The Body’s Learned Response to Trauma
Most people, at some time in life, have had unexplained feelings, pain, or reactions. They may have wondered what is happening and searched for a way to explain and relieve the negative sensations. These kinds of unwanted feelings can occur when a person has an experience that bears some similarity to a traumatic incident from the past.
Here’s an example. It’s a hot summer day, Noah is having lunch at an outdoor cafe. Suddenly he sees a man breaking into his nearby car. Noah’s immediate reaction is anger. The anger is accompanied by hormonal changes and other physiological effects. Noah rushes out to stop the stranger’s damaging actions. The man shoots at Noah, grazing his head and drawing blood. In response to blood loss, the body’s natural reaction is to reduce blood flow to the injured area, Noah’s head. In this example, the traumatic incident contains elements of: hot weather, eating lunch, surprise, anger, head injury, restricted blood flow to the head, and head pain.
Some years later, Noah is having lunch in a restaurant on another hot day. This time he is with a friend, Nancy. Nancy makes an unexpected comment for which Noah feels some anger. At this point we notice some similarities to the earlier traumatic incident: hot weather, eating lunch, surprise, and anger. The similarities to the earlier traumatic incident cause some of the effects of that incident unconsciously to be replayed. Noah begins to feel a headache. The past trauma’s feeling of pain in the head is being replayed, but the restricted blood flow to Noah’s head is also being replayed. This is the general principle: when one or more elements from a trauma are repeated, a person can experience some of the negative effects that were associated with that earlier trauma. The body has learned a pattern of response in addition to the negative feelings from the traumatic event.
In this example, characteristics of a past trauma were repeated in a somewhat similar situation, in a process called restimulation. It’s important to understand that the restimulated effects are not only the feelings but also the response of the body, which in the above example include hormonal changes related to anger and restricted blood flow related to a head injury. In the current situation, when Noah feels the restimulated effect of a headache, it is not only ‘in his mind’. The headache feeling is combined with reduced blood flow. And the underlying cause of both the reduced blood flow and the headache is the restimulation of the past traumatic incident.
As one goes through life, incidents involving similar characteristics become connected, and can get restimulated together. For Noah, it means that he now has a tendency to get headaches in certain circumstances. This process of restimulation is, at least partially, non-conscious; the person is not aware that past events and their negative effects are being restimulated.
The technique of Traumatic Incident Reduction (TIR) can eliminate the effects of restimulation. In a normal life, the power of restimulation continues to increase as more painful incidents get added to chains of incidents containing unwanted effects. For this reason, TIR is especially valuable; it breaks the ever-increasing pattern of restimulation. TIR can therefore result in better feelings and better responses, and also in a real improvement in the functioning of the body.