KATRIEN'S VERSION
Trauma is any feeling unfelt.
During any New Experience, small or large, there are 3 levels that You Experience.
- INSTINCT: An Instinctual Emotional response. This is the Energy that accompanies an Emotion. Each Emotion has its own Energetic Flavour.
- EXPRESSION: Where Instinctual Emotional Energy mixes with Your Identity to create a personalized Expression of the Emotion You're experiencing.
- PERCEPTION: Where Your expression is monitored, cross-referenced and potentially altered to create Suppression or Allowance.
If Perception suppresses Emotion You get Trauma.
Trauma is filed as a Memory in Your Brain on Auto-Loop so You are constantly, sub-consciously aware of it. And in Your Fascia, where You consistently and subconsciously Contract against the Energetic expression.
Bringing the Memory to Conscious Awareness releases Trauma.
There are 2 Entry Points for release:
- Psychologically.
- Somatically.
Below is a video on how to do it somatically.
The Article
When I work with My Clients the very first thing I introduce them to is Myofascial Release (MFR), Rolling or some other sort of Self-Massage. And every time I finish off the explanation with a fore-warning that they might find themselves in tricky situations emotionally. And that experiencing these situations doesn’t make You a Weirdo, in fact it’s very normal Human Behaviour. Not only feeling unfelt Emotions but also to release them through Expression.
Which I’ll be honest the first 10 times around it can get pretty strange.
Usually this is as far as the explanation goes. I skim the surface with a Finisher like “ If something comes up, open Yourself to it, get lost in the moment and let it pass.”
But recently I had a small Presentation I did with a group of Master’s Students completing their degree in Trauma Work Therapy and I received a lot of Questions and Requests about how to create Space within the Body.
So in this Article I’m going to explain to You how Everyone experiences Trauma on a regular Basis, Why Expression is the Antidote to any Trauma, How feeling Your Emotions is the easiest Reset Button for Your Physiological Health and we’re going to cap it all off with a video that shows You how to visit Your Trauma through the Body to create Space.
No Psychological Inquiry required.
But first I’m going to tell You what Trauma actually is.
DO I REALLY HAVE TRAUMA?
In one of my recent articles Micro trauma: How to Unwind and Support Your Own Psychic Patterns, I described Trauma as any Feeling unfelt. This can range from one end of the Spectrum and span the globe to reach the other end. From spilling some water on Your shirt right before You answer the door for Your Dinner Party, - where You have to quickly ignore or only halfway acknowledge the emotion of feeling upset in order to present Yourself as a Good Host/Hostess. All the way to micro-traumas that accumulate over time or Large T Trauma’s that require some serious Processing and a re-introduction to Self-Connection and what it means to Feel Safe.
The Point is if You ever ignored an Emotion because it felt uncomfortable, the Place You were in didn’t feel conducive for its Expression, or You just thought “Ahh, it’s no big deal”, it’s still there.
Standing on the Shore of Your Inner Beach with Sunscreen, waiting for You to call it aboard the Sun Deck of Your Private Penthouse Yacht called Life.
THE LINK BETWEEN TRAUMA & EXPRESSION
We all know that anything good in Life always comes in the shape of a Pyramid.
Toblerone, Tepee’s, Blocks of Swiss Cheese, Watermelon Slices, Wet Floor Signs.
What’s not to love about a Pyramid?
So let Me Introduce You to The Pyramid of Expression.
Before You take a look, it’s good to know that Baseline is Your Standard Operating Procedure. And if You are present You are here less than 5% of the time.
That’s not a scientifically backed number but the point is when You’re operating from Your Right Hemisphere You’re always in a State of Energetic Exchange between Your Environment and Yourself. Naturally You’re going to feel new sensations every moment and Your Expression of those sensations is going to change synchronously.
Of course these can be imperceptibly small or extraneously large but the point is You are aware of them.
In Your Natural State Baseline is a “Touch-and-Go” Response. A point You come back to and bounce off of.
On the other hand You can get stuck at Baseline when You lock Yourself up in Your left Hemisphere. This is where Trauma occurs. Not Feeling an experience and therefore denying its Expression.
Disconnecting from the rest of Your Body and the Outside World. This is how You get stuck. You become Expressionless. Or rather continuously expressing the Energetic Constitution of a Memory.
A Memory that still has emotions attached.
Emotions that never got felt, and therefore never got Expressed.
Unfelt and Unexpressed = Trauma
So what’s this Energetic Constitution You ask?
Only the most Wooey Piece of Pyscho-somatic Science You could ever get You hands on.
Just Kidding, it’s actually pretty Basic. Let Me Show You through the Pyramid.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE SOMETHING NEW
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INSTINCT
The First thing that happens when You feel something new is an Instinctual Response. Instinct is at the Base because it Drives the areas higher up in the Pyramid. Humans have a set of Emotions that operate on an instinctual level. Evolutionarily conserved, these emotions aid Survival. They are:
- Joy / Trust / Happiness
- Fear / Surprise / Excitement
- Anger
- Sadness.
Think of them like the 3 Primary Colors of Red, Yellow and Blue.
Except there’s 4.
They can exist on their own as Basic Emotions, or they can also blend with one another to form Complex Emotions like Love, Frustration, Jealousy or Gratitude.
Both Basic and Complex Emotions have an ability to impact Physiology by Stabilizing or Destabilizing Homeostasis and both trigger Behaviour to create change. All of these Emotions arise out of the Instinctual Level.
And all of them also have an Energetic Constitution.
Like Ice Cream each Emotion has a Flavour. The Flavour is its Energetic Constitution. The Energy the Emotion carries has an “air” to it that favours the way an expression is transmitted.
Here’s a List:
- Happiness = Opening
- Sadness = Closing
- Anger = Outburst
- Love = Embrace
And the list goes on, but You get the gist.
EXPRESSION
The Instinctual response then carries on up the Pyramid to Influence Expression.
This is where the Energetic Constitution of the Emotion blends with Your Identity and determines how the Emotional Energy is Expressed.
For example Your Sister may express Joy by leaping Up on her toes, doing Starfish jumping Jacks in the air with a big Giant Grin spreading across from ear to ear. But Your Aunt might throw her hand up in the Air and shout “Hallelujah!” and then breaks into a smooth little tap dance number.
It all depends on You, but in both cases their Hearts, Bodies and Minds will be Open because that's part of Joy's Flavour.
PERCEPTION
The last stop is Perception. This is where You perceive Your Experience and Expression, (or planned Expression) from 1st and 3rd Person Objectives. It cross-references Present Sensations with Past Experiences and Future Potential Outcomes to decide whether or not You're going to Express or change the way You are currently Expressing. This is a perspective that uses judgment to help influence behavioural decisions.
Simplistically, it decides whether or not You are going to express Yourself truthfully.
With honesty and Integrity.
This one’s also the Kicker.
If You decide You feel safe enough to Express, all Systems are go and it’s Smooth Sailing.
If You decide You’re not going to Express or change halfway in spite of Your innate desires; there’s a feeling unfelt. Filed away in Your Brain and Body as Trauma.
But so what right? You still feel pretty good. Besides feeling better are there any other tangible effects on Your Health?
There sure are.
THE BEST THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR PHYSIOLOGY IS FEEL
Feeling guides Behaviour. The better You can feel the more intune You are to Your Body’s needs and the better decisions You can make. The better decisions You can make the Healthier You will be.
So long as You act on them of course.
Expression and Feeling go hand in hand.
They both carry out the same role. Something we will expand on down below.
Expression and Feeling are like Giant Buttons that have the Power to automatically reset Homeostasis by modifying behaviour.
Emotional Expressions are like giant Gift Baskets full of Homeostatic stabilizers that reset Physiological Balance within Your Body. They're like Santa Claus coming to the Mall and throwing out Christmas Presents from his Sleigh to every excited kid in sight.
Except each Kid is part of Your Physiology that had its Homeostasis disrupted and each Present is a Homeostatic Stabilizer.
Expression has far-reaching effects on Your Physiology by activating 10+ other buttons indirectly.
Instead of trying to activate the 10 other buttons individually, just Press the One “Expression Button” and You cover all Your bases.
When You choose to sweep a feeling under the rug, save it for another time or put it on the Back-burner, Perception is influencing Your Behaviour in a way that prevents You from fully committing to what You feel. This message gets relayed back down to Your Fascia, where it uses specialized contractile cells called Myofibroblasts embedded within it's Matrix to contract against the Energy of the Instinctual Emotion rather than allowing it to flow through into Expression.
This is where Your Body physically starts to tense up.
*NOTE: For Clarification Purposes I mean Energy in the Biophysical Sense.
I.e. Energy = The Capacity to do work.
You can test this for Yourself pretty quickly. Resist showing any emotion at the height of experiencing one and You’ll notice it takes a lot of effort.
We can reverse engineer this to observe it carries Energy through Newton’s Third Law “ Every Action has an equal and opposite Reaction.”
If it takes work to hold the Emotion in, then clearly it carries Energy.
Of course the Energy has its own proprietary blend of Herbs and Spices, a la courtesy of Energetic Constitution.*
When You tense up it’s like shrink-wrapping the Expression Button, deactivating the whole network.
You can still find Physiological Balance but know You’re dealing with each of the 10 buttons individually without a root cause.
For example if You feel Excitement or Fear Your Heart Rate increases, Blood Sugar spikes, Organs stop Digestion & Detoxification activities, Adrenaline gets released, and Your Blood Vessels dilate. Expressing Yourself by Running, Jumping, Yelling, Whooping or any other Expression of Your Choosing will reset everything so You're good to go. Back in balance in a matter of minutes.
If You ignore it Your Fascia will contract against the expression, You’re Amygdala will file it as a threat, Your HPA Axis will drip-feed You Cortisol to keep You on alert leading to Poor Sleep, Imbalanced Circadian Rhythm, Hypertension and Adrenal Exhaustion.
Perhaps a little over-dramatic but it’s certainly not uncommon.
Plus Your Fascia is still contracting against the Emotion and Your Brain has also put it on loop in the areas of Your Brain associated with Your Sub-conscious mind.
You can still:
- Regulate Your Breathing to adjust Sympathetic Response
- Meditate for altered Brainwave States.
- Eat the right foods like Bitters for Bile Secretion and Red Cabbage to activate Insulin Production
- Take Cold Showers to adjust Neural Tone
- Etc.
But if a feeling is left Unfelt a Memory is made, and the Root Cause still needs Your attention.
You still need to Allow the Energy to Flow through.
Allow.
Energy.
Flow.
I told You this was Wooey.
THE 2 WAYS TO ALLOW - (FEEL A FEELING)
There are a couple ways You can release a Memory.
One is Externally and the other is Internally. Both require Space.
In either case, if the Space is lost 2 things happen.
Let’s revisit Our Pyramid.
It got an Update.
ENTRY POINTS FOR EXPRESSION
As soon as Space is lost the feeling can no longer be felt or experienced and Trauma gets stored.
Trauma is stored in 2 ways:
- As a Memory in the Brain. Stored and Filed away in the Background where it is no longer consciously perceived.
- As a Memory in Your Fascia. Stored and filed as a Consistent contraction that You are no longer consciously aware of.
The goal in any Trauma work is to bring the Memory to the surface, to conscious awareness, so it can be felt and experientially understood.
Out of Context this can be a bumpy ride, which is why I've put together a video for You.
You can enter the Memory from 2 points.
- Psychologically. Through remembering, visualizing and re-experiencing the Memory and it's attached emotions mentally. This later carries forward to a full body response.
- Somatically. Through Touch, Movement and Bodywork. Finding tension in Your Fascia and giving Your Body the permission to feel the Memory to it’s fullest. This is known as Somatic Therapy, and includes practices like EMDR, Somatic experiencing, Alexander Techniques and the Feldenkrais Method. Sometimes this leads to logical understanding or explanations bubbling up the surface.
In both cases the Memory will challenge You. And out of Context Your Expression can feel awkward and foreign. So I thought I’d use Myself as an example in the Video below.
Like I tell My Clients “You might cry, make weird noises, throw a temper tantrum or laugh until You pee Yourself. But whatever it is commit to it and know that what You're experiencing is perfectly normal and okay. In fact it’s putting You further ahead.”
SUMMARY
So know that You know how to hack Trauma, learned the easiest way to reset Your Physiology and what You can do to begin looking for and adressing those traumas You never knew You had, have You given it a try? Is this New News or Old News for You? Do You have any questions?
Reach out through the Intake Form below or reach out on Social Media. I’d love to hear Your Feedback!
