You are feeling stressed and anxious so you try to “do the right thing” and go to a Yoga class or do Mindfulness meditation, but it just seems to make you feel worse and more anxious.
If you’ve had this experience, please know there is nothing wrong with you. It just means that your nervous system is dysregulated and this may not be the right resource for you to use at that moment.
There is no one perfect practice or exercise for every single person to use all the time. Your nervous system loves choice and often when you try to sit still and be quiet, your nervous system may actually be wound up and need movement to get rid of adrenaline to help it to feel calm.
Many yoga and mindfulness/meditation teachers aren’t fully trained mental health professionals. Certain yoga poses can be very triggering for those who’ve endured physical trauma, particularly sexual trauma.
Some mind-body practices like mindfulness/meditation can actually flood your system and this happens because you are paying attention to your internal sensations; like racing thoughts, butterflies in the tummy, or shallow breathing. This heightened awareness can cause your survival brain to interpret these physical sensations as danger.
For trauma survivors, some breathing techniques and holding yoga postures for a prolonged period of time can turn on the fight or flight response, and put the nervous system into overdrive. As a result you may experience an increase in intrusive thoughts or flashbacks, and feel on edge, tearful or numb.
In the same way that animals freeze when they are in danger, humans can dissociate or shut down in response to traumatic events, and/or prolonged exposure to trauma. Dissociation is a mental process of disconnecting from your thoughts, feelings, and memories. It is an instinctive survival response. Meditation uses purposeful introspection and this form of deliberate self-analysis can cause flashbacks and panic attacks in some individuals.
With the wrong resources, your nervous system becomes more dysregulated and you feel more intense symptoms that last for longer. Exactly what you don’t want!
This is not to say that practices such as Yoga or mindfulness/meditation are wrong, bad or that we should never use them. It’s about learning what your unique nervous system needs at that time, depending on what state it is in (fight, flight, or freeze), and a one-size-fits-all approach to nervous system regulation is not at all helpful.
Understanding the different states of the nervous system; and learning through experiential practice from a trained and skilled clinician, will give you a range of tools to choose from so that you can bring your nervous system back into balance.
Identifying the right resources and practices that are most helpful to YOU in each particular nervous system state, enables you to take better care of yourself and to recover quickly from trauma symptoms.
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