Trauma Training Tip
We have entered Fall, the season of the Metal Element, the Lung and Colon organs. Its job is to receive the “pure Qi of the heavens” in the Lungs and to “let go of the drainage of the dregs” in the Colon. It is both the most etheric of all the elements, and the most responsible for our “felt sense” or somatic experience of our world. It is critically important to the Self Protective Response (SPR).
The SPR is initiated by the Po, the spirit of the Lungs. When we hear a twig snap, if our Po is intact, a message is sent to the orienting functions of the Liver via the control or K’e cycle. We narrow our focus, orient our sense organs towards the sound, and are instinctively animated to respond to this felt sense of threat. We don’t have time to consider whether, where, when, or how fast we should move – we respond instinctively.
That capacity for instinctive responses is the gift of the Po. There is a slight sympathetic arousal – which we notice in the correspondences of the Metal – our breath catches, the felt sense of our open curiosity stops, our skin may have “goose bumps,” the hair on our neck may stand “on end,” and there may be a sensation that “something is amiss” in our Colon.
If our Po discerns danger, it sends a message via the creative or Sheng cycle to our Kidney to signal threat. The Kidney is the signaling center for threat. Overwhelming fear provides the signal for initiating a whole-body survival response. The adrenal (ad-renal, above the Kidney) gland informs the body-mind that there is a life-threatening emergency to which we must respond.
The Five Element contribution of Constitutional Focus (CF) can be very helpful in working with trauma survivors. The elements inform how we negotiate and are impacted by traumatic stress. The Five Element correspondences illuminate a multi-faceted and coherent path for restoring balance.
Metal trauma survivors may
- Feel suffocated by grief
- Struggle to find a “fresh breath” to inspire a new chapter
- Display a very primal sense of shut down
- Feel challenged to receive life’s treasures, or let go of life’s tragedies
- Be tormented by the question “How can a loving God allow bad things to happen to good people?”
- Experience deeply soulful survival guilt
Helping people cultivate their Po, and thus their felt sense, is a critical capacity for moving through all 5 of the Elements.
Alaine’s Two Cents
Please join me in welcoming Lydia Witman as my new registrar and administrative assistant.
Lydia comes to Integrative Healing from a background of medical librarianship and over 20 years working in hospitals. She has worked in clinical roles supporting healthcare professionals as well as patient-facing roles supporting patients and their loved ones. More recently, she has worked with rural and low-income medical clinics to prepare grant applications and reports for funders. She looks forward to supporting all who are learning the Tao of Trauma with Alaine.
Check This Out!
I met Aletha Starr Williams as part of my service in a project for survivors of military sexual trauma.
Aletha is a life coach whose goal is to help clients gain clarity as they move through transformational shifts in their lives. She is a combat veteran with a special commitment to Veterans and Service Members. It is her passion to help others move through trauma and events that impact their mind, body, and soul. She finds that soul and moral wounds are too often forgotten.
We had a lovely chat on her Inner Starr Compass Healing video podcast, which you can check out below.
And here’s her website, Inner Starr Compass Healing.
Clinical Curiosity
Where is your clinical curiosity carrying you?
Send me a question or two and I will explore them with readers in this corner next month.
Q.
I am a clinical social worker. My patient is in her 60’s. She’s extraordinarily competent – great with details and precision. She’s very accomplished in her work life, but not very settled in her personal life.
She has a brittle edge. She runs over other people’s opinions or plans and has a hard time processing differences of opinion. It’s as if she doesn’t know her own feelings – or at least has a hard time communicating her disagreements and staying in relationship.
Her “go to” neurological platform is freeze. She was raised in an abusive family. I would say her predominant emotion is grief, she’s experienced so much loss.
A.
Thank you for writing. Your patient is a great example for how the Tao of Trauma approach can help providers of all types. As a mental health provider, you are skilled at recognizing emotional and cognitive distress. Learning the 5 Element model will help you see beyond the general dysregulation to a constitutional type – and give you some guidance for where and how to work with your patient.
From what you have written, I would look at her Metal Element (chapter 6 in The Tao of Trauma). Helping her cultivate her Po, helping her find her interoception, her felt sense, will be so very helpful to her.
When we experience traumatic stress, especially as a young person, our Qi, our attention, necessarily leaves our body. It’s too much, and we “leave.” That was a helpful action way back when, but now figuring out how to welcome our Qi back becomes so very important. When our Qi is in our tissues, on a psychological level, we have more awareness, more honesty, more presence. On a physical level, Qi warms and protects and transforms and hold things in place. All we really need to do is help Qi return to tissues – then it will do all the work of healing.
Questions like: “As you share that, what do you notice in your body?” or “From the outside I’m noticing your breath going a bit shallow, I wonder what you are noticing?” Help her track her sensations and stay with them long enough to experience an activation/deactivation cycle. She will create more space inside, and have more awareness of her experiences.
So glad she has you.