Hi! Here I’m going to teach you a tad about how trauma affects our bodies, and also provide some corresponding self-care resources specifically for people who have experienced trauma. This is for educational purposes only and absolutely does not replace individual psychotherapy with a therapist.
First off, what is “trauma”? Trauma is so broad and subjective– it’s whenever we experience a real (or perceived) threat– and our unique capacity to cope is overwhelmed. It’s subjectively experienced as a threat, which is why the exact same event(s) can traumatize one person and not another. It can be a single incident, a repeated pattern of events, or in an interpersonal relationship.
How does “trauma” affect us?
Trauma can keep us in a chronic state of hyperarousal, our “high zone” (e.g. anxiety, anger, rage, etc) or hypoarousal, our “low zone” (depressed, frozen, etc) or where we vacillate between the two:
- Learn about our Resilient Zone and how to widen our ability to stay in a regulated place where we can mange the stressors of everyday life.
Trauma can cause our bodies and minds to experience being stuck in the past. One of the ways to help with this is building up our resources to be safely in the present moment:
- A Quick Grounding Exercise: Can help our bodies know we are here, and not there.
- Benefits of Paying Attention to Your Breath: Can help us experience calm.
- Calm Yourself through Breathing: Can help calm down our nervous systems.
- Discover Our Safe Haven: Can help us experience peace.
- Learn to identify a resource: Can help cue “safety” to our bodies. It’s so important to surround ourselves with our resources.
- And if none of the above strategies are working– maybe because you’re overwhelmed, activated, or dissociated– try these “Help Now Skills.” (aimed at reminding your body you are safe in the present moment).
Trauma can make it really hard to manage overwhelming emotions:
- Identifying a 10% solution: Can help us manage overwhelming emotions.
- Be curious: Can help us not feel ashamed.
- Resiliency Pause: Can help us be aware of what else is true.
- Build our mindfulness muscle to regulate or re-regulate our nervous system.
Trauma can cause us to experience a lot of self-hatred and shame. All the more reason to build our self- compassion muscle!:
- Learn about Self-Compassion (video)
- How to show yourself kindness
- Practice being healthfully proud of yourself
Anything can traumatize our nervous systems when we don’t have enough support:
- The Power of Social Support: can help us withstand and/or tolerate better the trauma
Sometimes, believing in the power of hope is a huge part of recovery.
May we be gentle with ourselves and others, and also be encouraged that healing from trauma is within the realm of possibility.
Warmly, Robyn
*Even though I am an LMFT, the content on this blog is not a substitute for individual therapy nor is it meant to convey specific psychological advice. Rather, it is for educational purposes only. Please reach out on the Therapy with Robyn page if you are interested in exploring more about what therapy with me might look like.
For More:
- *If you’d like some inspiration that healing can be in the realm of possibility, you’re welcome to watch my Trauma and Healing story.
- I have a general Self-Care resources as well as self-care category of blog posts, which might also be helpful to build our self-care habits.
- I have a sub-category specifically for Self-Care for trauma survivors, which is another place to locate the information on this page.