No Matter the Cause once trauma occurs this is what needs to happen
The body can respond to trauma in many ways. Trauma continues to intrude with visual, auditory, and/or other somatic reality. Again and again, a person will relive the life-threatening experiences they have suffered, reacting in mind and body as though such events were still occurring.
Similarly, emotions may manifest as physical pain – sometimes in parts of the body that were not involved in the trauma.
“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe in their bodies; the past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort,” writes psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, MD, in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.
“Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from themselves.”
As a result, trauma lives on in our minds and bodies. The conscious mind may forget the original episode, but the ANS (autonomic nervous system) remembers. Some sufferers live as if the pain were constantly occurring, enduring a continual cycle of emotional and physical pain.
Other trauma victims may experience discomfort only under certain circumstances: The sound of fireworks might affect a veteran of wartime deployment; physical contact might scare a survivor of sexual assault; rolling over in bed into a position that mirrors his or her posture after a collision might traumatize someone injured in a car accident.
In each instance, the body is primed to react long after the original threat has passed.
No matter the cause, once trauma occurs, processing it is critical.
