Releasing Trauma from the Body

By: Dr. Denise Renye

Psychology is much, much more than a science of the mind. It’s a science of the whole person. It’s a science of the entire human experience. And what’s our first human experience? The body. That means the body cannot be neglected in psychology no matter how much some try to do so. We must bring in the body to heal the whole person.

And the field has slowly been shifting significantly in the last couple of decades. In 2014, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk released his seminal book, The Body Keeps the Score. In it, he described how trauma is not stored in the brain as a memory (like was previously thought), but instead is stored in the body at a cellular level. That means trauma can affect how a person carries themselves, how they hold their shoulders, how they sleep, their digestion process, and more.

You can watch a short video about the book The Body Keeps the Score here.

To speak specifically about trauma, it’s not only relegated to war veterans or car accident survivors. It’s also more than abuse of the sexual, physical, verbal, or emotional kind. Trauma can be the sudden death of a loved one, a miscarriage, repeated childhood neglect, poverty and class differences, racism, etc. In essence, trauma is any experience that overwhelms your nervous system and ability to cope. It can leave you feeling helpless or enraged. (And in case you are wondering, yes, a pandemic counts as traumatic.)

Many people have learned to cope with trauma in self-sabotaging and medicating ways such as with alcohol, other drugs, or excessive eating/exercising/restricting to name a few. They may not even realize they’re reacting to trauma and instead just trying to feel better. A fish doesn’t know it is water, it just is. A person with trauma doesn’t know they are in a hellscape, they just are. After experiencing trauma, are we stuck with it? Are we doomed to have hunched posture, making ourselves small both physically and metaphorically? Are we plagued with indigestion for all the rest of our days? The questions are worth asking and worth staying curious about.

Just as the mind and body registers an event (or events) as traumatic, the mind and body can also release those traumatic events. Here are some techniques I’ve found are helpful for releasing trauma from the body:

·      Massage therapy

·      Body movement (dance, sports, yoga, shaking, etc.)

·      Hugging

·      Art without the performative aspect

·      Laughing

·      Crying

·      Breathing

·      Chanting or singing

·      Free-write journaling with a pen or pencil

·      Drumming

·      EFT (emotional freedom technique), or tapping

Anything that puts you back in touch with the body and helps you feel safe will be nourishing for your body and mind. Also, so much of healing from trauma involves support and feeling safe in the presence of someone else. That could be with a friend or partner, or it could be with a trained professional such as myself. I’ve emphasized the numerous physical ways to release trauma from the body, but it can also be helpful to talk with someone about it – not in a way that retraumatizes you through regurgitation of the event(s) over and over again, but in a way that helps you process it and release it. If you’re interested to learn more about the mind-body connection and how trauma can be processed, reach out. Neglecting the body when dealing with trauma healing can be a reenactment of the neglect (or abuse) that occurred earlier in life.

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