Recurring flashbacks.
Constantly expecting something terrible to happen.
Feeling like a prisoner in your own body.
In other words, trauma is serious business. So serious, in fact, that it gets imprinted on your central nervous system, permanently in place until you experience your body in new ways. But before we dive into the cure, let’s look at the cause.
So, what is PTSD?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder happens when something traumatic happens to you, or you see it happen. For traditional PTSD, this means things like physical or sexual assault, verbal or physical abuse, accidents, surviving a natural disaster or a near-death experience. For complex trauma, it might be that nothing “dramatic” happens, but rather a slow burn of small incidences that imprint themselves on your mind and body, changing how you move through the world. Unfortunately, this leads you to a place where you’re incredibly anxious, unable to relax because of the events that’ve happened and your body lives in the past while you continually (most often, unsuccessfully) try to create fresh start.
While it manifests in different ways for different people, symptoms include:
- Agitation, irritability & hostility
- Always on high alert (hypervigilence)
- Self-destructive behavior
- Social isolation from friends & family
- Mistrust, intense fear & severe anxiety
- Loss of pleasure, guilt, or loneliness
- Insomnia & night terrors
- Emotional detachment or unwanted thoughts
And the two most important things to know about PTSD?
1 | It’s not your fault.
Your body flips on autopilot so it can do its duty and protect you from getting hurt again. As a result, your body goes overboard with this protection, sending you false warning signs and triggering feelings that your painful past keeps getting played out in the present, as if it’s happening again and again to you, on loop. These warning signs also play a big part in feeling stuck in your body, out of control, unable to escape, and unsafe. It’s not you—it’s your body.
2 | PTSD isn’t a life sentence. (Not even close.)
While talk therapy can stir up the pain, adding in mindful gentle movement unlocks and releases the pain that’s stored in your body, meaning you can bypass the mind (where the old story or memories reside) and delve into the heart of what’s going on. Once we find the underlying cause, we can gently access the pain and break the cycle. Here at MindBodyWise, I’m a huge believer in PTG, or Post-Traumatic Growth. It’s all about being positively changed as the result of struggling with a major life crisis. In other words, this is the rainbow after that exhausting, terrible rain.
Our work together:
Even though it doesn’t always feel like it, healing and recovery are absolutely possible, especially when the “Bodymind” is integrated so seamlessly into the treatment plan. By blending gentle movement and verbal processing, I create custom safe emotional spaces for exploration. No matter what you do, say, or experience, you’re always “right” and welcome here.
Your journey towards whole healing is all about resetting those intricate patterns of your body, mind, and heart, creating new ways of relating to yourself. I’m talking about accessing the core of your PTSD and C-PTSD, and trauma, so we can gain control of your body and settle your mind. Free from pain. Free from the stress of trying to find another thing that might help. Just gentle, complete self-acceptance that’ll have you befriending your body while gaining awareness and freedom from the plethora of symptoms that completely suck the life-force out of you. You deserve joy.
The healing can happen.
I’m here to help.
