Confronting Emotional Stress & Early Developmental Trauma for Lasting Healing
Emotional stress is the biggest contributing factor in six leading causes of death: cancer, heart disease, respiratory diseases, liver cirrhosis, injuries and suicide.
90% of all visits to the doctor are related to inadequate handling of stress.*
Stress can manifest as:
- Panic attacks
- Phobias
- Depression
- Obsessive compulsive disorder
They occur more often when the internal emotional state worsens, of an external strong trigger, and sometimes (seemingly) for no reason.
Developmental trauma and neglect are the single largest source of the largest number of psychological and somatic diseases during life.**
In order to understand a person, we must know the environmental surrounding that has formed a person. Early development is the formative period of a person.
What is early developmental trauma?
Developmental-related trauma essentially occurs as:
- Developmental trauma by neglecting and not fulfilling the child’s primary needs
- The consequence of the child’s unbearably painful emotional experience
– shock trauma (a very strong unworkable experience)
– cumulative trauma (repeated hurtful experience of lower intensity)
How does it manifest in adults?
- Inadaptability, irritability and excessive reactivity
- Violent reactions during a sudden change of plan or failure to meet expectations.
- Distinct irritability and low breaking point already and at lower pressures.
- Inappropriate and excessive flight-fight response code triggering situations (due to inadequate changed perceptions).
How integral body psychotherapy can help?
- You learn who you are and what you can become, what our real human potential is.
- When and how you have been deprived of your needs, what and why you did not get and how it has determined you.
- How can you change it now and develop yourself towards the realisation of your potential at the level of psyche, brain and emotions, and how you can become the way you feel yourself to be in your essence.
- To clarify and help you understand through an integral approach: psychological, neural (development brain), spiritual, physical (physical and biochemical)
Personally for me, everything used to be stressful: why is he doing this, why is she so cold, why are people so stressed out, he is so stupid for not listening to me, she is so this and that…. And the list goes on and on. It was stressful to be alive, and even at home things were busy and it was impossible to do everything I wanted the way I wanted. I had no time, no patience, no desire to ‘live like this’, and in time I got ‘better’ staying at home, but outside OMG, it felt dreadful.
Does it sound familiar?
Did you find yourself in my story?
Yoga and meditation is what I have known since 2004. It was the only place where I was able to reach mySelf, and to access my “rest and digest”. But any outside triggers would slowly bring my system to “fight-or-flight” responses. In other words, a system that prepares the body for strenuous physical activity. I was always ready-to-go, and it was so tiring.
A drive for being seen and valued in every aspect of my achievements (because my parents did not show validation/recognition of my actions) has given me a strength to push myself in every aspect of my functioning. But on the other side I had a violent reaction, when things would not go my way or plans would change, and I would feel as a failure which resulted in depression and freeze, or extreme reactions and regulations with substances. In my mind I was not good enough, I was not fast enough, I was not smart enough…and the list goes on and on. It was an extreme road of fast and furious, a constant up and down mode, a mode that required an extreme amount of energy. It was a never ending spiral but my system did not know different.
In therapy (good number of them) I was led to the different levels of witnessing my feelings and reactions. Layer by layer in building the relationship with my therapist, I was learning about my patterns and reasoning behind it. Through releasing the body’s expression of stored pain and trauma, a new experience with a trustworthy support rewired my system. We usually perceive ourselves from the memory of personal events, and an even narrower form is based on identification and classification and needs for confirmation of personal values from the outside. I did not know enough about my authentic real worth. My therapist was my witness (much needed for integration and physiological experience) that gave me the ability to self-observe and testify my conditions.
Finally, I feel! I have a balance between my thoughts and my feelings without neglecting or diminishing either one. Triggers are now my internal drivers for deeper understanding of myself, and surroundings are my continuous call for reflection, and introspection. Life is beautiful, full of opportunity for growth.
*Please be aware that this is just a small fraction of my personal story. There are many layers and the possibilities for the individual dive into the subject.
https://integralpsychotherpay.ie/
Main – Photo by Suzana Zalokar
