Trauma: A Compassionate Approach to Suffering

Welcome

Hello, friends and family. 

Welcome, and thank you for joining our Oversoul community.

Our mission is to create a sacred space for personal and generational healing. 

If you, or someone you know, needs help, please share this letter with them and invite them to join our community.

This is the second Oversoul Letter. 

If you are new to the community and want to catch up on last week’s letter, you can find the first letter, “A Time to Heal,” at:

https://www.oversoul.life/newsletters/oversoul/posts/a-time-to-heal

Let’s get into it–

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Introduction

Last week I wrote about losing my father-in-law, Paul, to death by suicide, and the resulting impact on my emotional and physical health from that trauma. 

Today, we are going to dive deeper into the topic of trauma to better understand ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world at large. 

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Trauma

This newsletter is all about trauma–what it is, how it affects us, and how we can heal from it.

Our world is awakening to the impact trauma plays in our physical, emotional, and mental health.

But still, few people fully understand the role trauma plays in our personal, family, and community lives. 

I quoted Dr. Gabor Mate in last week’s letter. His perspective and clinical work with trauma opened my eyes to the far reaching impact of trauma around the world. 

In Dr. Mate’s book, “The Myth of Normal,” he posits that trauma affects our families and societies so pervasively that we hardly recognize its impact. 

We assume that the traumas we experience are “normal,” because that’s all we’ve ever known. So many of us go through life carrying deep wounds, both inflicted upon us and inherited.

With this letter I hope to prove that if you, or someone you love, faces challenges related to trauma, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. 

Together, we can heal trauma and live completely full, happy, healthy lives–no matter how difficult current challenges seem. 

What is Trauma?

I prefer Dr. Mate’s definition of trauma:

“Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.”

This means that trauma isn’t necessarily about what happens to us externally, but about our internal responses to the event. 

Everyone is different, so traumatic events affect people differently. An event traumatic to one person might not leave a lasting impression on someone else. 

Because our bodies all respond differently, there is no one-size-fits-all definition for trauma. Therefore, we should practice empathy and compassion for the suffering of others, even if we don't personally find the events traumatic.

Fight-Flight-Freeze-Fawn Response

Trauma stems from our body’s natural survival instincts.

When we undergo overwhelming stress, our bodies naturally react, triggering our fight-flight-freeze-fawn response.

This neurological response to stress evolved in animals, including humans, in order to avoid danger. 

Our fight-flight-freeze-fawn response kept our ancestors safe in the forest and savannah landscapes we evolved in. Before we lived in domesticated, settled communities, the dangers of tigers, snakes, or other animals concerned our ancestors daily.

The body’s ability to react instantaneously to a dangerous animal meant the difference between life or death.

When faced with stress, the body naturally reacts in these four ways:

1. Fight → You might try to attack or defend yourself.

2. Flight → You’d run as fast as possible to escape

3. Freeze → If escape isn’t possible, your body might shut down, immobilizing you as a last resort. 

4. Fawn → You might to appease an attacker by being submissive. 

All of these methods protect us under different threatening circumstances. 

What’s Happening Physiologically During Fight-Flight-Freeze-Fawn?

When the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response is triggered, the automatic nervous system (ANS) floods our bodies with chemicals like cortisol and adrenaline. 

These chemicals move through the circulatory system quickly to jolt us into action. 

Cortisol and adrenaline cause:

    *The heart rate to quicken

    *Digestion to slow down.

    *Sensory and perception to widen

These automatic responses bypass our rational, thinking mind, processing information about our surroundings in an instant. 

Under healthy circumstances, once the threat passes, the flood of cortisol and adrenaline decreases, and the body moves from fight-flight-freeze-fawn to the “rest and digest” response. 

    *Muscles relax.

    *Heart rate slows.

    *Breathing deepens. 

Our bodies then emotionally process the response, sometimes resulting in tears, shaking, or waves of emotion. This is normal as the body shakes off the excess energy from the response. 

Most importantly for understanding the impact of trauma–the brain processes the threatening event in regions of the brain that regulate fear and memory: the amygdala and the hippocampus.

If the brain perceives the threat as a once-time occurrence, then the hippocampus files the memory away, and the mind-body moves on from the incident normally. 

Traumatic Events

When we experience extreme or persistent stresses, our bodies dysregulate and our nervous systems remain stuck in the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response. 

Trauma tricks our brains’ amygdala and hippocampus, causing our nervous system to react to perceived dangers, rather real or not. 

Trauma survivors stuck in a heightened state of arousal (fight-or-flight) often suffer from anxiety, panic attacks, hypervigilance, anger, and defensiveness.

On the other hand, trauma survivors may shut down (fawn-freeze), leading to chronic exhaustion, numbness, depression and dissociation. 

Trauma survivors often oscillate between heightened states and shut-down states, as the stress symptoms overwhelm the nervous systems' pathways and energy.

When trauma affects the nervous system so deeply, the body struggles to enter the rest-digest response, leaving us chronically exhausted, and simultaneously, on edge.

Mind-Body Connection

Trauma affects our entire bodies, not just individual systems. 

Western medicine today  is beginning to recognize what Eastern and indigenous healers have known for millenia: the interconnected nature of the mind-body.

The brain is the largest center of neural activity in the body with billions of neurons, but there are other neural centers of the body outside the brain.

Although possessing fewer neural connections, the gut is often called “the second brain,” containing 100 million neurons. 

The vagus nerve connects the brain to the stomach, regulating mood, digestions, and immunity. 

So when we have “a gut feeling,” or an intuition, that’s not just a colloquial expression–

The stomach literally processes information, often quicker than the logical, prefrontal cortex of the brains. 

Similarly, the heart contains 40,000 neurons, regulating the flow of blood and emotions. 

Viewing these neural centers, we understand how a traumatic wound to our nervous systems impacts the entire body, because our different physiological systems are not distinct from one another. 

When the body cannot regulate from the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response, inflammation builds in the body that impacts physical, emotional, and mental health. 

Here’s how long term stress and trauma affects the systems of our body:

Endocrine System–

    *Excess cortisol production.

    *Exhausted adrenal glands, causing low energy, burnout, and difficulty        managing stress.

    *Blood sugar imbalances

    *Sleep disturbances, 

    *Weakened Immunity 

Cardiovascular System–

    *Elevated heart rate

    *High blood pressure

    *Inflammation

    *Heart Disease

Respiratory System–

    *Chronic shallow breathing, reinforcing anxiety and stress.

    *The diaphragm remains tight, reducing oxygen intake and increasing CO2 retention.

Digestive System–

    *Irritable bowel syndrome

    *Leaky gut

    *Gut dysbiosis

    *Mood instability

Musculoskeletal System–

    *Chronic pain, stiffness, and somatic symptoms.

    *Jaw clenching, neck pain, 

    *Tension headaches

Immune System–

    *Weakened immune function

    *Increased chance for illness

    *High inflammation

    *Autoimmune diseases.

    *Trauma survivors have higher levels of systemic inflammation, increasing the risk of autoimmune diseases.

Cognitive & Sensory Changes–

    *Overactive amygdala → Heightened fear response, emotional reactivity.

    *Underactive prefrontal cortex → Difficulty with decision-making and impulse control.

    *Depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses

    *Altered sensory processing, hypersensitity to sounds, lights, or touch

    *Numbness

Most individuals and families suffer from at least one of these physical, emotional, or mental symptoms. 

Without a perspective on trauma, these symptoms seem to emerge in our lives randomly, or out of the blue. 

When visiting a doctor to treat symptoms, the doctor rarely asks clients detailed questions to understand the roots of their ailments. 

Doctors specialize in particular systems of the body, so they rarely see illness as part of a bigger picture. 

A therapist treats your mental health. 

A cardiologist treats your heart. 

An endocrinologist looks at your hormone levels. 

An oncologist treats you for cancer. 

Rarely do doctors integrate the holistic nature of the body, failing to recognize the mind-body connection.

Stigma Toward Trauma

In our modern era, insight into trauma began during the first world war. 

WW1 was a unique, and terrible, era due to “trench warfare.”

Combatants from all factions fell into a statement situation early in the war due to advancements in lethal machine guns. 

Rather than charge headfirst into intense enemy fire, combatants holed up in trenches dug into the ground, occasionally firing bullets or making futile crossings into “no man’s land,” the area between opposing trenches, 

After the war reached an essential stalemate a few years in, enemies began launching mortar shells at each other–explosives that denoted sending shrapnel flying. 

The soldiers who lived in these conditions in the trenches experienced a hell unknown to us today. 

The constant firing of mortars, the loud sounds, and the imminent fear of excruciating death, resulted in what doctors of the time called “shell shock.”

Victims of shell shock trembled, screamed, couldn’t sleep, and sometimes even lost the ability to speak, or became paralyzed. 

These soldiers dealt with unfathomable damage to their nervous systems.

Military leaders shamed victims of shell shock considering them cowards.

The common advice to shell shock victims was to “man up.”

Shell shock is an outdated term now, but symptoms the soldiers experienced then are still prevalent today. 

Now, we call shell shock, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it is a common source of trauma. 

Just as during WW1, we can’t expect someone with deep trauma to simply “man up.”

Someone affected by deep trauma cannot simply move through it on their own, because the brain and nervous system are damaged and need help to repair. 

While society’s perspective toward trauma is improving, we still have a long way to go in recognizing and responding affirmingly toward victims of trauma. 

Wounds Seen and Unseen

In our culture, we tend to view wounds differently depending on if the wound is seen or unseen.

Consider someone with a broken leg–we never expect a person with a broken leg to walk without assistance from friends, or crutches. We don’t shame them if they need a wheelchair. 

When someone breaks their leg, we rush them to the emergency room to set the bone and apply a cast. We quickly recognize the injury and get the person help as soon as possible.

We even view broken legs as something somewhat honorable or cool–that’s why we sign our names on people’s casts.

A broken leg is an example of a wound that is seen. 

In contrast, we also experience unseen wounds that are just as serious and real as a broken leg, that affects our ability to function in life as severely. 

While a broken leg is a wound to our skeletal system, trauma is a wound to our nervous system.

We never expect someone with a broken leg to go on without rehabilitating the leg, but yet we expect people wounded by trauma to carry on as if nothing is wrong; often misattributing the symptoms of trauma as character flaws: laziness, distractedness, volatility.

We don’t say about a person with a broken leg, “Why can’t that person just get up and walk?” 

But yet toward trauma survivors we stigmatize saying, “Why can’t they just pull themselves together?” 

Or, “Why can’t they just get over it?”

We can sign our names on a leg cast, but not on someone’s injured nervous system. 

As we wake up to trauma’s impact on our lives, we develop deeper empathy and compassion for the traumatic events ourselves and our loved ones suffer. We express greater patience toward the survivor, while recognizing that the symptoms of trauma differ from the roots.

Misidentifying With Nervous System Wounds

Another cultural challenge with trauma and nervous system wounds is based in language and self identity.

In grammatical structure across many of the world’s languages, the injured leg is viewed as an “object.” 

In English, we say, “my leg is broken,” or, “I have a broken leg.”

In this grammatical context, the leg is something separate from the self. 

“I” broke “my leg.”

Compare this language, then, to how we describe nervous system wounds–

Sometimes we say, “I feel depressed,” or, “I feel anxious.”

Other times we may say, “I have depression,” or, “I have anxiety.”

These phrasings imply that the symptoms of trauma, depression and anxiety, are emotions we feel or possess.

At the worst, though, language can pathologize trauma and blur the lines between ourselves and our traumatic experiences.

When we identify so closely with our trauma, we may say, “I am…” rather than, “I feel…”

For example,

“I am depressed.”

“I am anxious.”

“I am bipolar.”

“I am an addict.”

This language confuses the nervous system by conflating it with our sense of self. 

Our nervous system feels more like “us” than our skeletal or muscular systems, which seem like something we “have.”

This way of speaking makes us feel that there is something inherently wrong with us. 

Instead of asking, “what happened to me?” we fall into the trap of thinking, “This is just how I am.”

Doctors often buy into this pathologizing language through diagnosing trauma survivors and prescribing a host of drugs to treat the symptoms, while largely ignoring the roots of trauma.

Doctors can make us feel that we are broken, and without the use of drugs, never able to consistently regulate on our own–

This simply isn’t true. 

Coping with Trauma

In addition to many negative health impacts, the effects of trauma often manifest in the ways we cope with injuries to our nervous systems. 

These coping mechanisms mask the pain of the underlying traumatic wound. 

In a wonderful form of non-pathologizing cognitive therapy called “Internal Family Systems,” coping mechanisms are seen as “parts” within ourselves with their own autonomy and personalities, that seek to regulate the “internal family” of our emotions. 

Richard Schwartz, a family therapist and Harvard Medical School professor, developed the Internal Family Systems framework while working with teenage girls coping with trauma through self-harm and eating disorders. 

Schwartz recognized that the girls he helped kept referring to “parts” within themselves, such as “one part of me wants to do this, but another part of me doesn’t want to.”

We all use language like this to describe our different desires and wants. 

“Part of me wants to go to the movie theater tonight, but part of me wants to stay home.”

Schwartz focused on this language and started asking the different parts of his clients their intentions, hopes, fears, etc.

He quickly discovered a family of parts within each client that interacted with each other in meaningful ways.

Some parts managed stress, other parts handled emergencies, and some parts exiled themselves to avoid pain

In addition, Schwartz found that his clients possessed a sense of “Self,” with a capital S, that is unchanging and ever present. 

So the typical internal family systems parts include:

*The Self–The never changing, constant, curious, compassionate, connected part of ourselves. Who we really are. 

*Exiles–The wounded, suppressed parts of ourselves.

*Protectors–Defenders that try to keep exiles save, including:

    Managers–Proactive protectors, avoidant of danger.

    Firefighters–Reactive protectors, there to save the day in an emergency.

After working through Internal Family Systems therapy to work through my own traumas, I identified parts within myself that I can use as examples in this framework:

After losing my father-in-law, Paul, to death by suicide, I had an exiled part. This exiled part of me could not handle the grief of losing Paul, so he disassociated and went numb (freeze response). 

This exiled part of me was avoidant, and did not want to address the loss of Paul. A manager part developed to protect this exiled part from the pain of loss. The manager’s primary method to avoid the pain was to play video games. 

Video games became my coping method for my grief that protected my exiled part that suffered from the trauma of losing Paul.

I also developed a firefighter part that protected my exiled part when stress threatened my sense of security. The firefighter emerged when I faced the slightest stress, becoming angry, defensive, and contentious with others (fight response). The firefighter knew my exiled part could not handle any more loss, stress, or instability in life, so he fought anything that threatened my system.

Now, I recognize coping within myself and others as protector parts responding to exiled parts hurt by trauma. 

It’s a beautiful framework that applies to all coping methods:

*Substance abuse

*Self-harm

*Anger & Aggression

*Perfectionism

*Binge eating or restrictive eating

*Escapism

*Etc

We can’t treat the symptoms and ignore the roots. 

We can’t treat the protector parts as the problems, when the protectors seek to shield us from further pain caused by trauma, even if the methods are ultimately unhealthy. Because the protector parts exist to shield us from even greater pain. 

Furthermore, we cannot become identified with our exile or protector pieces. 

Like the section above, our words matter in defining our relationship to our coping methods. We can easily fall into the trap of saying:

“He’s an alcoholic,” rather than the more nuanced, “He is using alcohol right now to cope with unresolved trauma.”

The difference in the language means everything, whether keeping us in hopeless, victim mindsets, or empowering us with understanding and compassion. 

How to Heal Trauma and Associated Symptoms

No matter how deeply affected by trauma, we all possess the capability within ourselves to completely heal our nervous systems and other bodily systems. 

I am not a professional therapist or doctor, so I cannot offer professional advice. However, I can share my own experiences with healing trauma with the hope to help you heal and move forward on your own. 

These are my best recommendations for healing trauma, and the advice I would give myself if I could go back in time to when I lost Paul.

1. View trauma and recovery as an exciting journey of self discovery. Like a hero setting off on a quest, accept the call to adventure. Embrace change wholeheartedly. Face your past, present, and future with courage. 

2. Recognize that healing is non-linear. Everyone follows a different path to healing, and there is no-one-size-fits all approach. We are all meant to heal in our own way, in our own time. Healing modalities that resonate with others might not resonate with you, and that’s okay. Sometimes breakthroughs happen in sudden jumps, while other times healing is a long process with setback and bumps in the road. 

3. Learn to calm your nervous system. Simple, intentional breathing techniques help open the diaphragm, allow more air into your lungs, and relax the body. Breathing deeply and slowly helps activate the rest-digest parasympathetic nervous system. If you ever feel stressed, stop, and breathe deeply.

4. Create a Sacred Space for Healing. We can’t heal in unsafe, cluttered environments. Create a sacred space for yourself, indoors or outdoors, where you can go consistently to reflect, relax, and meditate. Clear clutter from the space, and bring in meaningful objects to support your journey.

5. Seek effective talk therapy. Find a qualified, experienced therapist specializes in Internal Family Systems, or Compassionate Inquiry, developed by Gabor Mate. Therapists practicing these techniques will not pathologize your trauma. 

6. Embrace somatic healing techniques. Somatic healing techniques retrain the amygdala and hippocampus centers of the brain that regulate the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response. Somatic healing techniques connect us back to our bodies, emotions, and intuitions. 

1. *Intentional Breathing–Training the body to relax by focusing on breath. Also includes holotropic breathwork, a form of deep rhythmic breathing that helps release suppressed trauma.

2. Meditation–Learning to calm and expand the mind through various techniques. 

3. Yoga & Movement Therapy–Moving the body slowly, and intentionally to reconnect with feelings and sensations–particularly effective for healing disassociative symptoms. 

4. Dance–Moving the body in a safe environment. 

5. Humming, chanting, & singing–Expressing the vagal nerve that connects the brain and gut to release trauma. 

6. Cold Water Exposure & Heat Therapy–Alternating the body between extreme cold temperatures and extreme warm temperatures, like Wim Hoff methods, cold plunges, and saunas.

7. EMDR–A therapeutic technique that uses rapid eye movement to process repressed traumas. 

In future letters and videos we will dive deep into each of these somatic healing modalities, and interview experts in each method. 

Invitation

If you, or a loved one, suffer from effects of trauma and nervous system wounds, you are not alone. 

Hope and healing are completely possible, no matter how deeply trauma has affected us.

I invite you to begin, or further, your healing journey today. 

Together, we can help ourselves and our loved ones and build a more compassionate world. 

How to Connect

1. Subscribe to the Oversoul Letter for weekly information about how to heal trauma and reconnect with your authentic purpose. 

2. Starting in April, we are launching a guided, group transformational program with weekly calls and coursework. This program is perfect for someone looking to dip their toes into transformation and healing work. To join the waitlist, please email [email protected]

Safe journeys.

Much love,

Tate

Oversoul 2025