Links between pain and trauma Polyvagal theory developed by Dr Stephen Porges is very influential in the trauma world. The essence of polyvagal theory is that feeling safe is the fundamental drive for humans. If there is the perception of danger ('neuroception' is the...
From my mid-20s onwards, the question ‘how do we feel?’ has been a fascination for me. How do we construct our experience? What are our beliefs and how does that affect our experience of our bodies? Volunteering with people with learning difficulties and then working...
Why is it that two people can experience the same stressful event, but have very different outcomes? I recently joined Avni Trivedi on the Speak From the Body podcast to talk about deepening feeling, changing the narrative and addressing stress, pain and trauma. We...
Finding Safety: Trauma and the Body What is trauma? When your physiology is stuck, you are stuck. Trauma can be defined as being stuck in protective reflexes. Dissociation is a protective reflex most people are unaware of. In my experience, most people dissociate most...
One: Too much load can lead to injury Not sleeping, not being able to rest and managing lots of stress are all extra loads on our system. Being emotionally out of balance, having poor nutrition and feeling isolated are all extra loads. The more load we are carrying...
The very nature of trauma is that it is overwhelming - it’s more than the organism can cope with. Trauma shatters our worldview and rules of fairness and justice no longer seem to apply. Trauma often leads to a spiritual crisis and a profound re-evaluation of meaning....
Anything can work some of the time. Nothing works all of the time. This phrase works really well to illustrate the complexity of working with pain. Pain is dependant on multiple, diverse, interacting variables. Pain is a perception due to the interplay of biological,...
There’s an awful lot of pain around. There was a huge survey done in Europe recently: 1 in 5 people experience chronic pain. They have persistent or severe pain for more than six months. For many of them, the median time was a number of years. The really exciting news...
https://vimeo.com/338245305 This is a short video on the importance of feeling, on how nerves can get sensitised and some tips to be less sensitive. Enjoy! How can we be less sensitive? Danger chemicals from immune cells and stress hormones sensitise nerves....