Healing Trauma: Spiritual Technologies of Who Was There for You

What is Trauma?

Trauma is the lasting emotional, psychological, and physical response to an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that a person experiences as life-threatening, very harmful or scary. It overwhelms a person's ability to cope, often causing long-term distress and shattering their sense of safety, self, and predictability in the world. It centers around:

• Subjective Experience: Trauma is defined by how an individual experiences the event, rather than the event itself.

• The Three Es: The Event, Experience of it, and Effects on the individual.

• Physical and Emotional Harm: It can cause immediate reactions like shock or fear, and long-term symptoms like anxiety, depression, or PTSD.

American Psychological Association (APA) defines trauma as “Any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. Traumatic events include those caused by human behavior (e.g., abuse, war, industrial accidents) as well as by nature (e.g., earthquakes) and often challenge an individual’s view of the world as a just, safe, and predictable place." It also includes any serious physical accidental injury, such as a widespread burn or a blow to the head.

Who experiences trauma?

“Although many people who experience a traumatic event will go on with their lives without lasting negative effects, others will have difficulties and experience traumatic stress reactions. How someone responds to a traumatic experience is personal. If there is a strong support system in place, little or no prior traumatic experiences, and if the individual has many resilient qualities, it may not affect his or her mental health.” (SAMHSA: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.)

Types of Trauma

• Acute: Results from a single, isolated stressful or dangerous event.

• Chronic: Results from repeated and prolonged exposure to highly stressful situations, such as abuse, neglect, or bullying.

• Complex: Results from exposure to multiple, often chronic, traumatic events.

  
  

Shannon’s Approach to Trauma

My understanding of trauma has shifted along with international research on why some events remain traumatic and create lasting effects for some people but not for others. Our collective awareness has gone from thinking, “What's wrong with you?” to asking, “What happened to you?” and now focusing on, “Who was there for you?” 

Research has shown that a simple retelling of a traumatic experience does not always deeply heal the one who suffers. While it can feel good to be truly heard, especially for those who have never told it and received real empathy, repeatedly telling the story does not often change the subconscious beliefs implanted during the trauma or the nervous system’s reactivity. And sometimes the retelling of traumatic stories just further engrains the pain as our minds loop around the painful parts of the story. 

The majority of my clients find it helpful- when they are ready- to build a new relationship with a traumatic experience by re-approaching the memory and inviting a shift. Often the shift is around “Who could have been there for you.” While in factual reality, no one may have stopped the trauma, we can access another perspective that enables our bodies, hearts, and minds to feel supported. We can do this many ways: through role play, through imagination, through calling in ancestors or pop stars or our highest selves, or by letting our wise adult-self take over the situation. Or we may use drawing materials or nature to discover a new part of the experience we didn’t realize before.  It may sound hard or odd at first, but I am fully present to support you. Many people find it alleviating.  

Then we talk about how to implement the new shift into daily life. After we work with the Experience of the event, we further explore how we can change some of the future Effects of it. You can read about one example on my blog: Somatic Sense Rooms. 

Note: I have taken numerous trainings during my work at the children’s hospital and online by psychotherapy organizations such as PESI, but I am not a licensed psychotherapist.  I do not diagnose and treat mental health disorders. I am highly trained in spirituality, and I utilize spiritual technologies. I find there is significant overlap and inter-development in the best somatic psychotherapy and the best spiritual technologies. For examples, EMDR (developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro as she walked in the woods), and Internal Family Systems (and other parts work with archetypes).

How We Can be Effective

In my sessions, we often target a single traumatic event, even though it’s likely there were other traumatic times and complex factors. Because when we re-wire the thinking and nervous system response around a major event, it can change the thought-patterns associated with other traumatic events, by association. It usually works best if there’s a concrete memory of a specific place and time. Afterwards, we allow time for the new way of thinking to permeate and spend the next sessions on how we want to live our lives today. We focus on the transformation. We may go through 2-3 traumatic events over the course of a year. We don’t necessarily need to go through all of them. This saves you time, energy, and money, and it is also more sustainable for me as a trauma healer.

Having supported hundreds of parents and families through child deaths, and having worked with adults’ childhood trauma in private practice, I have developed intimate knowing. And, I figured out that to provide transformative work that alleviates client suffering, it must also sustain my hope in the world so I can hold hope for others. My ability to work with the most egregious life experiences depends on a collaborative approach to trauma, rather than “client tells the story and I hold it.” I'm not meant to hold it; I'm meant to empower you in your holding- through reworking or releasing it.  Then my memory of your trauma also has the liberated aspect. Both of our brain-body systems need energetic movement, because I am also human and through my deep empathy I participate in your story. 

So to help you with trauma, I ask that you let me know before diving into a story, so we can prepare together. I can give you choices, as I always do in our work together. We want to make sure you'll have the space and resourcefulness you'll need the rest of the day or week if reopening the memory is overwhelming. I ask you to only share the parts of the story that are most clutching for you, and refrain from going into significant detail about whatever harm happened. Details often stymie energy around the pain rather than the liberation.

For example: ***Warning*** the following 2 paragraphs have an example of a trauma:

You might say, “I was in the driveway when the car pulled up and he took me into the car and beat me.” I would ask you to not go into details about the kind of car, or the way he beat you. However, you might share, “While it was happening, I just kept thinking I shouldn’t have been in the driveway," or "I still hate my shoulder, where he first hit me. I hate wearing a bathing suit." When we focus on the feelings and thoughts that you were or are still having, we can target your deepest need. Those are the places where we can bring the most helpful attention and look for options to comfort and shift. 

An Exception

There are experts in treating sexual abuse, and I am not one of those. For sexual trauma, I recommend the Sexual Trauma and Abuse Care Center in Lawrence, or if you're in another community, finding an expert there. I do welcome you to let me know how sexual abuse has affected you, such as “I was sexually abused by my uncle in childhood, and when I told an adult, they did nothing to stop it.”  We can talk about how that experience may be affecting you now, including rage, anxiety, or despair from it. We may be able to find new healing thoughts. But I am not equipped to help you process your experiences of that situation.

Gratitude

Thank you for caring about yourself enough to get educated on trauma. I hope this provides some clarity on my approach. And I understand it's complicated- if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

There are many other approaches to treating trauma, and I hope you will find the one/s that work well for you. I have personally experienced EMDR and spiritual counseling as effective, and I believe there are different options because we are unique people. You are welcome to try the methodologies I utilize as well as others. 

It is truly an honor to provide support for your deepest wounds and to have been gifted skills in helping you navigate these tough waters. 

Sincerely,

Shannon Gorres, MDiv, MA

Various resources on healing trauma somatically:

a.       The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity By Nadine Burke Harris

b.       The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor

c.      Books and workbooks by Dr. Arielle Schwartz

d.       The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. Or Waking the Tiger or Healing Trauma by Peter Levine.

e. My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

f.       The Pain We Carry: Healing from Complex Ptsd for People of Color by Natalie Y. Gutiérrez

g. Voices from the Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices edited by Lara Medina and Martha R Gonzales

h.        body rites: a holistic healing and embodiment workbook for Black survivors of sexual trauma by Shena J. Young

For folks still exposed to trauma, especially through work: Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky with Connie Burk

More about the child’s brain: The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

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