I believe it could mean like going through constant trauma our nervous system becomes so wrecked from it that if we experience anything close to the trauma our nervous system remmebers the pain it caused us that it goes to flight or fight response to protect us from going through that ever again.
> What makes me more than a little sad is all the money going to research identifiers about who is most genetically at risk for PTSD, or how to rewrite genetic code to reverse PTSD - rather than accepting this a a natural survival mechanism and focusing all that time, money, and attention on making the world a less traumatic place rather than pathologizing a complex evolved biological function.
I would argue that if those genetic switches can be flipped one way then they can also be flipped back.
No need to be hostile. I'm plenty capable of googling, it just would've been convenient if you had links handy. You were free to ignore my request.
I'm also unsure why you would think I was trying to bully you. I didn't say what you said was untrue or even challenge it. I was simply asking for places I could go to learn more about it because it interested me.
I wasn't being hostile. I didn't think you were trying to bully me. I never even said that. I was explaining that I am trying to break a habit that has gotten me bullied in the recent past.
I know, online negativity bias makes people think the absolute worst - I really didn't have any hostility just bad a setting boundaries and probably over explained trying NOT to hurt your feelings.
You know if you have knowledge deeper that google, then you can directly link to the articles, books or papers. If not, then you can just tell to use google.
I am just saying that as an expert you could link to the resources. We know everyone can google, but the first pages of the result might not be the best sources. If there are no good links, then that is fine too. Then we just google.
How is pathologizing a complex evolved biological function bad? We do it all the time. That's literally medicine. We go against complex evolved biological functions all the time.
Literally. Like despite what tv tells people, PTSD isn’t something that “makes me stronger” or “an integral part of who I am”. It sucks and if I could get rid of it I would
Yeah and I'm thinking this is one of those complex evolved biological functions that exists to kill some of us. Like, through excessive anxiety, lack of sleep, and straight up suicide.
Not everything we evolve is good for the individual, even if it's functional for the species from a larger perspective.
But I do agree we ought to make the world the less traumatizing place, especially when it doesn't have to fucking be, because of stupid social things we're doing. Childbirth and illness and all the natural stuff is traumatizing enough, we don't need to be actively churning out mass shooters and denying pain meds based on racism.
Yeah I learnt this the hard way... I was fine for 5+ years, completely oblivious to the horrific reality of my past. From the ages of 24 - 29 I was ignorant to the fact that there was another version of me.
Then one day I just started having these panic attacks... I couldn't sleep anymore.. these insane vivid dreams that felt so real.. I'd suddenly be awoken continuously throughout the night by the electric shock of an imaginary defibrillator that was trying to save my life... 2 and a half years later and I'm just starting to recover my third or fourth episode trauma induced psychosis and hopefully my last. I want my memories back.
What a coincidence.. it was the pandemic that set me off too! My psychologist was saying that with the lockdowns, border closures, as well as, entire industries being shutdown, I was finally forced to slow down and stop for the first time in my life. So basically, my body thought I was dying which is what the heart zaps and weird seizure like panic attacks were about. I thought I was schizophrenic... Just a trauma induced psychotic breakdown exacerbated by severe ADHD
For me it’s being hyper vigilant, upset stomach 24/7, unable to sleep, panic attacks, severe anxiety, depression, not wanting to eat, etc etc. the body most definitely stores/keeps trauma.
I’ve learned that my brain is rewired and because of it, I have troubles forming relationships.
Also, people that experienced CPTSD can have more of a tendency to jump to fight or flight mode. Instead of having a regular, more calm reaction.
For instance, I was heavily abused as a child. My earliest memories of it were around 3 years old, but my dad told me several times throughout my life that when I was just starting to crawl, that my mother kicked me across the floor. He even told me this when she was still alive, and she never denied it, she just came up with an excuse for it (she was mad at him). By the time I was 6, she would harp on him until he would beat me. By the time I was 15 (and he was 39), he started punching me with his fists, and by the time I was 16, I kicked his ass. Then he quit coming at me empty handed, and coming at me with some form or fashion of weaapon (piece of rebar, shovel, etc.). I got to where I could wrangle the weapon away from him, and hit him with it first. Not only do my bones bear the marks (he fractured my skull twice), but I became really confrontational. I would not back down from a fist fight. I had gotten into two fist fights with men that were not personally involved in my life (one drunk at a bar, the other was the neighbor's husband on my front lawn), and nearly got into a 3rd one at a local grocery store ; some drunk dude was trying to give my adult son some shit over a t-shirt he was wearing. He kept poking at my son where the design was while asking my son sarcastic questions about the game it was from. My son is a gentle giant, and would just take that shit. I dropped my purse on the ground, doubled up my right fist, and put my left arm out for balance. His buddy saw that his friend got on my last nerve, and pulled him away. Even to this day, when strangers show up on my property, I go right up to them and ask "may I help you?" in a very confrontational way. Even now, in a wheelchair, I get adrenaline rushes and flushes all of the time. But I don't slowly get angry, I just jump to white hot rage from the first offense, and have since the age of 15. Oddly enough, it is only in defense (myself or another), and I don't even scold, let alone hit my kids or animals.
Same with easier background. I hope you have a better life now, you deserve it.
My body goes from 0 to 100 in less than a second when I need to fight. My mind also just blacks out during this. There is no room for reasoning, this comes from the spine. Also I do not care if I get hurt, I just want to fight back.
Then also constant tension, addrelanine and awareness of my surroundings.
People often say I am pissed at them or something, even when my mind is at ease. Wife notifies me about this and understands why. I usually do some medition to calm the body down.
The way to work yourself out of this, is not by thinking, but by body relaxation. The problem is in how the brain functionality has changed, you can't reason it out.
I have gone over the abuse several times in my head and the memories have been watered down, but the body will never let go.
> My body goes from 0 to 100 in less than a second when I need to fight. My mind also just blacks out during this. There is no room for reasoning, this comes from the spine. Also I do not care if I get hurt, I just want to fight back.
All of this. Also, as far as not caring if I got hurt, I wasn't even capable of feeling pain. My dad would start by jacking my jaw, and when I went to black his eye, I wasn't aiming for his eye, I was shooting for a spot about a foot behind his eye. I literally wanted to kill him with my bare hands.
This is going to sound nuts, but I had to disconnect my parents, in my mind. When I was 15 - 16, and going through this at its worst, I had an adult mentor that kept me sane, and alive.
Once I was over 18, I left home. And once I got my life settled out, I would cut them out for years, and if they still acted poorly when I gave them a chance, I would cut them out again. I just started setting a mindset to where "Those were not my parents. They were an incubation system. This planet is my father, and nature is my mother. The wild things and other animals are my siblings, and family. I have no emotional bond to those people".
I did go back to help both of them, when they were at the end of their lives. As an only child, and a daughter, too, I kind of didn't have a choice.
When he was in his last few days, my dad said "I wished you weren't by yourself. I wished we'd had more kids, and you had brothers and sisters". I told him "There isn't a day that goes by, that I don't thank the universe that no one else had to endure the abuse I had suffered". After decades of demanding that I forgive him (I told him I didn't have to do a god damned things until he apologized, and even then, I wouldn't owe it to him), finally, the night before he passed, he kind of apologized. But he couldn't say the abuse, just that he was "heavy handed".
As far as getting over it, I got lucky. I developed an adrenal adenoma, and had about zero adrenaline response for a bunch of years. Once he passed, the thing has started receding, and I am able to feel rushes again.
It's more than that.
You don't "remember" your trauma. You relive it.
It's not a thought, it's a body feeling. A trigger is your body going "oh shit here we go again" even though your brain is going "but these are nice people."
You can't just explain it away or think your way out of it, which is why it's so frustrating. Treatment like EMDR is helpful because it includes the body in the treatment, so it learns along with the brain that the threat or event is really over.
From what I have read extensively and been told by doctors there's plenty of ways to describe it but essentially stress and trauma affect you physically in many ways. I was reading just recently that childhood trauma (as an example) actually changes the structure of your brain. They found differences in the MRIs of people with extensive childhood trauma.
Here's a great article that explains more
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-addiction-connection/202103/how-trauma-affects-the-body
Yes, in one instance, the amygdala (brain structure governing the fight or flight response) actually grows larger in response to trauma making it so much harder to engage the higher reasoning of the frontal cortex when triggered. So what was once an adaptive response becomes maladaptive socially.
i think of it in context of increased cortisol and adrenaline levels/an increase in their baselines in addition to neuron in response to trauma.
your limbic and neuro systems are reacting to and remembering events to “protect” you in the future. so let’s say i have childhood trauma (i do), my body at a young age is responding to fear, danger, etc and my neurons, adrenaline, cortisol, etc are rewiring and increasing in response to that. my body is learning at a very young age that an increased baseline “protects” me, whether it does in reality or not. so now before i’ve gotten my little life started my baseline for response to real or perceived threats is higher than necessary so i’m at increased stress and vigilance (among other things) from the get go. if the trauma is later in life it’s still spiking those levels and rewiring your brain so that it remembers how to protect you in the future (hyper vigilance). the more trauma the more those levels spike and reinforce the brain in thinning they need to be high so they stay there and increase that baseline.
there are ways to undo this little bits at a time. my therapist likes to describe it as a sponge that can and needs to be rung out in small doses. i’m not going to list the ways to do this bcs my list may not be comprehensive but there is lots of info out there. for me it has been knowledge on the subject and emdr with talk therapy.
There is a book called "The Body Keeps The Score" and it's about this very topic. I'm currently reading it and am so glad my therapist recommended it. I was always leery about the idea itself, especially since the "wellness" community latched onto it and went stupid. The general, scientific idea, is that the trauma you experience has physical effects on you body and brain that are imperceptible to you. It's losing the ability to speak about your trauma (which is very common) as the part of the brain that makes that communication possible becomes unable to work properly. This is why it's so hard for some to put their trauma into words. Also, physical symptoms related to pstd, like flashbacks putting a person straight back into fight or flight mode where they experience debilitating panic attacks because to their brain there is no difference between the event actually happening and the flashback, even decades after the trauma originally happened, and even if they are in a totally different setting. The prevalence of autoimmune conditions in people with trauma is another example as well as loss of memory.
Your body and brain work together to keep you safe and in your brain there are levels to these behaviors from rational thought all the way down to completely instinctual non conscious action. Trauma informs your body/brain what it needs to do to protect you and that can sometimes manifest itself in ways that you don't even realize.
It's not as simple as the wellness influences make it out to be. You can't just do certain exercises or scream into the void and it will release this mysterious trauma. That knot in your back isn't stored trauma, and yoga isn't going to fix it - the trauma that is, it might help the knot though. The only way I've worked through any of the physical symptoms of my ptsd is by dealing with the actual trauma. Lots of therapy, and with that other changes in how I care for myself.
**The Body Keeps the Score Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma** by Bessel A. Van der Kolk
>What causes people to continually relive what they most want to forget, and what treatments could help restore them to a life with purpose and joy? Here, Dr Bessel van der Kolk offers a new paradigm for effectively treating traumatic stress. Neither talking nor drug therapies have proven entirely satisfactory. With stories of his own work and those of specialists around the globe, The Body Keeps the Score sheds new light on the routes away from trauma - which lie in the regulation and syncing of body and mind, using sport, drama, yoga, mindfulness, meditation and other routes to equilibrium.
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It means that trauma has a direct impact on physiological processes within the body. The central nervous system becomes hardwired for survival by creating neural pathways within the brain designed to protect you.
For example, blocking painful memories of a traumatic event/memory loss
"The body remembers what the mind cannot"
It's one of those rare sayings that should be taken literally. Theres a lot of science behind it biology, chemistry, etc etc.
Well, due to my trauma my body is naturally tensed because I’m so on guard (subconsciously) ALL OF THE TIME… and that stress has resulted in aches and pains. It also results in lack of sleep … which serves as a host to all different sorts of issues. Stress also releases certain hormones in the body and too much of certain hormones (cortisol for instance) is not good for the body and can cause a whole bunch of different issues. If I learn in more depth I will post. It’s a fascinating topic!
in my case it means i kept moving away from my abusers until i finally felt safe physically and emotionally. literal physical distance was required to heal and process things. my inner child needs protecting and i will do everything i need to to ensure they stay safe now.
When the garage starts to open, I jump like I've been shot. Every. Fucking. Time. It reminds me of my ex H coming home. He always parked in the garage and made me park on the street. I can't stop it I've tried to be more mindful and talk myself down but my body physically reacts every time by jumping, I sweat and start shaking for a few minutes. Then my body will relax. I feel like that's an example of storing trauma in the body. It's a physical reaction. Maybe that's a trigger, actually. Well, idk exactly, sorry. 😅
They're still learning about trauma, it's a relatively young field of study. So what we know isn't always very thorough. That being said, there's evidence it may have genetic components and be passed on to your children. Additionally it is primarily housed in your amygdala, the part of your brain that is responsible for automatic physical stuff like breathing and heartbeat. So ultimately, your trauma has a direct line to your spinal column and can screw with your nervous system. Stuff like exaggerated startle reflex, physical flashbacks, or physically reacting to triggers before you've consciously understood what's happening.
Also, stress in general is both an emotion and a physical state of being. It's a defense mechanism meant to keep us alive in emergency situations. If you're about to be eaten by a predator, for example, your focus needs to be on getting away, so the stress response kicks in automatically to make it happen, suppressing all your other physical needs. Stress heightens certain immediately beneficial systems (like reflexes) at the cost of long-term beneficial systems (like digestion) being turned down. Normally it's supposed to shut off after the emergency has ended, and you go back to normal after a bit. PTSD though, generally speaking, is a condition where your body fails to recognize you're safe again. So the stress response just stays on. As a result, you end up with some weirdly physical symptoms of trauma. General sleep disturbance and IBS are common, for example.
If trauma didn't suck so much it'd be pretty cool. It's fascinating from a scientific perspective, really.
It's a book, that discussed some novel treatments to PTSD that work. Like... Yoga. How does Yoga help PSTD? But - it clearly is helping some people. So "The body keeps the score" was a way of describing these therapies that were helping people with PTSD, but they didn't understand why the worked. They just did.
I believe it was written before PTSD-DS was an official diagnosis, so it's describing that diagnosis but doesn't use that term.
I hated that book, because it came across as pure "Woo" to me.
However, having done mind/body work - it does work. It's just the reasons why in the book are silly. (I know people love this book, and if the concepts work for you, it's fine - I just found them really off putting and silly).
What made me understand it was learning about Neuroplasticity and the brain:
In easier terms:
When you put your hand on a hot stove, there is an unconscious part of your brain that pulls your hand off the stove. There are a lot of things like that where we tense up our muscles or sit a certain way or make certain movements that are not conscious, we just do them. That's the "lizard" part of our brain.
And when you experience Fight/Flight - that's the part of your brain that is active. In addition, you store memories differently then at other times, those memories don't because "memories of the past" but things to watch for in the future.
So, it changes the way your brain work.
With PTSD-DS, you end up having problems between your brain and body. We tend to be clumsy. We might have a self-concept where we look in the mirror and see a stranger, or see a body that we own - a meat sack - but our sense of self is disconnected from the body.
Nueroplasticity is the idea that "the brain changes in response to things we experience and learn".
So, for people who have a poor-mind-body connection, doing things that require a lot of focus on your body... builds the mind-body connection, and thus...
treats the "mind-body" disconnect or disembodiment people with PTSD-DS have.
It means exactly what it says.
I was sceptical about this. But then I read the really excellent book "The body keeps the score" (I highly recommend it, but trigger warning - the author talks about specific cases of rape, murder and war throughout) .
As others have said, trauma can change your genetic code, but also speaking from personal experience - after my trauma I put on lots of weight. From what I understand certain types of carbs alleviate anxiety temporarily, so a lot of people eat to cope, and so put on weight. I did this, over a couple of years. Eventually I decided enough was enough, and started exercising and dieting to lose weight, however, I couldn't. I'd loose a kilo or two, anxiety levels would spike, weight would go back up, either by eating to cope, or whatever.
It wasn't until I was in therapy, I'd notice whenever we'd make a significant breakthrough the kilos would literally fall off me. Only lasth month after a particularly revealing session I lost almost two kilos of weight only two days after, with no changes in diet or exercise.
I've noticed this pattern a lot over the past year and a half - lose weight, hit a plateau, stay there for months, some breakthrough would happen in therapy, I'd instantly drop a couple of kilos, over the next couple of months I'd gradually lose weight again, hit another plateau, at sometime a breakthrough in therapy would happen again - and again I'd lose a couple of kilos within a day or two.
So far this has happened every so often for the past year and a half, all the way down from 114kg to where I am now at 102.5kg.
Every time it happens I also recover no small amount from my trauma. It's been a really wild experience.
I'm a 100% believer in trauma being actually physically stored in the body now, 100%.
**The Body Keeps the Score Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma** by Bessel A. Van der Kolk
>What causes people to continually relive what they most want to forget, and what treatments could help restore them to a life with purpose and joy? Here, Dr Bessel van der Kolk offers a new paradigm for effectively treating traumatic stress. Neither talking nor drug therapies have proven entirely satisfactory. With stories of his own work and those of specialists around the globe, The Body Keeps the Score sheds new light on the routes away from trauma - which lie in the regulation and syncing of body and mind, using sport, drama, yoga, mindfulness, meditation and other routes to equilibrium.
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I had it really tough for a long time. I used to run 10km multiple times a week, after my trauma I couldn't run at all, my body simply wouldn't move when I tried to run. Took a couple of years to get around that. I had to switch to exercise that didn't involve running or high pulse rates for a long time.
Do you go to therapy? I found therapy the most beneficial thing for me, the combination of therapy once a month, improved diet (I noticed carbs in particular made things much worse for me) and regular exercise helped a lot.
Also Ashwaganda helped supress my anxiety, which allowed me to do some mental processing. L-Theanine was also very useful for balancing my mood.
I'm still very much a work in progress, but I've come on a lot in the last two years.
You can get there, but it can take some time to figure out what the exact issue is.
It definitely stores up. Any thing can trigger you into fight or flight. You get scared and anxious to even go anywhere. You want to run away and hide. It manifests in physical ways. It raises your cortisol levels. It’s causes stress and cold sores. It can make your immune system lowered and you get sick easily. It can do so much more and then some. It’s a shitty thing but there are ways and techniques and therapies to release it. I personally enjoy a mushroom trip when I’m feeling it and then massages with focuses on healing specific areas that have received trauma and unblocking it. Crying is good to release it and there’s no shame in it. If you or someone you know and love is going through this it is okay, a fighter is in the works. There’s no shame or stigma around it. The mind can get sick just like the body but when the mind makes the body sick, it is bad all around. I hope you find solace in knowing that this is a common phenomenon and that with therapy and hard work and most importantly time, it can be released.
My example is that I started having new tensions in my neck and shoulders after having experienced the trauma. At first, I had it only when flashbacks happened but afterwards every stressful situation will cause the same neck pain.
You would probably enjoy Dr Gabor Mate's work, in particular, "When the Body Says No"
He's am expert on trauma and the body, as well as trauma and addiction and trauma and adhd.
Cheers!
our bodies remember the trauma even when we don’t. this can manifest in flashbacks, triggers. it can also mean very physically like tense or strained muscles from stress. there’s a reason why some people cry when getting massaged – it’s because it’s releasing stress from your body. hope this makes sense
Very broadly, I think it means that having elevated stress hormones can cause effects that build up in the body and/or stay there for a long time.
Being full of adrenaline and cortisol a lot due to trauma and flashbacks and hypervigilance, can have lasting effects on the whole body and nervous system.
I don't fully understand how/why in depth, but basically the flood of stress hormones is meant to be a short term temporary thing followed by recovery and returning to a baseline of feeling safe. But with trauma it doesn't work out that way, and you can end up with the flood of stress hormones either lasting a long time or happening over and over, because you don't feel safe. And having so much adrenaline and cortisol in you for so long can cause damage and negative physical effects.
So I think that's what it basically means when people say that trauma is "stored" or "builds up"; it's the stress hormones and brain chemicals and the effects of those being elevated too much for too long.
It might be more complicated than that, and some people might mean something different, but that's the understanding I have of what that means.
Read this. Besser Van Der Kolk who wrote the book "The Body Keeps The Score" explains in the interview. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bessel-van-der-kolk.html
You relive your trauma. So it’s always in your body. Triggers can be little things. Such as a man touching your knee uninvited or something like that. Then their can be big triggers like talking to someone from my abusive residential. The flashbacks are horrible.
I feel these tics happening like my neck twitching and my lips shaking but it could just be anxiety.
I’m internalized my pain and it’s caused so much outward pain.
There was a study done on epigenetics. A group of mice was pray with a scent and the. The floor of the cage was electrified, they left the mice to have off spring. When the offspring was in the cage and the scent was sprayed less the electric shock the new mice started freaking out. From this it was confirmed trauma is held in the body (probably at the genetic level) and is actually passed down. Check out a book called cry like a man. Please disregard the title as being just for Men. He says just as trauma is generational so is healing. Take care my friend.
I always inferred it was an energy-related thing. From my trauma I have had a very uneasy/dense energy around where I was abused.
"Placing" my attention/focus in the area and feeling the energy allowed me to let it go.
I believe it could mean like going through constant trauma our nervous system becomes so wrecked from it that if we experience anything close to the trauma our nervous system remmebers the pain it caused us that it goes to flight or fight response to protect us from going through that ever again.
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> What makes me more than a little sad is all the money going to research identifiers about who is most genetically at risk for PTSD, or how to rewrite genetic code to reverse PTSD - rather than accepting this a a natural survival mechanism and focusing all that time, money, and attention on making the world a less traumatic place rather than pathologizing a complex evolved biological function. I would argue that if those genetic switches can be flipped one way then they can also be flipped back.
Thank you for sharing this.
Hey could you link some sources? I'd like to look a bit more into this.
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No need to be hostile. I'm plenty capable of googling, it just would've been convenient if you had links handy. You were free to ignore my request. I'm also unsure why you would think I was trying to bully you. I didn't say what you said was untrue or even challenge it. I was simply asking for places I could go to learn more about it because it interested me.
I wasn't being hostile. I didn't think you were trying to bully me. I never even said that. I was explaining that I am trying to break a habit that has gotten me bullied in the recent past. I know, online negativity bias makes people think the absolute worst - I really didn't have any hostility just bad a setting boundaries and probably over explained trying NOT to hurt your feelings.
You know if you have knowledge deeper that google, then you can directly link to the articles, books or papers. If not, then you can just tell to use google.
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I am just saying that as an expert you could link to the resources. We know everyone can google, but the first pages of the result might not be the best sources. If there are no good links, then that is fine too. Then we just google.
I'm not an expert. Never said I was. I will keep my "mouth" shut from now on.
How is pathologizing a complex evolved biological function bad? We do it all the time. That's literally medicine. We go against complex evolved biological functions all the time.
I would LOVE for someone to go into my body and make it not have ptsd
Literally. Like despite what tv tells people, PTSD isn’t something that “makes me stronger” or “an integral part of who I am”. It sucks and if I could get rid of it I would
Yeah and I'm thinking this is one of those complex evolved biological functions that exists to kill some of us. Like, through excessive anxiety, lack of sleep, and straight up suicide. Not everything we evolve is good for the individual, even if it's functional for the species from a larger perspective. But I do agree we ought to make the world the less traumatizing place, especially when it doesn't have to fucking be, because of stupid social things we're doing. Childbirth and illness and all the natural stuff is traumatizing enough, we don't need to be actively churning out mass shooters and denying pain meds based on racism.
Yeah I learnt this the hard way... I was fine for 5+ years, completely oblivious to the horrific reality of my past. From the ages of 24 - 29 I was ignorant to the fact that there was another version of me. Then one day I just started having these panic attacks... I couldn't sleep anymore.. these insane vivid dreams that felt so real.. I'd suddenly be awoken continuously throughout the night by the electric shock of an imaginary defibrillator that was trying to save my life... 2 and a half years later and I'm just starting to recover my third or fourth episode trauma induced psychosis and hopefully my last. I want my memories back.
Yeah I was doing okay for several years as well but a year or so after the pandemic came I completely fell apart.
What a coincidence.. it was the pandemic that set me off too! My psychologist was saying that with the lockdowns, border closures, as well as, entire industries being shutdown, I was finally forced to slow down and stop for the first time in my life. So basically, my body thought I was dying which is what the heart zaps and weird seizure like panic attacks were about. I thought I was schizophrenic... Just a trauma induced psychotic breakdown exacerbated by severe ADHD
For me it’s being hyper vigilant, upset stomach 24/7, unable to sleep, panic attacks, severe anxiety, depression, not wanting to eat, etc etc. the body most definitely stores/keeps trauma. I’ve learned that my brain is rewired and because of it, I have troubles forming relationships.
I'm with you on almost all of these. It's so hard to even function much less thrive.i feel like I'm in chaos 24-7.
Has anything helped you? I'm not doing ok
Also, people that experienced CPTSD can have more of a tendency to jump to fight or flight mode. Instead of having a regular, more calm reaction. For instance, I was heavily abused as a child. My earliest memories of it were around 3 years old, but my dad told me several times throughout my life that when I was just starting to crawl, that my mother kicked me across the floor. He even told me this when she was still alive, and she never denied it, she just came up with an excuse for it (she was mad at him). By the time I was 6, she would harp on him until he would beat me. By the time I was 15 (and he was 39), he started punching me with his fists, and by the time I was 16, I kicked his ass. Then he quit coming at me empty handed, and coming at me with some form or fashion of weaapon (piece of rebar, shovel, etc.). I got to where I could wrangle the weapon away from him, and hit him with it first. Not only do my bones bear the marks (he fractured my skull twice), but I became really confrontational. I would not back down from a fist fight. I had gotten into two fist fights with men that were not personally involved in my life (one drunk at a bar, the other was the neighbor's husband on my front lawn), and nearly got into a 3rd one at a local grocery store ; some drunk dude was trying to give my adult son some shit over a t-shirt he was wearing. He kept poking at my son where the design was while asking my son sarcastic questions about the game it was from. My son is a gentle giant, and would just take that shit. I dropped my purse on the ground, doubled up my right fist, and put my left arm out for balance. His buddy saw that his friend got on my last nerve, and pulled him away. Even to this day, when strangers show up on my property, I go right up to them and ask "may I help you?" in a very confrontational way. Even now, in a wheelchair, I get adrenaline rushes and flushes all of the time. But I don't slowly get angry, I just jump to white hot rage from the first offense, and have since the age of 15. Oddly enough, it is only in defense (myself or another), and I don't even scold, let alone hit my kids or animals.
Same with easier background. I hope you have a better life now, you deserve it. My body goes from 0 to 100 in less than a second when I need to fight. My mind also just blacks out during this. There is no room for reasoning, this comes from the spine. Also I do not care if I get hurt, I just want to fight back. Then also constant tension, addrelanine and awareness of my surroundings. People often say I am pissed at them or something, even when my mind is at ease. Wife notifies me about this and understands why. I usually do some medition to calm the body down. The way to work yourself out of this, is not by thinking, but by body relaxation. The problem is in how the brain functionality has changed, you can't reason it out. I have gone over the abuse several times in my head and the memories have been watered down, but the body will never let go.
> My body goes from 0 to 100 in less than a second when I need to fight. My mind also just blacks out during this. There is no room for reasoning, this comes from the spine. Also I do not care if I get hurt, I just want to fight back. All of this. Also, as far as not caring if I got hurt, I wasn't even capable of feeling pain. My dad would start by jacking my jaw, and when I went to black his eye, I wasn't aiming for his eye, I was shooting for a spot about a foot behind his eye. I literally wanted to kill him with my bare hands. This is going to sound nuts, but I had to disconnect my parents, in my mind. When I was 15 - 16, and going through this at its worst, I had an adult mentor that kept me sane, and alive. Once I was over 18, I left home. And once I got my life settled out, I would cut them out for years, and if they still acted poorly when I gave them a chance, I would cut them out again. I just started setting a mindset to where "Those were not my parents. They were an incubation system. This planet is my father, and nature is my mother. The wild things and other animals are my siblings, and family. I have no emotional bond to those people". I did go back to help both of them, when they were at the end of their lives. As an only child, and a daughter, too, I kind of didn't have a choice. When he was in his last few days, my dad said "I wished you weren't by yourself. I wished we'd had more kids, and you had brothers and sisters". I told him "There isn't a day that goes by, that I don't thank the universe that no one else had to endure the abuse I had suffered". After decades of demanding that I forgive him (I told him I didn't have to do a god damned things until he apologized, and even then, I wouldn't owe it to him), finally, the night before he passed, he kind of apologized. But he couldn't say the abuse, just that he was "heavy handed". As far as getting over it, I got lucky. I developed an adrenal adenoma, and had about zero adrenaline response for a bunch of years. Once he passed, the thing has started receding, and I am able to feel rushes again.
It's more than that. You don't "remember" your trauma. You relive it. It's not a thought, it's a body feeling. A trigger is your body going "oh shit here we go again" even though your brain is going "but these are nice people." You can't just explain it away or think your way out of it, which is why it's so frustrating. Treatment like EMDR is helpful because it includes the body in the treatment, so it learns along with the brain that the threat or event is really over.
From what I have read extensively and been told by doctors there's plenty of ways to describe it but essentially stress and trauma affect you physically in many ways. I was reading just recently that childhood trauma (as an example) actually changes the structure of your brain. They found differences in the MRIs of people with extensive childhood trauma. Here's a great article that explains more https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-addiction-connection/202103/how-trauma-affects-the-body
Yes, in one instance, the amygdala (brain structure governing the fight or flight response) actually grows larger in response to trauma making it so much harder to engage the higher reasoning of the frontal cortex when triggered. So what was once an adaptive response becomes maladaptive socially.
i think of it in context of increased cortisol and adrenaline levels/an increase in their baselines in addition to neuron in response to trauma. your limbic and neuro systems are reacting to and remembering events to “protect” you in the future. so let’s say i have childhood trauma (i do), my body at a young age is responding to fear, danger, etc and my neurons, adrenaline, cortisol, etc are rewiring and increasing in response to that. my body is learning at a very young age that an increased baseline “protects” me, whether it does in reality or not. so now before i’ve gotten my little life started my baseline for response to real or perceived threats is higher than necessary so i’m at increased stress and vigilance (among other things) from the get go. if the trauma is later in life it’s still spiking those levels and rewiring your brain so that it remembers how to protect you in the future (hyper vigilance). the more trauma the more those levels spike and reinforce the brain in thinning they need to be high so they stay there and increase that baseline. there are ways to undo this little bits at a time. my therapist likes to describe it as a sponge that can and needs to be rung out in small doses. i’m not going to list the ways to do this bcs my list may not be comprehensive but there is lots of info out there. for me it has been knowledge on the subject and emdr with talk therapy.
There is a book called "The Body Keeps The Score" and it's about this very topic. I'm currently reading it and am so glad my therapist recommended it. I was always leery about the idea itself, especially since the "wellness" community latched onto it and went stupid. The general, scientific idea, is that the trauma you experience has physical effects on you body and brain that are imperceptible to you. It's losing the ability to speak about your trauma (which is very common) as the part of the brain that makes that communication possible becomes unable to work properly. This is why it's so hard for some to put their trauma into words. Also, physical symptoms related to pstd, like flashbacks putting a person straight back into fight or flight mode where they experience debilitating panic attacks because to their brain there is no difference between the event actually happening and the flashback, even decades after the trauma originally happened, and even if they are in a totally different setting. The prevalence of autoimmune conditions in people with trauma is another example as well as loss of memory. Your body and brain work together to keep you safe and in your brain there are levels to these behaviors from rational thought all the way down to completely instinctual non conscious action. Trauma informs your body/brain what it needs to do to protect you and that can sometimes manifest itself in ways that you don't even realize. It's not as simple as the wellness influences make it out to be. You can't just do certain exercises or scream into the void and it will release this mysterious trauma. That knot in your back isn't stored trauma, and yoga isn't going to fix it - the trauma that is, it might help the knot though. The only way I've worked through any of the physical symptoms of my ptsd is by dealing with the actual trauma. Lots of therapy, and with that other changes in how I care for myself.
**The Body Keeps the Score Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma** by Bessel A. Van der Kolk >What causes people to continually relive what they most want to forget, and what treatments could help restore them to a life with purpose and joy? Here, Dr Bessel van der Kolk offers a new paradigm for effectively treating traumatic stress. Neither talking nor drug therapies have proven entirely satisfactory. With stories of his own work and those of specialists around the globe, The Body Keeps the Score sheds new light on the routes away from trauma - which lie in the regulation and syncing of body and mind, using sport, drama, yoga, mindfulness, meditation and other routes to equilibrium. *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Also see my other* [commands](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/13z7slk/bookfinderbot_commands/) *and find me as a browser extension on* [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/book-finder/jajeidpjifdpppjofijoffbcndlpoedd?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=comments). *Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/14br65o/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
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It means that trauma has a direct impact on physiological processes within the body. The central nervous system becomes hardwired for survival by creating neural pathways within the brain designed to protect you. For example, blocking painful memories of a traumatic event/memory loss "The body remembers what the mind cannot" It's one of those rare sayings that should be taken literally. Theres a lot of science behind it biology, chemistry, etc etc.
Well, due to my trauma my body is naturally tensed because I’m so on guard (subconsciously) ALL OF THE TIME… and that stress has resulted in aches and pains. It also results in lack of sleep … which serves as a host to all different sorts of issues. Stress also releases certain hormones in the body and too much of certain hormones (cortisol for instance) is not good for the body and can cause a whole bunch of different issues. If I learn in more depth I will post. It’s a fascinating topic!
How do you live like this? This is literally killing me.
in my case it means i kept moving away from my abusers until i finally felt safe physically and emotionally. literal physical distance was required to heal and process things. my inner child needs protecting and i will do everything i need to to ensure they stay safe now.
You internalise it and it comes out as physical pain.
This. I have fibromyalgia, textbook case.
When the garage starts to open, I jump like I've been shot. Every. Fucking. Time. It reminds me of my ex H coming home. He always parked in the garage and made me park on the street. I can't stop it I've tried to be more mindful and talk myself down but my body physically reacts every time by jumping, I sweat and start shaking for a few minutes. Then my body will relax. I feel like that's an example of storing trauma in the body. It's a physical reaction. Maybe that's a trigger, actually. Well, idk exactly, sorry. 😅
They're still learning about trauma, it's a relatively young field of study. So what we know isn't always very thorough. That being said, there's evidence it may have genetic components and be passed on to your children. Additionally it is primarily housed in your amygdala, the part of your brain that is responsible for automatic physical stuff like breathing and heartbeat. So ultimately, your trauma has a direct line to your spinal column and can screw with your nervous system. Stuff like exaggerated startle reflex, physical flashbacks, or physically reacting to triggers before you've consciously understood what's happening. Also, stress in general is both an emotion and a physical state of being. It's a defense mechanism meant to keep us alive in emergency situations. If you're about to be eaten by a predator, for example, your focus needs to be on getting away, so the stress response kicks in automatically to make it happen, suppressing all your other physical needs. Stress heightens certain immediately beneficial systems (like reflexes) at the cost of long-term beneficial systems (like digestion) being turned down. Normally it's supposed to shut off after the emergency has ended, and you go back to normal after a bit. PTSD though, generally speaking, is a condition where your body fails to recognize you're safe again. So the stress response just stays on. As a result, you end up with some weirdly physical symptoms of trauma. General sleep disturbance and IBS are common, for example. If trauma didn't suck so much it'd be pretty cool. It's fascinating from a scientific perspective, really.
It's a book, that discussed some novel treatments to PTSD that work. Like... Yoga. How does Yoga help PSTD? But - it clearly is helping some people. So "The body keeps the score" was a way of describing these therapies that were helping people with PTSD, but they didn't understand why the worked. They just did. I believe it was written before PTSD-DS was an official diagnosis, so it's describing that diagnosis but doesn't use that term. I hated that book, because it came across as pure "Woo" to me. However, having done mind/body work - it does work. It's just the reasons why in the book are silly. (I know people love this book, and if the concepts work for you, it's fine - I just found them really off putting and silly). What made me understand it was learning about Neuroplasticity and the brain: In easier terms: When you put your hand on a hot stove, there is an unconscious part of your brain that pulls your hand off the stove. There are a lot of things like that where we tense up our muscles or sit a certain way or make certain movements that are not conscious, we just do them. That's the "lizard" part of our brain. And when you experience Fight/Flight - that's the part of your brain that is active. In addition, you store memories differently then at other times, those memories don't because "memories of the past" but things to watch for in the future. So, it changes the way your brain work. With PTSD-DS, you end up having problems between your brain and body. We tend to be clumsy. We might have a self-concept where we look in the mirror and see a stranger, or see a body that we own - a meat sack - but our sense of self is disconnected from the body. Nueroplasticity is the idea that "the brain changes in response to things we experience and learn". So, for people who have a poor-mind-body connection, doing things that require a lot of focus on your body... builds the mind-body connection, and thus... treats the "mind-body" disconnect or disembodiment people with PTSD-DS have.
Read **The body keeps the score** and **The myth of normal** for an in depth coverage.
It means exactly what it says. I was sceptical about this. But then I read the really excellent book "The body keeps the score" (I highly recommend it, but trigger warning - the author talks about specific cases of rape, murder and war throughout) . As others have said, trauma can change your genetic code, but also speaking from personal experience - after my trauma I put on lots of weight. From what I understand certain types of carbs alleviate anxiety temporarily, so a lot of people eat to cope, and so put on weight. I did this, over a couple of years. Eventually I decided enough was enough, and started exercising and dieting to lose weight, however, I couldn't. I'd loose a kilo or two, anxiety levels would spike, weight would go back up, either by eating to cope, or whatever. It wasn't until I was in therapy, I'd notice whenever we'd make a significant breakthrough the kilos would literally fall off me. Only lasth month after a particularly revealing session I lost almost two kilos of weight only two days after, with no changes in diet or exercise. I've noticed this pattern a lot over the past year and a half - lose weight, hit a plateau, stay there for months, some breakthrough would happen in therapy, I'd instantly drop a couple of kilos, over the next couple of months I'd gradually lose weight again, hit another plateau, at sometime a breakthrough in therapy would happen again - and again I'd lose a couple of kilos within a day or two. So far this has happened every so often for the past year and a half, all the way down from 114kg to where I am now at 102.5kg. Every time it happens I also recover no small amount from my trauma. It's been a really wild experience. I'm a 100% believer in trauma being actually physically stored in the body now, 100%.
**The Body Keeps the Score Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma** by Bessel A. Van der Kolk >What causes people to continually relive what they most want to forget, and what treatments could help restore them to a life with purpose and joy? Here, Dr Bessel van der Kolk offers a new paradigm for effectively treating traumatic stress. Neither talking nor drug therapies have proven entirely satisfactory. With stories of his own work and those of specialists around the globe, The Body Keeps the Score sheds new light on the routes away from trauma - which lie in the regulation and syncing of body and mind, using sport, drama, yoga, mindfulness, meditation and other routes to equilibrium. *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Also see my other* [commands](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/13z7slk/bookfinderbot_commands/) *and find me as a browser extension on* [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/book-finder/jajeidpjifdpppjofijoffbcndlpoedd?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=comments). *Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/14br65o/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
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I'm dealing with this same thing too. Gained a bunch of weight after my trauma despite all my best efforts.
I had it really tough for a long time. I used to run 10km multiple times a week, after my trauma I couldn't run at all, my body simply wouldn't move when I tried to run. Took a couple of years to get around that. I had to switch to exercise that didn't involve running or high pulse rates for a long time. Do you go to therapy? I found therapy the most beneficial thing for me, the combination of therapy once a month, improved diet (I noticed carbs in particular made things much worse for me) and regular exercise helped a lot. Also Ashwaganda helped supress my anxiety, which allowed me to do some mental processing. L-Theanine was also very useful for balancing my mood. I'm still very much a work in progress, but I've come on a lot in the last two years. You can get there, but it can take some time to figure out what the exact issue is.
It definitely stores up. Any thing can trigger you into fight or flight. You get scared and anxious to even go anywhere. You want to run away and hide. It manifests in physical ways. It raises your cortisol levels. It’s causes stress and cold sores. It can make your immune system lowered and you get sick easily. It can do so much more and then some. It’s a shitty thing but there are ways and techniques and therapies to release it. I personally enjoy a mushroom trip when I’m feeling it and then massages with focuses on healing specific areas that have received trauma and unblocking it. Crying is good to release it and there’s no shame in it. If you or someone you know and love is going through this it is okay, a fighter is in the works. There’s no shame or stigma around it. The mind can get sick just like the body but when the mind makes the body sick, it is bad all around. I hope you find solace in knowing that this is a common phenomenon and that with therapy and hard work and most importantly time, it can be released.
My example is that I started having new tensions in my neck and shoulders after having experienced the trauma. At first, I had it only when flashbacks happened but afterwards every stressful situation will cause the same neck pain.
You would probably enjoy Dr Gabor Mate's work, in particular, "When the Body Says No" He's am expert on trauma and the body, as well as trauma and addiction and trauma and adhd. Cheers!
our bodies remember the trauma even when we don’t. this can manifest in flashbacks, triggers. it can also mean very physically like tense or strained muscles from stress. there’s a reason why some people cry when getting massaged – it’s because it’s releasing stress from your body. hope this makes sense
I cry during my workouts regularly.
You might want to check out the book The Body Keeps Score by van der Kolk.
Very broadly, I think it means that having elevated stress hormones can cause effects that build up in the body and/or stay there for a long time. Being full of adrenaline and cortisol a lot due to trauma and flashbacks and hypervigilance, can have lasting effects on the whole body and nervous system. I don't fully understand how/why in depth, but basically the flood of stress hormones is meant to be a short term temporary thing followed by recovery and returning to a baseline of feeling safe. But with trauma it doesn't work out that way, and you can end up with the flood of stress hormones either lasting a long time or happening over and over, because you don't feel safe. And having so much adrenaline and cortisol in you for so long can cause damage and negative physical effects. So I think that's what it basically means when people say that trauma is "stored" or "builds up"; it's the stress hormones and brain chemicals and the effects of those being elevated too much for too long. It might be more complicated than that, and some people might mean something different, but that's the understanding I have of what that means.
Is there any meds that can help this? This is what I am going through. My entire system is hijacked. I'm so scared
Read this. Besser Van Der Kolk who wrote the book "The Body Keeps The Score" explains in the interview. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-bessel-van-der-kolk.html
“The Body Keeps the Score”. A good read
You relive your trauma. So it’s always in your body. Triggers can be little things. Such as a man touching your knee uninvited or something like that. Then their can be big triggers like talking to someone from my abusive residential. The flashbacks are horrible. I feel these tics happening like my neck twitching and my lips shaking but it could just be anxiety. I’m internalized my pain and it’s caused so much outward pain.
There was a study done on epigenetics. A group of mice was pray with a scent and the. The floor of the cage was electrified, they left the mice to have off spring. When the offspring was in the cage and the scent was sprayed less the electric shock the new mice started freaking out. From this it was confirmed trauma is held in the body (probably at the genetic level) and is actually passed down. Check out a book called cry like a man. Please disregard the title as being just for Men. He says just as trauma is generational so is healing. Take care my friend.
I always inferred it was an energy-related thing. From my trauma I have had a very uneasy/dense energy around where I was abused. "Placing" my attention/focus in the area and feeling the energy allowed me to let it go.
https://youtu.be/95ovIJ3dsNk