Stress, trauma & the nervous system

It’s possible to go through stress and adverse experiences without being traumatised. And this is dependent on each person’s nervous system capacity and the support available during times of stress. 

For instance, if you grew up in an unsafe environment or have witnessed tragedies in your young years, it’s likely that your nervous system will be more affected by events later on; compared to people who haven’t been through great adversity in early childhood. 

Interestingly, I often also see in my practice, clients who have had an uneventful childhood with loving and caring parents, but events that happened in the family dynamics when they were in the womb or as an infant had affected them deeply, disrupting their way of coping with life as an adult. 

Young children are extremely susceptible to their environment and carers. 

So if you feel you often struggle in relationships or feel quite overwhelmed with daily demands. Or if you struggle with boundaries and/or lack of consistency. 
There could be incomplete stress responses “locked in”your nervous system. And in the case of early life difficulties, a healthy baseline of regulation never had space to develop.

These “stuck” responses can be reached and dealt with somatically. And the fragmentation in the psyche caused by early events can be integrated. But it has to be done gently, as not to retraumatize your system. 

It’s a case of creating safety in the body, discharging old “stuck” stress responses in the system and somatic psychoeducation.

It is important to keep in mind that integration is not a linear process, as the body has its own innate wisdom on how to heal.