Traumatic events can be the primary cause of physical and mental illness. This article will discuss how traumas take hold and offers an effective method for trauma release.
What are traumas?
Traumas are incidents or events of a physical and/or emotional nature that can be so stressful to people that their bodies or minds are altered in negative ways. These effects often are not easily reversed.
A simplified analogy is that trauma is like stretching a steel spring farther than it can go, so much so that its original shape is distorted and changed forever. Thus, when individuals experience a significant trauma (as opposed to an accident or uncomfortable situation), they can be changed forever.
Who is affected?
Many people experience traumas to one degree or another. Babies and children are especially vulnerable, due to their innocent, perceptive and sensitive natures. They might be afflicted with an illness, be given toxic drugs or vaccines that unknowingly damage their bodies, suffer falls or injuries, or find themselves at the mercy of abusive parents, teachers, other adults or peers.
Children do not understand negative “adult behaviors,” such as yelling, lying and manipulation. So, when these behaviors are precipitated around them, children’s minds are often deeply affected. These types of traumas are common and often dismissed by mainstream medical doctors and psychologists, perhaps because they themselves have been traumatized and are unable to recognize mild trauma in others.
Teens and adults can also experience traumas in the form of accidents, rape, medical interventions, humiliations and more. People living in extreme poverty and corrupt and oppressive nations have the potential to be exposed to many more traumatic situations than those in more economically stable and less violent parts of the globe.
How do traumas affect us?
Living with trauma is like having to drive around large boulders or potholes in the roads we travel every day. We cannot just plow through these roadblocks, but must carefully navigate around them. It is as though our minds wall off certain areas or memories. This always alters mental functioning and often alters physical, social and other activities, as well. It can cripple individuals for life.
Physical effects. Trauma can affect digestion, sleep, energy level, movement, heart function, immune response and much more. Indirectly, trauma can cause any symptom or disease, such as gaining too much weight, being too thin, physical disabilities (such as limping), impaired respiratory function, seizures, heart problems, immune diseases (such as cancer) and other physical disorders. In fact, trauma is an important and often unrecognized cause of disease. It is not taken into account during most doctor visits, although it should be.
Emotional effects. Trauma gets in the way of clear and accurate thinking. It can severely lower energy levels and self-esteem. Feelings are usually numbed to some degree, and perception and memory can be affected.
People can become neurotic, phobic, fearful, anxious, bipolar, borderline personality, compulsive, obsessive and depressed. The effects of trauma can cause bad habits, sour dispositions, addictions, deviance, delinquency, criminality and even psychotic conditions, such as schizophrenia.
After experiencing a trauma, in order to handle the pain, some people lie about the incident and attempt to minimize or block it out completely. This can turn people against themselves and distort their perceptions in unusual ways. It also can set up severe conflicts in the mind, which can lead to mental and physical disorders.
Other emotional effects of trauma are diminished mental acuity, risky behavior, slow thinking, extreme nervousness in certain situations, cigarette smoking, drug use, alcoholism, eating disorders, stuttering and other symptoms.
Examples of traumas
Traumas can take many forms. Here are some common examples:
1. Physical violence against the body — This might include beatings, muggings, molestation, rape, political, and other oppression, starvation or excessive exposure to heat, cold or noise. Other physical acts of violence involve bullying, hazing, gang violence and fights that result in the loss of teeth or broken arms or legs.
Traumas also can include auto accidents, building collapses, fires, floods, falls or animal attacks. Other physical traumas include difficult births, delayed development in a child or other birth defects, and death or disease of a loved one, including the death of a beloved pet.
Trauma can occur from a severe fever or other illness, especially one involving physical pain or disfigurement, such as losing one’s hair, having one’s skin burned (or fall off), or something else that is truly horrible to process. It also includes the effects of procedures, operations, vaccines, some medical drugs and poisons on or in the body. Even a difficult and toxic course of chemotherapy for cancer that wrecks the health can cause trauma.
2. Emotional traumas — These include harassment, intentional confusion, embarrassment, humiliation, manipulation, insults or being lied to. For example, trauma may be caused by a parent who is overly critical or who yells, swears or punishes too harshly. The same can occur in adult relationships if one party is not honest or respectful.
Something as seemingly minor as exaggerating the truth can cause trauma in sensitive people, because it creates confusion. Trauma may even be caused by a teacher who picks on a child, embarrasses or humiliates him. It may be the result of working for someone who chides his employees or acts harshly or irrationally. Praising a person too much causes trauma because it is often a form of lying and manipulation.
3. Social traumas — These are many, including being ostracized or excommunicated by your family, community, church or others. It might involve being slandered, having your reputation or good name ruined by someone, a very bitter and prolonged divorce, getting sued, job loss, bankruptcy, home forclosure or living in extreme poverty. Trauma can even occur after one has been exposed to very loud music at a rock concert, which not only hurts the ears but can affect mental health as well.
4. Spiritual/religious traumas — At times, religious and spiritual groups traumatize their members, either intentionally or unconsciously. They do this by teaching lies or false doctrines, shaming or humiliating those who do not go along, or scaring people in other ways. Some groups practice dangerous and toxic religious rituals, satanic cult behaviors, deviant group sexual acts, sleep deprivation or impose unhealthy diets.
In Arizona, several people died and others were traumatized during a sweat lodge ceremony that went too long. People were distracted by the religious/spiritual nature of the event and did not realize they were in danger. Sadly, sometimes group leaders promise their followers that the rituals or suggested behaviors are very special, thus people are off guard, and wake up to the danger too late.
It is also true, however, that Christian churches and other religious groups do help many people reverse traumas.
5. Witnessing — Observing or even hearing about the horrors of other people can be traumatic, especially for children. This might involve witnessing or hearing about a murder, rape, robbery or beating, or being present when someone is slamming things around the house, or just overhearing parents fighting or arguing. Those who live in war zones or who have experienced earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist attacks, building collapses or other such events, even when there were no injuries, can suffer extreme trauma.
Witnessing violence or horror on television, on the computer, in movies or experiencing it even while reading a book can cause trauma in susceptible individuals. This is especially true if they were traumatized earlier in life in such a way that it makes them more susceptible to it now.
Releasing traumas
Common methods used to control and perhaps release traumas include counseling and drugs such as antidepressants, tranquilizers, muscle relaxants and antipsychotic medications. In our experience, Hypnotherapy is one of the most effective ways to release trauma quickly and easily.