Trauma is anything that for any reason, at that time, overwhelmed you and your nervous system. It is significantly different to stress – in terms of their biochemical effects, stress and trauma are completely different experiences. Trauma is not an event. Although it might occur around an event, it is not about the event. Trauma is the experience your body had going through the event, or through a period of time. It can be both a one-time event or a series of events. Its effects on individuals can vary widely, and can manifest in many ways, impacting both the mind and somatic body.

For one person, trauma can be caused by a miscarriage, for another, the loss of a marriage or the decline of their health. For another, it’s a physical or sexual abuse. For other’s it could be a natural disaster or a road accident. For some, it might be their whole childhood experience, or even accumulated life experiences, although they cannot identify anything specific. Someone could go through the same event as another being, and one person may walk away traumatised while the other person may walk away fine. Why? The state of their nervous systems going into the experience sets the stage for how they navigate, process and integrate the experience (this then goes back to early childhood neurobiological and neurodevelopmental patterns). People diagnosed with PTSD already had trauma patterns in their nervous system that affected their perception of the experience that followed – they were unable to process and integrate as their system was already in a dysfunctional state.

Regardless of the experience, it is the effect on the nervous system and the body is the same. Physical to emotional and behavioural symptoms can be indicators of trauma, especially for those who are experiencing PTSD or CPTSD.

• Physical manifestations like fatigue, chronic or acute pain, inflammation
• Emotional changes such as mood swings, outbursts, shut down, fleeing
• Behavioural shifts and unexplained reactions that seem highly irrational

It is imperative to know that there is a huge difference between stress and trauma.

In terms of their biochemical effects, stress and trauma are completely different experiences felt within the body. When you have a stress response, meaning fight or flight energy involving the sympathetic trunk of the nervous system, it’s your body’s way of trying to maintain homeostasis. This refers to the balance between all of your different systems. Your body works hard to make sure all your organs and systems work together harmoniously and synchronously (such as your kidneys, liver, digestive system, and thyroid) to keep you in a healthy range. When you’re under a lot of stress, your body fights to make sure you can still function well enough. The role of the nervous system is to maintain homeostasis, to keep you alive and maintain this balance of homeostasis. It knows if you don’t maintain balance, then you’re going to progress into disease, following on further into emergency that may lead to death. But stress response is NOT trauma response.

So essentially, the nervous system’s main concern is keeping you alive. And as we know according to Polyvagal Theory, there are 3 main systems within the Autonomic System, as show in the chart, all which have their own distinctive job while also interplaying with one another at any one time.

What about the Biology of Trauma?

The biology of trauma comes down to your actual biology, your gene expression, your cellular matrix. It’s the biology of your nervous system and the physiology of your nervous system on a cellular level. This is what determines whether in the present moment, an event or experience in life, will just be a stress for you that your body can go into sympathetic and come back down into homeostasis OR if it goes into sympathetic and becomes too much overwhelm for your system that you shift into a freeze response and shut down. The freeze response is the trauma response. It is the nervous system saying… “We aren’t going to make it, we are going to die, we need to conserve and preserve”. So it sends the system into shut down and collapsed immobility as a means to help you survive. This is done outside of conscious awareness. Meaning, it’s not a choice you made or an action you chose to undertake. It is done unconsciously through neuroception. Those diagnosed with PTSD will be lying within this nervous system range. It can take months to thaw out of this range.

For many i have guided with PTSD and CPTSD, it can take a solid and consistent 12-18 months to safely come out from freeze state / trauma response and into vagal regulatory states. But the point being, it is achievable and doable, one you have a neuroplasticity programme in place that is working synergistically in conjunction with a vagus nerve regulatory plan. There must be a psycho aspect and a bio somatic aspect, creating coherence and neurological signalling of safety.

This here can be achieved via The Firefly Method® which has taken Danielle 4 years to perfect. And it works, time and time again

How can I identify stored trauma in my body?

Trauma becomes wired into our nervous system. There are certain ways it shows up after being stored in the body or wired into the nervous system. We can identify trauma through observing and witnessing the patterns of our life. For instance, patterns for numbing, patterns for managing and regulating emotions, patterns for being able to handle difficult situations. Do you emotionally shut off? Mentally check out? What are your patterns around food consumption? Do you emotionally eat? Do you emotionally drink? Do you binge drink or take recreationally drugs? Are you endlessly trying to escape your reality? Do you scroll on social media? Numbing out behaviours are patterns of the freeze trauma response.

Your feelings, reactions, and triggers can reveal underlying trauma. It can look like consistently feeling burned out, panic attacks, ongoing anxiety, not being able to move through grief, not being able to complete daily simple tasks. We can see trauma even though we might not have considered it as trauma. We see it as, “my personality” or, “my attachment style”. For instance, pushing people away to protect ourselves, or doing the opposite, anxiously attaching and latching on and struggling to let them go. Trauma also has a connection to health conditions and contributes to many health issues, both in the short-term, and long-term. Not only this but once your biology has been affected by stored and unresolved trauma, it also predisposes you to continue experiencing more of life as a trauma, pain, suffering, fear and grief. It repeats on a cycle as the trauma loop has not been resolved.

One example of a chronic health condition with a clear link to trauma is autoimmunity. Autoimmunity is related to chronic freeze response. Chronic pain is a freeze response. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s, Crohn’s. All of these are diseases, conditions, and symptoms that are classified as a freeze and trauma response. The nervous system is in the freeze response more than it is actually even in the stress response. The immune system believes the body is under attack, signally pro-inflammatory responses and high pain signalling.

As an overview, let me identify signs of stored trauma in the body

General

– Low energy inc fluctuating blood sugars – Easily overwhelmed

– Ongoing anxiety – Regular panic attacks

– Cycles of lowness – Depression – Burn out cycles

Relationships

– Avoidance – Withholding expression – Fear of conflict

– Clinging/Anxious Attachment – People pleasing – Meeting another’s needs before your own

– Pushing people away – Inability to connect

Coping Mechanisms

– Emotional eating/constriction – Numbing patterns – Binge drinking

– Substance usage – Endless scrolling – Binge watching TV – Over exercising

– Isolating – Avoiding people and situations – ‘Checking out’

Health Conditions

– Chronic Pain – Nerve pain – Physical bracing and tightness – High inflammation – Cancer

– Gut issues – Poor digestion and motility – Autoimmune issues

– Chronic fatigue – Always seeming to be ‘sick’