TREATING TRAUMA

Trauma is an event of overwhelming experience to one’s self or observing it in another.  The devastation results from the inability to integrate the experience intellectually, emotionally and physically.

Responses to trauma are 1) fight 2) flight and 3) freeze.  When fight or flight are not perceived as options, freeze becomes the only alternative.  When we freeze, energy which wanted to protect us, gets trapped.  The cycle of perceiving fear and our ability to respond to the threat in an effective way gets truncated.  This renders our body, mind and spirit debilitated and leaves our nervous system burdened by undischarged energy.

Symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder include anxiety, irritability, depression, panic attacks, hypervigilance, insomnia, flashbacks, nightmares, extreme sensitivity to light and/or sound, mood swings, emotional detachment, feeling alienated, avoidance, numbing out,  lack of interest in activities, trouble concentrating, needing to over control, feeling driven, feeling damaged,  outbursts of anger, rage, trouble remembering, impulsivity, poor self esteem, sense of shortened life span, and dissociation.  The symptoms become a container for trapped energy.

When we are traumatized, we often find ourselves unconsciously repeating certain behaviors thus recreating situations where the possibility to release ourselves from the trauma trap is possible, however without resources, we remain bound to habitual patterns..   

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a gentle, step by step assistance in the unfolding of bound energy that resulted from a traumatic experience.  It is based on the Hakomi principals of
-Mindfulness
-Nonviolence:  safety, cooperation, respect
-Body, Mind, Spirit Wholism
-Organicity: holds the notion that as Organic whole beings we have within us what we need to heal.
-Unity: focuses on integrating parts of the personality that have been split off and stresses interconnectedness from the cellular, to psychic, to interpersonal, and to communal levels and guides the therapist/client relationship in a nonhierarchical manner that supports their shared humanity with healthy boundaries.