A traumatised person's brain and hence mind, operates differently from one who has not been traumatised. The perception of massage is mediated through the nervous system. It follows therefore that the experience of massage for a person who has suffered trauma may be quite different from someone that hasn't. Massage may not be relaxing for the traumatised person.
Like stress, trauma has become overused and devalued. For example 'I'm traumatised, my cell phone is broken!' Even involvement in a genuinely traumatic event doesn't necessarily mean that the person will suffer trauma.
With the support of others and with rest and time, many recover from the traumatic event. But others don't and develop post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For such people, their brain functioning and central nervous system functioning has altered.
Simple and Complex Trauma
Babette Rothschild is a leading expert on trauma. She divides trauma into 2 main categories. Simple trauma is the effect of either a single or unrelated series of events that happens to an adult whose life experience up to that point has be relatively ordinary. The CNS of such a person is stuck in fight or flight.
Complex trauma is concerned with chronic abuse and/or chronic neglect that happens early in a child's life when the brain is still developing. What happens in this case is that the usual pathways of information flow are reversed. Instead of transmission from the top downwards i.e from the cerebral hemispheres to midbrain and hypothalamus to brain stem, it flows the other way. The normal route fails to develop and so the bottom up pathway form brain stem to hypothalamus to cerebrum is switched on permanently.
For those that suffer from complex trauma, the information that is relayed from the sensory receptors and from the proprioreceptors, stimulated by massage, arrives at the cerebral hemispheres, that part of the brain that registers meaning. However, it then fails to have any impact on the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal axis or the autonomic nervous system (Alan Schore).
Relaxation Can Be Undesirable
It's as if the brain is stuck in the general adaptation syndrome but with dysfunctional thought processes relating to the trauma such as intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, inability to switch off from the incident, inability to relax for fear of what may happen if mental defenses are lowered.
Massage is always thought to be desirable, but the physical relaxation it brings induces mental relaxation. This may not be what the trauma patient requires.
About the Author:
The author is a massage therapist, psychotherapist and craniosacral therapist and supervisor in private practice in London, England. Su can be contacted at her london psychotherapy practice or at london psychotherapy.
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