Beyond "Stressed" lies "Traumatized"

“All of us have been born into a pre-traumatized field. I have been taught, and trained, and educated by people that at least have a certain amount of inner fragmentation in their nervous system; that is what we call trauma. So I am actually trained to see a world that is fragmented.” –Dr. Thomas Hubl.

We are trained not to see how institutional life affects our bodies, our emotions, our nervous system, therefore, how it traumatizes us. We understand how a single horrifying event, like combat or sexual assault, can create trauma. And most of us might reflect that such has not happened to us, so we’re not traumatized. But we’ve been taught and trained and educated into an element of trauma: dissociation, “cognitive functioning without an integration of our cognitions with our bodily experiences,” according to Dr. Stephen Borges, “and that this leads to a type of dissociation that is occupying a significant percentage of everyone’s lives.”

Dissociation means living in a fragmented world, at least on the doorstep of trauma.

To understand how traumatic stress is? affecting us, we need to deepen our understanding of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) that controls most of our body’s functions. A typical understanding is that the ANS? is composed of two branches: the Sympathetic branch,? or gas pedal , which causes arousal and leads to the Fight or Flight response, and the Parasympathetic branch, the brake, that slows us down and leads to Rest and Relaxation.?

This view is outdated, missing a huge component of the ANS, without which we really cannot understand traumatic stress. Our nervous system’s? response to stress is not just Fight/Flight, it’s Fight/Flight or Freeze. And Freeze is not just “hold still,” it is becoming shut down, “involuntarily immobilized.”

?The main component of the Parasympathetic branch is the Vagus nerve, and this nerve complex has two parts with very different effects: the Social Engagement System, and the Emergency State.

In the diagram above, the Social Engagement System is the green zone. Here the Vagus nerve regulates the muscles of the head, of vocal and facial expression, and of the middle ear that distinguishes frequencies of the human voice. These? give clues to others of how safe it is to approach us. We need safety and connection with others to be ourselves.

The Sympathetic Nervous System is the orange and red zone, flight or fight. It mobilizes us for survival, and when the Sympathetic Nervous system activates, the Social Engagement System drops out. We’re not looking for clues of safety, and we’re not hearing the frequencies of the voice as well.? As long as we’re able to move, we can stay in this zone, though we are rapidly depleting resources that would allow us to stay there.

If we don’t return to the Social Engagement System,? then we become progressively overwhelmed. When we can’t mobilize to get away, the oldest part of the Vagus nerve (in evolutionary terms) kicks in. It overrides both the green and orange/red zones. This is? the blue zone; we become a collapsed system. It is the oldest defense system in life, hiding, playing dead, and it is designed to help us survive whatever is happening to us at the moment when we can’t get away.

The helplessness that people experience while in the blue zone brings with it? a lot of shame. I “should have” done something, or “I wish I had” done better. But, neurologically, you couldn’t.?

Dr. Porges explains, “We forget that some bodily reactions are reflexive and not voluntary. Immobilization in response to life threat is a common ‘reflexive' response shared with other mammalian species. Our society treats people who don't fight or who don't effectively mobilize as if there is something wrong with them. Instead, a Polyvagal-informed society would be saying, “This really was the best neurobiologically adaptive response that you could have made….

???This is all about how we interpret our own behaviors–how we develop our personal narrative.”?

But the helplessness can persist. Our nervous system doesn’t give us an easy way out of it. A gazelle in the clutches of a cheetah can play dead, and when the cheetah pauses to catch its breath, can get up and run away. Then, at a safe distance, the gazelle will literally shake off the trauma. We don’t do that (though we could; it’s called Somatic Experiencing). But without some kind of intervention, playing dead can become a lifestyle. We become more dissociated,? one of the walking numb, or trapped and hopeless, cut off from the connections that could restore us to life.

“Trauma is a chronic disruption of connection,” says Dr. Porges. We all? have to become more Polyvagal-informed. We have to understand that evaluative institutions, like education and healthcare,? automatically trigger our nervous system to go into defense mode, that the cognitive bias of our whole society promotes dissociation and works against learning, health, and connection

“Yes, it is all about being informed,” according to Dr. Stephen Porges. In looking at your own life, at? your persistent struggles, areas of challenge where your energy just evaporates, where you can’t see the forest OR the trees, do you recognize that your deficiency may have nothing to do with will power? And everything to do with trauma? Are you carrying shame for this, and is it time to let that shame go? To shake it off?

In dealing with colleagues, are they masking problems where greater connection could bring a resolution? When dealing? with children or adolescents, is their troubled behavior a sign that their oppositional behavior is driven by fear, or their attention problems are signs of hyperarousal, or their isolation is really an inability to trust? In family members or people you meet, does their muteness or monotone expression mean that their voice is traumatized??

We all have to become more Polyvagal-informed, and now you are starting to be. See you in the green zone.

The quote from Dr. Thomas Buhl and the diagram of the Polyvagal System are from “The Resilient Heart: Trauma-Sensitive HeartMath Certification” by the HeartMath Institute, www.heartmath.org.

The quotes from Dr. Stephen W. Porges are taken from The Pocket Guide to the Polyvagal theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe.

Somatic Experiencing was developed by Peter Levine, PhD,? https://traumahealing.org/