How Does Mindfulness Help You Heal From Trauma?

Image by Stefan Widua

If you are interested in personal growth (which, as you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are), you will know that mindfulness is a helpful skill to learn. In fact, it can feel a little overwhelming at times, as mindfulness is touted as a sort of miracle cure by the media for problems including ADHD, depression, anxiety, chronic stress, eating disorders, substance abuse, chronic pain, insomnia and many more. Of course, it’s not a miracle cure but, happily, many of these claims are backed up by extensive research (psychologists have been researching mindfulness as a health-promoting practice for around 50 years).

So, mindfulness practice is clearly helpful for many of the common mental-health and some of the physical-health problems we all struggle with. And, as I often say in these posts, this is not new information for billions of people around the world – Buddhists have been practising mindfulness for 2,500 years; and devotees of yoga have been using similar techniques for even longer, so they probably greet the Mindfulness is Today’s Hot New Health Hack-type headlines with a wry smile.

Mindfulness is key for trauma recovery

One area of particular interest to me is the importance of mindfulness in healing from trauma. I specialise in treating complex trauma, so I am always looking for knowledge and skills that will help me help my clients. If you have a trauma history (and many of us do, whether we know it or not), here are three ways that mindfulness will help you heal:

1. The power of ‘noticing’. Until you know what the problem is, you can’t possibly solve it. So we need to learn how to notice all sorts of things in real time. For example, if you want to work with your inner critic, you have to notice that you’re being self-critical and say, ‘Oh, there’s my Critic again!’ Otherwise it’s just a constant flow of harsh, negative and self-demeaning comments passing through your mind (and triggering challenging emotional states like anxiety, stress, depression, low confidence or self-esteem).

   How do we notice? With mindfulness, which allows us to take a step back and adopt an ‘observer’ position, so we see our thoughts arising, rather than being swept away by them/believing them to be The Truth.

2. Mindfulness is vital for emotional regulation. One of the biggest difficulties for trauma survivors is the overwhelming power of their emotions. There are many reasons for this, but simply put most of my clients struggle with intense waves of emotions like anger, fear, sadness or shame. This makes day-to-day life a real struggle – and can lead to using substances like comfort foods, alcohol or prescription/recreational drugs to numb out emotions that feel too big to handle.

   Mindfulness helps with this problem in a number of ways. First, research shows that just noticing (see above) and naming emotions helps reduce their intensity. So thinking, ‘Oh, I’m feeling really anxious right now’ can help you feel less anxious. This is especially helpful when some emotions, like panic, seem to come out of the blue. (They never do – there is always a trigger, which again requires noticing to start learning which things trigger you and why.)

   Second, using simple mindfulness practices like breathing into the part of your body where you feel tight or tense (because that’s how the emotion is showing up, somatically) can help soften and relax that part of your body, which in turn calms the uncomfortable emotion.

   Third, mindfulness practice helps strengthen synaptic connections in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the part of the brain (just behind your forehead) you need to regulate the more emotional, reactive parts of the brain, like the limbic system. Which leads to…

3. Mindfulness practice helps us find peace, calm and equanimity. Like all skills, mindfulness takes effort, practice and dedication to learn. That’s why it’s called a yoga practice or meditation practice. Doing it once won’t make much difference. But meditating every day, for long stretches of time, will help in many ways. As a long-time meditator, I can confirm that I am so much calmer, more peaceful and balanced than I used to be. It has helped me develop what Buddhists call ‘equanimity’, which essentially means balance. So if something triggers or knocks me, it’s easier to come back to a calm, centered presence.

   This is partly because I have strengthened the neural architecture of my PFC, so have more access to resources that help me feel calm, as well as soothing and reassuring anxious/stressed/upset parts of my brain. In less jargon-y terms, regular meditation helps you feel a little happier, a little stronger, a little more able to cope with life’s many challenges. And that has to be a good thing, whether you have a trauma history or not, right?
   

–If you would like to know more about how mindfulness could help you heal your trauma, come along to my next webinar: Not Just Mindfulness, But Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. It takes place on Saturday 12th November 2022 from 3-4.30pm. Places are either free, if you are struggling financially, or payable by donation if you can support my Heal Your Trauma project (after covering expenses, all donations go towards running the project and making trauma-informed help available to everyone, everywhere).

Book your place now using the button below.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Try this Simple Grounding Technique to Help with Dissociation

Image by David Pisnoy

Dissociation is one of the most confusing, disturbing and often frightening experiences we can have. It is also extremely common – especially, but not only, if you are a trauma survivor. When explaining dissociation to my clients, I often use the analogy of a circuit breaker.

So think about a circuit breaker, which is designed to deal with sudden surges of electricity. When there is a surge, the switches get tripped, shutting down the electrical circuit and protecting all of your devices (kettle, toaster, computer, etc) from burning out.

That’s how dissociation works in your brain. If you experience something completely overwhelming, like any kind of trauma, your brain flips a few switches (metaphorically) and shuts down various circuits, to protect you from lasting damage. At the time of the trauma, this is a helpful, adaptive and potentially lifesaving strategy.

Imagine you are in a bad car crash. If you are injured, your brain flips those switches to, for example, disconnect you from the physical pain in your body. This might help you survive, by allowing you to escape the crash site. Or just to cope with the experience, by protecting you from the pain until you’re in hospital and can get treatment. As with so many of the coping strategies we use for any kind of traumatic experience, this is a good, healthy, protective thing to do.

When dissociation is not helpful

The problem with dissociation is that, over time, it becomes an unconscious and habitual response. Especially if you are a trauma survivor, with a heightened sensitivity to anything that feels scary or threatening, you might dissociate on a daily, or even hourly basis. And it’s clearly not helpful to find parts of your brain shutting down if you are driving a car, in a meeting or speaking to your child’s teacher at school.

A common dissociative experience is when your prefrontal cortex (PFC), or ‘thinking brain’, shuts down. That’s why your mind goes blank when you feel anxious, because anxiety signals threat, so your brain triggers the fight-flight-freeze response to help you survive, and shuts down your (relatively slow, overthinking) PFC so you can act, fast. This is a dissociative response, which can be scary and confusing when the only threat is that teacher telling you that your daughter is a bit naughty in class.

Try this grounding technique

Mindfulness is a wonderful skill, for many reasons, but it’s especially helpful if you’re prone to dissociation. It will help you bring the PFC online; realise that you are here, now and not there, then; and bring you back to the present, to your body, to the safe place you currently inhabit – not the scary memories you might be stuck in when you experience trauma-related dissociation.

1. You can use any of your five senses to help ground you in the present moment, but this technique involves sight. Look around the room and pick three objects (for example, a painting, plant and book). Focus all of your attention on each one in turn, describing them in as much detail as you can.

2. With the painting, that might be something like, ‘I see a large painting in a silver frame. It’s a rectangle, about two feet wide by four feet long. The painting is of a woman with a small dog on her lap. I can see strong greens and reds in the woman’s dress; and the dog is a small pug, with a shiny, dark-grey coat.’

3. Keep going, finding as much detail as possible (for this exercise, it’s never too much) and then do the same for the plant and the book.

4. After you have described all three objects, notice whether you feel more mindful and present – in your body, mind and moment-to-moment experience. I’m confident that you will be at least a bit more present, but if you still feel a bit spacey or weird pick another three objects and repeat the exercise. Again, check on your phyiscal and mental state – this should help you feel calmer, more grounded and in your body.

I really hope this helps. As ever, when offering you these techniques as part of my Heal Your Trauma project, I want to stress that if you are a trauma survivor, you will need the help of a skilled, trauma-informed professional. And if so, use these techniques alongside, rather than instead of, your treatment.

Warm wishes,

Dan

Listen to this grounding technique on Insight Timer