Trauma Resolution

"Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the event itself. They arise when residual energy from the experience is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds."
— Peter Levine


Trauma is a term used to describe the challenging emotional and often physical consequences that living through a distressing event can have for an individual. Traumatic events can be difficult to define because the same event may be more traumatic for some people than for others.

However, traumatic events experienced early in life, such as abuse, neglect and disrupted attachment, can often be devastating. Equally challenging can be later life experiences that are out of one’s control, such as a serious accident, being the victim of violence, living through a natural disaster or war, or sudden unexpected loss.

When thoughts and memories of the traumatic event don’t go away or get worse, they may lead to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which can seriously disrupt a person’s ability to regulate their emotions and maintain healthy relationships.


Signs & Symptoms


A traumatic event can be:

  • a recent, single traumatic event (e.g., car crash, violent assault)
  • a single traumatic event that occurred in the past (e.g., a sexual assault, the death of a spouse or child, an accident,
  • living through a natural disaster or a war)
  • a long-term, chronic pattern (e.g., ongoing childhood neglect, sexual or physical abuse).

A person who has experienced a traumatic event might develop either simple or complex PTSD:

Experiencing a single traumatic event is most likely to lead to simple PTSD.

Complex PTSD tends to result from long-term, chronic trauma and can affect a person's ability to form healthy, trusting relationships. Complex trauma in children is often referred to as "developmental trauma."

I am a Somatic Experiencing® (SE) Practitioner. SE, developed by Dr. Peter Levine and supported by research, tells us that trauma is an internal straitjacket created when a devastating moment is frozen in time. It stifles the unfolding of being, and strangles our attempts to move forward with our lives. It disconnects us from ourselves, others, nature and spirit. When overwhelmed by threat, we are frozen in fear, as though our instinctive survival energies were ‘all dressed up with no place to go.

Somatic Experiencing offers a new and hopeful perspective on trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity to heal, as well as the intellectual spirit to harness that innate capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question: Why are animals in the wild, though routinely threatened, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually “immune” to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is unveiled.

Somatic Experiencing is a short-term naturalistic approach to the resolution of post-traumatic stress reactions. It is based upon the ethological observation that animals in the wild utilize innate mechanisms which regulate and neutralize the high levels of arousal associated with defensive survival behaviors. Somatic Experiencing normalizes the symptoms of trauma, which bind this arousal, and offers the steps needed to resolve activation and heal trauma.

Although humans possess regulatory mechanisms virtually identical to those in animals, these systems are often overridden by neo-cortical inhibition (through the rational mind). This restraint leads to the formation of a constellation of symptoms, including pain, patterns of bracing and collapse, cognitive dysfunction, anxiety, and a sense of intrusion. Through the focal awareness of bodily sensation, individuals are able to access these restorative physiological action patterns. This allows the highly aroused survival energies to be safely and gradually neutralized. Unregulated arousal previously “locked in” the neuromuscular and central nervous systems can be discharged and completed, thus preventing and resolving traumatic symptoms.