What is a trauma? According to Google, the definition is "a deeply distressing or disturbing experience that can have lasting negative effects on a person's mental, emotional, and physical well-being." The words trauma, traumatizing, and traumatized have been used quite a bit the past few years. There is less of a stigma around going to therapy than there used to be. People are speaking openly on and against traumatizing practices.
Any macro or micro trauma that your brain perceived shapes your physiology. The cells of your body respond to the stressor accordingly and will go into fight or flight mode, freeze mode, or fawn mode. These are learned behaviors that you picked up over time, either due to how your caregivers taught you, how they responded to stress, or other experiences you had in your childhood years.
I use the word stress frequently in the office, but we can replace it with trauma too. A car accident is a physical stress and a physical trauma. A loved one dying is an emotional stress and an emotional trauma. Your response to the stress/trauma will be unique to you.
Why is this relevant in a chiropractic practice? As mentioned in previous blogs, we record your heart rate variability at intake and at reassessment appointments. How your brain perceived your lifetime of stressors and traumas can be indicated by this scan. Through consistent chiropractic care, we can rewire how your brain perceives and responds to trauma. There are of course circumstances in life, like losing a loved one, that will shape us forever. We are not looking to make ourselves impervious to these situations. Instead, we are looking to take a brain that has been stressed and traumatized and help it either calm its hypervigilant state, wake up its freeze state, or decrease the people-pleasing response.
You will always be who you are. We can't go back and undo life events. Taking care of yourself in the healthiest way is how you heal forward. Talk therapy, nervous system regulation, having a strong social community, and other forms of healing modalities are how we do that. It's not easy work by any means, but it is always worthwhile work, because you are WORTH it.
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