THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE
The most important thing to know is that there's a difference between trauma and stress.As we like to say to people, life sucks a good amount of the time.We all have jobs and situations that are really unpleasant.But the moment that a situation is over, it's over.The problem with trauma is that when it's over, your body continues to relive it.
HERE ARE THE THREE WAYS TO HEAL FROM TRAUMA WITHOUT MEDICATIONS
PSYCHOTHERAPHY
The nature of trauma is that something happens to you,your survival brain makes the first interpretation and says,So it's very important to really be aware that these reactions emanate for your body.And so, the big challenge of treating trauma is how do we help people to live in bodies that feel fundamentally safe?A good psychotherapy is actually quite helpful Not to fix people, but helping people to acknowledge “oh my God, that was terrible what happened to me.And I need to take care of the wounds that I'm carrying inside of myself”. This issue of self-compassion and really knowing that your reactions are understandable is a terribly important part of beginning to recover from trauma.
YOGA
Maybe if you do yoga,you can open up your relationship to your body.You learn how to breathe calmly, you learn to pay attention to yourself,you get to see how different movements and different postures affect you.And so you form a deep relationship with your internal sensory system.Yoga, at the end, was a more effective treatment for PTSD.than any of the drugs we had studied. But we yet have to see a psychopharmacology clinic being transformed to a yoga studio.
PSYCHEDELICS
"Psychedelic substances can open up people's minds”?To see that the reality that they live in is just a small part of the reality that is.These drugs are illegal." MDMA, also known as ecstasy or molly, for trauma. you have a whole day of taking ecstasy while you lie on a bed with two therapists in your room for eight hours.What we see in the people who get the drug is amazing.People are able to go to places they have never felt safe to go.This is not a picnic.They see the horrible things that's happened to them.But MDMA allows people to see themselves with compassion.All these measures we have about self-perception and self-awareness just shoot up and rather than blaming themselves, they're able to say,Probably more than just about anything else we have studied.But what's important here is that one size doesn't fit all. Different people need very different things.What works for someonelse may not work for you.Everything is an experiment in life.And healing from trauma is an experiment.
By Roshni Pawar