Trauma imprints in the body

Acceptance can be difficult. That's an understatement if ever there was one. When we reject or resist feeling our feelings, we can't experience them and the experience remains undigested or unexperienced. Psychiatrist Ivor Browne calls unexperienced experience trauma. This is one of the ways trauma imprints in our bodies. What we don't feel and experience our body takes on.

Chronic indigestion, or undischarged trauma, can show up in our life in all sorts of ways; IBS, acid reflux, bloating, chronic inflammation, anxiety, stress, depression, chronic fatigue and so on. Finding a way to digest the indigestible is important for our health. Ask your self what has been the hardest for you to digest or accept in your life?

I believe it's nigh on impossible to let go of something that we haven't digested or even acknowledged is there. And that's where the frustration and overwhelm come in, we try and struggle in vain to let go of something that hasn't been acknowledged, accepted or felt. The overwhelm goes beyond frustration, it very often, if not always, leads to feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. The helplessness is also felt because of not consciously knowing due to repressed or unconscious pain, a pain so painful that it is deeply buried. But our body lets us know in the form of symptoms, as it is the container for all our pain.

The first physical signs of indigestion can be low stomach acid, we don't digest our food as well and feel off and bloated. If left unchecked this can become chronic and can lead to issues such as IBS and many others. Emotional signs of undischarged trauma are feeling overwhelmed, flying off the handle at the 'slightest' thing, being called 'too' sensitive and feeling like it's all 'too much'.

One of the reasons we won't allow our self to experience anything traumatic is we fear we'll never be able to exit from the feeling or experience and it will be unbearable. Which is usually how we felt when it first happened and we don't want to return there. We're terrified it will stay with us forever and swallow us up in its pain so we resist feeling it with all our might. The strategy of avoiding pain in the short term (the freeze response) works really well and can be life saving, but in the long run we pay a huge price for suppressing what's crying out for acceptance from us. Tapping diagram and procedure.