The Body Really Does “Keep the Score”

I often refer clients to read “The Body Keeps the Score,” by Bessel van der Kolk.  While I found it to be potentially quite triggering for some people, the overall message is one that, I think, seeks to validate the profound effects of trauma on humans.  There is a lot of stigma that a person who has experienced trauma, loss, chronic illness (including chronic mental illness), emotional pain or major life changes should just be able to “get through” and “move on quickly.” When we do have physical or emotional responses to stress, we can be made to feel weak or that we somehow lack resiliency. Those beliefs do us a disservice - I think they actually thwart our ability to heal.  If we can’t talk about our pain openly, that implies it’s something to hide away or feel ashamed of. I had a trusted doctor once share with me that she firmly believes that 100% of the women that she sees with Fibromyalgia have experienced trauma and that it was simply “stored as pain in the body.” That blew my mind yet made so much sense. We have historically not been taught (healthy) ways to cope with hard things. I’m not suggesting we talk about our pain for the sake of talking about it (that’s akin to the idea of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”).  I’m suggesting we talk about it to normalize it, understand it, understand what it’s demanding of our bodies (slowing down, taking time off, resting, breathing, noticing pain and taking adequate steps to soothe it) and then to find a way to carry it with us or to heal what we can through action. 

Yesterday I experienced my body “keeping the score” in real time.  Don’t get me wrong, I notice little things every day that I am certain are a byproduct of my past traumas but not to this degree. I have been having chest pressure and pain for about a month and had been attributing it to all the crying I was doing and the grief I was feeling over my dog who was old and being euthanized soon. I also had not been sleeping well for 4 months as I was up every night taking him out to the bathroom and, of course, plagued with worry about his passing. I was waking up with my heart pounding out of my chest from nightmares or being woken up by the smallest thing - so I knew I was in a very hypervigilant state.  Combine that with me just being me and having a good dose of generalized anxiety disorder and, yeah, chest pressure, right?  After my dog was put to sleep three weeks ago, I felt a huge sense of relief and I thought my anxiety was gone (or so I thought),  but the chest pressure remained.  Yesterday I was having dinner with my husband and the pressure was still very present so I finally went to the ER.  They ran a bunch of tests and, thankfully, everything came back clear.  But what was also clear was that I was having an acute response in my body to all the things I’d been carrying  - my blood pressure was elevated, I was showing little heart “blurps” on my EKG (while I was simultaneously feeling my heart beating rapidly and my pulse in my throat) and the most intense experience of uncontrollable shaking I’ve ever had.  The nurse was like “Woah! Are you cold?!” They covered me with a warm blanket and my body continued to shake intensely for an hour. This was after I had gotten clear results so I was not particularly anxious about the outcome of my visit.  I honestly believe it was a build-up of all the grief, stress and trauma over the past two years (since my Dad died) and the perfect cocktail of being in an overstimulating environment (holy cow I don’t know how ER nurses do it with all those damn bells going off all the time!) to bring it out.  On top of that, we had gotten some unsettling news about our other dog, Tammy, yesterday morning. I was able to recognize that I had reached my capacity to carry anything else “upsetting” and my body was like “hey girl, here is some uncontrollable shaking and rapid heartbeat to let you know that you need some serious rest and recovery and to remind you that bodies can only endure so much before they tell us what’s what.” 

I share this openly with the intention of three things: 1) To validate and affirm other’s experiences in the hopes that you can self-validate when and if you find yourself in a similar position - if you’ve ever had a panic attack in a grocery store or suddenly start to cry in the middle of a parent/teacher conference, if you throw up or have diarrhea before work every day or if you end up in the ER thinking you're having a heart attack but it's "just anxiety"- your body might just be keeping the score too.  2) To strongly encourage you to prioritize caring for yourself mind, body and spirit so that those moments can either be minimized (meaning that they happen less, not that we minimize your experience or how it felt) and that they don’t knock you for a major loop when they do come about. 3) To spread awareness that things that happened an hour, a week, a month, a year or a decade ago can and do impact how you might be experiencing the world around you today.  Those hard experiences you had a long time ago can most definitely impact how well you’re tolerating stress today. Those things can drive how well you’re sleeping. How you feel about yourself.  Your relationships.  I also believe that trauma can manifest in your body and come out in the form of acute anxiety/panic or health issues when you reach a point where your body has just had enough. Our nervous system knows what to do to protect us in the event of a catastrophe.  The problem is, after trauma, sometimes our bodies and brains don’t know the difference between a true catastrophe and walking through the grocery store.  

The ER visit was another light shed onto the areas of my life that still need a lot of attention. I have been working really hard at getting myself back onto solid ground after my dog died. I was doing a lot of really good things for myself. But, I can see that there are deeper wounds that still need my attention. I don’t have all the answers on healing but I am confident that I am being guided (that’s just a personal belief, not a universal truth) towards that.  I have a strong desire to get out into the woods and just sit and be quiet and listen.  I have a deep urge to follow my heart's wishes and travel more, especially to the few places that really call to me on a soul level. I want to run towards trust and love and gratitude and away from fear and negativity.  I want to enjoy my time and be present with my friends and family and hold firm boundaries on my time and energy. I am starting to believe that to treat a trauma wound is to sit with it first, to understand its message (notice I didn’t say “purpose” - I don’t want to believe that traumas serve a purpose - but I do believe that they can and do send messages after the fact about what we might need more or less of in our life, changes we need to make or things we need to confront) and then sew it up the best we can.  We can keep our “sewing kit” handy for when the wound gets reopened, as it sometimes might. This experience yesterday showed me that some of my wounds are still open and need attention. So I begin again. 

As I move through another day, I am holding my traumas delicately in my hands and asking them what I can do to tuck them safely away (or better yet, release them altogether) so that my body and mind can be free to enjoy life.  If you have your own traumas, you may relate to the feeling of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.”  It can be hard to relax and enjoy the world around you if you are afraid that you’re going to have a repeat of the worst moments in your life.  I realize I have been living that way for the past two years since my Dad died.  I have been bracing myself, holding on very tightly and feeling intense moments of fear that I will lose another person (or pet) that I love.  Then my dog died and it was expected but so painful (and felt like confirmation that I can’t relax fully).  And then we got that unsettling news about my other dog almost right after that and I think I just allowed myself to have that unhealthy thought of “See! You can’t trust life! Bad things are going to keep happening and you’re never going to be able to fully relax again!” The most odd part of all of this is that, generally speaking, I am a very upbeat, optimistic and hopeful person who loves life and enjoys laughter and having fun.  But those negative thoughts are the running commentary in the recesses of my brain and they sneak out in the moments when I am most vulnerable. I want to say “I trust in the process of life” and truly feel it in my core. Right now, I can admit that I don’t feel so secure. THAT is what I mean by “trauma wound.” They can be powerful enough to change our beliefs about our safety in this world.  As I was on my way home from the ER last night, I sobbed (and felt more chest pressure! lol!)  and let my feelings out.  I acknowledged through my tears that I want to let go of the idea of ever attaining a full, forever lasting feeling of peace.  That feels like a total set up to me.  I am not arguing that it’s not possible for a person to always feel peace (that would be total goals!) but as my therapist says “you have to crawl before you can run.”  I am trying to shift into a mindset that I can feel peace in the small moments of my life.  It’s possible for me to feel peace for a few hours at a time too.  Maybe even for a full day.  Maybe a week? That might be a stretch but I am focused on creating and feeling as much peace and joy as I can in each day so that when the hard moments inevitably come in with the tide, I can also acknowledge that those, too, are just as fleeting. I do know that I don’t want to stay tethered to the notion that it’s better to live in fear of something bad happening so I can be “prepared” than it is to surrender to the flow of life.  The joy and peace I have been giving over in order to “brace myself” is what I truly believe landed me in the ER yesterday. The trauma told me “you aren’t safe and you better not relax because you need to be prepared for this again so you aren’t caught off guard” and my body has responded by being tense, anxiety ridden, sleepless, more sensitive to pain, hypervigilant, irritable, rageful at times and disconnected from my loved ones.  My body really has kept the score and I’d like to settle it.

Just for shits & giggles because I really do try to have fun even in the midst of a stressful situation. I had to take my bra off for a chest x-ray and because I had to stay hooked up to all my wires, it was stuck like this for my duration of my stay - every time I walked to the bathroom (if you know me, you know that's a lot), I had to walk with my bra (and my boobs) swinging to-and-fro! The x-ray lady was laughing at me because I was like "well, these people need some entertainment don't they?!"