The World in Trauma: Stress injury in the wake of Covid 19
What the world is experiencing now in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic is a perfect example of how the reality of trauma increases the risk and potential consequences of long term chronic stress injuries. You might know it as PTSD.
Trauma is universal, how we experience it, is not.
According to Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, trauma can be anything that overwhelms your capacity to cope. The mental, physical and emotional symptoms of stress from quarantine or shelter in place orders are unique to every individual. We’re all in the same storm but we’re not all in the same boat. We can experience the same event and have vastly different reactions to it.
Dr. Peter Levine, author of In an Unspoken Voice, describes trauma as any event that overwhelms our natural defensive responses and causes an injury to the autonomic nervous system affecting its ability to self regulate. This might be a single event but can also be chronic long term exposure to stressors that are outside of our control.
Symptoms of traumatic stress injuries don’t become PTSD unless they persist for over 1 month. Some would argue that PTSD is not a mental illness,that it’s not a psychological disorder at all but an untreated injury. (DSM PTSD definition) These labels make this group of symptoms fall squarely into the disease model for treatment and in doing so creates patients out of us all preventing the healing that comes from becoming a true participant in our own care.
Some of what’s driving our stress response to COVID-19 comes from the virus itself in the form of physical and emotional stress for those who have gotten sick themselves or had family members who’ve gotten sick or who have died from the virus. Some comes from the fear of catching it. But a lot, and I would argue most, is coming from our exposure to fear and uncertainty; from media and officials whose intent is to keep us all “safe”, the fallout of social distancing,business restrictions and stay at home orders.
Our current response to COVID-19 is very much like what happens in the body when we experience trauma. When our survival is threatened the body shuts down all non essential systems and ramps up only the systems that are absolutely necessary to survive the situation. In the body that means we get increased blood pressure, heart rate, adrenaline and cortisol, muscle tension and a decreased function in the digestive system, reproductive system and depressed immunity. To your primitive brain all that’s necessary is for you to be able to fight or flee.
Like the government's response, once the danger is past all of those “non-essential” systems can come back on line. It’s designed to ramp up quickly and come down quickly. Except when it doesn’t.
Unlike the body, our COVID response has been prolonged and lacking in the certainty that comes from taking physical action to save ourselves. Now many of us are feeling all the same systems shut down in the body that we have when being threatened, all the same physiological preparation to fight or flee but instead of being able to act on it, we are locked down.
Not only is there the threat of some unknown virus but we add the fear of long term unemployment, food insecurity and financial loss. Add to that the possibility that the home where you are sheltering in place isn’t safe. Fear and uncertainty are fueling increasing rates of alcoholism, domestic abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, addiction, suicide, depression, anxiety and more.
The world is quietly being injured, traumatized, on a mass scale.
The COVID-19 pandemic and our response to it has touched every corner of the world and disrupted the security, health and livelihood of every person on the planet. It's triggered a pandemic of fear that’s gone far beyond the virus itself. And if you thought we were ill-prepared to handle a world wide viral outbreak, wait til a world full of stress injured people come out of their homes. There is no quarantine that will be able to stem the consequences.
As we prepare to “reopen” our lives, we have no more assurances of safety than we ever had before. What we do have is a new awareness of contagion. COVID-19 is highly contagious, but it pales in comparison to the generational contagion of stress injury and trauma that may come out of our shared trauma.
There’s more to life and health than not being sick.
Most of us are aware that safety is an illusion but we still take our daily dose of fear watching the news every morning and every night without thought to the long term consequences. Leaving us with an overburdened stress response that’s begging for a way to safely self regulate.
Self regulation of the stress response is something that happens in the autonomic nervous system. It’s the part that automatically switches our natural fight or flight response off and allows non-essential systems to come back online so the body can return to “rest and digest” . Unfortunately the longer those “non essential” systems stay off, the longer we stay on high alert, the more damage is being done.
Long term chronic stress causes hormone dysregulation that leads to mood changes and sleep deprivation, damage to the gut microbiome, suppressed immunity, anxiety and depression along with Chronic GI problems and metabolic changes. The list of dysfunction related to and exacerbated by stress injury is long and not completely understood.
The paradox of trauma is that it has both the power to destroy and the power to transform and resurrect. Peter A. Levine
While we can’t control most of the stressors in our lives, we do possess the capacity to relieve the burden of stress injury regardless of the story that got us there. When the body perceives threat there's no way to rationally think your way out of the physiological response. But you can give the body a way to complete the stress response in a safe way, support it’s natural resilience and teach it to down regulate on it’s own. It starts by learning ways to communicate through the body in ways the body understands. Using the 4 Pillars of Resilience...
MOVE
Any way you like. Dance around, go for a walk, ride your bike, do jumping jacks whatever makes you feel good. Move every day. TRE® provides a direct line of communication to the parasympathetic nervous system. Learn more HERE, Click here for a provider in your area or HERE to book a call with me.
EAT
Not junk food or processed sugar. Throw that crap out. Start by adding one nutrient dense food to your plate with each meal. Like more fruits & veggies. Snack healthy first then see if there’s room for the “bad” stuff.
SLEEP
Tough one when you’re already overwhelmed but it’s critical. Here’s some tips...get out in the sun first thing in the morning and several times a day. Eat meals early in the evening. Turn off all the screens and blue light sources 2 hours before bed. And try a guided meditation to talk yourself into sleep. There are lots of free apps like Insight Timer that have audio only guided meditations specifically for sleep. I’ve had good success with Yoga Nidra and iRest as well.
CONNECT
More than just scheduling a zoom coffee date with a friend, you need to connect with your body. Try some mindful movement and meditation, like yoga, tai chi or martial arts. Or a guided body scan that lets you begin to feel the parts of your body that have lost sensation.
****The 4 Pillars of Resilience are included and taught in detail in Shifted my online stress detox course and through Kinetic Grace Yoga and Resilience Training.
The way we treat mental illness can’t be the same way we treat physical injuries and illness. Our healthcare system today is ill equipped to handle the contagious spread of stress injuries that are set to come out of COVID-19. Our mental and emotional health is intimately tied to our body’s health and vice versa. If one can be injured then so can the other. If one can be healed then so can the other. Now is the perfect time to start listening to the messages our body is sending us and become empowered in our own healing process.
If you’d like to know where you fall on the stress curve take a moment to fill out the Rediscover Resilience quiz and start collecting your free personalized resilience tools.
My name is Ericka Thomas. I offer trauma release yoga memberships and private coaching for survivors of stress injury and overwhelmed people just like you.
If you want to learn more about the trauma release process or find a certified provider in your area go to traumaprevention.com
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