These days, everything seems out of whack. That might include your nervous system.
Adjusting to life with COVID has been stressful, no doubt about it. I’m reasonably resourceful and resillient, but that didn’t prevent me from going through a cranky patch for a while.
It wasn’t just the daily dose of depressing news about social systems falling apart and the ginormous debt the country was accumulating to keep us afloat in the lockdown. Things that were easy now became complicated.
This is a difficult time, the kind that can cause us to store trauma in our bodies as we try to cope—with new demands, with the loss of our sense of autonomy, with the anxiety of not knowing what’s coming next…
Trauma is the response of our nervous system to an overwhelming situation. It is not the event, it’s how we deal with it.
What we don’t process at the time it occurs will live with us in our energy field, where it interferes with our ability to function well as life goes on.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study) is a research study of over 17,000 people conducted in the US by Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Participants were recruited between 1995 and 1997 and have been followed to see what happened to their health over the years since then.
This study has come up frequently in recent health seminars because it demonstrates an association of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with health and social problems in adulthood.
Here is Dr. Vincent Felitti, one of the principal investigators on this study, to tell you more about how childhood trauma can lead to serious illness later in life. Continue reading
I burst out laughing when this graphic appeared on my Facebook feed. Judging from the number of likes, I wasn’t the only one. I think it’s one of those things that makes us laugh because we recognize the truth of it in ourselves. Since I was working on this blogpost that day, it packed an extra punch for me.
The ending of the original quote, attributed to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is that it makes us stronger. While that can be true, it doesn’t magically happen. Using our difficulties to grow and become more resilient requires attention. It gives us the chance to release the energetic effects of trauma, so we can reconnect with ourselves to become ever-more whole. Continue reading