How Trauma Theory Informs This Response
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Summary: After her initial osteopathy session revealed a freeze response, the author returned for a follow-up to find her body had shifted to a flight response. Surprised at the quick transition, the author reflected on trauma experts like Peter Levine and Babette Rothschild, exploring how these theories highlight how fight-flight-freeze responses impact health.
I discussed in my blog post here about my first osteopathy appointment, where my osteopath found that my body was in a freeze response.
Now, I have returned for a follow-up appointment with my osteopath and have found that my body has shifted into a flight response! My predictions in my blog post were right… I postulated that my freeze response would turn into a fight/flight response when it thawed!!
I have to say that I was shocked at how quick it was for my body to shift from one state to the other. Of course, in normal life and health, the human body switches between the fight-flight response and the rest-repair response with ease. However, I now realise that I had expected something different from my body… I thought it would just be stuck in one mode forever. That I somehow had a broken switch, stuck forever in an activated sympathetic nervous system. It would appear that that is not the case. My body can heal whenever it wants.
Peter Levine: Trauma Is A Physiological Response
This transition in my sympathetic nervous system brought to mind for me the work of two trauma experts. The first was the work of Peter Levine, PhD. Peter Levine is a trauma specialist who works with the bodily responses of clients who have experienced traumatic events. He is interested in the physiological process that animals undergo as a result of traumatic events and how this information can be used to heal unresolved trauma in clients. He argues that an unresolved trauma response, which is what I suspect Type 1 Diabetes is, can only be completed when the body is enabled to complete the normal physiological response to trauma.
This video is Peter Levine explaining in his own words how this may take place….
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zsp4iRAGtc
Babette Rothschild: Hierarchy Of Trauma Responses
The second trauma expert that came to mind for me was Babette Rothschild. Babette is a trained psychotherapist and body psychotherapist based in the United States. Like Peter Levine, she specialises in the field of trauma and particularly on the bodily responses to it. She has written an excellent book called ‘The Body Remembers‘, which I found incredibly useful when processing the disabling overwhelm of early bodily trauma.
In her second book, ‘The Body Remembers Volume 2: Revolutionizing Trauma Treatment‘, Babette outlines a model for understanding the different physiological responses to trauma – fight, flight, freeze – and places them relative to each other in scale. (You can see a diagram of this scale, entitled ‘Autonomic Nervous System : Precision Regulation‘ on her website, somatictraumatherapy.com).
What is important for me in Babette’s scale is that the freeze response is recognised as a greater response of the sympathetic nervous system than the fight-flight response. So this supports the finding of my osteopath that, following treatment with her, my system down-regulated itself from a freeze response to a fight-flight response.
My Body’s Response To The Flight Responses
I am now wondering about the hypertension that my diabetologist has just diagnosed me with (see my post here on that). I saw him for my appointment just two days after I had my osteopath appointment. Was the high blood pressure just a temporary result of my body shifting from a freeze response to a more enlivened fight-flight response? When the sympathetic nervous system triggers a fight-flight response, a series of hormones are released that trigger a raise in heart rate, breathing rate and, yes, blood pressure!
I have booked an appointment with my General Practitioner to talk this through and explore whether or not I have a blood pressure issue. Let’s find out if this is a fight-flight reaction or an actual health concern. I’ll let you know what happens!
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Natalie is a blogger with Type 1 Diabetes. Natalie's special gifts are questioning the status quo and being a rebel. She is using these gifts to question medical 'knowledge' and find a true cure for Type 1 Diabetes.
