous system is very much active and it is in a state of hyperarousal. You are always looking out for something dangerous that might come up. All of a sudden you startle at a sudden noise or movement. Your muscles are always somewhat tense. You definitely feel on edge. Sleep is disrupted: Your nervous system does not feel safe enough to go to deep sleep. You may have nightmares that wake you up suddenly. Maybe you feel anxiety or panic all the time:
Childhood Trauma: Long-Term Effects and Healing Approaches
By Embodywise Somatic Practitioners The things that happen to a child stay with that child forever. Not in a blame way, but in a very genuine way. Your childhood was not just a period you went through. It determines your nervous system, your beliefs, and your body’s ability to feel safe. If you had a traumatic childhood, you are probably still holding that trauma with you. Not necessarily as a memory that you are aware of. As an emotion in your body. As a nervous system that is always on guard. As behavioural patterns that were logical at the time when you were small and unsafe. The good news is: the nervous system can learn something different. The body can let go of what it has been holding. Trauma during childhood does not have to be the main theme of your life. Here at Embodywise, we deal with people whose early experiences have deeply affected their nervous systems. We understand that healing from childhood trauma cannot be achieved by only comprehending the past. It is the body that needs to learn that safety is possible now. What Counts as Childhood Trauma Trauma isn’t just the dramatic things. It’s anything that overwhelmed your capacity to cope as a child. Obvious traumas include: But trauma also includes: What these have in common: your young nervous system didn’t have the resources to process what was happening. You did your best to survive. Your body learned protective strategies. How Childhood Trauma Shapes Your Nervous System The most impressive overhaul of the brain and nervous system happens in early life, really. At the same time, you were figuring out how the world works. You were finding out whether you are safe. Whether people can be trusted. Whether your needs matter. When your childhood environment was going through a messy or unstable phase, or was even scary, your developing nervous system didn’t have the option but to learn that it must always be on a high alert. Your amygdala, the threat-detection centre of your brain, became hyperactive. Your stress hormone system was getting ready to find danger everywhere. It was very reasonable when you were a helpless child in a scary situation. Your nervous system was the one saving you. However, as things stand today, you are a grown-up. The danger scenarios your body learned are out of date, and often, your current reality is completely different. Nevertheless, your nervous system is still stuck with the old programs. Science keeps proving that the effects of trauma in early life are visible in the actual brain structures that change over time. For instance, the hippocampus, responsible for memory, shrinks in size. The amygdala becomes overactive. The parts of the brain which govern emotion and stress become less engaged. Moreover, your body was trained in the art of numbing out and dissociating. Dissociation was survival. If you were unable to run away physically, you went away mentally. You learned to sever the connection with your body and your feelings. Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma Childhood trauma ripples through your entire life if you don’t address it. Mental Health Adults who experienced childhood trauma have higher rates of: The trauma doesn’t automatically go away when you turn 18. If you don’t process it, it follows you into adulthood. Relationships Childhood trauma affects how you connect with people. You might struggle with trust. Your nervous system learned that people hurt you, so you have difficulty believing anyone is safe. You might keep people at a distance or push them away before they can hurt you. You might find yourself in unhealthy relationship patterns. You might accept treatment you shouldn’t accept because it mirrors what you learned in childhood. You might be attracted to people who remind you of your abuser because your nervous system recognizes that energy. You might have difficulty with boundaries. If you grew up having your boundaries violated, you might not know how to set them. You might be too rigid with boundaries or have none at all. Physical Health Your body holds stress. Childhood trauma that never gets processed means decades of carrying tension and activation. Studies show that adults with childhood trauma histories have: Your nervous system’s chronic stress response literally changes your physiology. Self-Perception Many people who experienced childhood trauma internalize the message that something is wrong with them. They believe they deserved the abuse. They feel fundamentally broken. They struggle with self-worth. They don’t believe they deserve good things. They sabotage success or connection because they don’t believe they deserve happiness. They often have perfectionist tendencies. They work hard to prove they’re worthy. They’re often their own harshest critics. How You Perceive Stress Here’s something research is just discovering: childhood trauma changes how you interpret everyday stress. An adult who experienced childhood trauma perceives normal life challenges as more threatening than someone without that history. Your stress appraisal system is calibrated differently. What’s a minor inconvenience to one person feels catastrophic to you. This means you’re constantly perceiving threat. Your nervous system is exhausted from overreacting to normal life. Why Trauma Gets Stuck The reason childhood trauma sticks around is that it lives in your body and nervous system, not just your mind. When you’re a child experiencing trauma, your body has an automatic survival response. But as a child, you can’t fight back or run away. You freeze. You shut down. Your body gets stuck mid-response. This incomplete response stays in your nervous system. Your body is still trying to complete what it couldn’t finish decades ago. It’s waiting for permission to shake, cry, rage, or whatever response got interrupted. Talk therapy alone doesn’t necessarily access this. You can understand intellectually that your childhood wasn’t your fault. Your nervous system can still be stuck in survival mode. Recognizing Childhood Trauma in Yourself If you experienced childhood trauma, it likely shows up in your daily life. You might: These aren’t character flaws. They’re signs that your nervous system was shaped by trauma
Understanding Trauma Bonding: Breaking Cycles of Unhealthy Attachments
You end up pursuing an individual who causes you harm. You know, in your mind, you should break it off, but some heavy force continues to lure you back. You haven’t suddenly become stupid. You haven’t suddenly become weak. Your nervous system learned a way of survival, likely many years ago, and now it is governing, and its program is running you! This is what the world refers to as a trauma bond. It’s one of the most perplexing and painful experiences that a person can go through. The difficulty with trauma bonding is that it feels like love (the intensity, the longing, the hope for it to change, the urge for it to work). It starts to mock our love so closely that if a person doesn’t pull away before they’re truly entangled, they often have no idea what they’re experiencing. But here’s what is important: your body discovered this pattern. Your body can learn something other than that pattern. Embodywise works with people who are attempting to untangle from these cycles and does so in ways that move beyond talk therapy and into the nervous system itself, where the pattern resides. What’s Actually Happening When You’re Trauma Bonded A trauma bond develops as a consequence of someone hurting you, and then stopping, hurting you, and then stopping again. The stopping creates a glimmer of hope, and the unpredictability makes it difficult to tear yourself away. It is present in different situations: What they share is a cycle of harm and relief, over and over again. You may be saying to yourself: “But that doesn’t describe me.” Many trauma bonds don’t appear like explicit abuse, and look more like someone who is not fully there for you, someone who promises to change but doesn’t, someone who makes you feel like you are the problem. The key quality is not the nature of the harm, it is the inconsistency and unpredictability of the harm. The Cycle: What’s Happening in Your Body If you’re in a trauma bond, your body goes through three phases repeatedly. Phase One: Building Tension You sense that something isn’t quite right. Perhaps your partner is withdrawing or is irritable and agitated. They could be critiquing everything you do. Your body notices this. You find yourself tightening. Your breath becomes shallow. You frequently find yourself in a state of assessment to figure out what you may have done wrong or how you can avoid the next bad situation. Your nervous system is in a state of hyper-vigilance. This state is called sympathetic activation. Your heart rate might be elevated. You may feel the inability to calm down. You are in a state of anticipation. Phase Two: The Blowup Everything that’s building erupts. This can be yelling, withdrawing, being cold, being cruel, or accusations. You may be in a complete survival mode – you may feel panic, rage, or total numbness. Then something strange happens. A relief washes over you because the wait is now over. You are no longer waiting for something to happen. The explosion has arrived. Your nervous system, which has been wound up tight for days, has clarity about what is occurring, at least for now. Phase Three: The Calm Following the incident, everything calms down. Your partner might say they’re sorry, or show affection or care. They might also act as if nothing happened. In any case, the air has cleared. Your body is flooded with relief. If there is physical closeness, your body gets a flood of chemicals. Oxytocin, which gives you that bond to your partner, endorphins, which make you feel good. Your nervous system is finally calm. You feel connected. You may even feel like things may be different this time. Then it starts to build again in days or even weeks. Why Your Brain Gets Stuck It is not stupid of your brain to remain in this cycle. It is simply a reaction to chemistry. Predictable rewards are less likely to strike your dopamine system as compared to unpredictable rewards. This is basic neuroscience. It is the principle of a slot machine. You do not get addicted to games where you win or lose all the time. You become addicted to the games in which you occasionally win. Whenever your partner is nice and mean, your brain is receiving the slot machine treatment. You become obsessed. You are always thinking about them. You replay positive moments. You are asking yourself how you can make them nice again. This isn’t love. It is the reward system of your brain going wrong. Then there is oxytocin, the bonding chemical. It is discharged in the process of physical love and sexual intercourse. It does not matter whether the relationship is healthy. It simply does its work: it connects you with this person. Patterns also get stuck in your nervous system. When you were growing up in disorganized, unpredictable situations, your system was taught that chaos is connection. Consistent, stable individuals may be boring or even dangerous since your nervous system is not receiving familiar activation. All this put together and you have one who is addicted to a person. That is because neurologically, that is what is going on. How Your Childhood Set This Up The majority of trauma bonds do not occur by chance. Habits learned at a young age tend to trap people into them. When you were brought up by a parent who was loving and at times withdrawn or harsh, you got to learn that love was not always consistent. You were taught to struggle to get pieces of love. Your nervous system was conditioned to perceive unpredictability as normal. When your childhood was anarchic and dangerous, your nervous system was trained to be hypervigilant. You learned how to read the moods of people, how to control the moods of other people, how to attempt to avoid the bad things. Being an adult, you may be attracted to individuals who appear to require handling or those who
Sexual Trauma and Healing: A Compassionate Guide
Note: This article discusses sexual trauma broadly without being graphic. It does not focus on graphic details of the experience of survivors to respect their lived experiences. If you are feeling triggered while reading, please take a moment to take a break or contact a person you trust for support. You can read at your own pace. You might be a survivor of sexual trauma, or maybe you work with or know a survivor, or perhaps you’re interested in this issue and want to learn more about it. Regardless of why you are here, please know that you are not alone in this journey and that your presence is valued. Sexual trauma is a part of the silent stories that lie within our culture; it is experienced by many survivors, affecting millions of people, yet it is often stigmatized, ignored and kept quiet. Many survivors feel disconnected from their bodies, judged for their experiences by the people around them, and have no idea what the healing process looks like. This article presents a holistic, body-based viewpoint on sexual trauma and healing—the focus of this approach is the inherent wisdom of the human body. This approach is based upon the combined practices of Hakomi Therapy and the Innate Somatic Intelligence™ Trauma Therapy (ISITTA) framework, which teaches that true healing comes not only from our minds, but also from our partnering with our neural and physical systems and the innate ability that we each possess to create balance within ourselves. As such, this article aims to shed light on how to move forward from a place of empowerment and self-awareness and with joyful acceptance of your intelligence as a survivor. How Sexual Trauma Lives in the Body The Body Remembers Sexual trauma affects a person’s mind, but it also has an effect on their body through sensory perception. A survivor may not have conscious recollection or memory of the situation(s) that caused the trauma, but the effects of the trauma will remain in the form of sensations and tension; that is, a survivor’s response to the violation of her boundaries (the loss of agency) and the shattering of her sense of safety are embedded within her body’s nervous system. Trauma is stored in the Survivor’s body in forms of: tightness, tension, and instinctual protective behaviours. An adult Survivor can be hyper-alert in situations and have an instinctual response due to a tone of voice or pressure on the body or even a type of material (clothing) without being able to understand, or recognize what is causing this reaction. Survivors of Trauma do not experience this hyper-alert reaction because they are weak, nor do they experience it because they are not healing. Rather, the hyper-alert reaction is indicative of how intelligent, and how dynamic our bodies can be when it comes to protecting us from harm. Nervous System Adaptation The nervous system is faced with an extensive degree of overload when someone has been sexually assaulted; the challenge of having their bodily integrity and autonomy threatened with little means to escape/ defend themselves (i.e., helplessness); consequently, the person’s nervous system reacts to these stresses by adapting to the situation through mobilization, freezing or collapsing, meaning that the system has created the best chance for that individual to survive. These reactions are not pathological; they represent protective mechanisms whereby the nervous system’s wisdom has been used to help the person cope with sexual trauma. Over time, however, the protective mechanisms can become chronically activated; therefore the person may remain in either hyperalertness (hyper-arousal) to a certain degree, and/or hypo-arousal (dissociation) to a lesser degree. Some ways that survivors of sexual trauma will experience hyper-arousal and/or hypo-arousal include: Hyper-Arousal: Experiencing a heightened awareness of potential threats and feeling unable to settle down, along with having an increased heart rate at times when there was no immediate threat; Hypo-Arousal: Experiencing detachment from one’s own body, detachment from the emotional responses to experiences that would typically elicit an emotional response; Dissociation: Experiencing “being out of the body” or watching oneself from a distance; Dysfunctional Breathing Patterns: Having unconscious tension in the pelvic region, upper and lower backs, or jaw; this tension has developed as a protective response to sexual trauma. The Gift of Recognition When a survivor recognizes these patterns of behavior and says to themselves,’Oh my God, I feel like someone is suffocating me and I understand what that means,’ there is a shift in their awareness. The first step in gaining control of a traumatic response is recognizing it. It’s as if the nervous system is saying, ‘I know who you are and I have been keeping you safe.’ You and I can work together to create a different relationship. Core Somatic Principles for Healing 1. Safety and Pacing (Inside-Out Transformation) Recovering from sexual abuse does not happen in one day. Recovery cannot be done through sheer intensity, effort, force, and willpower alone but instead must take place gradually and gently; therefore, the body must relearn that both the environment and the body itself can be safe. In somatic therapy, we start the process of recovery from within. We begin to create resources to support and nurture the nervous system (the body) before we process any of the traumas. Creating a supportive environment will lead to resourcing the present moment and creating a safe environment for the individual. Creating a safe and resourced environment will depend on the individual; thus, we cannot specify exact individual resources, but we do create what we refer to as “windows of tolerance” (the area of the nervous system that is neither hyperaroused nor a complete shutdown). Some examples of the work we will do include: 1. Spending some time noticing the support of the ground beneath us or how our bodies are in contact with a chair, bed, or the earth. 2. Identifying or being aware of various people, locations, or feelings that create a sense of safety (e.g., the sound of someone’s voice or the feel of
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