Not all Stress is Trauma:How to Prevent Trauma Accumulating in your Body
Not all stress is trauma! Trauma is a special designation for any stressor (chemical, physical, emotional, spiritual) that your body isn’t able to metabolize in the moment, causing it to remain stored in the tissues for a later time.
Storing trauma in the body is incredibly intelligent! Seeing as all life experiences are intended to grow you, trauma essentially grants you a second chance to learn from certain life experiences that once overwhelmed your system. In the presence of new tools, skills, and awareness, the energy that's bound as tension may come to be a great asset to you (although you certainly can’t force this process).
You may find yourself wondering why certain stressors affect some individuals and not others. Or why certain stressors overwhelm the capacity of your system while others (seemingly of a similar intensity) may not. The reason is ADAPTABILITY! Adaptability is the most foundational element of health because it describes the threshold at which your body is able to metabolize life experience, before stressors begin to be bound in the tissues as trauma.
Adaptability describes your body’s range of neurological flexibility; the point at which you’re able to bend but right before you would break. By enhancing your adaptability, you may be able to prevent future traumas from accumulating in your system!
The purpose of this Earth School experience is to grow you and you will be challenged by it regardless of what “level” you’re at. Still, having the right tools in your toolbelt will help this ride feel a little more easeful and a lot more enjoyable.
Ways to enhance your ADAPTABILITY:
Chiropractic Care (especially tonal work) – I use a technique called BGI which recognizes that all stored tension in the body is potential energy. The adjustment (according to this technique) helps to integrate the bound potential, turning that energy into usable kinetic energy that increases the complexity/sophistication/consciousness of your system. I can help you find someone who does this wherever you live!
Somatic work – by getting curious about the sensations in your body, especially various kinds of tension, you’ll start to release and integrate stored trauma. This will create more space for new experiences and new life to fill you up!
Self-compassion – As simple as it is, believing your body is strong, capable, and resilient helps to make it so. Use this as an affirmation, visualization, meditation, etc.