Physical pain and tension that is not the result of any other medical condition. This can happen anywhere in the body, and for trauma survivors, it is most commonly held in the core of the body, the stomach, abdomen, and low back, as well as the upper torso, chest, shoulders, and spine.
Emotions are felt in the gut. Feelings such sadness, anger, nervousness, fear and joy can be felt in the gut. The term “feeling sick to the stomach” describes a situation which involves mental or emotional anguish which can produce stress in the mind and the body.
Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.
Many believe unprocessed trauma is stored in your nervous system. These trapped 'issues in your tissues' may have detrimental effects on your physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Trauma sensitizes the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which is the body's central stress response system. You can think of this as the juncture of our central nervous system and endocrine system, which makes us more reactive to stress and more likely to increase the stress hormone cortisol.
Take time to slow down and be alone, get out into nature, make art, listen to music while you cook your favorite dinner, meditate to cleanse your mind and relax your body, take a bubble bath or a nap to restore.
But, the feelings often do not go away after the situation has passed. These emotions become emotional information which stays in our bodies as trauma. So, where are these negative emotions in our bodies? Emotional information is stored through “packages” in our organs, tissues, skin, and muscles.
The most common areas we tend to hold stress are in the neck, shoulders, hips, hands and feet. Planning one of your stretch sessions around these areas can help calm your mind and calm your body. When we experience stressful situations whether in a moment or over time, we tend to feel tension in the neck.
Some may have a fight-or-flight type of response, which may include muscle tension, heart pounding and sweating because their body "believes it needs to activate," she explains. Others maybe experience a freeze response, which can look like someone who struggles to move or get out of bed.
It won't rid you of PTSD and your fears, but let your tears flow and you'll maybe feel a little better afterwards. 'Crying for long periods of time releases oxytocin and endogenous opioids, otherwise known as endorphins. These feel-good chemicals can help ease both physical and emotional pain.
"In a fight or flight situation, your muscles respond by tensing up. If you think of your pelvis as the center point for your body to work off of when trying to get away from trauma, and your body's response to trauma includes making your muscles tense, it makes sense that your hips tend to store a lot of tension."
The brain-gut axis also explains how you can feel stress and emotions in the gut. Most people have experienced butterflies before a first date or diarrhea before public speaking. These "gut feelings" are the result of stress being communicated to the gut via these bidirectional nerve pathways.
Guilt, Fishkin says, is associated with activity in the prefrontal cortex, the logical-thinking part of the brain. Guilt can also trigger activity in the limbic system. (That's why it can feel so anxiety-provoking.)
Physical digestive symptoms associated with PTSD include IBS - diarrhea, constipation, bloating, as well as stomach ulcers, gall bladder disorders and more. When your microbiome is unbalanced from trauma it communicates that message of chaos back to our mind via the vagus nerve.
The amygdala is responsible for the expression of fear and aggression as well as species-specific defensive behavior, and it plays a role in the formation and retrieval of emotional and fear-related memories. (Fig. 2 depicts the amygdala's involvement in fear circuitry).
The amygdala, an area of the brain that manages emotional responses, plays a crucial role in developing feelings of fear and anxiety. When a person feels anxious, stressed, or frightened, the brain signals other body parts. The signals communicate that the body should prepare to fight or flee.
A big event or a buildup of smaller stressful life situations may trigger excessive anxiety — for example, a death in the family, work stress or ongoing worry about finances. Personality. People with certain personality types are more prone to anxiety disorders than others are. Other mental health disorders.
On the other hand, repressed emotions are never processed. The problem with this is they don't just go away. Instead, they'll likely show up in the future — often in the form of possible psychological or physical symptoms.
Massage therapy, the manual manipulation of soft body tissue to promote health and well-being, can provide relief from physical, emotional, and mental stress, and decrease levels of depression, anxiety, irritability, and other symptoms associated with trauma exposure (Collinge, Kahn, & Soltysik, 2012).
During the purification process, you'll face and address uncomfortable feelings you've stuffed away to avoid dealing with them. An emotional detox pulls up all the repressed feelings of fear, anger, hurt, sadness, and frustration to clear them away, effectively hitting the reset switch on your emotions.
Traumatic body memories are particularly observed in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with intrusively re-experienced traumatic life events that manifest in the form of somatic flashbacks including physical sensations such as smells, tastes, pain, haptic experiences, pressure or sweating.