Peter Levine's "Waking the Tiger - Healing Trauma"

[steamy]

I have just started Peter Levine's "Waking the Tiger - Healing Trauma"

his methods are supposed to work without having to re-experience all your old trauma. Therefore I should be all fixed by the end of the week lol.

I will let you all know how it goes.

[Mendelevium]

Looking forward to your report. :-) Maybe even give us small updates partway through?

[Pieces]

I really liked that book because it was the first thing to taught me the importance of living through the experience of an traumatic episode instead of merely trying to survive it. Be staying present to the experience you don't get lost in trance (for me that was mostly trying to compulsively fight the feeling with thoughts) and you can learn that the experience is not something to be afraid of. It can be extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant but you can take it, or learn to do so. That way the conditioned ''This is too much for me / I can't take this / I'm helpless / etc'' ideas you about yourself can start to be broken down and replaced with an ''I can'' conviction. Also the information about the fear energy getting stuck in the body and then influence the nervous system was very helpful and insightful, definitely as must read in my opinion, if only to understand what's going on in your body better.

What didn't work for me, and I expect for other people with c-ptsd as well, is the mentioned ''past trauma doesn't need to be focused on''. Peter Levine's sees the trauma as purely physical; it's something the body does and when you teach the body to relax and let go you're good to go again. That may be true for trauma experienced later on in life but c-ptsd is I think much more about identity and the deep rooted conviction that for you/me being present in life and living a real is unsafe. Behind that conviction sits the unhealed trauma, which had to be pushed away because it would have been too much to handle at that time. Unhealed trauma, repressed memories etc is something that books skips on completely.

There is another method called TRE; trauma releasing exercises, which also focuses purely on the body. It did those multiple times and it didn't do anything for my state of mind.

[steamy]

I just saw that I was going to review the book. Unfortunately I got to page 80 and dropped it, Levine likes to compare humans with animals and I think that he has a point in so far that socialisation has provided us ways in which we see the world around us as kind of fixed rather than dynamic. I was always struck by how excited my dog got about going for a run, when I was asking myself "do I have to do this again?" Chris McDougall also makes the same observation in his book about barefoot ultra runners, who laugh and joke as they pump out 100km. He thinks that socialisation has taken many of these joys from us, and I think that its the same for other aspects of our lives, we are no longer happy go lucky, we are self conscious and serious and thats how we are conditioned to be. The happy go luckies eventually get the happiness shaken out of them. But Levine does acknowledge that animals who are abused and neglected do eventually develop "personality disorders" we have all seen dogs who are scared around strangers.

I have begun to think that much of our sensitivity to trauma may be epi-genetic or conditioned, I remember working in Cambodia with mine action, they could not train Cambodian dogs to sniff out land mines, as they would be nervous and distracted. If somebody raises their hand the dag assumes that somebody is about to throw a stone at them and they run away, this behaviour has been pre-programmed as a means of survival rather the same as a new born impala will run when it sees a predator. I wonder if some of how we react is pre-programmed, three generations of soldiers make such great soldiers due to the epi-genetic traits handed down through the generations but also three generations of soldiers with a sensitivity to trauma.   In this review of scientific papers, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3136568/ it does seem that susceptibility to trauma has some genetic or epi-genetic basis, this probably explains how behavioural traits are so recalcitrant, despite our best efforts. Knowing this, how we de/reprogram them is anybodies guess.