The effects of trauma can impact your life for years or even decades after the traumatic events. Trauma wreaks havoc on the psyche. It can lead to anxiety, depression, feeling detached from life or your body, difficulty in building healthy relationships, and diminishing your capacity to enjoy life.
Trauma affects you in many ways, so it is best addressed with a multi-layered approach. With cognitive insight, coping skills, somatic work (body-based healing), and soul work (insight into what your soul needs), you can heal your trauma holistically and look forward to a healthy and fulfilling life ahead.
Holistic healing can support you in finding balance again after experiencing trauma.
Key points
- Trauma affects your emotional and physical health, your ability to trust, and your ability to have fulfilling relationships.
- A holistic mind-body-soul approach can help you heal on many dimensions.
- Cognitive insight helps you understand and replace your behaviors with healthier habits. Somatic work can resolve trauma in your body
- Connecting with your soul can help you heal from trauma and empower your future.
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What is trauma?
Trauma comes in many forms. You may have experienced an isolated traumatic incident, or your might have experienced a series of traumatic events over time. You may have experienced trauma in childhood or trauma as an adult. Trauma can stem from sexual assault, violence in the home or outside of the home, an accident, abuse, or even neglect. Trauma is an emotional reaction that occurs as the result of difficult, dangerous, or disturbing events.
Trauma can be any experience that undermines your sense of safety and teaches you that the world is not a safe place to be. Whether the trauma only occurred once or was repeated, you can feel the effects of the trauma for many years in your ability to develop healthy relationships, stay resilient in the face of setbacks, feel centered and calm, develop a sense of safety and trust, and even in physical health challenges.
A holistic mind-body-soul approach to heal trauma
Cognitive insight
Cognitive insight work helps you understand and replace your behaviors with healthier habits.
Cognitive insight work examines the connection between experiences and behaviors. You can gain insight into why you’ve developed certain behaviors and how these behaviors either do or don’t serve you. Through cognitive insight work, you can get out of unhealthy patterns of behavior by understanding how they evolved in the first place and then learn to replace them with healthier habits that truly nourish you rather than cover-up the painful experiences.
Resolving trauma in the body through somatic work
Somatic work is a body-centered approach that works to release trauma that is latent in the body by using natural bodily (somatic) responses.
During a traumatic event, the body releases a rush of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. The sudden shock of the experience can interact with your stress response, and trap energies from the traumatic experience in different areas of your body. Somatic work allows your body to release those trapped energetic experiences from your nervous system in a way that other modes of therapy like talk therapy obviously can’t. Somatic work is using the body in order to heal the body.
Healing trauma on a soul level
Jungian and transpersonal psychology explains life experiences from a spiritual perspective. If you’re able to tune in to what your soul is trying to tell you, you may learn that all of your life experiences, including the unpleasant ones, are part and parcel of your soul’s spiritual journey through this world. From the soul’s perspective, your experience of trauma is innately tied to your purpose in this world, and resolving your traumas can help you better connect with who you are and what you’re able to achieve here on earth.
By asking the right questions, and learning to listen to your own soul’s answers, you not only heal from trauma but can access a wealth of inner strength. You can build resilience and wisdom that can truly transform painful experiences to empower your future.
The serious consequences of trauma on your physical health
Unresolved trauma can manifest in physical health conditions such as chronic pain, lack of energy, migraines, or other difficult symptoms. The ongoing effects of traumatic experiences that are not resolved include a greater risk for cardiovascular disease and other physical health problems.
Sudden exposure to any trauma raises your levels of adrenaline and cortisol. This is known as the stress response. A sudden flood of stress hormones can be life-saving when faced with imminent danger. But sustained levels of these hormones in response to frequent or prolonged trauma puts undue strain on your adrenals and endocrine system, which can increase your risk of autoimmune conditions, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, and even cancer.
How trauma impacts your mental health
Because trauma compromises your sense of safety on a very basic level, a traumatic experience can evoke hyperarousal symptoms such as hypervigilance or feeling constantly on guard. This can significantly increase your risk of depression, anxiety, or other mental health disorders, and can greatly reduce your capacity to fully participate in and enjoy life.
A study of more than 17,000 middle-class American adults showed that more than 60% of adults with negative physical and mental health conditions were exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — including abuse, neglect, and heightened stress in childhood.
Unresolved trauma can interfere with your relationships
Transpersonal psychology explains how unresolved trauma can limit your capacity to form close and emotionally healthy relationships. You might be unable to relate to others in a healthy way or be afraid of emotional and physical closeness (intimacy), which prevents you from being able to develop meaningful relationships with others.
Reach out for effective holistic help
While the effects of trauma can be difficult in different dimensions of your life, holistic therapy for trauma can be effective. You don’t have to be trapped forever by traumatic experiences. You can heal from trauma and live a happier more fulfilling life. Reach out today to schedule your free consultation.