Written by Isidora Bugarski, EBC Balkans
Are you familiar with the feeling of helplessness and hopelessness?
Have you ever felt like you’re not in your body, walking beside yourself, gazing at something without being able to continue the sentence you started, or unable to recall basic information about yourself?
These are just some signs of how our bodies react to trauma.
In an interview with EBC Balkans, Dr. Zorica Mitić, the author of numerous books and a body-oriented therapist, discussed this topic. She has dedicated her career and life to helping people overcome trauma, reduce stress, and improve their communication. Her work includes innovative methods such as Somatic Experience, Brain Spotting, and TRE, and she shares her knowledge with therapists worldwide. She was a volunteer doctor during the war in former Yugoslavia and is a great humanitarian.
Dr. Mitić emphasizes not missing the opportunity to talk about: what traumas are, how to prevent them, how to heal them when they occur, the causal relationship between events in our lives and trauma, and what can be changed?
Once trauma happens, finding the right cure is not easy because as many people, there are as many ways of experiencing an event, and there are many ways of treatment. That’s why prevention is much simpler.
What is trauma?
The word, which many avoid, has been increasingly discussed by psychologists and psychiatrists over the past 30 years, such as Gabor Mate, Dr. Peter Levine, Dr. David Barceli, Dr. David Grand, and many others, focusing on trauma awareness and prevention. The term itself comes from the Greek word and means injury. It is an injury to our behavior and our reaction. Contrary to common belief, trauma doesn’t necessarily happen in one event but practically occurs in our individual reactions.
What is an individual reaction or non-reaction?
Our response to an intense event that traumatizes us or a series of repeated events, such as family violence, peer violence, and societal violence in general. Our behavior and repeated patterns can change due to frequent attacks. Trauma is our inability to react and defend ourselves against what happens in a moment. It is associated with our feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. We are cornered, unable to do anything, a situation well-known to everyone, a typical example being during the COVID-19 pandemic—an epidemic of hopelessness and helplessness.
How do we overcome trauma?
Norwegians say, “A hundred paths lead to one room.” There are many different ways. Therefore, various therapeutic approaches are needed. There isn’t a single correct and effective way. Each approach can help someone. Dr. Mitić doesn’t advocate for just one therapeutic approach but diversity because everyone is different. Diversity is primarily related to the genetic basis, as traumas are inherited like allergies or other illnesses, including fears.
The principle “Those who have been bitten by snakes fear lizards” is associated with a term called retraumatization, which practically means that a person traumatized by snakes, when seeing a lizard, experiences the trauma as if it were a snake, making no distinction. In the behavior of a traumatized person, there is a wrong observation of reality (unable to see that the lizard is a lizard, not a snake). Many people are currently experiencing retraumatization, especially those who have lost children in the past. Recent events in society have triggered retraumatization in them. When real personal danger is present in the external world or not, trauma can emerge.
What does this create? It leads to inadequate behavior; many people become aggressive due to past bad experiences because aggression is often a defense mechanism. By spreading awareness of how traumas affect our behavior, society reacts with an excessive amount of tension and aggression. The root of all this is individual or collective trauma.
Personal and secondary traumas exist. There are personal traumas, events we have experienced ourselves, leaving a mark on our behavior. Still, there is also secondary traumatization, which is equally significant. Who experiences secondary traumatization? For example, journalists reporting on severe events, healthcare workers facing the harsh destinies of their patients daily, firefighters, soldiers, police officers, etc. That’s why major services like the police, military, and firefighters, worldwide have special training to overcome encounters with such tragic events. It is recognized in these professions as something that hasn’t been labeled as traumatization but needs to be overcome.
Awareness
We must be aware that we have many things in our daily lives that can change our behavior. Our nervous system constantly assesses and listens to what is dangerous and what is not, determining our behavior accordingly. If it’s not dangerous, we can talk nicely, and even raise our tone, but it doesn’t lead to major conflicts or other forms of violence. However, if we feel insecure, something else happens in our system; the alarm is triggered, signaling to prepare for defense or escape.
Escape is always the first option ingrained in our nature. However, if we are unable to escape, if we are trapped, then we can prepare for battle. If there’s no fight—for instance, we didn’t know how to fight against the coronavirus there are many things we are unable to fight against—then our nervous system shifts to the third level of defense, the most primitive level of defense, disconnecting us from our rationality.
How does this function in the brain?
Our brain is structured as Daniel Siegel illustrates, using a fist as a model of our brain.
Fingers represent the large brain or the cortex of the large brain, where cognitive, intellectual, and voluntary functions are among others.
The thumb represents the limbic system subcortex, where our traumas, emotions, and reactions are stored.
At the base is the extended spinal cord called the reptilian brain, where automatic defenses are stored, along with functions like heart rate and breathing.
When something overwhelming happens to someone, the cortex disconnects, and the subcortex is activated, where our automatic, instinctive, involuntary defenses come into play (1. escape, 2. defense, 3. freeze).
We feel as if we are not completely in our bodies, as if we are floating or slightly intoxicated. This happens because our nervous system produces, somewhat jokingly called, “local narcotics” (numerous hormones produced there), aiming to reduce the sense of pain from what is happening in our environment and our bodies. Freeze is a temporary disconnection from our conscious reactions, cognitive part, our body, emotions, and our surroundings. In such situations, we do not see things clearly around us, and all our assessments made during that period could be highly debatable.
How to recognize when we are frozen?
Apart from feeling as if we are not in our bodies, we may have a déjà vu-like syndrome, walking beside ourselves, being unable to continue a sentence we started, unable to remember simple facts about ourselves. In essence, we are not 100% functional. Siegel mentions that 27 different types of dissociations occur, but nothing is 100%.
What does it mean? Dissociation does not last long; it helps us get through a tough period, and then we return. However, there is something much stronger when the pain we experience is immense and exceeds our capacity for recovery.
What is the capacity for recovery or the window of tolerance?
It varies for each of us; everything is individual. Traumatization is individual because some people are traumatized by an event, and others are not, due to their previous experiences that have led to post-traumatic growth. Every trauma doesn’t destabilize us to the extent that we never recover; we recover from numerous traumas and many experience post-traumatic growth. Throughout our lives, we grow “through tasks” and experience, increasing our window of tolerance.
What is trauma therapy?
It is essentially increasing the client’s window of tolerance. Various methods work to raise the window of tolerance, allowing the nervous system to reset. To survive what one has experienced but to provide a different response, to not remain blocked but to come out of the blockade. The essence of trauma therapy is to exit the blockade in our nervous system, to complete the reaction that was not possible at one moment. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of concluding that something wasn’t that terrible, and then the body gains the ability to endure it.
What is TRE?
Dr. Mitić trains students for TRE – Trauma or Tension Releasing Exercise, innovative exercises by Dr. David Barceli, based on utilizing our body’s natural ability to contract and release, but releasing through trembling. This is used to recover the tremor mechanism, to recover the relaxation mechanism that is disrupted due to excessive use. It is a simple method; one doesn’t need to be a doctor or a member of the European Academy of Sciences like Dr. Mitić, but she leverages her position to educate others because many people are not even aware they are traumatized.
People can live without external triggers. Trauma can lie dormant until an external trigger appears, leading to situations like “those who were bitten by snakes fear lizards.” Then, there’s a risk of significant re-traumatization.
During the interview, she worked with Turks who experienced an earthquake. The example of Turkey, which suffered two earthquakes—one significant about ten years ago in Istanbul and the recent one in another part of the country where about 50,000 people died, around 150,000 were injured (the exact number is unknown), and millions were left homeless. Her students from the western part were trembling, retraumatized, and experiencing dissociation like “zombies”. The duty of a therapist in such situations is to calm and stabilize people, bring them back to reality, and tell them it happened before, not now. Now, someone else needs us to help them so that they don’t get traumatized and those psychobiological reactions remain within them.
Trauma changes our behavior, especially when we freeze. That’s the third phase—freeze. It’s a situation where our nervous system produces a kind of narcotic 10 times stronger than morphine, completely numbing us so we feel nothing. Everyone has felt this in life when losing someone dear, a kind of numbness, heavy legs, the desire to lie in bed without being able to do anything else, or even falling unconscious. Freezing can happen calmly or when a person is angry, moving, or active.
How to thaw?
To exit frozen states, one needs action, hyperactivity, verbal, or physical. Autoregulation, self-regulation, and co-regulation.
Autoregulation happens spontaneously, the body’s tendency to return to normal after daily challenges or life’s challenges. How it returns, our internal elasticity, and resilience, are part of our window of tolerance. When events are so overwhelming that we can’t return, we remain blocked. If we emerge from the blockade with aggression, trying to escape it is an inappropriate reaction. A milder example is an argument. We don’t listen to each other because we don’t have time, our nervous systems see danger everywhere. For example, we sense danger that someone doesn’t respect us, and we immediately react. If mutual respect is lacking, both sides will react.
A traumatized brain doesn’t measure whether the danger is significant or small. Instinctive defense reactions can be verbal, emotional, and physical. This is often seen in society.
Dr. Mitić’s main motivation for this work is to spread knowledge about the importance of talking about traumas, autoregulation, and then self-regulation.
Self-regulation helps individuals regain autoregulation, therapists make people aware so they can correct themselves slowly. Corrective corrections of disrupted autoregulation. Self-regulation is the ability to perceive what is happening within us and around us and towards other people. It’s of immense importance. Co-regulation is also of great importance because if a child has an immature brain, and is restless, and excited, with a stable adult, a stable regulation can calm them down. They regulate each other, not only between adults and children but also between adults. Everyone has someone in life to go to when highly excited. Co-regulation, empathy, love, and trust from another person who accepts us as we are or gives advice that regulates us correctly. People undergoing training to become therapists primarily learn to regulate themselves and then all their clients.
When regulated clients move into the world, society becomes much more regulated.
Autoregulation, self-regulation, and co-regulation are learned. It doesn’t have to delve into details and use technical terms; the principle is that we can regulate each other peacefully. Prevention of certain behaviors and reactions is essential.
If you are excited and on the verge of arguing with someone at home, with a friend, or at work, and someone next to you calms you down, the tension in that person decreases, and no tension in the body compels you to react. We all react due to sensations in our body, and they are very different, mostly tension.
The personal experience turned into a method.
The creator of TRE survived many traumas. During the bombing, every adult held two children on their laps in the bunker to prevent them from running outside. They all noticed that everyone was tense regardless of racial or other differences, and the children were trembling. After the bombing, when they were allowed outside, the trembling children ran to play, while the adults walked hunched with back pain, unable to lift their heads, remaining tense. They couldn’t fully relax and release the tension experienced because it’s a defense mechanism. He approached Alexander Loven, who dealt with energy medicine, and Wilhelm Reich, who dealt with energy psychology, and concluded that something had to be done with the body.
Nothing is purely psychological or physical. We’re all aware of how significant stress affects the physical body and organism. We have to “go into the body” and help it get rid of these sensations. This is done through different movements. TRE promotes trembling, but there are many other activities like yoga, various martial arts, running, jogging, walking and any movement. When we experience trauma, we remain trapped, deactivated, and unable to defend ourselves. To reactivate, we need to move. It doesn’t have to be a conscious reaction; often, when doing anything, we can get rid of something without being aware that something blocked us.
TRE doesn’t analyze in detail, and it can help a large number of people. How much can psychologists help people who have lost everything in an earthquake, for example? What can they do for them? What her students do is help people get rid of tension and fear. Fear is what strains us the most and remains with us. It prevents us from assessing anything around us. There’s a saying, “In fear, eyes are large,” and that’s what we see now. Media influences and propaganda also affect our fear, leading us to misjudge and have an unrealistic perception of reality. It’s significant to work on removing fear, which is part of trauma.
Who can use TRE?
People of different professions and interests can use this method. The method is simple and safe, and many instructors can work with people.
PREVENTION OF TRAUMA
The greatest prevention is stress reduction in our environment. We need to reduce triggers in our environment. How to do it?
We must raise awareness that our safety and behavior are crucial. We need to start dialogues in kindergarten and, similarly in schools, teaching dialogue. Often, we are not aware of our behavior when triggering automatic defenses on the other side, starting a spiral of violence or misunderstanding, and we need to break that.
We need to learn to talk without frightening each other, so our automatic defense reactions don’t surface, but instead, we have voluntary, conscious reactions. We cannot rid the world of people with malicious intentions, but we can prevent them by noticing them earlier. We can become more vigilant, and more capable of noticing and reacting better.
Regarding the TRE method, it is extremely suitable for working with youth, and children; it already has educators working in schools. The method is simple, doesn’t require a “big story,” and cannot cause harm. Natural abilities to release tension in the body are simple; it’s not designed to treat complex traumas but can reduce tension levels in our bodies.
Proven that children in constant stress, in survival mode, can’t learn much because their energy goes into survival, not learning. When that pyramid changes and children feel safer, when less energy goes into survival, transformation happens. The classroom should be a place providing a sense of security and trust, often it isn’t, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on it.
We need to start working. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Everyone in society must take their step. We all have a responsibility for our society. We must not allow the world we share to be shaped according to the image of those who make it ugly. She says: “My world is my duty, and I will do what I can to make it as beautiful as possible.”
Here, it’s about a method that applies to the ordinary world that can’t reach psychiatrists or psychologists, and at least the sufferings of severe cases can be alleviated. TRE is simple, can be done in an office, on chairs, and is very effective. When a client regularly exercises with an instructor for a certain period, their body can continue to exercise; leadership is no longer needed. When the relaxation mechanism is “repaired,” the body continues to relax on its own when it needs to.
Let’s take that first step!
