The Holistic and Somatic Approaches to Healing Trauma and Psychosomatic Disorders
What Does A Psychosomatic Disorder Really Mean?
A psychosomatic disorder means that there is a disorder of the psyche in the soma, which in other words means the body. Therefore to heal a psychosomatic disorder, we must heal the psyche or the mind in the body, and it is important to note that this is different in the mind in her head
The Impact of Stress on Your Immune System and Autoimmune Disorder
An autoimmune disorder occurs when the immune system is attacking itself – now why on earth would your own immune system attack itself? Throughout unravelling the psych or the unconscious mind in my body, I’ve come to really surface how much hatred and self-rejection one can hold towards the self and holding it inside our bodies. In other cases, it is our hatred or anger towards someone close to us. We didn’t feel safe to feel it or express it, so by keeping it in and holding our anger back, we hurt our own immune systems. This was certainly the case for myself and the case for my clients. Understanding stress, trauma and PTSD within ourselves becomes vital.
Therefore to heal an autoimmune disorder, we need to understand the impact of emotional stress on our immune system. You must heal the repressed anger and self-hatred and self-rejection that is within. We also need to process and heal the hatred, anger and resentment towards another person. It is important to note that sometimes we don’t notice these patterns of illness but it’s helpful to see them in the mirrors of our lives where we have trouble or where there is unhappiness or illness around us.
Why Somatic Approaches to Healing Trauma and Physical Disorders Are Important
Disorder means that there is a lack of order in your body. If things are flowing in order then there is health but if they are out of order there is disorder. The same goes for disease. There isn’t enough ease flowing in life and then dis-ease forms.
Your childhood memories lie in your body cells, your experiences are in your body, the things you wanted to say are stuck in your body, the things others and you didn’t give yourself permission to feel, your heart breaks, your betrayals, your resentment – they are pain – they are bundles of stress, dormant stories waiting to be listened to, felt and spoken to. Therefore healing the body is a journey of emotional integration, wholeness, forgiveness and connection. This is where somatic approaches to healing trauma in the body are vital.
Insecure Attachments, Impatience and Control’s Effect on the Body
There is a psychological explanation for our attachment styles to people and things that we learn from our parents and society at large. The one who wants to pay attention to insecure attachment styles because secure attachment styles do not cause problems in relationships and health, however, insecure attachment ones do.
For example, an insecure attachment style is ridden with anxiety and avoidance. Basically, this means that the things that you’re attached to, like people, your jobs or any relational entity often always make you feel kind of anxious and can trigger your fears of loss. This way of relating to your world is extremely stressful and creates constant stress levels in the body, therefore it’s important to heal the insecure attachment style, via grieving attachments.
It is known that emotional pain causes physiological effects and creates stressful responses in the body. One of the most common ways to assess a patient’s status is through the pain scale. Pain is pain therefore a lot of emotional pain can manifest in physical pain. If you have a history of many emotional experiences that are painful in your life then it can accumulate in the body and manifest as physical problems.
It is the lack of love and safety that lie deep in our foundational processing that our life’s empire is built upon. For example, if you don’t have a solid emotional and psychological foundation and are full of anxiety about everything you build on top of, it’s going to be very stressful and hard to sustain. It’s kind of like building a house on quicksand, it’s easy to crumble and fall.
It is the fear within that drives you to do what you do. Fear is not a bad thing, but running your nervous system on anxiety and constantly increasing stress hormones in the body creates physical illness. Therefore people with sensitive bodies cannot operate on anxiety and fear for too long before the nervous system, immune system and digestive tract go out of order, hence all the disorders in our hustle culture.
Then there’s the fighting. While fighting is a natural human reaction to danger, war and chaos, the act of constant fighting or a constant battle that exists within oneself can be very stressful on the nervous system and immune systems. We carry the wars of intergenerational trauma in our blood and until we sit back and heal it, our souls will never feel rested.
Then there’s the emotional emptiness that we face. It’s common that we grow up in families and have unmet needs. In families where there was abuse and dysfunction, these unmet needs are overwhelming. Unmet emotional needs and self-abandonment to please others to survive, lead to a vast amount of emotional emptiness. This phenomenon leads to various addictions and attachment styles that can be stressful for the
body. Imagine having pain and emptiness drive your addictions and your life behaviours. These behaviours can be dysfunctional and self-sabotaging to health and well-being.
Emotional Pain Can Bring Us to Paying Attention
Addictions lead us to escape into the mind and away from the body. Escaping into parts of the brain that keep us dissociated or disconnected from our bodies is a protective or defensive mechanism so that we don’t feel the pain that needs to be felt. For us sensitive folk, it is too much pain and too much abuse for one to tolerate to survive therefore we dissociate and become disconnected from our emotions and our true selves. Therefore if you are experiencing a lot of pain, anxiety, depression and addictions in your life and you can’t take it anymore, this means that your true emotions are knocking on your door so that you can finally pay attention to them and return to who you really are. You are always invited to come back home to your true self.
To Your Healing,
Tracey Nguyen, RN, MN, Holistic Nurse Psychotherapist
Specialties: complex trauma, intergenerational trauma, narcissistic abuse, codependency, BPD and
bowel/autoimmune disorders
Please Check My Courses :
Course 1 – How to Heal Emotions to Heal Your Body
Course 2 – How to Heal Narcissistic Abuse, CPTSD & Codependency
