It may be helpful to think of a traumatised nervous system in this way. Trauma is when your nervous system has become overprotective. Almost like when you reverse your car and there is a sensor that beeps when you get close to objects. Following chronic or traumatic stress your nervous system, or the sensor on the back of the car, has become overprotective and is now beeping when you’re still metres away from an object.
Nervous system work is about learning how to recalibrate that sensor, so that it becomes accurate about the distance of an object and doesn’t beep unnecessarily.
And when it comes to trauma, it’s very important to remember that the practices and techniques that help one person’s nervous system to feel calm and safe, are the very same practices that could send your nervous system into panic, overwhelm and shutdown.
There are some “healthy trends” that are being recommended to heal trauma, that may be dysregulating you even more!
Just because someone raves about a particular technique, or says it releases trauma and heals the nervous system, does not mean that it’s the right fit for all nervous systems. In fact, for many people living with trauma, they can be too much, too fast.
And more especially for those individuals who’ve experienced C-PTSD (complex trauma that is repeated or chronic).
Unfortunately when you try these health trends that are highly recommended, and they don’t work or make you feel worse, you can tend to feel like a failure and that there is nothing that will help you to feel better. This can stop you from feeling like you belong and it also sadly fuels feelings of shame.
There is so much information now on social media recommending cold plunges, breathwork, therapeutic tremoring, somatic hip openers, and meditation, BUT there is not one singular thing that impacts everyone’s nervous system in the same way.
I’ve worked with clients who’ve come to me after trying trauma releasing hacks that are highly recommended and they ended up feeling worse, not better.
Sometimes they felt panicked, shut down, overwhelmed or very unsafe. Not because they did anything wrong – but because their body wasn’t ready, and no one was there to hold that safely with them.
Complex trauma recovery isn’t about ticking boxes or powering through uncomfortable sensations. It’s about gently building safety, with a trained professional who knows your nervous system and history.
Trauma recovery is deep, nuanced, sequenced and highly individual. It doesn’t come with the intensity that is promised by hacks and quick fixes. So it isn’t something you can fix in a day, or even in a weekend.
Safety isn’t built overnight. Trauma healing is specialised. It takes time and repetition of safety to allow your implicit memories to be updated. Neuroplasticity doesn’t happen through a single breakthrough moment.
Trauma healing needs to be done carefully on an individual basis with a trauma informed, trained mental health clinician. It also requires more than talking therapy alone and it needs to be done 1:1 with a specialist who can give you the correct interventions and guide you, step by step through neural practices that are specific for your individual needs.
And most importantly, that they are there to make sure that you are resourced, assisted, supported, safe and co-regulated right the way through.
Your body holds reminders of the past. There is a reason that there has been a disconnect from your body and your emotions. These protective behaviours have been necessary for survival and they need to heal layer by layer.
Somatic awareness (awareness of your own bodily sensations and internal states) needs to be paced and built gradually
For some people stillness and silence don’t always register as calm and safe. Spending long periods of time meditating and attending 7-day silent retreats can flood your nervous system. Trauma healing requires social engagement and connection, rather than withdrawal. To feel safe it needs the right kind of relational support and small amounts of stillness that are gently built-in.
The shock of an ice-water plunge can be too much stress for an already stressed system. Cold water plunges can increase your stress hormones even more, and for dysregulated or nervous systems that are already fragile, repeated cold stress on the body can reinforce shutdown states.
Tremoring and intensive breathwork can both produce more sympathetic activation than some bodies can safely hold. Wim Hof breathing (regular hyperventilation) can trigger stressed bodies. Learning slower nasal and diaphragmatic breathing, that you can develop over time, is far more regulating.
Relying on wearable tech to track your heart rate, sleep and stress levels can actually cause chronic anxiety that keeps your nervous system stuck in a hypervigilant loop of checking and worrying. A major part of trauma recovery is learning how to feel and read your own internal signals and states.
Skipping meals and fasting while chronically stressed sends signals of distress to your body and dysregulates you. Your nervous system needs a stable blood sugar, rather than feast or famine. Eating regular, nourishing meals provides signals of safety to your nervous system that stabilises it.
Somatic exercises, like hip openers can make some people feel very vulnerable and unsafe. Imagine how detrimental to trauma recovery this could be, if you were following these exercises via video on your own? You need to be guided step by step so that if you feel flooded, you can quickly be co-regulated and returned to a safe state.
I’m not suggesting that these practices aren’t ever helpful or that they are never safe, I’m suggesting that instead of blindly trusting anything and everything marketed for “trauma healing” or “nervous system regulation,” please look for trained mental health professionals, who specialise in trauma and are fully qualified, registered and accredited (please be aware that in the UK this is unregulated, meaning anyone can call themselves a Counsellor or Psychotherapist without specific qualifications or experience).
You do not have to suffer alone. Your nervous system needs specific help to recover and heal.
If you’re ready to explore trauma recovery that’s right for you, I’m here. Let’s talk about what would actually help you to feel better.
Please feel free to contact me: www.caroline-king.co.uk