If you have followed Hope for Dystonia for a while, you know that dystonia is an emergent phenomenon. It is a bit like a storm: did the humidity in the air cause the storm? Or was it the elctricity, or again the wind? The answer is, of course, none of them and all of them. The storm is the phenomenon we witness when all of these elements and more come together and organize themselves as a system.
The same is true for dystonia: when the nervous system is exposed to different dysfunctional inputs, it does its best to organize itself in a way that allows us to survive in one piece. These inputs include imbalances in the body, genetic predisposition to neuroplasticity, toxicity, injuries, and - you guessed it - psychological trauma. (To learn more about the causes of dystonia, read "What Causes Dystonia, Really?").
Two types of trauma are particularly relevant for dystonia. The first is the "straw that broke the camel's back" kind of trauma: an acute event that takes us over the edge and triggers the onset of dystonia symptoms. Usually, when this happens, our nervous system has already been challenged for a long time.
An example of this would be an individual who develops symptoms after they move to a new city, losing the support network and familiar surroundings they had.
When we experience this type of acute trauma, it is important that we focus on somatic practices that help us release any stored traumatic energy, and that we surround ourselves with signals of safety and connection.
The second type of trauma is developmental: it is not necessarily one that happens as a single discrete event. Rather, it can be something we experience over the course of our entire childhood and adolescence.
Developmental trauma can take a number of forms, one of which is attachment wounding. We experience attachment wounding when our primary caretakers (usually, our parents) are unable to help us experience five fundamental qualities: safety, soothing, attunement, delight in our essence (i.e. being valued), and encouragement to be who and what we are.
When this happens, we learn to meet our fundamental psychological needs by staying chronically outside of our window of regulation, the space within our nervous system that allows us to alternate between sympathetic engagement and parasympathetic relaxation. In other words, we learn to survive by living in a state of chronic stress (fight or flight) or depression (freeze).
This chronic dysregulation (which we may or may not be even aware of) makes us more prone to illness and overwhelm as we face life's challenges. When this chronic dysregulation meets other causal co-factors of dystonia, our nervous systems may have a difficult time finding regulation and symmetry again, and we may develop symptoms.
Even when this happens, nonetheless, not all is lost! In fact, our brains retain the ability to learn (neuroplasticity) even into adulthood. Even as we age, our bodies want to get better.
Through a variety of mindfulness and self-compassion techniques, relational practices and more, we can help ourselves build the pathways in our nervous systems that allow us to actively experience the five qualities of secure attachment, therefore allowing ourselves to live within our window of regulation more and more of the time.
All of this information is also available in the video below. If you, too, feel called to learn more about how your journey of trauma healing can contribute to your dystonia recovery, I invite you to book a time to speak for free and share your story.
With love,
Fede
Hope for Dystonia
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