THE NEUROSCIENCE
the body keeps score
Repair — Identify & release traumatic shock, chronic stress, fixated states & mental blocks caused by unmet needs & misattunement by working with fight, flight, fawn or freeze.
Reset — Restore vagus nerve pathways to feel the rhythm, ease & flow of healthy regulation between the two states of ANS (sympathetic) and rest/digest (parasympathetic) activation.
Reclaim — Feel an embodied sense of calm & command as your emotional brain is guided back to its foundational protective capacity & productive life force.
1
Despite feeling like you can think your way out of stress, the rational brain is NOT the command center of your experience.
The prefrontal cortex, a.k.a. the rational brain is responsible for logical thinking, decision-making & planning, but it does not directly control your sense of well-being.
Talking therapies primarily engage the rational brain in a top-down approach & may not effectively address the deeper, subconscious emotional & physiological processes controlled by the limbic system.
The emotional brain includes the limbic system, the amygdala and hippocampus, the ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) & vagus nerve which form the epicentre of original experience. This system generates our primary sensory-motor emotional reactions. These then evolve into a complex array of mutually Influencing emotional responses. mood & temperament critical to the 'felt sense' of being well. Your sense of self, lifeforce, capacity & energy constellates here.
To heal from trauma & embed lasting change our ANS has to be repaired on the limbic somatic level.
Our emotional brain speaks the somatic language of survival & protection: fight, flight, fawn, & freeze.
If we endure too much stress, too soon and for too long this protective neurobiological system can become compromised. It is only designed to stay in defensive modes for short durations. Excessive stress can drive the system into ‘stuck’, maladaptive & distorted patterns.
A dysregulated emotional brain & ANS sends out an alarm signal & if not heard the system “acts out”. Symptoms become the management strategy of a body/mind/soul in distress.
At the same time, as ‘acting out”, our systems also learn to mask & override deeper needs in order to survive.
You can be traumatised while still going to work. meeting the needs of your family, friends & life - this is functional freeze in action. Simultaneously other parts of us can get can be stuck in agitated ‘fight’ mode, perpetually running in ‘flight’, submitting over & over again to 'fawn' or immobilised in dissociated 'freeze'.
These defensive arrested states cannot be deactivated by rational brain will or mindset. Clinical tools are required to heal the deeper emotional brain foundation.
THE EMOTIONAL v RATIONAL BRAIN
The need to work at a deeper level
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ARE YOU IN
FIGHT, FLIGHT, FAWN OR FREEZE?
WHAt's YOUR GO TO?
fight
When life gets stressful I notice I'm......
Angry, controlling, critical and argumentative
Internally I feel......
Tense, agitated, unsettled, furious & superior
My body feels......
Tight, hot, clenched jaw, heavy, burning
My pattern is life is......
Blaming others, extreme mood swings, being bossy, sulking
My 'go to' thought is & emotions are ......
"Everyone is so annoying" - anger, bitter, melancholic
fawn
When life gets stressful I notice I'm....
Extra quiet, make myself smaller, lose my voice
I sometimes feel.....
Sad, worried, wronged, desperate to connect
My body feels......
Constricted, twisted, small, slow, stiff, weak
My pattern in life is ......
Appease others, take the blame, over help others at my cost
My 'go to' thought is & emotions are......
"If I do this, I won't get hurt" - sorry, sad, afraid
All of us can and will use a blend of defensive responses to navigate & survive stressors in our daily lives. A reaction is neither good nor bad. They are simply a menu of ways that our stress response can look, sound or feel like. The key to 'well-being' is the capacity of your emotional brain, Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) & vagus nerve to quickly return you from the charge of sympathetic defense to the relative safety of parasympathetic calm or rest & digest. Understanding, repairing & nurturing your uniquely configured system is like any other health practice.
Ideally we should feel the triumph of meeting a challenge, enduring hardship or surviving threat & coming back to ourselves & others in connection. Resilience & safety are the bookends of a healthy ANS. Excessive stress/stimuli exposes you to getting stuck in habituated reactivity losing connection. When your ANS is too much 'on' or 'off' line, you feel stuck in dominant but unhelpful states.
flight
When life gets stressful I notice I'm......
Nervous, scared, worried and a little off-balance
Internally I feel......
Unsettled, restless, panicky, fearful & can't sit still
My body feels......
Nauseous, sweaty, on edge, racing heart, dizzy
My pattern in life is......
Busy at all costs, avoid depth, overthinking, superficial socialising
My 'go-to' thought is & emotions are......
"I don't feel ok, something's really wrong " - worried, lost, uneasy
freeze
When life gets stressful I notice I......
Pull back, withdraw, avoid people & places
I sometimes feel.....
Distant, spacey, mute & wish I was somewhere else
My body feels......
Floaty, numb, cold, slow, airy - out of my body
My pattern in life is....
Not being present, joyless, observational, unreachable
My 'go to' thought is & emotions are......
"I don't care what happens" - desolate, empty, apathetic
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Trauma is not the event itself, it is the imprints left behind,
Trauma ‘ghosts’ engender a kind of ongoing, perpetual chronic stress that feels like a living hell.
Long after developmental or shock trauma events occur, the emotional fallout creates imprints that have a life of their own.
Trauma can include singular or complex origins:
Developmental Trauma ( birth trauma, genetic, ancestral, dysfunctional family systems ranging from unintended miss-attunement - abuse - loss - rupture - instability to breakdown )
Shock Trauma ( car accident, sexual abuse, physical accidents, hospitalisation, horror - subject or witness )
Whenever events or unmet needs build up to repeatedly take our system outside its window of tolerance, it can become compromised.
The ‘ghosts’ express themselves as trauma symptoms - the alarm bell of a nervous system on fire or frozen in shock - showing
up in a myriad of physical, emotional, social, behavioral, &
psychological reactivity.
Trauma loops are a nervous system on repeat. Communicating the need
to complete a 'defense', ( fight, flight, fawn & freeze states have become fixated & cannot execute their protective function ) Access to getting you back to the calm of rest & digest mode - emotional safety is denied.
Talk therapy that only treats symptoms is often just a band-aid,
“In the culture, people talk about trauma as an event that happened a long time ago. But what trauma is, is the imprints that event has left on your mind and in your sensations... the discomfort you feel and the agitation you feel and the rage and the helplessness you feel right now.” ― Bessel A. van der Kolk
TRAUMA IS NOT
THE EVENT ITSELF...
IT IS THE GHOST
IN THE MACHINE
you are not crazy
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THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM (ANS)
emotional brain engine
The ANS is critical to well-being as it underpins our body's stress responses, emotional regulation, physical health &capacity for social connection. Maintaining a balanced, responsive & flexible ANS is key to achieving a state of homeostasis - in other words, overall well-being.
It controls heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, respiratory rate & body temperature. Additionally it regulates the body's stress response and plays a role in sexual arousal & orgasm.
The ANS consists of two main branches: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which triggers the body's "fight or flight" response to stress & the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which promotes the "rest and digest" response that calms the body after stress.
When the ANS is balanced, it efficiently manages the movement & pendualation between the body's stress & relaxation states, leading to inner calm, emotional flexibility, resilience against stress & a general sense of safety & well-being.
However, chronic stress or trauma causes dysregulation of the ANS, causing various maladaptions unique to each individual nervous system. You could have an overactive SNS and an underactive PNS. This imbalance can result in a host of mental health issues, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), & other stress-related & biopsychosocial symptoms & disorders.
Trauma symptoms are as many and varied, as are the personal conditions and context that create them.
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The vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve, is the body's electrical superhighway & weaves through you, deeply influencing your biopsychosocial landscape—shaping mood, spirit, desire,
appetite & thought.
It is the ANS (Autonomic Nervous System) messenger - commanding heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, reflex actions, sexual function, blood pressure & regulates the immune system's response.
This foundational channel is a vital conduit forging a profound
connection between the brain, gut, heart & soul of your being.
Trauma to the vagus nerve can significantly disrupt the body's
natural state of balance, leading to a wide array of psychobiological challenges.
Trauma can trigger an imbalance in the ANS, oscillating between excessive activation and/or underactivation. Symptoms are the alarm signal of an overburdened system.
Vagus nerve compromise can manifest as;
Physical- digestive complications, heart rate variability, insomnia, compromised immune system, increasing susceptibility to infections and inflammation, chronic syndronmal illness.
Psychological - difficulty with emotional regulation, mood swings, excessive rumination, low mood, fearful, hopeless, angry, numb.
Social - social engagement system compromised, struggle to talk, be with others, broken connections, a vicious cycle of stress sensitivity to others.
Listening to the somatic language of the vagus nerve attends to source of bodilyfelt dysregulation. Clinical neuroscientific tools to heal nerve pathways restores power to regulate your body, mind & soul.
THE VAGUS NERVE SUPERHIGHWAY
Neuro electric communication
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MORE READING
THE NEUROSCIENCE OF EMOTIONAL TRAUMA
Dr Peter Levine - Waking the Tiger
Bessel Van de Kolk - The Body Keep Score
Gabor Mate - The Myth of Normal
Dr Paul Conti - The Invisible Epidemic
Dr Stephen W. Porges PhD - Our Polyvagal World -
How Safety & Trauma Changes Us
