Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Excellent Rising. I'm Anna M. Mail, somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery. I run Somatic Trauma recovery center. So please check the links in the show notes. And today I will talk about four pillars for somatic healing of PTSD and complex trauma.
[00:00:22] Not just what happened, but how your nervous system continues to organize around it. And how can we learn new pattern using those four pillars?
[00:00:37] Because when, uh, there has been emotional neglect, unhealthy relational patterns or abuse, the impact doesn't stay in the past.
[00:00:48] Your system, your body doesn't just remember your experience, it structures itself around it. This is very important.
[00:01:00] It's not only what your mind has experienced, but how your skeleton system, how your muscle system, how your nervous system, how your fluid system, immune system structure itself around experience of trauma.
[00:01:22] That's why somatic therapy is so beneficial in trauma PTSD healing.
[00:01:32] And the work of somatic therapy is how can we repattern, undo the structures around the trauma in regulated innate structures.
[00:01:51] The essence of somatic experiencing work and somatic touch work and trauma and PTSD recovery is how can we mold our structures, how can we undo, unlearn what has been organized in experience of trauma to innate self, Innate, healthy regulated self.
[00:02:21] And your body knows that it has the wisdom.
[00:02:25] What is missing is re patterning, restructuring.
[00:02:31] And this can be learned. So let's begin.
[00:02:36] We know years after trauma has been experienced, we can still feel activated, watchful, tense, or emotionally pulled into something that is no longer happening. Right? We know the book the body keeps the score.
[00:02:56] It's still in our structures, in the muscle memory, not only in our mind, but in the memory of our structures. When I say structures, I mean your muscles, your skeleton, your immune system, your fluid system, your nervous system.
[00:03:15] And the reason why that memory is still trying to protect you.
[00:03:26] But without updated information M. So healing is not only about processing the past, it is about helping your body reorient to reality.
[00:03:45] To what is right here, right now.
[00:03:49] As you know, I work with genocide, war and displacement survivors.
[00:03:53] We know death activation 10, 15, 20, 25 years after the war, after the combat, after displacement, after immigration is still on.
[00:04:12] Even the war is over.
[00:04:14] Decades. We can see this in soldiers over and over again.
[00:04:18] I witnessed in myself decades after war was over, system bodied couldn't reorient to reality.
[00:04:33] So peace was happening over a decade and body was still in hyper vigilant state.
[00:04:44] So today I want to give you a framework for that through four pillars.
[00:04:50] Space.
[00:04:51] So this is pure somatic work.
[00:04:54] Space, time, weight and movement.
[00:05:01] So number one in somatic recovery, space is first pillar.
[00:05:12] Space means the first thing your system needs to recognize is space.
[00:05:22] Proprioception, interoception, external versus internal threat and trauma collapses space.
[00:05:34] What once was external, right?
[00:05:38] What was happening to us becomes internal because it feels inside of our body.
[00:05:48] And logically you can know this person is not here, this person died, or this person now lives across the ocean, or those people, cultures who did you harm, and your body still feels there next to me.
[00:06:13] I can see this. So this is very common with clients who survive narcissistic and sadistic abuse.
[00:06:21] And the quality is I still have a feeling, as I have been observed as someone is watching over my shoulder.
[00:06:32] Even that person is not in their lives and anymore for years, even that person is dead.
[00:06:45] But this is the quality.
[00:06:48] And this is why people feel watched, feel judged, feel unsafe in neutral environments.
[00:06:57] Because your nervous system has not updated that the threat is no longer present in your space, space, space reorienting into the space around you and inside you.
[00:07:23] And this is a form of implicit memory, activation, hydro vigilance, or lack of spatial differentiation.
[00:07:33] So this spatial work is one of the core works we are doing in our somatic therapy.
[00:07:40] How can we recognize spatial differentiation?
[00:07:48] Because your body is not distinguishing between past environment and present environment in the space.
[00:08:00] So let's say if you have been, uh, living through emotional narcissistic abuse in past relationship, and you can sit today in a meeting and feel tightness in your chest, or being afraid to speak, or anticipating judgment even though no one is attacking you, but your system, your body, your implicit memory, emotional knowing is responding as if the original person who did you harm is still present.
[00:08:43] Right?
[00:08:44] And the work is to help your body recognize where am I right now?
[00:08:53] Where am I right now?
[00:08:56] To recognize the space, to notice different walls, different window doors.
[00:09:07] It can sound very silly. But your nervous system is track proprioception and connecting with proprioception from the past.
[00:09:25] So this is what your body need to recognize.
[00:09:29] Where am I right now?
[00:09:32] Who is actually here?
[00:09:34] Name those people.
[00:09:36] Is the person who harm you in your meeting room, um, right now or not?
[00:09:44] What space exists between me and that person?
[00:09:54] Is someone right into my face, or that person is just sitting across the table and doing their own business and sometimes physically stepping back, leaving the room or orienting your eyes around the environment so you can recognize the distance.
[00:10:19] Walls, space can help your nervous system to stabilize.
[00:10:26] And this is not avoidance, it is retraining your nervous system to perceive safety through the space right here, right now. Okay, this is what we do all the time. This is our work with our clients.
[00:10:44] And if you would like to go more into the depth, please check the links below the programs I'm running and you can sign up second time.
[00:10:57] So how do we organize and heal our trauma? Uh, on somatic level, second pillar is time.
[00:11:11] We need to know then versus now.
[00:11:17] So second pillar, time. First one. Space.
[00:11:22] Trauma collapses time in the same way it collapses space.
[00:11:29] We know that when trauma happens, there is no space and there is no time.
[00:11:38] And what happened years ago can feel like it's happening now. And this is trauma time distortion, activation of non linear memory networks.
[00:11:54] So your nervous system is not registering. This is over.
[00:12:00] It registers, this is happening again.
[00:12:05] So for example, if you're in a conversation and suddenly you feel small or voiceless, overwhelmed, but your reaction doesn't match the situation because your system is not responding as who you are now in this timeline, with this age, but as who you were then.
[00:12:33] So survival brain is not recognizing that now you're 49, it still thinks you're 8.
[00:12:48] Many times people get triggered.
[00:12:50] They feel like they're regressing. When they go back to visit their family of origin, they lose a sense of time, which means they forget the primal brain. Survival brain cannot recognize that now they're adults, they're 35 or 55 and they regress into the timeline of them being 13 or 12, six in front of their family members, parents and siblings.
[00:13:30] Trauma, that's trauma, right?
[00:13:35] So the work is to begin to differentiate.
[00:13:40] To differentiate is so important.
[00:13:45] And the question you can ask yourself is when did this actually happen?
[00:13:57] Who was I at that time?
[00:14:01] How old was I, uh, at that time, how old I am now.
[00:14:11] Many times what I'm saying to my clients, if you know you will regress in your timeline in your age where you start to feel like a kid.
[00:14:24] Write down on palm of your hand, how old are you? To remind yourself it's amazing trick and works wonders.
[00:14:35] So if you need to face your family members and you know you'll be triggered, or you have to go to a meeting and you know you'll be triggered, or you need to present something, write that adult age, Write it down and on the other hand write down the age when your trauma happened.
[00:15:03] So on one palm of hand you will have age 49, on another eight and just see your palm of your hands, remind yourself, I'm adult.
[00:15:19] My 49 year old woman in me is grown up and is more than capable to protect this eight year old.
[00:15:30] She will not feel threatened, unsafe, um, bullied, under my watch ever again.
[00:15:41] And you just scoop the palm of 8 year old hand with your 49 year old hand and just say internally, I got you, I got you.
[00:15:57] That was then, this is now.
[00:16:01] And this is not cognitive bypassing.
[00:16:07] This is time orientation, bringing your system into present time die.
[00:16:17] If your therapist absolutely use this with your clients, it does wonder.
[00:16:29] Third pillar is weight, weight, weight. We can feel that we are working with this on embodiment level.
[00:16:45] This is where somatic release happens.
[00:16:49] And the inquiries who carries the experience?
[00:16:56] That's the weight, weight of experience.
[00:17:01] Trauma carries emotional physiological weight, somatic weight, heaviness, contraction, density.
[00:17:12] And many people carry that weight inside of their systems.
[00:17:18] Immune system, muscle system, skeleton system, fluid system, nervous system. That's the weight of trauma experience.
[00:17:34] And this relates to somatic imprinting, internalizing of relational dynamics and chronic sympathetic or freeze states.
[00:17:48] And there is a big difference between being aware, uh, of the weight and embodying the weight as ongoing.
[00:18:00] That's the work we need to do.
[00:18:03] How can I be aware of the weight and leave the weight where it belongs, but not inside of my body?
[00:18:14] And someone, um, for example, who experienced emotional neglect may carry a constant feeling of not being enough.
[00:18:27] It's enormous weight on our skin of not being enough.
[00:18:33] It carries the shame. And we know the shame sticks to the skin first or heaviness in the chest, then burden, pressure to re perform.
[00:18:46] So even when the original environment of trauma is gone, that weight has been internalized and glued to our skin, to our chest, to our shoulders, to our neck. Muscle, skeleton system, right immune system.
[00:19:06] And the work is to consciously place the weight with the person in the past, in the environment where it occurred, but not in your body.
[00:19:23] So these are the practical skills you're using through the movement, how we do this? Please check my programs in the links below for PTSD and Shannon recovery.
[00:19:34] So leaving that weight outside of our body, your body needs to feel that.
[00:19:43] And you can say that belongs to that experience.
[00:19:49] And it's not mine to carry right now.
[00:19:55] And you still can feel residue of the weight.
[00:20:02] But the density and intensity of the weight was not on you to carry.
[00:20:12] And you still acknowledge it happened, it had impact.
[00:20:17] But you stop carrying it as if it's alive in your body today.
[00:20:25] It needs to be left outside of your body where it belongs with the person who did harm to you in the past, in the environment where it happened.
[00:20:45] And then we have movement restoring autonomy. So the fourth pillar is movement.
[00:20:55] This is your healing becomes active.
[00:20:58] Movement, depression, resist movement, depression, love, stuckness.
[00:21:07] Oh, it Thrives on stuckness in lack of movement.
[00:21:14] And the best way out of depression is movement. And trauma often creates, we know, freeze states, functional freeze, learned helplessness, fixation on the source of threat. So locus of control is on the threat all the time. Makes sense and huh, Your body becomes organized around monitoring the other person. It's extremely exhausting when trauma is over.
[00:21:57] And it's very important when trauma is happening, but not when we are doing this 24, 7, 10, 15, 20 years after trauma took place.
[00:22:15] So in relational trauma, one person continues living their life, the other watches, analyzes, anticipates, um, hopes for change.
[00:22:32] And that energy becomes locked in observation. And it's enormously exhausting on your nervous system, on your whole systems in your body, because it creates loss of autonomy, loss of direction, loss of vitality.
[00:22:51] There is a, uh, dysphonic mental looping, emotional dependency.
[00:22:59] And the work is you begin to move.
[00:23:05] You begin to move intentionally.
[00:23:10] And that movement is not now you need to run marathon.
[00:23:17] Now movement can be shifting your attention.
[00:23:24] That somatic work can shift my locus of control from threat, from other people to my dog who is safe, to my friend, who is safe, to my body who is safe.
[00:23:48] Or engaging with new people, believing those who harmed you or who are making you feel less off, can they engage with new people or making decisions independent of that person who did you harm?
[00:24:12] Look at that movement. Movement of decision making from someone toward yourself. It's a big movement and it's a big space where that movement is happening. That's why we need a space so the movement can happen.
[00:24:34] And we need to have awareness of time that right here, right now, you're not helpless or you're not a child, but as adult you can do that movement from external to internal to self.
[00:24:58] And then we have physically moving your body.
[00:25:03] Start with small walks around your block.
[00:25:08] Start with the small tiny walks.
[00:25:12] Dance, not with choreography.
[00:25:17] With ecstatic dance, you just mold your body as your body wants.
[00:25:24] Not to follow instruction, not to figure out choreography where you'll be stuck in your mind.
[00:25:31] No ecstatic dance. Five rhythms. Open floor stretches, stretch your body.
[00:25:40] Hike, trail walking, lifting weights.
[00:25:45] It reorients your body from threat fixation, hypervigilance to your spatial awareness and possibility of getting back confidence inside of your soma, inside of your body.
[00:26:07] And this is what builds safety.
[00:26:10] Movement.
[00:26:13] Movement is saying to your body, this is who we are.
[00:26:19] This is who we are. It's safe.
[00:26:24] I have you.
[00:26:27] I have you.
[00:26:31] Bones are saying to your, uh, muscles, lean on us.
[00:26:37] There is a structure inside of Us, we have deep structure.
[00:26:45] Lean on us muscles, your void system.
[00:26:49] Your blood is feeling confident to move through your muscles.
[00:26:56] And then your nervous system is seeing, oh, let's dance at this. Let's move at this.
[00:27:05] There is a possibility of movement and safety and regulation.
[00:27:11] So these are all your system. They are stitching and connecting inside of your body.
[00:27:21] And when you move and orient outward, your prefrontal cortex re engages and threat perception decreases and safety signals increases.
[00:27:39] So movement creates choice, and choice is taking in trauma. So we are undoing trauma pattern by giving a choice, and this is what it comes when we move.
[00:27:55] You choose to move your legs, right? Your legs are choosing to move. They're making decision. I am moving now with this song.
[00:28:07] I am moving on this payment, on this trail.
[00:28:13] And it gives a sense of integrity and detachment of people or person who harmed you. Let it sink in. Let it sink in. This is very, very important.
[00:28:27] Somatic work is tremendously helpful in PTSD trauma recovery.
[00:28:38] It releases you from organizing your life around someone else behavior.
[00:28:52] To summarize, all of this healing is not just emotional processing.
[00:28:59] It is reorganizing your body, your soma, through space, time, weight, movement.
[00:29:11] Meaning space is saying, this is not happening here in this restaurant, in this room, in this country.
[00:29:27] Die.
[00:29:30] Meaning this is not happening now.
[00:29:36] Right now, I'm safe.
[00:29:43] Wait.
[00:29:45] This shamma Beridan. What happened to me does not belong inside me.
[00:29:55] I can leave it outside of my body.
[00:30:02] I don't need to carry it.
[00:30:05] I can leave it outside.
[00:30:09] Movement means I had a choice.
[00:30:15] I'm not choiceless as I was when trauma happened to me.
[00:30:21] And I have direction.
[00:30:24] I have with that, with choice and direction, I have integrity. And that's the source of gaining back confidence in your body and depression. Doesn't like that.
[00:30:40] Doesn't like that.
[00:30:42] So, for example, if you feel triggered after a message from someone who hurt you, instead of reacting, you recognize they are not physically here. Space, right?
[00:31:04] You orient.
[00:31:06] This pattern of me being triggered by this person again and again is from the past.
[00:31:14] I'm adult now. I am 49. I'm not 13 or 19.
[00:31:23] Then release of the weight, the emotional weight, belongs to that person.
[00:31:33] That's on them. It's not on, um, me.
[00:31:36] It belongs to that experience caused by that person.
[00:31:41] That weight, they will, uh, carry.
[00:31:44] But not my body, not my immune system, not my nervous system, not my bones and my muscles.
[00:31:55] And the last one, movement.
[00:31:59] A, uh, movement means I'm not in a freeze. You act and you give your body confidence.
[00:32:09] So you go for a walk, you move your choice to yourself.
[00:32:19] That's a big movement, moving your choice to yourself, not to wait for someone else to do this and that, to hope. Hope is a choiceless place to be.
[00:32:34] Trust is very active choice to be. You trust that your body can move you, that your feet can move you, that your fingers can move you.
[00:32:51] And in that sequence, your nervous system relearns and gets reminded of innate, innate sense and innate right.
[00:33:09] I am safe now.
[00:33:11] And when these four elements are not recognized, we continue to live inside the past, inside the other person, um, inside the weight of trauma, of experience, what happened to us, of choiceless state.
[00:33:31] But when we integrate, then we begin to bring back our vitality, our dignity, our human rights.
[00:33:41] We begin to live in our body, in present moment, in our own movement, with the burden of faith outside of us.
[00:33:53] And that is where healing becomes real.
[00:33:57] Not as an idea, not as affirmation. Lies. You're picking up on social media, not as drilling everything, optimizing, disciplining yourself, but as a shift in how your somatic system experiences life. And if you're a somatic therapist, and if you're a therapist working with the clients, use those four pillars.
[00:34:32] It's the core of trauma and PTSD healing.
[00:34:38] So this is all for today.
[00:34:40] Please check all my programs and teachings in the links below.
[00:34:45] This is all for today.
[00:34:47] Please share.
[00:34:48] Review the podcast, uh, so it can grow and expand.
[00:34:52] Share with your friends, and as always, be gentle with yourself. Much care.
