When we get injured, the body responds in every way it can to protect the damaged area and keep us alive. In much the same way, when we are psychologically hurt, our mind responds in the moment to protect us from further psychological harm. In these instances, mechanisms that are usually perceived as 'bad' (swelling, inflammation, redness; or dissociation, feeling fear and defensiveness, fight or flight etc.) are appropriate and sometimes necessary for survival. But what happens if these response mechanisms don't go away, even when the injury has healed, or the threat as passed?
Let's start in the physical realm before we go back to the psycho-emotional parallel. When we injure a muscle, for instance, the neuromuscular junction senses a noxious or harmful stimuli, something that threatens its wellbeing, and it tells the muscle to switch off basically. This is much like the circuit breaker in your house, preventing blowing a fuse. This is a great protective response from the body in order to preserve the muscle and prevent any further damage. When the muscle becomes inhibited, it will no longer fire properly to do its normal functions, so other muscles will need to adapt to make up for it. In this way, we may be able to carry on relatively normally, going about life, while the adaptations keep things functioning pretty well, even if it never feels completely back to how it was. However, as the surrounding muscles are performing their adaptations, they are also performing their normal functions, and over time they become overworked, fatigued, and less nourished and supple, develop adhesions and taught bands, or become injured and inhibited themselves.
So now we have all these "problems" in various muscles, and all kinds of pains and symptoms are surfacing. The original damage to the muscle may have healed long before, but the adaptations by the body are still present, however they are no longer appropriate for the current state of the tissue. If the inhibited muscle is acknowledged by the brain as healed, functioning, and whole, it can be switched back on to perform its role properly. Then there is no longer need for the adaptations to continue, and things can fall back into place. Once things are in place and working as an integrated whole, the body can go beyond the state of being healed and actually work on getting stronger, better, more skilled, more able, more evolved, and free.
The initial protection of the damaged muscle was necessary, and the prolonged protection of it became pathological. So at the point when we are treating all the ongoing pain and dysfunction, what really is the wound? Is it the initial injury, or the adaptations that continue to cause harm? This is similar to the initial use of inflammation to bring blood supply and repair cells to a site of injury. If the area is not recognised as healed once it has been repaired, the brain will keep sending messages for inflammation and there will be persistent swelling and discomfort long after the initial threat has passed.
[Side note: As I am an acupuncturist, the treatment for these instances involves acupuncture and electro stimulation at these neuromuscular junctions in order to disinhibit the muscles and bring them back to work in integration with the rest of the body. Then we use manual therapy, acupuncture, gua sha etc. to address the bands and adhesions that formed].
So now you might be putting some pieces together about how this relates to our psycho-emotional response to pain and trauma, but let's make the parallels a little more obvious. An event occurs that is emotionally hurtful or scary. This can involve things that happen in close relationships, or with strangers, and can involve the physical body as well. In the moment of the event, the person must respond in order to protect their own sanity and mental health. Sometimes that means they may dissociate or essentially "leave" the event, even while technically present. Or perhaps the need to feel fear and react in a fight or flight response to defend themselves. We can see clearly now that if the event has passed and this person is effectively safe, then it is no longer appropriate to be in a hyper-defensive state, or to be continually dissociating. Furthermore, we can imagine how these states, in perpetuation, could cause issues for them in ongoing and existing relationships and commitments in life. They may say that the harm was the event, and they've never healed. But was it the event itself, which has now passed, or is it the persistent adaptations and mechanisms that are causing the harm?
Sometimes an event occurs and we have not reached a stage of development in which we can make sense of it from a perspective of wisdom and insight. Instead, we draw conclusions about ourselves and the world as a result of the experience, which have elements of truth but are very partial. We were hurt and we conclude that the world is not safe, or that we are unlovable. The event has long gone, but these conclusions prevent us from forming meaningful relationships, which perpetuates our belief that the conclusions are in fact true. So was it the event that is the trauma? Or is the the conclusions we made that continue to cause us harm?
If we were to understand that an event occurred, and passed, and that ultimately we are undamaged, and we are whole, and that the event was something that occurred in our experience, then we don't form the adaptations the effectively exist as trauma. Or if they are already there and we can shift our attention, enlarge our perspective to see the part of us that has always been whole and unwounded, that the event itself was not the trauma, and has long passed, then we can move from forever feeling that we are needing to heal and instead be healed. [In some ways, this is easier said than done and takes incredible effort and will, and in some ways it can be done instantaneously with a shift in attention from a partial experience to one that is more total and integrated].
When we are paying attention to all parts of ourselves, and not only the part that was wounded; when we move from healing to being healed; this is when things get really interesting. Just like when we got our physical body tuned up and in working order, it didn't stop there as we moved into strengthening and improving our abilities and engagement with life, much is the same when we are healed. This is when we really begin our evolution. Our focus shifts from the injury that happened in the past, to the future that we can now take part in creating. We lose our reasons for needing more time for healing, and we gain responsibility for evolving and moving forward. We are free. We are free from the very personal past and pain and needing more time, and we are free to evolve and live in integrity with whatever truly matters most to us.
Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine in conjunction with psychotherapeutic tools can be extremely useful in catalysing this pivot, so long as the practitioner has made this pivot in themselves. Content that we don't want to face can often be found in emotional stuckness or in physical obstructions in the body, and we can use acupuncture and/or herbs to move these. We have to open communication between the unconscious with the conscious and develop a relationship to ambiguity and the unknown, into which we can evolve and create our future. This might sound totally wild. For sure, I get that. It might also make so much sense to you. If it's speaking to you, heed the call.