The Difficulties Of Massage For The Trauma Patient
Author: SuFox Total views: 37 Word Count: 448
The brain and therefore the mind of a person who has been traumatised functions in a different way from a person who has not been traumatised. Perceptions of massage are mediated through the nervous system, and so the experience of massage may differ between the traumatised and non traumatised person. For the former, massage may not be relaxing.
Let's be a bit more specific here. Trauma, like stress, has become an overused and devalued word, as in 'I'm traumatised! My Ipod is broken!' Involvement in a genuine trauma such as a road traffic accident, a shooting, a house fire or a burglary, does not necessarily mean that a person becomes traumatised.
Many people recover with time, rest and the supportive presence of family and friends, without suffering ill health or ongoing mental distress. They get their minds back. But some people who've been through trauma don't recover and develop PTSD. (Post traumatic stress disorder). They don't get their minds back. Their brains and central nervous system (CNS) functioning are altered.
Simple & Complex Trauma
Babette Rothschild, a leading trauma expert, divides trauma into 2 major areas. Simple trauma refers to a single event or series of events that are not related and the effect of this on an adult whose life experience has been fairly ordinary up to that point. This person's CNS gets stuck in fight and 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 a sufferer of complex trauma, the information relayed from sensory receptors and proprioreceptors stimulated by massage arrives at the cerebral hemispheres, the part of the brain that registers meaning, but then fails to have any impact on the autonomic nervous system or the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal axis. (Alan Schore).
Relaxation Can Be Undesirable
It's like the brain has got itself stuck in the general adaptation syndrome, except that in addition there are a host of dysfunctional thought processes going on that relate to the trauma. These include and inability to relax. The person suffering trauma may fear lowering their mental defenses in case something undesirable happens. There may be an inability to switch off from the event. There may be flashbacks. There may be intrusive thoughts.
By the use of massage, physical relaxation induces mental relaxation. For those suffering trauma, this may be undesirable.
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About the Author
The writer is a massage therapist, psychotherapist and craniosacral therapist and supervisor in private practice in London, Britain. Su can be located at her london psychotherapy practice or at london psychotherapy.
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