“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you.”
Dr. Gabor Maté
Besides the long-time bestselling book by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, several new books by physicians for lay readers are solidifying an already strong case that unprocessed trauma results in adult ill-health. Likewise, there are a plethora of on-line or in-person workshops and courses to equip marketplace and spiritual leaders to be “trauma-informed” in their care of employees or parishioners.
The needs are indeed great. The current generation of youth (Gen Z) are said to be the sickest generation EVER. But there are also reports from around the world that they are spiritually open and hungry. They seem to recognize the chaos of the present cultural moment and that politicians and governments are failing to find solutions (and maybe never will). We older generations must be ready to fan their spiritual flames and invite them to heal their inevitable childhood traumas EARLY on their journey.
In this post I want to highlight some of this newly published evidence, provide an easy-to-understand word picture to explain what goes awry in our nervous system with trauma, and follow-up on why leaders and clinicians of all disciplines need to avail themselves of opportunities to learn skills to navigate this intense season.
Unhealed trauma, which may have been a very hurtful abusive event (Big “T” trauma), or lack of good things from impaired parents (little “t” trauma), leaves a trauma “signature” in your soul (mind, will and emotions), which in turn can spread “residue” right down to your bodily cells. Time DOES NOT heal trauma.
Here are a couple of links to questionnaires that will help you recognize how unhealed trauma may still be affecting you:
Two new books
In her book, The Autoimmune Cure: Healing the Trauma and Other Triggers That Have Turned Your Body Against You, Dr. Sara Gottfried, an expert in autoimmune disease, writes,
“People with embedded trauma are primed to react—becoming hypervigilant, anxious, restless, potentially angry, panicked, or even dissociated. Your body stores the trauma in your brain, stress response, hormonal control system, gut, immune system, and nervous system. All of these parts have peptide receptors that provide access and store memories of emotional information. Trauma is stored as a memory of overwhelming experience in the network. At this point, your nervous system is in a state of alarm, along with your hormones and immune system. While the trauma may be hidden inside of the body, the wheels are turning toward an untenable situation that can lead to chronic health conditions, as we’ve discussed. Ultimately, your immune system gets confused and mistakes your own tissue as a foreign invader and goes into attack mode.” (pg 27)
She goes on to write, “Studies show that up to 80 percent of patients with autoimmune disease experience significant emotional stress before disease onset. … People with PTSD had a 250 percent greater risk of systemic autoimmune disease.” (pg 14)
Dr. Lawson Wulsin, a psychiatrist with a passion to equip primary care physicians in the bio-psycho-social model, writes along very similar themes in his recent book, Toxic Stress: How Stress Is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It.
“We also know that exposure to a lot of adverse experiences in childhood is among the strongest predictors of physical and mental illness in adulthood.” (pg 7)
“This mountain of evidence has continued to build since then, making a strong case for chronic stress as a major contributing factor to the onset and the progression of a range of our most common chronic conditions, specifically coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and major depression.” (pg 46)
A previous post highlighted the famous ACE study which initially established the relationship of Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) with poor adult health.
A (metaphorical) picture of a soul wound
The soul/spirit (our conscious mind) is hosted and embodied primarily in the nervous tissue of our brains and nerves (our nervous system). Nerve cells (neurons) and their long tails (axons) use electrical energy to share information and are organized into “neural networks,” connecting and communicating with each other, and the body. Dr. Dan Siegel has identified about 9 of these networks, which he says need to all be “integrated” (connected) to provide a healthy mind (soul) and mature relationships (interdependence).
The electrical activity can be measured outside the skull with electrodes (such as an EEG) and the flow of “information” can be pictured on sophisticated real-time scans such as fMRIs or SPECT scans. Picture in your mind’s eye that each of the neural networks are neighbouring villages, connected with above ground electrical wires and telecommunication lines as in Figure 1.
Then a hurricane (a trauma) comes through to knock down the lines as in Figure 2, causing a village or two, or more, to lose power and communication with the other villages.
Trauma, whether a physical blow to the head as in a concussion, or a significant psychological injury, similarly disrupts the flow of energy (electricity) and information to one or more affected neural network(s). To recover, utility repair crews need access to repair the downed lines, but depending on the severity of the storm damage (such as roads washed out by flooding or blocked from fallen trees) access may be delayed. Or ongoing strong hurricane force winds may delay crews from repairing the lines.
Similarly, in brain trauma the disruption may be quickly restored, or delayed, occasionally for years where for one reason or another, like in our picture story, villagers are happy to stay in the dark!
Let’s now apply this metaphor to a real-life psychic or concussive wound affecting the neural network known as the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC). The ACC (in pink in Figure 3 below) is key in processing emotional and pain information from the limbic system (the brain’s principal emotional centre), passing it on to the prefrontal cortex (known as your executive control centre just behind your forehead skull), so that decisions for action can be chosen there. In turn, the self-regulation function of the prefrontal cortex needs to pass that information back to the limbic system to down-regulate the aroused (fight or flight) state after the danger (storm) is over. But with the ACC “lines” down, this 2-way communication is blocked as in Figure 3.
Now the “fight or flight” aroused state stays on, causing prolonged elevation of stress hormones (especially cortisol) leading to chronic inflammation throughout your body and all manner of illnesses. That same “outage” of the ACC results in misreading of incoming pain signals, confusing psychic and physical pain (Figure 4).
Without restoration of the lines, this is known to result in chronic pain (also known as nociplastic pain), such as the bodily pain typical in fibromyalgia.
How to “repair the lines”
Typically, the sooner repair crews get access after a storm the better. So, early debriefing is now considered best practise among military and first responder trauma survivors. It is important though, that “crews” don’t cause more damage by retraumatizing survivors (sometimes reliving the trauma in a poorly led debrief may further retraumatize susceptible individuals, especially those who have not healed their own prior childhood trauma). But many times, early debrief and psychoeducation can result in quick processing and closure, and a positive outcome.
After more remote trauma, such as childhood trauma, survivors should be encouraged to seek help. A healing journey is never a solo one. Ingrained coping strategies cause dysfunctional makeshift rewiring around the downed lines (blockages) that need to be “taken down” and replaced with proper restored lines. (This is like using a long extension cord from your neighbour to power your own house.) These coping strategies can be anything from numbing addictions (acting “in”) to aggressive bullying and drivenness (acting “out”). Unchecked these just repeat the cycle—“hurt people hurt people.” Not to mention diminished inspiration and creativity, and the evitable crash or burnout.
Trauma expert Dr. Peter Levine talks of “renegotiating” remote trauma (rather than reliving the trauma) by recruiting “resources” not available at the time of the trauma.
In the faith-based approach to healing trauma that we endorse and use at IHTC, we invite Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, (the Trinity, our “Utility Crew!”) as that resource to accompany the trauma sufferer into a place of complete safety. If the trauma was connected to attachment problems (like parental rejection or abandonment), an attachment to a loving Heavenly Father will be reparative. Similarly, the divine resource of the Holy Spirit can enable the trauma victim to have the strength to forgive and release a perpetrator (almost always needed for complete closure).
A faith-based approach like this can lead to healing states of consciousness which some other therapists attempt to achieve through psychedelics (such as MDMA, aka ectasy), for example.
This is not work one should attempt alone. We have professionals to walk with you. We always reiterate the truthful euphemism, “We are wounded in community, and so we heal best in community.”
And don’t miss the opportunity to attend Healing Trauma Conference – Atlantic Canada.
This trauma-informed conference Healing Conference 2024 in September (27-29, 2024) is a key resource made available to assist you on a healing journey and to help you become a healing resource for others. (In my opinion EVERYONE age 15 and up should attend!) There will be group healing sessions, as well as opportunity for individual healing prayer ministry. There are also breakout workshops on a wide variety of trauma-informed topics to help both survivors and caregivers.
The time is now!
Many voices around the globe are recognizing that we are on a verge of a new era. The secular experiment with humanism is leaving the world in a chaotic mess. There is another narrative that is worth exploring and you can jump on board to be part of a movement of hope.
"The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God’s glorious sons and daughters! For against its will the universe itself has had to endure the empty futility resulting from the consequences of human sin. But now, with eager expectation, all creation longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God’s children." Romans 8:19-21 (TPT)
It is the 2 billion or so followers of Jesus Christ (THE largest global movement), in our maturing to become like Jesus Christ Himself (as CS Lewis once said, “little Christs”), that a renewed earth which we believe will be established, where all Jesus’s followers (with perfected resurrected bodies reunited with their spirit/souls) will co-rule in ongoing creative ways for eternity.
Wild? Yes. Possible? Well, “with God all things are possible,” and after all Someone DID the first creation. He certainly therefore can recreate a “new heaven and a new earth” (see Revelation 21:1).
If that narrative interests you, and if you want to learn more, check out an Alpha course near you. Or contact us.
Compassionately,
