Did anyone see Dr. Drew Pinsky on Erin Burnett OutFront on CNN this week? If not, make sure you watch the video clip below.
They were discussing a recent, tragic incident of extreme road rage, yet in a week where many are feeling disturbed by the government shutdown, it’s easy to find additional relevant applications.
Pinsky’s words brought a bit of relief and a spontaneous deep breath for me. Erin wanted to know about the road rage, in other words: “How does this happen?”
Dr. Drew talked about it as “a symptom of how unregulated we are“. He also said, “it’s all about how we raise our kids” and how “unregulated aggression is something we should really be thinking about“.
Our society’s lack of emotional regulation doesn’t often wind up in TV news discussions, let alone a reference to the root of the problem, i.e. “it’s all about how we raise our kids”, but it should.
Here’s the tricky part, adults who have trouble with self-regulation lack what is needed to raise children with that capacity. Frequently the culprit is chronic or traumatic stress, or their own unresolved difficult childhood experiences.
So… what are we going to do about it?
Sincerely,
Barbara English, LMFT
Founder & Executive Director, Living Ubuntu http://livingubuntu.org
(949) 891-2005
[Ubuntu] n. Every human being truly becomes a human by means of relationships with other human beings.
It is not uncommon in many cultures to hear phrases such as, “I was so frightened my jaw was quivering,” “I was shaking all over my body and I couldnt calm down,” “When I was giving that speech my legs were really shaking,” “My hands were shaking so bad I couldnt hold anything,” “I was so angry I shook all over.”
The experience of trembling is not only commonplace in our culture but it is a common experience to many mammalian species. This familiar, albeit disconcerting, experience is known as neurogenic tremors.
It is well-known and documented that neurogenic tremors are a common result of a traumatic event.
The tremors are the central nervous system’s innate way of discharging excessive tension through the rapid muscle contraction and relaxation of the tremors to calm the body down from an over excited adrenal state. Continue reading →
Stress and the phenomenon of muscles holding tension is very hard on one’s thinking process. It gets in the way.
Above is a interview with Dr. Robert Scaer where he shares thoughts on Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE). It was conducted by Chris Balsley, a TRE Trainer based in Denver, Colorado.
Highlights from the interview:
He has been doing TRE for over 10 years.
It helps him deal with chronic back pain.
TRE helps him release the tension in the Psoas muscle, helps calm the autonomic nervous system and get more clarity of thought.
8-year-old Boston Marathon bombing victim, Martin Richard, holding the sign he made when his school organized a ‘Peace Walk’ in May 2012.
Hi everyone,
Monday’s frightening and tragic bombings at the Boston Marathon exemplify the kind of mass violence we would wish would never occur. Yet, in some odd way, it also feels like it came ‘too soon’.
Incidences of mass violence are happening way too often, leaving an inadequate amount of time to fully process the last one before there is another one to contend with. We are left with the shock, the outrage, the numbness, the fear, the heartbreak, the resolve to bring change… and then… the next one…
Monday was a prime example of this. How could it be that runners from Newtown seeking to commemorate 26 Sandy Hook shooting victims by running the 26 miles of marathon didn’t even get through the race without being in the midst of yet another national, mass, violent tragedy?
Did you hear about 8-year-old Martin Richard waiting at the finish line for his Dad?
A year ago he participated in a peace walk with his school. He made a sign that said, “No more hurting people. Peace.”
Martin didn’t survive the explosion, but his message did.
This might be the best any of us can aspire to accomplish in this life:
No more hurting people.
Peace.
This Friday, April 19th, Golden West College will be holding its 7th Annual Peace Conference. The theme for this year is Sustainable Peace. Come say ‘hi’ to us at our Living Ubuntu booth.
Ten years ago today, it was a Wednesday evening I will never forget. I was filled with anxiety and dread throughout the evening, attending an event in Santa Monica where Gore Vidal was promoting his recently released book, “Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta”. Headed home afterward, south on the 405 sitting in the passenger seat, there it was, my worst fears confirmed.
The radio’s news announced the U.S. had begun a military assault in Iraq. We were officially at war… again. I stared in the direction of the ocean, transfixed on the night-lighted landscape of refineries and began to cry. I pictured the view as if explosions were occurring here locally and I felt throughout my being the extreme and horrific destruction and loss of life about to occur far away.
Ten years later, I still feel the deep sorrow of that moment, and the decade of tragedies that unfolded day after day, to this very day.
When a war ends, then what?
The roads, bridges and buildings get re-built. But how does an entire society recover from the heartbreak, devastating loss, and the Post-Traumatic Stress that holds them imprisoned in the past, even when they desperately want to move forward? PTSD symptoms often rule the lives of people that don’t know what PTSD is, and often stigma prevails so even the limited resources available for help are not sought out.
And often it doesn’t end there. Substance abuse takes over. Tempers flare. Domestic violence increases. Children get neglected and abused. For many reasons, unresolved trauma is trans-generational.
(caution: this clip includes graphic descriptions and imagery)
We can’t afford to ignore the implications of these ill-attended to invisible epidemics. The paradigm needs to change.
Last December, we completed research to assess how many refugees living in San Diego are suffering from post-trauma symptoms. We will send an update soon about the results and the next phase of our project to launch a Trauma Recovery Program for this high-risk, vulnerable community. We are going to need your help to make it happen.
People don’t think any more, they feel. ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Oh, I don’t feel comfortable.’ ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, we the group were feeling…’
Do you know one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas? Now thoughts and ideas, that interests me. Ask me what I’m thinking…
– Margaret Thatcher in the film, The Iron Lady (2011)
Hello everyone,
Once upon a time, in a place not far from here, a group of Darfur, anti-genocide activists went to visit a Congressional aide. When a member of the group delivered an impassioned plea for intervention and tears came to her eyes as she expressed her heartbreak and anger that innocent children were being bombed by the Sudanese government, contempt for feelings ruled the day, and arrogance reigned supreme as she was told by the aide, “these decisions need to be made by grown-ups”. A few sentences later, the aide added platitudes, referencing the role of the U.S. government as “we’re doing all we can.”
Having witnessed the above exchange, I couldn’t disagree more with Ms. Thatcher that, “…one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.”
Why are we so afraid of feelings? Why so much disrespect and suspicion of them?
I don’t know what happened in Margaret Thatcher’s life that led to such contempt of feelings, but she is not a rarity in her perspective. Yet, she is targeting the wrong enemy. Feelings, per se, are not the culprit.
It is a myth that we lose the ability to think rational thoughts, have sound judgment, choose wisely, or are ‘less adult’ when we are emotional. Feelings are not irrational, immature or mere ‘fluff’. There would be no warm, empathic relating, or enjoyment of life without them. Feelings are a necessary companion on the path to knowing who we are and in the pursuit of compassionate wisdom. They take us beyond the dry and dull to infuse ideas with passion and ‘life’. Feelings contribute the heart and essential humanness so that we do not fall victim to the cold, calculating, slice-and dice, cut-off automaton influences of a left-brain-only, logical, linear thought process.
Where we get into trouble is when we are not in a well-regulated state, or lack sufficient groundedness in our body. Then we are at risk to be unable to contain our emotional states. Feelings can become overwhelming, hi-jack our senses, and unplug the rational. Chronic stress, and unresolved traumatic experiences only make it worse.
We live in a society that over-values the head at the expense of the heart. We pay too high a price if we just go along with that. To counter-balance this, able to feel our feelings and keep our heart open, we’ve got to be able to stay in tune with the body’s sensations. But how?
Why is there so much resistance to feeling our feelings?
Why do we have such a love/hate relationship with our bodies?
Why do we obsess about how we look rather than how we feel?
Why is it so hard to slow down?
Why don’t we stop to feel our tiredness?
Why do we pursue success and accomplishment at the expense of relationships?
Living Ubuntu Body Group
February – May 2013
6 sessions on Sunday afternoons (2p-4:30p)
“I followed all of the rules, man’s and God’s. And you, you followed none of them. And they all loved you more. Samuel, Father, and my… even my own wife.”
– Alfred to his brother Tristan in the film, Legends of the Fall (1994)
Hi everyone,
I have always loved the scene from the film, Legends of the Fall quoted above. It’s agonizing to hear Alfred as he finally puts his heartbreak into words after a lifetime of trying to be good by following all the rules. Despite all his efforts, it didn’t bring him what he longed for. Love never came, not from his father, his brothers, or even his wife. In anger and disbelief, he tells his rule-breaking, rebellious brother Tristan (Brad Pitt), “…they all loved you more.”
There are many times and in many ways that no matter what we do, we don’t get the result we hoped for.
How do we know when to stop trying to change a situation?
How do we ‘let go’ when it means facing agonizing disappointment and heartbreak?
How do we accept the many situations in life where we are ultimately helpless or powerless?
Learning to grieve well is an essential part of living, yet, it isn’t easy when we live in a culture that tries so hard to avoid it.
Yes, actually, we did chose this topic on purpose to come right after the Holiday season. All details are below and on our website. To create an emotionally safe, secure space, we are limiting attendance to 10 people. Please let us know if you would like to join us.
Am I the only one that got sucked in to watching every single episode of the recent HBO series Newsroom?
What happens to a highly successful middle-aged man that grew up eldest child in his family of origin, with an abusive alcoholic father in the household? He finds out at age ten that he is big enough to fight off his father and protect his mother and younger siblings. By middle age, it has become deeply ingrained within him to detest bullying and be an upstanding protector of the vulnerable. At face value, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
Yet, episode six gives us the ghost that won’t give up the haunt. News anchor Will McEvoy’s childhood history was revealed during a session with his psychiatrist. Only after that exploration did he realize that during a recent TV interview, he had become the very thing he hates. Will perceives presidential candidate Rick Santorum to be a bully. When Will interviews a gay, African-American Santorum-supporter, his intention to protect the vulnerable goes terribly wrong. During the course of the interview, it is Will that becomes the bully.
.
.
Okay, I know it’s not real life, but I thought they did a great job in this episode of illustrating one of the many ways even our best intentions can backfire, do a u-turn, and come back to bite us.
How did Will get so off-track?
What if when Will encountered the “bully” it activated his childhood fear of his father? A successful middle-aged man might have trouble admitting that to himself and fall back on power, control, and dominance, in order to not feel his fear. In that state, the Santorum-supporter is no longer a human being to empathize with, but a threatening object to defeat.
Staying in touch with our own inner states and motives isn’t that easy. Sometimes we only see these things in ourselves with the help of others. Will’s psychiatrist helped him see what had actually happened: in order to fight a bully while not admitting to his own fear, he became a bully, and ironically, wound up targeting the same guy he had originally seen as victim.
“The first night, I fell asleep really easily and felt like I’ve been asleep for weeks.
I woke up feeling deeply rested. It feels like a sense of ‘letting go’ […] I feel like I can then move forward in my life and I’m not acting out of things that have happened and pains that I’m carrying around. So it just feels like I can become more available to… life.”
– Nicole
Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) is an easy to learn body-centered method created by Dr. David Berceli. It is a simple technique that helps releases stress or tension from the body that accumulate from every day circumstances of life, from difficult situations, immediate or prolonged stressful situations (e.g. anxiety, depression), or traumatic life experiences (i.e., natural disasters, social or domestic violence, PTSD).
TRE consists of six simple exercises that help individuals release tension from the muscles, which in turn relaxes the anxiety of our minds, by evoking a muscular shaking process in the body. The exercises elicit this shaking in a controlled and sustained manner. When evoked in this way, this shaking, also called “neurogenic tremors“, begins to release deep chronic muscular tension held within the body.
Reported benefits include:
Better sleep
Less worry & anxiety
More energy & endurance
Less relationship conflict & work stress
Reduced muscle pain & body tension
Alleviates symptoms of PTSD and helps heal trauma
“The human body registers everything that occurs to it, both physically and neurologically. And if we do not resolve trauma, all it can do is to continue to wear us down over life psychologically, emotionally and physically.”
– David Berceli, creator of TRE
* * *
David Berceli, creator of TRE
David Berceli, PhD is an international expert in the areas of trauma intervention and conflict resolution. For the past 22 years he has lived and worked in nine countries including Israel, Palestine, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Yemen, Egypt and Lebanon providing trauma relief workshops and designing recovery programs for international organizations around the world.
The human animal is designed to experience, endure and survive traumatic episodes. If we did not possess this ability the human species would have become extinct shortly after it was born. This natural ability to let go of and resolve post traumatic reactions is genetically encoded in us to complete one process and begin something new as a part of our unending cycle of evolution. When a traumatic event occurs, the individual feels overwhelmed and the experience seems unbearable.
However it is precisely because of this overwhelming experience that the individual is forced out of their old way of thinking into a new way of being in the universe. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, all experienced trauma and used their painful encounters to develop a more moral and ethical response to their traumatic circumstances. Their lives demonstrate to us that the trauma recovery process contains the possibility of helping the human person develop into a more moral and ethical species. If we can repeat this process for thousands or millions of people, we can use the transforming power inherent in the trauma recovery process to transform the ethical and moral foundations of the human person… Mass trauma may be the process whereby the human species is evolving into a more ethical species. The trauma survivors of the third world may be the harbingers of a morality necessary to temper the technology of the first world. These survivors may be evidence of the natural evolution of the human species from the Age of Technology to the Age of Wisdom.
Wisdom born of trauma
“I do not wish tragedy on anyone but ever since that accident, I never fail to tell my wife I love her. I kiss my children every day. Life is richer, fuller and deeper than I have ever experienced. It has more meaning and depth than it ever had before.”
This type of transformation of life after surviving a traumatic experience is very common. The questions that beg to be asked here are: How and why does a traumatic experience cause us to live a more profound life than we previously had? Why don’t we simply choose to live life at its deepest level before a tragedy? Why do we need to have a traumatic experience to wake up to appreciating life to its fullest?
As a human species, we are biologically designed to experience, endure and survive trauma. No different from other living organisms on this planet, we are genetically encoded to let go of and recover from trauma as a way of ridding ourselves of any experience that obstructs or interferes with the natural evolutionary process of the human body.
Resolving past traumas delivers us into the future. Through the unending cycle of trauma recovery, the human species learns how to adapt to life threatening situations. This process of adaptation makes the species stronger and wiser to protect it from future traumatic episodes. If we did not possess this natural evolutionary instinct, we would have died as a species shortly after we were born. Trauma recovery is as natural and common as trauma itself. Accepting this sometimes unpleasant fact of life allows us to see trauma in a new light… Only by letting go can we unlock ourselves from the past, be delivered into the future and prepare ourselves for our next evolutionary experience.
Once a trauma befalls us we are forced, whether we like it or not, whether we want to or not, to follow its life-altering path. At times, this process often leads us through episodes of helplessness and hopelessness. It can terrify us by unveiling the fragility, precariousness and vulnerability of our humanity. It exposes us to the rawness of life as a living species on this planet. It tears at the very fabric of our identity and radically redefines our view of life. However, it is precisely because this experience has burned the bridges of our past ways of thinking that we are forced into a new way of being in life. The old ways of thinking and relating no longer suffice and a new way of being begins to emerge. We discover that on the other side of this frightening journey we have the potential of emerging into a new life of maturity, compassion and wisdom.
We are a non-profit organization with a focus on mind-body issues, specifically health and well-being, and the effects of stress, trauma and compassion fatigue. We seek to increase awareness of the global and local impact of these issues, build a sense of community, and encourage living a more fully embodied life.
“The first night, I fell asleep really easily and felt like I’ve been asleep for weeks.” – Nicole
In Southern California, we start each Ubuntu Group with a session of TRE. If you’d like more information, please visit our website at livingubuntu.org/events or call (949) 891-2005.
* * *
What is TRE?
Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) is an easy to learn body-centered method created by Dr. David Berceli. It is a simple technique that helps releases stress or tension from the body that accumulate from every day circumstances of life, from difficult situations, immediate or prolonged stressful situations (e.g. anxiety, depression), or traumatic life experiences (i.e., natural disasters, social or domestic violence, PTSD).
“The human body registers everything that occurs to it, both physically and neurologically. And if we do not resolve trauma all it can do is to continue to wear us down over life psychologically, emotionally and physically.” – David Berceli
—
Credit:
Many thanks to Steph Combe, a TRE Trainer in New Zealand, for producing this heartwarming 8-minute documentary on TRE. For more information, visit traumarelease.co.nz.
Living Ubuntu Blog 