Trauma
Trauma is an overwhelming experience that is either too much or goes on too long.
We have evolved survival mechanisms to cope with danger. These mechanisms are biologically programmed and not within our control. Everyone’s experience is different but it can be useful to use the terms fight, flight, freeze. They pre-date our reason by eons of evolution.
When there is safety afterwards our nervous system can move out of survival mode. It no longer needs to protect us so it relaxes. Monitoring our environment returns to normal levels and we can think and respond flexibly once again.
If the danger never goes away or if there are intrusive thoughts and images we stay in a hyper-alert state. When there is no safety afterwards the nervous system remains in survival mode.
Mechanism of healing
Developments in trauma therapy have discovered ways of co-operating with the nervous system’s mechanism of recovery. Assuming a client is now safe, the first task is to defuse survival responses by learning skills of self-regulation. I will teach how to do this before we continue further. Sometimes this is enough: it may not be necessary to detail the traumatic experiences themselves.