Connecting me to Myself
I have been spending the last month or so developing skills to connect my mind to body in ways I have never been accustomed to before. For many years, I was unable to recognise different emotions, and I struggled with a sense of self. I was almost dissociative from my true sense. Of course, I wasn’t aware there was anything wrong because I was born into an existence that required adaptations to my nervous system. Survival is the term I would use.
In the four years that I have been engaging in therapy, reading about complex PTSD, and writing for my website, I have started to tune in to my internal state, including the cues that my nervous system is giving me, and challenging thought processes. For decades, I have denied, numbed, ignored or fled from the desperate pleas that my body was giving me. I was pushing down deep unhealed wounds, which, over time, started to fester, spill out, and eventually demand my attention.
I have finally surrendered to the signals in my body, which have shown me that I have been deeply hurt from previous traumas that I buried. At first, with the help of my therapist, I focused on my bodily sensations. I realised that oftentimes my throat felt tight, or my chest felt heavy. For so long, this was a normal state for me, so I never paid attention to the possible meaning.
I started to recognise when my nervous system shifted from “rest/digest” to fight/flight” and paid attention to the thoughts or to the environment when this was happening. Slowly, I began to experience stronger emotions, most of which were becoming overwhelming. It was as though, once I said yes to my nervous system, all the unprocessed feels rose like boiling water in an overfilled pan.
I started to read about somatic therapy and learned that there are ways to connect to and manage the nervous system, particularly when the body becomes trapped in the fight/flight (sympathetic) state. As a sufferer of complex-PTSD, my body is very well rehearsed at being in a constant state of readiness for threat. This is because from a very early age, my life experiences, relationships, and childhood taught me that to survive, I needed to be on high alert. My environment for many years demanded this, and as my therapist reminds me regularly, this adapted behaviour indeed kept me safe.
However, the body is not designed to be in a chronic state of fight/flight and in time, the person can become exhausted, dissociated, or fractured. I can resonate with all these. I had dissociated from some of my trauma to such a degree that I lived with those who had inflicted the abuse and created them in a way that removed them from the trauma. It was the only way (I thought) that I could conceal a shame that I now realise was never mine.
I also became fractured, becoming increasingly separated from a sense of self. I no longer recognised what were coping mechanisms and what were personality traits. I lost who I was, the joyful, childlike, carefree experience, which, while rare, I enjoyed at certain times through my life. I was also exhausting myself, calculating, for example, that in the last 6 years, I had spent 4 of them at university, studying to master’s level, while working, and raising a family. This was a distraction. I didn’t see it at the time.
I have evolved so much in the last 6 months, having made a concerted effort to tackle long-held trauma, unmet needs and unhealed wounds. One of the biggest breakthroughs I have had is the experience of somatic therapy. I had been in therapy four years before this, and my therapist had often referred to this. But in the last month, I really applied the practical. This has made a startling difference in my ability to really experience my emotions through body sensations.
There are so many techniques, and all of them can be done while sitting or standing, at home, or for five minutes during a quiet moment at work. Some of them only require the ability to connect to breath. What is more predictable than breathing? That said, because I had untreated asthma as a child, I sometimes do struggle to focus on my breathing. So instead, I focus on humming on my exhale.
As I have dived into more research into somatic therapy, I have learned of a technique called the Emotional Freedom Technique, which is an holistic practice that combines acupressure and cognitive therapy to reduce emotional stress. The National Institute for Clinical Care and Excellence even recognise it as a treatment, albeit suggesting more research is needed.
I perform this every day now. It involves tapping specific body parts, the backs of the hands, the eyebrow region, under and to the side of the eyes, the top of the head and the sternum. I also shake out my body, which releases built-up tension caused by the sympathetic nervous system. All these techniques have contributed to my new body-mind connection. I have started to feel so much more grounded, and this has helped enormously.
As I heal the different parts of myself, and begin to regulate my nervous system, I allow space to heal those deeper wounds that have led to the chronic fight/flight and the diagnosis of Complex ptsd. The work I am doing is lifelong learning, and I will continue to invest in somatic therapy. It is a compliment to the talking therapy I have and the medication I take alongside. Each treatment in isolation has less impact, but combined, can be the difference between peace and chaos.
If you are struggling and feel the need to reach out, please ring your doctor or use the 111 service to be signposted. You could also read more of my blogs, or go to other sites, like Complexptsdfoundation.org or MIND. There are some great resources out there and information is power.
