How Trauma Gets Trapped in the Body w/ Dr. Aimie Apigian Understanding Trauma in the Nervous System

A couple things that have helped me: ditch social media altogether (no IG, FB, Twitter, Snap), going for walks for 30 minutes, increase in protein

I'm a chosen miracle that got sober 7 years ago off of cocaine and I'm raising my deceased daughter's children facing unlawful and unfair eviction and am so desperate for this message... I haven't watched it fully but I wanted to thank you. There's people out here like me that are going through so much. We can't possibly take a minute out to go to a counselor at the moment cuz we're too busy trying to meet basic survival

"The Body Keeps the Score" is an excellent book on this subject. Great video. I love this information.

Dr. Aimee basically described my entire life. I’m turning 60 this year. The times I had improvement with pain and quality of life were the times I was able to focus on nutrition and did tai chi and mild yoga. Movement is key. There are days I forget to eat or drink and sleep sometimes becomes a luxury. I have found myself in bed for months bc my body just gave out. I really appreciate this video and it gives me hope that my body can heal.

There comes a time when you understand enough, and analyzing it more is not going to help you. Yep...that's why the gym, massage, and stretching are way more helpful for me than focusing on my feelings. It astounds me how much grief can wreak havoc on our bodies. I remember just getting on a treadmill once and started sprinting and crying, as if I was trying to outrun everything. But after that, the heaviness and shaking stopped, and I felt relieved. Bizarre...

As some one trained in massage therapy with a degree in psychology and who has done lots of yoga, I have long held basically the same view from my own experience. My explanation to others is like this: If you experience a traumatic experience, like almost being run over by a car, your physical response in the body is for your muscles to tense up as part of the fight or flight response. When the event is over and you can relax, maybe 99% of the muscles actually release their tension. However, deep within the muscle, perhaps at the deepest part, there are some muscle cells that simply do not let go. I don't know the precise "how" of it. One theory I've had is that the lack of blood flow from the layers of constricted muscles interfere with the functioning of a small number of neurons deepest within that constriction. However, more recently, I've begun to think that it is a function of repression / suppression. We regularly repress and suppress our emotions to avoid appearing weak to others, to ourselves. So after that near-death example of almost getting run over, your "complete" emotional response might be to collapse weeping on the ground thinking of how you almost lost everyone and everything, how your life was almost over, the family who would mourn, the undone dreams, the pain you almost went through. However, who wants to lay weeping on the ground in public, in front of others? So instead, we bear down to get control of our emotions. Bear down? Right, that is a muscular phrase, and involves squeezing muscles which helps in some manner to help us hold back emotions. We bear down and, in essence, lock those emotions away behind that wall of tension. It then stays tense the rest of our lives absent some kind of intervention later in life. Thus, over our lives, our body's musculature becomes a roadmap of our life's traumas. In massage, if we do deep tissue on a person, we can find such tension and we can release it. When it releases, it is not uncommon for the client to experience an emotional flashback to that traumatic event and/or an emotional release and catharsis. Because you do need to still process the emotions you refused to process at the time of the traumatic incident or since. I've had client's sobbing on the table during massage due to such catharsis. Afterwards, not only do they feel much better emotionally, but the muscles tensed to hold back those emotions are now relaxed giving the person a sense of greater physical lightness, mobility, flexibility and freedom. On the other hand, in my personal therapeutic journey, I have sometimes found myself realizing I had never processed grief from a past experience, I let it wash over me, have a major cathartic response (e.g., sobbing) which I do not suppress, but let it run its course and even probing it as you would a sore tooth till every last drop of emotion is wrung out of that experience. It cannot always be done in one session of catharsis, sometimes need to go back a few times to meditate on the experience, find new aspects of emotion I've not yet released from it, and get a bit more catharsis. Once done, I feel physically lighter, not just emotionally, and certain muscles move more freely without that tension. I have witnessed the same thing happen to others. Thus, it seems possible to attack this problem from either end, from the muscular tension or from the emotional suppression, leading to the same result. Note, if you are thinking of going out for a very deep tissue massage to get rid of all your emotional trauma, it is not quite so simple. A lot of massage therapists (most?) do deep tissue by plowing through tense muscles in a way that tears and hurts. I do not believe that will create any release of trauma, and may even add more onto it. My own philosophy of deep tissue, which I was taught, is that you go as deep as the muscles will let you and not one bit further; move through the muscle fibers, and if you find a tension / knot, you then wait patiently at the doorstep of the tension that is refusing to let you further/deeper. You wait patiently, sort of knocking on the door, and you wait as long as it takes for the edges of the muscle you are pressed up against to slowly relax and allow you deeper. You may have to go through multiple layers like this. Eventually, you can get as deep as with the "plow and tear" method, but with no tearing, no pain, no trauma. This type of deep tissue is a silent conversation / communion between the muscle of the therapist and the muscles of the client at the spot where they touch, and the client's muscles slowly gain a level of trust in the therapist to let them in deeper. It is rather analogous to the way a patient is able to go deeper emotionally as they gain trust in their psychotherapist. The point is, this kind of massage therapy for release takes a long time and it can be very hard to find a massage therapist who truly understands and practices this kind of deep tissue. Also, I expect it requires a certain level of embodiment for a client to surrender fully to this kind of muscular communion and release, so it may work best on people who have practices meditation, yoga, etc., and it may not work at all or as well if some one is a "typical" American couch potato who scoffs at meditation and is very cut off from their body. I actually believe psychedelic medicines can greatly aid this type of thing, in particular I think ketamine can be very effective if used properly. I have witnessed a combined use of ketamine on a person receiving deep massage like I describe while simultaneously discussing past traumatic events with a therapist, and the results were beyond expectation, at least from my lay perspective (I have bachelors in psychology, but am not a psych professional, so I do not claim to truly understand how effective this was long-term for the patient/client, but it does seem very promising to me). The bottom line is Western medicine and science in general has a flaw of compartmentalization. We talk about healing emotions through psychotherapy or perhaps massage therapy to release trauma-related tensions or perhaps using psychedelic medicines to allow the person to delve more deeply into their own psyche to find their old wounds and release them from within. So if these are three good modalities for healing trauma, why not combined all three? Seems like a no-brainer to me. Oh, well. following added 11/14/23 after review of above, to explain theory on how knot gets released in this kind of deep tissue: One benefit often overlooked of massage, and deep tissue massage, is bringing conscious focus to areas of the body holding suppressed traumas/tensions. We don't really feel them, notice them, or think of them normally. But laying on the table with the therapist pressing into muscles you probably use but don't think about much. your mental focus almost always shifts to the point of contact the therapist is making. Now, your consciousness is there and is moving along with the point of contact. So when the therapist gets to a deep, repressed tension, and then waits, the client's awareness is now there, too (I usually suggest/invite clients to imagine they are breathing healing/relaxation into the point of contact and breathing out tension/stress, which I think helps them keep awareness like this.) So when the therapist reaches a deep knot of tension in a client, the client on some level (subconscious?) notices it like a person putting on a pair of shoes they had not worn for years, finding the fit is not quite right, unexpected lump. "What's this?" the awareness says, does an audit, finds out this area was zones for temporary suppressed memory storage, but never released. Seeks approval from admin to un-suppress it to get the muscle untensed since it is causing pain/issues. Once admin approves it, the tension released and the suppressed feelings/images are processed to the brain in a cathartic experience and the knot vanishes. This may take a few seconds or 10 minutes. At some point, the therapist has to just give up, but I cannot say for sure if every knot would be released if the therapist just kept waiting -- hours or days if need be. But it could be some repressed stuff the person is not ready to deal with yet, so approval is denied. Since the release generally happens in a few minutes, I think it is reasonable to proceed on assumption that it takes a few minutes for this process, and if the muscle has not released in in a few minutes more, the request to release it was denied.

31:00 “Give me something to study but don’t give me anything to feel” - this resonated with me- always been more of a thinker than a feeler.

OMG no one has ever made sense to me than watching and hearing this lady speak 😭😭😭😭 I'm everything she's mentioned about storing trauma in my body. The sicknesses I still experience. The chronic fatigue and chronic insomnia 😭😭 gut health.. I'm a wreck and I'm barely trying to survive each day.

So let me get this straight When trauma happens to us it can be like a attack on our body that causes it to tense up & react over & over again causing a cycle of health problems. This makes so much sense because I've had a lot of trauma followed by ptsd ,chronic fatigue ,fibromyalgia, & chronic imflimation ,Wow, so PTSD, trauma, fibromyalgia, & chronic fatigue are all connected & possibly caused by attachment trauma. Finally some progress in what is triggering all the pain inflamation & suffering ! Thank you ladies !!! this is a major breakthrough in the subject of trauma 🎯👍🏼

Psychedelics are just an exceptional mental health breakthrough. It's quite fascinating how effective they are against depression and anxiety. Saved my life.

Once while working as a child welfare caseworker I believe I had a pretty profound vagus nerve attack. I walked into a home and came across a horrific child neglect situation involving a 2 year old so emancipated he was bones in a diaper. He could barely stand up and also had a belt looped around his neck. Long story short, by the time I got back to my office I fell to the floor doubled over in severe cramps, the room was spinning, nauseous and couldn’t lift my head off the floor for about two hours. I’m very holistic and healthy so this came out of the blue. I knew very little about trauma biology at the time but inherently knew my sudden attack had everything to do with what I had encountered earlier that day. This video was immensely fascinating!

This was the best explanation about how trauma gets trapped in the body that I have come across. I have been trying to understand this for the past couple of years after going through a major depressive episode in 2021... I've definitely experienced this, having grown up in a traumatic household. I've suffered with anxiety and depression, sleep issues, eating issues, digestive problems and dysregulation my entire life thinking that this is just how I am and continually struggling. It is so good to get some clarity and understanding. I am finally on the healing journey. Thank you for this episode with Dr. Aimee. It was a blessing to me. I am so grateful. 🙏

I am therapist and Dr Aimee has explained this perfectly she has helped me to join up the dots - inspiring 👏👏👌👌❤️

Thank you Emma for sharing the message and for having me in this video! Brilliant video! Super happy that it gets shared across and hopefully help a lot of people in their healing journey.

I have done everything..hypnosis, feldencraise, yoga, frequency treatment, meditation, somatics, emotional freedom tecnique…tapping, affirmations, quigong, ..unless anyone has experienced trauma they don’t know…

Wow! I’m about half way through this video and it all makes sense now! I grew up with severe emotional neglect which caused me to have anxiety and depression very early on, about age 14. I read “Running on empty” about a year ago and learned I’ve been living with trauma and severe anxiety. Go figure right before my 30th birthday I started having health issues. I got Celiac disease, severe nutrient deficiencies, about two years later I developed Hashimoto’s Thyroid and then sleep apnea. I also have digestive issues. 🤦‍♀️ I have been working on healing the last year and I have turned my health around a lot. Exercise has saved my life. Thank you for this video. I appreciate your care and passion in helping us!!!

She hit on everything that got me in the past 30 years, grief and anger😞

The boulder exercise broke me down.. and with breakdowns comes break-throughs! I have been trying and trying to release my internal trauma and I finally have found the first step to completing the cycles. That was intense and so incredibly needed. Worlds of thanks to the both of you ladies for redirecting my journey right when I need it the most. Huge love to you both ❤

Well that explains so much why I don't watch TV, including the news. Even sitting in the room with my husband when he has some crime show on is unnerving to me that I leave the room soon after, yet he feels like I avoid him but he's the workaholic and fills his free time teaching karate and going to church. I deconstructed the faith I once held for 40+ years of my life 12 years ago, unknowing to me at the time was a huge part of deconstructing much of my own cognitive dissonance. That freed my mind of psychological prison. Now in my second phase of my trauma healing the past 9 months in therapy and watching videos like these and recently, my youngest daughter and I doing yoga together.

I don't remember when I watch tv/news last time. I stop it many, many years ago because I realized it was impacting my mind in a very negative way. And because of past trauma I was unconsciously doing best to avoid any trigger. It was an unconscious self-protection from external events.