When Nothing's Worked

Today, we're going to discuss about Trauma Illness. There's a lot of discussion surrounding trauma and anxiety lately, with much focus on topics such as the vagus nerve, the fight or flight response, and the link between stress and the development of various illnesses. In this blog, I aim to explain four key objectives.

• First, I want to discuss about Trauma Illness. What is the difference between trauma illness and trauma informed illness? Or a trauma informed practitioner?

• Second, what is the difference between somatic illness and trauma illness?

• Third, I'm going to discuss to you about the timeline. That's an absolute must if we're going to understand what a body is doing and why it's playing out the way it is.

• And then fourth, what are current therapies that we can do to help with trauma illness, which seems to be so prevalent lately?

So objective number one, what is the difference between trauma illness and trauma informed illness?

So Trauma informed illness, there is an illness. It is a medical presentation, there are clinical symptoms, a person, it does not feel well, and there is something going on. They also have stress, anxiety, trauma relationship to the illness that is presenting. And a Trauma informed practitioner knows how to diagnose and treat and work with the illness while also being aware that there is trauma involved, there is stress, there is anxiety involved, that could prolong or make it more difficult in whatever treatment modality they choose to use.

So that's trauma informed illness. I'm putting a new term out there and it could change over time. But basically, Trauma illness, is where the illness is coming from the nervous systems direction to begin with. So I'll explain it when I kind of go over the timeline a little bit to make this easier to comprehend.

Objective number two, what is the difference between somatic illness and trauma illness?

So Trauma illness is more about the nervous systems direction. It's a nervous system activation, a nervous system memory that is causing the actual illness. Somatic illness is more feelings involved. Somatic means the feelings that are stored in the basal ganglia portion of the brain end up coming out as physical symptoms. So that's very different from trauma illness, because somatic is all about feelings. It is the feelings that come out in a physical way so that we can see and identify them, and we pay attention because we see it now physically.

Somatic illness is often not frequently referenced or examined. However, it's crucial to consider the emotions associated with what's happening in a person's life and understand how these emotions may manifest physically. Emotions tend to manifest in the physical form as a means of making themselves known, enabling you to address them. So, we have somatic illness, which is feeling-based, in contrast to trauma illness.

So, let's delve into this a bit. Imagine a person is currently experiencing symptoms such as heart palpitations, anxiety, and a fight or flight response. Let's make sure that they are listening and that we notice that these symptoms are heart-related. There might be issues with the electrical conductivity of the heart, an elevated heart rate, racing heart, tachycardia, difficulty breathing, syncope, or even SVT. These symptoms may seem irregular for a heart, but they are normal responses to stress or a fight-or-flight situation.

Now, let's consider a person dealing with these symptoms, and it's clear that they need medical attention. They have clinical symptoms that can be diagnosed, and they require immediate care. However, what is absolutely necessary to help this person is examining the timeline of their entire life events and their complete history, not just to identify the medical condition at hand.

A good doctor or practitioner will inquire about your personal and family history to gain a deeper understanding of the medical condition you're experiencing. However, what I refer to as the 'evolutionary nervous system' is the story recorded on your timeline of life events.

Let's consider a scenario where a person had a severe car accident at the age of 18, and it left a lasting impact. They recall the experience, the subsequent PTSD, the fear of death, and the moments of waiting for the ambulance. Additionally, they may have experienced another significant event affecting their nervous system, such as a traumatic bullying incident that profoundly shaped their life. This incident made school attendance challenging, led to feelings of being an outcast, and gave rise to anxiety around people. Despite this, they yearned for trust and connection.

When examining a person's medical presentation, what we often overlook is the impact of their evolutionary nervous system and what it has recorded from the past. This information may be influencing their current experiences. It's essential to understand that the nervous system does not recognize a specific timeframe; it doesn't differentiate between the past and the present. All it knows is, 'I touched a hot stove once, and it was painful.' Whenever something in the present resembles that past event, like a hot stove in a kitchen, anything that might trigger that memory, your nervous system will automatically recall it, without conscious thought. It brings the past into the present.

Even though this heart patient is currently dealing with medical issues and requires medical care, it's essential not to forget that their condition is not solely influenced by the traumas they've experienced and the emotions associated with them. It's also important to recognize that their nervous system, at the time of the accident, had to go into survival mode. This led to an elevated heart rate, as it was reacting in fear and preparing for survival by pumping more blood. The nervous system redirected energy from the muscles, causing weakness, and initiated a state of shock. It also prompted an increase in breathing rate to enhance the person's physical chances of survival after the accident.

Fast forward to the present day, where the individual is experiencing a medical situation with diagnosable symptoms that are evident. However, there's no clear explanation for it. Despite passing all the tests and having a normal echocardiogram, the symptoms don't seem to register on the monitors.

So, what's happening is that the nervous system is essentially creating an illness on its own due to a perceived threat in this particular person's life. They had a severe illness, possibly COVID, which triggered the body into a survival mode. Then, they had a minor bike accident, but it was enough to remind their nervous system of a similar situation when they were 18 years old, lying on the ground after a significant accident. The current accident bears enough similarities, and the nervous system is essentially creating an illness based on this new, much more minor accident that has happened in the present.

It's important to understand that this is still a research project in progress, but it's a vital component of the new discussions I'm introducing to the fields of chronic illness, mystery illness, and silent illness. We must not remain silent about what the nervous system has recorded because it's currently influencing how our cells and immune system respond.

Consider the evolutionary nervous system; its primary purpose is to remember information crucial for your survival. For instance, if you've ever touched a hot stove, your nervous system remembers the sensation. Now, every time you encounter a hot stove, you don't have to consciously remind yourself that it's hot and not to touch it. Your nervous system has already recorded this information in the memory regions of your brain. You don't even need to think about it; you instinctively exercise caution around a hot stove. This automatic response applies to various life events as well.

Remember, as I've said before and will continue to emphasize, when you experience an injury, you're not just injured once; it affects you twice—once in the body and once in the brain, nervous system, and biofield, or whatever term you prefer to use. So, how do we work with this? I'm in the process of perfecting the process now, but the first step is understanding the evolution of an individual's nervous system, what insults have been recorded, and how the nervous system may be responding.

Now, what kinds of past experiences could have triggered similar responses that need to be distinguished from the current situation? We work with the biofield. The nervous system conveys messages to the cells, and the cells act on these messages like a programmed response. Cells do not make independent decisions; they execute actions based on the messaging they receive. Cells also store an energy field, and they are electrical and electromagnetic in nature. As a result, cells emit and communicate a bioelectrical and biomagnetic field around them. This is where I believe subconscious energy is stored.

So, there's much more work to be done in understanding what cells store and how they function. You've heard me mention that cells record and retain memory, and they follow their programming until they receive a new message. We dedicate a significant amount of effort to parasympathetic training. This is because we must make use of the sympathetic nervous system, the fight-or-flight response, the side that comes to your rescue, often referred to as the SAM state when we're in danger. However, we also need the ability to differentiate between the past and the present and return to a parasympathetic state, which is the only state of the nervous system in which true healing can occur.

Now, we also incorporate a lot of frequency therapies, and you'll likely hear more about frequency work because it's a way to interact with the biofield and balance what I refer to as electrical disruptions. These biofield disruptions can be thought of as removing the obstacles from the river so that the biofield can respond in the present moment. There is still much more to learn and research on this topic. However, if you're one of those dealing with chronic, unresolved, mysterious, or silent illnesses, you should seek a practitioner who not only understands trauma but also comprehends trauma illness and the evolutionary nervous system. As far as I know, I'm currently the only one working on this that until we teach other people and research more.

So if you are that person, you might want to look up our Hidden Health Clues Program because this is what's going to help you to identify the insults and share them with us so that we can help you understand what your body is doing and what it is pulling from past memory and separating what is current, what is past, and how do we work with that differently.