Trauma Training Tip
August. The air feels thick and heavy. It’s Late Summer, the Earth season in the world of Asian medicine. It’s 2020. We’re coping with an out-of-control CoVid 19 pandemic, the highest unemployment numbers since the 1930’s, and long sought-after and slow-coming transformation of our social contract on race. Many of us are feeling a chronic rumble of uncertainty in the Earth below our feet – and for some of us, genuine “quakes.”
The Earth Element governs our guts and our capacity to “Digest the Gristle.”
When we feel threatened, our Sympathetic nervous system needs all our energy in our joints and muscles to mobilize a life-saving response. Energy for digestion, assimilation of nutrients, and peristalsis in our guts is temporarily suppressed. If habituated, such as in long-term or repeated experiences of danger or life threat, our capacity to transform both nutrients and experiences becomes compromised.
Our guts’ role in the production of T-cells and neuro-transmitters is also compromised – giving rise to one explanation for the suppressed immune function, higher levels of mental illness, and prevalence of metabolic disorders such as obesity in trauma survivors.
The phenomena of the “CoVid 15,” weight gain during the quarantine, can be a life-and-death issue for some. Dr. Jennifer Lightner published observational research data on the risk of hospitalization according to body mass index, or BMI, in The Clinical Infectious Diseases Journal. Her team found obese adults under age 60 had a higher risk of admission to the hospital and the intensive care unit compared to people who have a healthy weight.
The common experience of weight gain during this pandemic has been attributed to a more sedentary lifestyle during the quarantine. I suspect the impact of chronic and historic stress – especially overwhelming experiences in infancy and childhood – and the resulting compromised capacity to turn food into qi or energy is perhaps a “weightier” player. Healers who understand and work with trauma physiology can be so very helpful in times when the Earth under our feet feels so very shaky.
The release of sympathetic arousal we are witnessing in the current social movement is a very hopeful sign for the restoration of balance and regulation in the body of our nation. As the burden of high sympathetic arousal is released, regulation in the Earth Element is restored. We will find greater capacity to digest toxic memories, management strategies, and tissue imprints that remain behind experiences of trauma – some of which may be exacerbated by traumatic stress experienced by our ancestors as epigenetic imprints. Our physiology will better support us to harvest life-giving lessons, and let go of conclusions that cause our body-mind to contract.
Acupuncturists and bodyworkers can attend to supporting the function of the viscera in their clients. Mental health providers can attend to how their clients are digesting their experiences, the lessons they are harvesting, and the transformation of the “meaning” that they may have assimilated from their experiences.
Thank you for your service!
Alaine’s Two Cents
I will be speaking on a webinar sponsored by the American Education Research Association, Peace Education Special Interest Group, on Sunday, August 30, 2020, from 1-3 p.m. EDT.
I will be drawing heavily from the Adverse Childhood Experiences research on the impact of childhood trauma on adult health, wellness, and of course, ability to focus and learn. Covid-19, the role of police in schools and racial bias in all levels of education are complex issues, each with tendrils to traumatic stress that call our attention.
Open to the public, register for free here.
Check This Out!
This series of podcasts on The Science and Psychology of Polarization by Rebel Wisdom is a beautiful contribution to our social discourse.
This is Episode 2. It features Stephen Porges talking about Polyvagal Theory and Polarization. It’s a great contextualization for the role healers can play in serving our growing social movements.
Additionally, look for an Introduction to the topic as Part 1, Alex Evans in Part 3, and Peter Levine in Part 4.
Clinical Curiosity
Q. My client is a survivor of child incest, beginning at age 5. She is morbidly obese and convinced that people are untrustworthy. She is losing her capacity to have a sense of being able to manage her life.
A. So glad you wrote!
The foundation for helping her is in cultivating a sense of safety and relationship as a felt sense.
The overwhelm and terror she experienced as a little girl sent a powerful message of life threat to her heart. She responded with high tone in her sympathetic nervous system.
Her perpetrator was larger and more powerful in so many dimensions – making it impossible for her to experience a successful fight or flight response. Her biologically dictated mobilization response was thwarted – and the resulting shut-down in her viscera, the organs of the Earth Element, became habituated.
Her physiology, on very high alert since she was 5, has become programmed not to give up any calories. It “thinks” that it needs this stored energy to fight or flee at any moment.
Of course she can’t transform food into energy when peristalsis in her guts has been compromised for so long! Of course she is obese. This understanding may open up conversation, self-observation, and self-compassion in the place of shame and contraction.
She also likely lost some of her capacity for interoceptive information to help her guide signals from the outside world for managing her life. Her capacity to “trust her guts” and interpret information about who and what is safe and what she needs was compromised long ago.
The more you can help her system find safety, the less she will need to be in this state of very high alert – and the more successful she can be with losing weight. Even a loss of 7-10% of her body weight can have a profound impact on her immune system as well as her heart, liver, and joints.
Use the kidney-adrenal hold to help her system build capacity in its signaling center for threat. Her heart will come into more regulation, lessen the need for a life-threat command in her tissues, and the tone in her sympathetic system will be reduced.
I also recommend a consultation with a thoughtful and kind nutritionist or naturopath for enhancing gut-health. Probiotics and/or prebiotics may be very helpful to supporting her return to gut-health.
Helping her find compassion and kindness for herself and her body will be your greatest gift to her.