Your Body Is Your Biography

Your body stores everything that's happened to you. To finish healing we must unearth its secrets. glenellynmfr.com

Transcript

The Body As Biography

Your body is a map. On it, in it, is the history of everything that has happened to you, what you’ve done, even what you’ve thought.

It is now widely held that childhood trauma: including the four major abuses: physical, sexual, emotional/verbal, and neglect leave withering and lasting scars that profoundly affect a child’s feeling of self-worth. Trauma weakens the immune system leaving a child more susceptible to disease and or addictive behaviors as an adult. At some level, I have found, all of us suffer, to varying degrees, from some level of trauma. Not just the overt physical/sexual/verbal abuse, but simply feeling unwanted, neglected, constantly criticized, bullied at school or on social media, being exposed to catastrophes: wildfires, tornados, parental divorce, or death, living in a stressful home with alcoholic or constantly arguing parents, etc. These can lead to feelings of fear, anxiety, and panic. Children can often mimic a parent’s condition.

In my own case, my father had a heart attack serving in the military in Japan. Though a healthy child of 7, I developed a heart ailment that caused me to spend a month in the same hospital as dad. Not knowing anything was wrong with me I thought I was being punished, isolated from my family. In surgery, giant figures with white masks came at me with a black mask. I screamed feeling I was being choked to death (a common response when ether was used as an anesthetic). Afterwards I couldn’t trust anyone; my parents, my own body. I must have done something wrong to deserve this. I regressed; started bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, tried not to sleep, not knowing what they’d do to me. Started other obsessive behaviors that lasted into adulthood. 

According to Dr. Gabor Mate, a well-regarded Canadian trauma specialist who has worked with chronic pain, addiction and cancer sufferers; all addiction and most diseases are caused by early childhood trauma. When you were powerless to get what you needed you did whatever you could to soothe your suffering. It was the exact, even, only choice open to you at the time. And it worked. Because you survived.

And what does the body do in response to trauma. The brain, sensing danger, secretes the hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, tensing muscles preparing for the fight or flight response. But the less well-known, and probably more common reaction is the freeze response. In the animal world this response is seen in the prey animal suddenly dropping to the ground, as though shot, while being chased by a predator. Its an instinctual response to an overwhelming danger. This act can sometimes save the animal from being killed. If it survives and escapes it instinctually runs, shakes, and hyperventilates to discharge the pent-up energy. See the short video of a polar bear being hit with a tranquilizer dart and the convulsing, long breathing response to release the stored energy. At the end of these two incidents the animals trot away as though nothing happened. By completely discharging the stored energy there is no residual energy locked in the body, so the body literally has no memory of it. And how do humans respond to similar dangers.

Infants have no problem releasing the effects of trauma. Full-throated wailing, and uncontrolled shaking are common in infants. Yet beginning in toddlerhood instinctual responses get buried inside us through “conditioning” like: physical or verbal punishments, threats, time-outs, privileges removed etc. Then we send pre-adolescent children to school where their natural instincts are curtailed further, teaching them to sit at a desk for 6 hours. It’s said that Tom Sawyer would be on Ritalin today for ADHD. In other words, childhood is treated as a disease.

Remember, for example, what happened if you showed anger to your parents when you were young. Most likely it was not permitted: “Don’t talk to your mother that way”, “Go to your room and think about what you’ve done”, “Another word out of you and I’ll give you something to really cry about”, etc.                              What you learned was that your survival meant you had to bury your body’s natural response to upset, to boundary crossing, being mistreated. 

Or maybe, though you were not physically or sexually abused, there was a constant low level of criticism: “Why can’t you be more like your sister?”, “Hurry up, you’re making Mommy angry?”, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you”, etc.

In the first case you learned to bury your instincts to survive. In the second you got the message that something was wrong with you.

Or maybe you witnessed your parent’s angry arguments. Maybe one was an alcoholic. It can be deeply traumatic to know the ground you stand on is not safe. Your body secretes the fight/flight hormones, muscles tense ready to run but there’s nowhere to go. And there’s no peace. Living in that constant state of arousal stays lodged in the body. 

What is now known is that there are two common responses to even mild, unpredictable traumatic stress: the first is addictive, self-soothing behavior patterns that can last a lifetime. The second is the onset of adult disease decades after the traumatizing events. The most prevalent are auto-immune diseases; rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, MS, to name a few. What they have in common is it is the body attacking itself. Literally playing out the messages you were told: There is something wrong with you.

Though we forget all the various physical and emotional traumas we sustain in our lives, the body doesn’t. Called “tissue or somatic memory” these events get lodged the body’s fascial network, and left untreated begin to get louder to get our attention. A body locked in a fight/flight or freeze response cannot relax. The parasympathetic nervous system (the rest and digest response) never kicks in. In addition to above, anxiety and depression are common.

Today, 20 % of all Americans (65 million people) are now taking mental health meds with a 20% rise since the pandemic began. Medical Professionals know that these drugs do not cure depression, but are meant for short term symptom management.

So how do we comeback from early childhood adversity or trauma? Today, now that the mind-body connection is more widely understood there are a variety of modalities that are helping beyond talk therapy: mindfulness mediation, yoga, tai chi, art therapy, writing and somatic trauma release therapies. 

In MFR we often encounter patients who, finally feeling their physical pains can now release the emotional pain they were unaware they were still holding underneath. I have taught and practiced, yoga and tai chi meditations for many years yet neither were quite as effective as the release I’ve gotten with the few good MFR therapists with whom I have worked. Not everyone has that kind of experience but what they do get is the newfound freedom of pain relief and the better use of body parts they thought were lost to them as a part of aging. 

What I have found in myself, and my clients is, when I feel good in the body, I feel better about me, and the world around me. That is the engine of healing.

If I can help in your recovery or answer any questions please contact me at my website, by email, or phone. And as always, my best intentions on your healing journey my friends.