Watford Acupuncture
Working with TRAUMA & PTSD
Working with TRAUMA & PTSD
What is trauma?
Over the years I have had many clients come to me with serious trauma and PTSD symptoms. While acupuncture often provides some relief, there are other equally important tools that need to be used in order to heal.
What happens with PTSD or severe trauma is that the amygdala which is usually mainly activated in times of stress becomes overactive while the pre-frontal cortex which helps us organise, manage, understand and respond becomes less active. This essentially means that a person regularly experiences stress/fear/activation - similar to what they experienced in their traumatic past, often re-living and re-experiencing the traumatic event, especially when there is a “triggering event”. For example, someone who experienced or witnessed domestic violence as a child may be “triggered” when they see a scene of abuse on tv. For someone who has not experienced that trauma, witnessing the abuse on tv may be disturbing and upsetting, but it would not elicit a “trauma response” - the fear which induces a fight, fight or freeze response.
Another way to look at trauma
Often the name that some therapists give to this part of us that is stuck in trauma/the traumatic past and which gets stimulated or triggered, is the ‘pain body’. Interestingly, some cultures entertain that during a very traumatic experience, e.g. rape or severe body assault, a part of our spirit or consciousness leaves. You can in common terms compare it to a pressure that is released during cooking from the pressure cooker. Or you can call it the disassociated or “spaced out” part of us or the fragmentation of self, ego or consciousness. Often, a person might not even remember the traumatic event or they blank out chunks of their memories as trauma tries to hide to prevent itself from being discovered. The person has to disassociate and disconnect as on some level, it is too difficult and painful to process what they witnessed or experienced and thus they store it ‘away’.
Another way that trauma stays with a person has to do with the thoughts and beliefs they develop about the experience. Oftentimes, a person will experience a felt sense that something is fundamentally wrong with them. For instance, after someone experiences the trauma of sexual abuse, they often question themselves and ask “what’s wrong with me - how could I have been violated like this. I must not be a normal person”. This serves only to compound the suffering.
Trauma and PTSD leads to fragmentation and dissociation, and without specialist tools, it is going to be close to impossible to integrate the parts of us that have witnessed or experienced a particularly traumatic event.
Understanding the “pain body”
The theory of the “pain body” is that when some parts of our consciousness leave during a traumatic event, something has to replace it. This “thing” is the pain body.
The pain body is a structure that replaces the missing part of our fragmented self / ego / consciousness. It is like when you scoop out a spoonful of soup with your spoon, the soup gets levelled, only that in trauma, the pain body often takes on an intensity similar to the traumatic experience. Think of it as when the crime is committed, some traces of DNA are left behind that belong to the aggressor or traumatic experience but remain a part of the affected person.
Often the person who experienced the trauma tends to associate themselves with the pain body – or you can say – the pain body takes over the person who has now identified themselves with the wound/trauma.
Commonly, people do not know how to get out of this situation and so re-expose themselves to traumatic situations or even feel affinity to and form a relationship or closeness/identity with their trauma.
How to move on from the effects of trauma / PTSD
There has been a lot of research done which confirms that pharmaceutical medication doesn’t work in the long term and it's only good for acute stages of trauma / PTSD i.e. suppressing and calming, not working with the root cause of the trauma and suffering that ensues.
The approaches that do seem to help involve dealing with trauma stored in the body-mind through recognising and addressing the interplay of the subconscious mind and body. Accordingly, an interplay of mind, body and energy tools such as the following is needed: Yoga, Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Counselling, Acupuncture, Regression Therapy, Hypnosis, EMDR, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Psychedelics, and Meditation/Chanting.
Ideally, these therapies need to be supported by some kind of group work where a person, with the help and support of a community, integrates the experience and creates new neural pathways in their brain, essentially rewiring the old neural pathways and bringing the pain body “into the light” i.e., therefore transmuting and integrating in a different form.
What all these approaches seem to have in common is that they are able to frame and zoom in on the traumatic event and then take it apart, like when you have a photo in the frame and you want to change it, you have to take it off the wall and dismantle it, take the tape, nails and put a new photo behind the glass.
When you take a suppressant or pharmaceutical medication, it is like trying to paint the colour of the frame – hoping this will create a new picture that gives a different impact to the viewer. It doesn’t actually change the picture - i.e., what actually needs to be changed. Unfortunately, this is not dealing with the trauma, only palliating the symptoms. I should clarify here that trauma is different to severe mental illness like schizophrenia, where a person may need to rely on pharmaceutical medication to function. However, more recently, there is more and more evidence showing that psychedelic therapies are able to successfully treat and heal even patients with severe depression or schizophrenia.
By now, it is clear that when it comes to mental health in particular, the western pharmaceutical medicine approach is best for emergency medicine where it can save lives or for acute stages of ill health. However, in the long term, people need to take more holistic approaches including reframing, substituting and the healing modalities already mentioned.
More about the effective tools
Trauma lives in a complex environment. It cannot just be shifted and subdued. It must be approached, transmuted and integrated using a variety of tools.
Setting the intention: To begin the process, the individual must give themselves permission to move on from the trauma and to want to start a new way – move ahead. From a therapist's perspective, it doesn’t work to just push a person into healing, one has to want it.
Bodywork, such as Cranio-Sacral Therapy and energy work such as acupuncture are able to really shift the body into its optimum state.
EFT, EMDR, TRE are some tools that help the person to start to notice the pain body and manage their response when it arises.
One of the best systems is regression therapy. The aim is not to feel the pain again but to get to the place just before the trauma happened and help the body process some unconscious memories and shine the light in order to process them. It might be that there is even an earlier memory of the event or even some kind of generational trauma stored in our DNA and one might get a flashback of something that doesn’t appear to be from the environment of their current lifetime. Through this process, a person usually encounters some form of debilitating emotion, be it anger, pain, sadness or grief about what happened or is about to. To process this emotion and substitute the event in the mind together with compassion and forgiveness is crucial.
Psychedelics: there is increasing research that people with severe mental health illnesses can benefit from certain psychedelics e.g., MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for depression. The usage of psychedelics isn’t meant to be propose the use and reliance on drugs. Psychedelics are proven to re-connect or process deep stored trauma. Unfortunately, most are illegal however, we can only hope that they will be sanctioned for therapeutic use soon.
Transformation
An important component of healing not already mentioned is spirituality, the connection to “something greater”- whether you call it Love, Universe, Absolute Truth, compassion, open heart - the connection is important. We need to put things into perspective and understand that suffering is ultimately caused by our identification with matter and not realizing that we are ultimately spiritual beings.
The healing process is an integration of different tools. Transformation and healing occur when consciousness (knowledge & spiritual vibration) is increased together with the clearing of old and debilitating patterns and neural pathways, substituted by the newly realised and updated versions of self. This is when the amygdala is tamed and the frontal cortex stops being inhibited and starts to play the role it is made to. This is when one stops being stuck with the old story but is able to say: “I am here because of all that happened and I have the opportunity to be almost re-born again”. Instead of going into a museum of war crimes, we can throw away the guns and embrace a new life.
The transformation and the embracing of the new would be done with a therapist who can hold a space for the person and who can help the person see that they are not their pain body. And looking at their life experiences from a higher perspective is seeing that there is always something to help one learn and grow. And if you don’t grow in the jungle – you die. This is in line with most cancers and unexplained neurological or autoimmune disease – the person on some level decides that there is no meaning, point in living and resigns to the half-life. Taking the pill and ignoring the trauma or feeling, it's probably easier in the short term, but not in the longer term, as you might guess what is down the line for most of these cases.
Please feel free to contact me if you are being affected by trauma or PTSD. I am happy to help, however, this type of deep and complex work requires an investment of time and a commitment to do the work. It may also entail potential changes of lifestyle or environment in order to see any substantial and long-term results.
imultaneously address root causes and treat clients holistically.
Over the years I have had many clients come to me with serious trauma and PTSD symptoms. While acupuncture often provides some relief, there are other equally important tools that need to be used in order to heal.
What happens with PTSD or severe trauma is that the amygdala which is usually mainly activated in times of stress becomes overactive while the pre-frontal cortex which helps us organise, manage, understand and respond becomes less active. This essentially means that a person regularly experiences stress/fear/activation - similar to what they experienced in their traumatic past, often re-living and re-experiencing the traumatic event, especially when there is a “triggering event”. For example, someone who experienced or witnessed domestic violence as a child may be “triggered” when they see a scene of abuse on tv. For someone who has not experienced that trauma, witnessing the abuse on tv may be disturbing and upsetting, but it would not elicit a “trauma response” - the fear which induces a fight, fight or freeze response.
Another way to look at trauma
Often the name that some therapists give to this part of us that is stuck in trauma/the traumatic past and which gets stimulated or triggered, is the ‘pain body’. Interestingly, some cultures entertain that during a very traumatic experience, e.g. rape or severe body assault, a part of our spirit or consciousness leaves. You can in common terms compare it to a pressure that is released during cooking from the pressure cooker. Or you can call it the disassociated or “spaced out” part of us or the fragmentation of self, ego or consciousness. Often, a person might not even remember the traumatic event or they blank out chunks of their memories as trauma tries to hide to prevent itself from being discovered. The person has to disassociate and disconnect as on some level, it is too difficult and painful to process what they witnessed or experienced and thus they store it ‘away’.
Another way that trauma stays with a person has to do with the thoughts and beliefs they develop about the experience. Oftentimes, a person will experience a felt sense that something is fundamentally wrong with them. For instance, after someone experiences the trauma of sexual abuse, they often question themselves and ask “what’s wrong with me - how could I have been violated like this. I must not be a normal person”. This serves only to compound the suffering.
Trauma and PTSD leads to fragmentation and dissociation, and without specialist tools, it is going to be close to impossible to integrate the parts of us that have witnessed or experienced a particularly traumatic event.
Understanding the “pain body”
The theory of the “pain body” is that when some parts of our consciousness leave during a traumatic event, something has to replace it. This “thing” is the pain body.
The pain body is a structure that replaces the missing part of our fragmented self / ego / consciousness. It is like when you scoop out a spoonful of soup with your spoon, the soup gets levelled, only that in trauma, the pain body often takes on an intensity similar to the traumatic experience. Think of it as when the crime is committed, some traces of DNA are left behind that belong to the aggressor or traumatic experience but remain a part of the affected person.
Often the person who experienced the trauma tends to associate themselves with the pain body – or you can say – the pain body takes over the person who has now identified themselves with the wound/trauma.
Commonly, people do not know how to get out of this situation and so re-expose themselves to traumatic situations or even feel affinity to and form a relationship or closeness/identity with their trauma.
How to move on from the effects of trauma / PTSD
There has been a lot of research done which confirms that pharmaceutical medication doesn’t work in the long term and it's only good for acute stages of trauma / PTSD i.e. suppressing and calming, not working with the root cause of the trauma and suffering that ensues.
The approaches that do seem to help involve dealing with trauma stored in the body-mind through recognising and addressing the interplay of the subconscious mind and body. Accordingly, an interplay of mind, body and energy tools such as the following is needed: Yoga, Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Counselling, Acupuncture, Regression Therapy, Hypnosis, EMDR, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Psychedelics, and Meditation/Chanting.
Ideally, these therapies need to be supported by some kind of group work where a person, with the help and support of a community, integrates the experience and creates new neural pathways in their brain, essentially rewiring the old neural pathways and bringing the pain body “into the light” i.e., therefore transmuting and integrating in a different form.
What all these approaches seem to have in common is that they are able to frame and zoom in on the traumatic event and then take it apart, like when you have a photo in the frame and you want to change it, you have to take it off the wall and dismantle it, take the tape, nails and put a new photo behind the glass.
When you take a suppressant or pharmaceutical medication, it is like trying to paint the colour of the frame – hoping this will create a new picture that gives a different impact to the viewer. It doesn’t actually change the picture - i.e., what actually needs to be changed. Unfortunately, this is not dealing with the trauma, only palliating the symptoms. I should clarify here that trauma is different to severe mental illness like schizophrenia, where a person may need to rely on pharmaceutical medication to function. However, more recently, there is more and more evidence showing that psychedelic therapies are able to successfully treat and heal even patients with severe depression or schizophrenia.
By now, it is clear that when it comes to mental health in particular, the western pharmaceutical medicine approach is best for emergency medicine where it can save lives or for acute stages of ill health. However, in the long term, people need to take more holistic approaches including reframing, substituting and the healing modalities already mentioned.
More about the effective tools
Trauma lives in a complex environment. It cannot just be shifted and subdued. It must be approached, transmuted and integrated using a variety of tools.
Setting the intention: To begin the process, the individual must give themselves permission to move on from the trauma and to want to start a new way – move ahead. From a therapist's perspective, it doesn’t work to just push a person into healing, one has to want it.
Bodywork, such as Cranio-Sacral Therapy and energy work such as acupuncture are able to really shift the body into its optimum state.
EFT, EMDR, TRE are some tools that help the person to start to notice the pain body and manage their response when it arises.
One of the best systems is regression therapy. The aim is not to feel the pain again but to get to the place just before the trauma happened and help the body process some unconscious memories and shine the light in order to process them. It might be that there is even an earlier memory of the event or even some kind of generational trauma stored in our DNA and one might get a flashback of something that doesn’t appear to be from the environment of their current lifetime. Through this process, a person usually encounters some form of debilitating emotion, be it anger, pain, sadness or grief about what happened or is about to. To process this emotion and substitute the event in the mind together with compassion and forgiveness is crucial.
Psychedelics: there is increasing research that people with severe mental health illnesses can benefit from certain psychedelics e.g., MDMA for PTSD and psilocybin for depression. The usage of psychedelics isn’t meant to be propose the use and reliance on drugs. Psychedelics are proven to re-connect or process deep stored trauma. Unfortunately, most are illegal however, we can only hope that they will be sanctioned for therapeutic use soon.
Transformation
An important component of healing not already mentioned is spirituality, the connection to “something greater”- whether you call it Love, Universe, Absolute Truth, compassion, open heart - the connection is important. We need to put things into perspective and understand that suffering is ultimately caused by our identification with matter and not realizing that we are ultimately spiritual beings.
The healing process is an integration of different tools. Transformation and healing occur when consciousness (knowledge & spiritual vibration) is increased together with the clearing of old and debilitating patterns and neural pathways, substituted by the newly realised and updated versions of self. This is when the amygdala is tamed and the frontal cortex stops being inhibited and starts to play the role it is made to. This is when one stops being stuck with the old story but is able to say: “I am here because of all that happened and I have the opportunity to be almost re-born again”. Instead of going into a museum of war crimes, we can throw away the guns and embrace a new life.
The transformation and the embracing of the new would be done with a therapist who can hold a space for the person and who can help the person see that they are not their pain body. And looking at their life experiences from a higher perspective is seeing that there is always something to help one learn and grow. And if you don’t grow in the jungle – you die. This is in line with most cancers and unexplained neurological or autoimmune disease – the person on some level decides that there is no meaning, point in living and resigns to the half-life. Taking the pill and ignoring the trauma or feeling, it's probably easier in the short term, but not in the longer term, as you might guess what is down the line for most of these cases.
Please feel free to contact me if you are being affected by trauma or PTSD. I am happy to help, however, this type of deep and complex work requires an investment of time and a commitment to do the work. It may also entail potential changes of lifestyle or environment in order to see any substantial and long-term results.
imultaneously address root causes and treat clients holistically.
Watford ACUPUNCTURE