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Day 2. Life is turned upside down( continued)
TO THE TRAINER
PART II: THE TRAINING
KEY POINT
Aim. To clarify the nature and expression of trauma.
The story illustrates
• How the body reacts to a traumatic event.
• Reactions in the five focus areas.
Responses to threat
When we meet danger, we have a hierarchy of defences that we use to protect ourselves. They are biological and automatic. Animals respond to danger in the same way. Our first reaction is actively to defend ourselves: to flee or fight. Our nervous system becomes highly active. The muscles are filled with blood and mobilised for action; breathing is short and stays in the upper part of the body.
If we cannot flee or fight our way out of a situation, we adopt passive forms of defence. We freeze and submit.
When a traumatic event is overwhelming, and one is trapped, helpless and feeling intense fear, it is common to be haunted by the intensity of the experience. That is because the experience is so overwhelming that it overrides our capacity to integrate the event.
TEACHING INSTRUCTION.
It is important to understand the trauma reactions that most people are likely to experience after severe or life-threatening events. These reactions are not signs of insanity, but are nevertheless experienced as very shameful. They are natural, common and predictable responses to extreme violence.
When women experience the feeling that they can no longer control what happens to them, no longer control their lives or defend themselves, this too is a survival response, a normal or expected reaction of self-protection.
Figure 3. The Butterfly Woman Immediately after the trauma.