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89 Your Trauma, Your Body: Protection vs. Connection

Episode 89 Published 4 years, 1 month ago
Description
  1. Summary:  Join Dr. Peter as he explains how trauma impacts our bodies, through the lens of polyvagal theory. Through quotes, examples, questions for reflection and experiential exercises, Dr. Peter walks you through a current understanding of how large a role our bodies have in our experience of trauma.  
  2. Introduction
     
    1. I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, bringing to you, my listener the best of psychology and human formation and harmonizing it with our Catholic Faith
  3.  
    1. This is the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast -- you are part of it, right here, right now and I am glad to be with you.  This podcast is part of our broader outreach, Souls and Hearts bringing the best of psychology grounded in a Catholic worldview to you and the rest of the world through our website soulsandhearts.com -- we have vibrant communities, we have courses, we have podcasts, we have blogs and shows, all kinds of resources at soulsandhearts.com, check it out.  

    1. Trauma.  Last month, we began a whole series of episodes on trauma -- such an important topic
       
      1. Quote from trauma therapist and research Peter Levine:  “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.” – Peter Levine
    2.  

    1. We started with an overview of the best of the secular understandings of trauma.  In that first episode in the series, number 88, we got into the definitions of trauma and attachment injuries, and we dived into the experience of trauma -- what trauma is like.  

    1. That sets us up for today's episode, number 89 -- Your Trauma, Your Body:  Protection vs. Connection.  Today, we are getting into the body's response to trauma, really focusing in on what happens in our nervous system.  What happens in the brain, what happens in our spinal cord and our nerves and throughout our bodies
       
      1. We will be especially tuning into our own nervous system.   


    1. There's going to be some vocabulary here, I will help you with that. There will some big words, but I am going to walk you through the concepts and make them easier to understand. 

    1. In the past two decades we have learned so much about how trauma impacts the body -- the physiological effects of trauma 
      1. So what is physiological?  Physiology
         
        1. the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts
           
          1. organ systems, individual organs, cells, and right down to the level of biomolecules
        2.  
          1. The parts within us carry out the chemical, electrical and physical functions within our bodies.  Our bodies are living systems
        3.  

        1. Put simply, physiology is the study of how the human body works
      3.  
        1. Today we are looking at how trauma impacts physiology -- how trauma affects the workings of our body, especially in our nervous system.  


    1. Lots of misconceptions out there.  
      1. Old way of understanding stress -- what I learned in graduate school.  Most prominent.  
        1. You were either stressed or not stressed
        2. fight or flight or rest and digest
        3. Stress on or stress off.  No nuance, very simple way of understanding
      2. Today, we are going to do much better than that, go much deeper than that.  
  10. Review: Definition of Trauma 
    1. Integrated Listening Systems website:  Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel a full range
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