4 Pillars of Trauma - Creating & Healing Developmental Trauma
The creation of developmental trauma is neurological. The thoughts, emotions, and instinctive responses that come together to create the memory of trauma are all downloaded and stored within the nervous system.
Dr. Peter Levine outlines 4 core components of developmental trauma in his book Waking the Tiger.
Understanding these 4 components of developmental trauma helps you to understand the strange responses that you may be having, and help you to determine if you may have trauma stored within your body and nervous system.
Hyperarousal
Constriction
Dissociation
Freezing
Hyperarousal involves the activation of the nervous system into action. Increased heart rate, increased breathing rate, restlessness, difficulty sleeping, racing thoughts, and signs of physiological activation that could be misconstrued as anxiety, and could potentially be misdiagnosed as generalized anxiety, anxiety NOS, social anxiety.
Constriction refers to the tightening of the body including muscles, blood vessels, viscera. This physiological state is part of the fight or flight reaction, and is a preparatory state for battle.
Dissociation is often experienced as a state of disconnection from reality, fantasy, and/or lost memory/time. The consciousness leaves the physical body and immediate surroundings. Dissociation assists the psyche to protect itself from frightening or damaging events surrounding the traumatic event. Dissociation is also what most often holds the traumatic event in place - since the consciousness must return to the body in order to fully release the trauma energy from the nervous system. Assisted therapeutic inner journey work greatly helps this process of trauma release and re-integration.
Freeze. The freeze response is difference from the constriction response of the physical body. When the body has run out of resources (for example freezing, fighting, dissociating, running…have all failed) the UPregulation of the fight or fight response gives way to the secondary branch of the sympathetic nervous system and becomes DOWNregulation. This form of down regulation is not calming. The body remains in a state of hyperarousal, however the physical self is immobilized. Dr. Peter Levine calls the experience of helplessness into this equation.
Helplessness in developmental trauma and PSTD:
Helplessness and overwhelm are core emotional features of a traumatic response. The events that create trauma, are much less important than the reaction of the person experiencing the event. When the person’s resources are overwhelmed by the event, the nervous system will register a state of distress that cannot be resolved. This is why children are more vulnerable to experiencing trauma (because they may have access to fewer psychological, relational, and material resources at the time of the event.
Developmental Trauma and Stacking:
People who have previously experienced events that were not processed well and therefore remain as trauma in the nervous system, are less resilient to new stressful events and are more likely to record new trauma in their nervous systems This event is recorded within the nervous system as a trauma, aka - they are stacking trauma.
Healing Developmental Trauma
Trauma can be healed naturally by applying the principles of the nervous system to the healing process. There is a particular way that the body records trauma, and therefore an order forreleasing trauma from the body.
