Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery (Part 1)

(The content of this article and the others in its series are based heavily on the excellent book by Babette Rothschild, 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery – as well as the work of other experts in trauma recovery)

Understanding Trauma

By definition, a traumatic experience shakes our trust — not just in the world around us, but in our brain’s and body’s reliability in performing as we’d wish.  Traumatization happens when our nervous system is overwhelmed by an incident (or incidences). The overwhelm rockets us out of our window of tolerance for distress, and our brain sends us into fight, flight, or freeze.  This happens automatically. It is beyond any deliberation or choice. The fact is, these responses are absolutely natural and entirely adaptive. It’s the subsequent trauma reactions (flashbacks, physiological activation, risky behavior, hypervigilance, avoiding activities, mood changes, dissociation) that are disruptive.  These symptoms of trauma are incredibly distressing. Finding ways to calm the upheaval and feel more at peace in mind and body are what trauma recovery is all about.

As you make your way through this series on fundamentals for trauma recovery, please listen to your intuition about whether or not it’s the right time for you to apply a particular tool.  Ask yourself, “Does this concept make sense to me? Does it resonate? Is it comfortable to read about? To imagine applying?” If you find yourself uncomfortable with, displeased by, or disconnected from the material, that is fine.  Set it aside for now. If you’re drawn to revisit it at a later date, that will be just fine, too.

Enter Mindfulness

One of the fundamentals of recovering from trauma is practicing the basics of mindfulness.  Mindfulness, at its core, is:

noticing, without judgment, what’s happening in the present moment.

Research shows that tuning into your personal gauges for pleasant/unpleasant, positive/negative, comfortable/uncomfortable is essential for effective decision making.   In trauma recovery, gauging your personal experience “in the now” will inform you what’s helpful, what is not, what soothes, what activates, what feels good, what is uncomfortable. Listening to your gauge on these matters is primary in deciding what’s the best for you and your recovery – what to eat, who to connect with, what activities to engage in, when to reach out or step back…and everything else you want to do in life.

Applying mindfulness in this way means getting acquainted with the following gauges:

–Body sensations 

-Moods

-Emotions

-Thoughts

-Mental images

You can begin learning to read your gauge over simple choices in your day.  For example, what food to eat, or where to sit in a room. Try out the different gauges, and notice which one speaks to you most.  Imagine drinking a hot drink – what sensations do you notice? A cold drink? When you’re hungry, does an image come to mind about what you’d like to eat? Do you notice a mood for a certain flavor or texture?  When you sit in a chair or sofa, what happens in your muscle tone? How is your mood?

Some people appreciate a structure to the mindfulness.  Here is a helpful acronym: STOP.

S – stop, take a pause to notice

T – take a breath, or let one go.  Repeat as many times as feels right.

O – observe; what you notice in your body, feelings, thoughts, images

P – proceed.  Based on what you observed, what would be good for you now?  How can you make it happen for you – now, or soon?

Experiment and play with various benign decisions in your day.  Get familiar with your gauges – which ones are easy to notice, which more difficult.  Pay special attention to body sensations, (unless that’s distressing), as they can be especially communicative and relevant in recovery.  When you feel competent at being mindful this way, you can begin applying mindfulness to more relevant choices; which route to take on your walk, who to go to coffee with, how to wind down at the end (or in the middle!) of your day.  Ultimately, you’ll use this same tool to determine what’s next in your recovery. What tool to apply, whether to work with a trauma professional, if you want to work on present-day functioning, or revisit past experiences. All of these are personal decisions that are for you to determine.  Your gauge is perfectly fitted for you, and is primary in making choices that will work for you.