Exercise is hard for everyone, right? Well sure it is. But having a trauma history can make it harder – turning a once difficult task into an impossible one. Here's why and what to do about it:
It's not "just in your head". You are not "just lazy".
The physical experience of trauma is measurable. Hormone fluctuations, brain damage, inflammation, and muscle tension are just a few of the very real bodily experiences of those with trauma histories.
A lot of times trauma survivors are labeled as lazy or dramatic because their experience with exercise differs so much from their non-traumatized companions. These survivors are guilted for needing more gym breaks, taking it slower, and having longer recovery times. But contrary to the "just work harder" mentality, survivors need a more intentional and practical approach to make exercise not just doable but enjoyable!
Recovery is harder for those with higher cortisol levels
One of the primary experiences of traumatized people is chronically elevated cortisol levels. Cortisol is an incredible hormones that we need in order to manage stressful situations.
It is designed to be released for SHORT DURATIONS during stressful experiences in order to:
Increase blood sugars for small bursts of energy in order to escape or fight the threat.
Improve our memory
Regulate our metabolism
Decrease inflammation
Boost immunity
The key phrase in this being "short durations". We didn't evolve to maintain chronically elevated levels of cortisol – a byproduct of a nervous system that is constantly dealing with traumatic stress.
Wildly enough, when we have too much cortisol for too long we:
Lose muscle mass
Accumulate fat
Increase inflammatory response
Decrease immunity
Increase muscle tension which reduces the circulation necessary for the muscle recovery.
In short: Increased cortisol levels make the acute stress of exercise more painful and harder to recover from.
Increased heart rate can signal danger to a traumatized nervous system
The nervous systems of traumatized people are commonly dysregulated. The sensations of exercise (i.e. elevated heart rate, sweat, shortness of breath, increased oxygen intake, etc.) have been inextricably with the experience of danger.
Exercise is essentially a healthy form of acute stress on your body. And for many, many people it is an incredible tool for managing stress and increasing resilience. However, for some people, stress coupled with these bodily sensations can trigger a vortex of discomfort or pain. Until the nervous system has been trained to de-couple the experiences of trauma from the sensations of exercise, it can be making things worse in the long term.
In short: The increased heart rate, shortness of breath, sweat, and increased oxygen from exercising can feel deeply scary for a traumatized person.
People stuck in "freeze" do not have as much energy
When we are in fight-or-flight for too long our bodies enter a freeze state. This is not done consciously/by choice. This response is part of the autonomic nervous system which regulates our involuntary bodily responses such as hormone release, heart rate, digestion, etc.
The freeze response is necessary for several reasons:
Helps conserve energy so we can either recover from the damage of stress or escape danger when given the opportunity.
Releases numbing hormones that disconnect us from the pain of our experience.
Give us space from our experience so we can formulate a plan of action or wait for help.
While many people live in severe states of freeze (e.g. immobilizing depression), many more live in states of functional freeze. This is when we are able to manage ourselves through some semblance of an "ordinary life".
However, someone living in functional freeze often feels:
Extreme heaviness in their body
Numbness (both emotional and physical)
Chronic fatigue
Disconnected from reality
Brain fog
In short: Being stuck in freeze leaves no energy available for the acute stress of exercise.
Tips for making exercise possible and healing
Phew! That was all a bummer wasn't it. Lucky for us, we trauma survivors still get to enjoy the benefits of exercise. We just need to get a little creative...
1 – Prioritize the pleasure of your exercise experience
We want the experience of exercise to be coupled with pleasure not pain while you are retraining your nervous system. This means prioritizing exercise modalities that are enjoyable. It doesn't matter if they aren't as effective. We want to increase that heart rate, shorten your breath, and sweat while doing something that is without a doubt fun and safe. Overtime this connection will grow and you will have more power to interpret these bodily sensations as safe during harder exercises.
2 – Take breaks to reorient to safety in your body and environment
This is based on the somatic healing principle of pendulation. Maybe you want to pick up that intensity! Awesome! Just sprinkle in breaks every few minutes or so. Use these breaks as an opportunity to reorient yourself to safety. That means looking inside and outside of your body for signals that you are okay. Feel into your legs. Remind yourself why your heart is beating quickly. Notice the colors in the space around you. Check in with the friend that accompanied you to the gym. Anything that helps you connect the experience with safety.
3 – Don't overdo it and anticipate a longer recovery time
Listen. I know it sucks. I know we just wanna be "like everyone else" (whatever that really means) and not worry about calculating everything around our trauma. But you read this article, right? There are real, measurable differences in how your body may react to exercise from someone that hasn't been through what you have. You might not have as much energy, you may be at higher risk for injury, and you may get sore much easier. All this to say, ease into things! Exercising becomes sustainable and enjoyable when it isn't consistently followed with debilitating and prolonged pain.
4 – Stay in tune with the sensations of your body
A lot of the time our nervous systems are picking up on bodily sensations and interpreting them without us even being aware of it. This puts our emotional experience in the hands of our nervous system (which may interpret the sensations as danger instead of safe exercise). When we keep the sensations conscious and notice what's happening in our bodies we have more ability to control how they influence our emotional experience using our "thinking brain" rather than our "survival brain".
5 – Engage in somatic trauma healing practices
The real bottomline here is that all of this gets easier when you work on processing traumatic experiences still held in your body. Somatic healing works directly with the body's experience of trauma and can release many of trauma's limitations.
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