For the past couple weeks I have been feeling very uneasy. I have had this sense that something is not right, but I cannot put my finger on anything in particular. My body has been on edge – my hands have been shaky, my heart has been racing, and my body has been extremely tense. My senses have been hypervigilant and have been telling me to be aware of danger, but there has been nothing dangerous going on. I cannot figure out why my body is acting like this. I have told myself that everything is ok, yet my body won’t calm down.
I mentioned this uneasy feeling to my Dad and he told me that the body remembers difficult times in our lives and starts doing what it needs to do to protect us. Could it be that past trauma could really trigger my body to have such a physical reaction when nothing in fact was wrong?
Over the past several years, I have experienced very traumatic events in April. This year in April, I have been in the middle of several transitions and therefore there has been a lot of unknown. Most likely, this uneasy feeling is from a combination of the feelings that come with venturing into the unknown and my body’s memory of how I’ve responded in the past to some of the traumatic events that have happened in April.
Our organs, tissues, skin, muscles, and endocrine glands can store trauma because they have receptors that let them access and retain emotional information. This means our memories are stored in our brains and our bodies. Fascinating!
“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience in mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present. Trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think.”
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
I’ve started reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. It’s heavy reading, but I’ve been learning so much. Multiple times so far, I have been shocked at how much I relate to what he is writing about and I still have about half of the book to finish. So far, I haven’t read about what can be done to help our bodies release the trauma, but I have hope that we can be freed from the bondage that often accompanies trauma.
I’ve started working through this with my therapist. I will write more on this topic as I learn more about it because I find it so interesting that our bodies remember trauma. It makes me feel like I’m not going crazy and helps me understand what is going on in my body.
Love,
Redeemed Mama
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” – Isaiah 41:10