We all have our traumatic stories, whether they involve subtle or overt experiences. Whether it's due to sexual or physical abuse, physical and verbal aggression between parents, being teased in school, or being unfavorably compared to a sibling, among many other situations.
Trauma is not about what happens externally, but what happens internally as a result of our experiences. We can associate trauma with disconnection. To avoid certain emotions, we unconsciously learn to disconnect from our bodies and start dwelling more in the world of thoughts.
The more disconnected we are from our bodies and emotions, the more incomplete we feel, leading us to seek fulfillment in things, experiences, and people around us. We start feeling as if our body is not such a safe place to be, so we seek to escape it and what it represents.
We try in various ways to find this fulfillment using the external world as a solution until a moment comes when this illusion begins to fade. It's at this point that a person typically seeks help or embarks on a spiritual path, hoping to find what they've been searching for in the external world.
Discovering that nothing external can fill us the way we want can be painful and frustrating, but it's a significant step that allows us to begin abandoning the illusion and reconnecting with who we truly are and our emotional world.
Reconnecting with our body is a gradual, experiential, and individual process that requires patience. Each person has their own pace, history, behavioral and emotional patterns, and muscle tension level. The tension we feel in the body is a way of protecting ourselves from pain. When there is pain, the muscles around that region contract to shield us from feeling it. However, when it comes to emotional pain, this often chronic tension has consequences such as anxiety, depressive states, chronic pain, migraines, etc.
Therefore, it's necessary to embark on this journey back to our body so that we can begin to feel more secure, free, and complete. Initiating the process of teaching our body and nervous system that it is safe and can turn off or gradually lower the alarm button that has kept us in a state of alert.
There are various ways to do this, and different approaches exist. In the sessions I conduct, I ask several questions to help each client shift their attention away from the external world and thoughts, facilitating reflection, and helping them see things as they truly are. However, in many cases, I believe this alone is not sufficient. Directly aiding the body in feeling secure in the present moment is necessary, and for this, somatic exercises can be practiced, and "homework assignments" suggested, making each person more autonomous and independent in their reconnection process.
Until we feel secure in our own bodies, we will continually seek to compulsively obtain that security from the external world. Therefore, it's of utmost importance to start opening up to the possibility of looking at what we've learned to hide so that it can be processed and integrated. As I often say, perhaps this is the best way to love and respect ourselves.