Trauma, Health and Anger

[Eagle Ray]

Today has been hard. Since Friday I’ve had a return of physical symptoms I had recur throughout last year - shortness of breath and feeling very unwell. Today I had to cancel an appointment with my employment agency because I was too unwell when I’d been looking forward to discussing my ideas for starting my own business on the NEIS program.

I have a cholestatic liver disease and the recent symptoms may be related to lung issues that can occur with that and I’ll probably have to go through more medical testing. But I’ve also been reflecting on the impact of trauma on health and the suppression of anger that can occur when subjected to trauma, especially from a young age.

I had repeat instances of verbal and physical abuse which were quite extreme and left me with nowhere to go but to lie on my bed in a frozen state, often beyond the point of being able to cry. I had to internalise aggression shown towards me as there were no other options. Recently I experienced similar abuse following the death of a family member when I was at my most vulnerable. I was too weak to do anything to defend myself.

The liver disease I have destroys the bile ducts, and I feel like a process of internalised anger over my lifespan is likely responsible for this autoimmune disease. Bile is produced when we are angry, but in my case the anger didn’t get expression and I feel like it’s caused inner destructive processes to my own body.

After the last abusive attack I was in a state of extreme hypervigilance 24/7. One night, unable to sleep, I realised I needed to scream. I screamed into a pillow so I hopefully wouldn’t freak out the neighbours, but after several screams my body started to let go and I actually became sleepy and was able to go to sleep.

Can anyone else relate to possible links between trauma, repressed anger and health issues? If so, has anything particular helped? I’m the kind of person who never shows anger. People have said they’ve never seen me angry. But I feel like there must be a load of repressed anger in me that needs expression. I’m in a lot of pain at the moment, physically and emotionally. I feel like my body has really had enough. I actually bought a book online the other day by Gabor Mate called When the Body Says No. I’m looking forward to reading it as it sounds very relevant to my situation and might help.

Sorry for such a heavy topic. I just wondered if others can relate and have any ideas on dealing with deeply repressed anger linked to trauma?

[Mum Chris]

Hi eagle ray

I would remind myself that the bile ducts the liver and flow on effects on your kidneys are triggering. From what you have posted you are doing amazingly well. Many people with liver problems have extreme issues with anxiety and depression. They may have been quite ok before but the liver disease affects mood and cognitive functioning. I had my gallbladder removed and issues with my liver and digestion. I find a combination of dietary changes have helped. Dandelion root tea that is steeped for 15 mins does help with bile and gut mobility. I find what works for a while doesn’t work forever so I try different things. Kimchi live cultures massage stretches and deep breathing. I think to that the search is as good as the discovery. Something doable something to focus on. Like a meditation. I tried acupuncture but I found that the 15 minutes not moving was the struggle for me. 
Being out of my way helpful supportive and compliant is one of my major illnesses from my abuse.  I feel I’m in control because I’ve done all this fantastic stuff and been wonderful helping that anyone would see me as valuable and nice and not a threat and not get angry or hurt me. How could they. But it’s like moths to a flame. I’m the flame and narcissistic people are drawn to me. Instead of them getting burnt up it’s me. I nearly need to sit on my hands and tape my mouth shut but I’m not running around helping anymore. I’m asking for help and expecting to receive it. I’m treating me better than I treat others. So much guilt and struggle with myself because like you I was taught to put up with being mistreated and at the same time be of service to others. I was told ego was bad. I’m finding my true nature is quite scrappy and independent so for my young life I was submissive and volatile. I’d be pushed so far then come out swinging. Of course I suffered more serious abuse then and was told I deserved it because there’s something wrong with me. If I tried to get help I was told I was overreacting and being dramatic. So when serious abuse happened I internalised it and lived in silence. 
Thinking we can create safety by being compliant and thoughtful and caring is a pattern of CPTSD. It’s taking responsibility for others actions. I’m aware but not cured of this defect yet. All I can do is limit contact with narcissistic family members and keep only good people near me. 

MC

[Eagle Ray]

Thanks MC,

I’m sure, in my case, the liver disease is the result of lifelong suppressed anger. It destroys the bile ducts, and given bile is produced when we are angry but it was not safe for me to express anger, it turned inwards eventually manifesting as an autoimmune disease.

I’ve done major dietary changes that have hugely helped with debilitating fatigue and extremely slowed cognition. I’m now doing much better on those fronts but my biggest issue now is major shortness of breath even from slight exertion. The disease is associated with interstitial lung disease. I’m really hoping it’s not that but may have to go through further testing and potentially deal with that. Breathing issues have been lifelong for me, especially shallow breathing, but it’s now morphed into a feeling of drowning or suffocating which is horrible. The last abusive attack I was under I couldn’t get in any air no matter how much I was trying to suck in oxygen. I know this is the extreme end of the freeze response.

But the somatic work I’m doing is now finally addressing the physiological impacts of trauma. In the last session I got to re-enact the defence response I wanted to do in the above mentioned trauma incident, but was unable to do at the time. After a few goes at this she got me to do it in slow motion. It was amazing as I could feel and see all these things in my body. I was able to turn and directly stare at the attacker who turned into a spindly hologram and dissolved, leaving only the quiet sounds of the night on an otherwise peaceful evening. Essentially the attacker lost all power over me. I’m now able to extend this to other abusers from my past when trauma memories arise.

 I’m hoping this work can heal the dysfunction in my body and that it’s not too late for me. My true nature is very optimistic but the last couple of years nearly beat that out of me. But I think what you say about having the right people in your life is absolutely necessary while not allowing in the harmful ones. It actually becomes essential for health and well-being. I can tell now that each time I make the right decision for myself and not someone else, it opens more and more positive doors into the future.

[Driffle]

Don't forget that volunteer work can be at least as effective as paid work at giving you a feeling of purpose and community. It can also be a lot more forgiving of uncertainty with one's health.

Your dream sounds very much like a replay of your birth experience. I totally agree that we aren't supposed to start life as isolated from human connection as you were. My birth was unremarkable and I had prompt access to human contact, but that contact, while well-intentioned and non-violent, wasn't very nurturing. My parents' capacity for nurture was limited by their own traumas, and the examples they set for how to process trauma weren't helpful for my own health, and took me some time to unlearn.

Great to hear that you've already found TRE and gotten some benefit from it. You make a really good point about the "symptom" of tremoring being regarded by the medical model as an undesirable symptom that requires suppression. When I started getting osteopathic treatment one of the concepts I soon encountered was that some symptoms represent pathology while others represent our body's efforts to compensate for its problems, and others can occur temporarily while our body is correcting itself. Obviously it's unhelpful to try to suppress compensation and healing. I will say though that when we (and our practitioners) have no idea what's going wrong with our bodies we have no idea which symptoms represent which and it's easy to become distressed about anything and everything that's going on. Hence that ability to listen to our body being a superpower.

[Eagle Ray]

Thank you Driffle.

 If I’m going to really listen to my body right now I think volunteer work is all I can manage. My body isn’t right, especially with the shortness of breath, and I know I have a journey of healing work ahead of me.

I understand about having parents who haven’t effectively processed their own traumas and so all we have initially is their way of being in the world. It takes courage to unlearn those patterns and find new ways, and it sounds like you have done great work finding your own path into what is healing and helpful.

 I found there are a few osteopaths in a nearby town, so I’m going to research how each of them work. My Bowen therapist may know about them too and have a recommendation.

An interesting thing I’ve learned with somatic experiencing is developing curiosity about our bodily sensations. I think often we are afraid of the sensations that arise as our body attempts to come out of trauma, but curiosity apparently shuts down the trauma circuits and we begin to realise what our body is doing to recover equilibrium. It’s like all the forces to regain homeostasis are in us, it’s just allowing that to unfold in a supportive context.

The current psychologist I’m working with has been very intuitive at guiding me through this kind of healing process. She understands the physiology of trauma recovery and basically co-regulates with me by being attuned and present and knowing what will help me enact the resolution of trauma. I think good bodyworkers do something similar, such as Bowen therapists and I’m sure osteopaths, in that they are truly attuned and present with what is happening in your body and are basically helping enable a natural healing response.

[Driffle]

If your thoracic issues work anything like mine they'll be aggravated by stress, which is always a higher risk with paid work than with volunteering.

Sometimes learning new ways isn't so much about courage as not being able find any other way forward.

If you encounter any difficulty figuring out which osteopaths have the right skills I'm happy to try to help.

Really interesting point about curiosity. On an intellectual level I've always approached my symptoms with curiosity - even from a very early age - but on an unconscious neurological level my body has been panicked by them. I'm still unpicking those unconscious responses. It's slow going.

A lot of what you're saying aligns precisely with the philosophy of osteopathy, e.g. the body has an innate sense of homeostasis and health, and the role of the practitioner is not to try to impose change but to help the patient's body find its own way there. One of their superpowers - especially with cranial training - is their palpation skills. If you show up with an overwound SNS they'll feel it through their hands immediately (if they can't then you need to find someone more skilled).

[Eagle Ray]

Yes, I think you might be right there, that it’s when we have no other way forward that we have to take a certain path for survival. I was extremely weak yesterday with quite bad shortness of breath, even at rest. Pulmonary arterial hypertension can co-occur with the liver disease I have and also mitral valve prolapse which I also have. It’s prognosis is not good but it’s looking like what I might have that’s causing the shortness of breath. Seeing the doctor on Wednesday for further testing.

I’ve never felt so close to no longer surviving, and yet at the same time I’ve found a really good therapist after years of trying and I’m finding lots of resources that are helpful. While pulmonary arterial hypertension is fatal, people live longer than they used to with treatment. I’m trying to believe I can recover and my body can turn all the autoimmunity I’m going through around.

 I’m currently reading the book When the Body Says No by Gabor Mate. I’m reading Chapter 13: “Self or Non-Self: The Immune System Confused”. I’ve never read such an accurate description of what my body is going through. It explains exactly the childhood dynamics/trauma I went through and the autoimmunity that can result from it. It’s things like this that give me hope that supposedly degenerative illnesses are not the end of the line and there are ways to turn them around.

My Bowen therapist is very intuitive and I think might have a good idea of who might be an appropriate osteopath for me to see in town. I’ll see how I go and hopefully find a good person.

 I was listening to a podcast with Peter Levine and he said something like people approaching trauma with curiosity have higher rates of being able to heal from trauma. I think if you have that you have one of the key ingredients to recovery. He describes the decoupling of trauma sensations from the associated emotional anguish, also using ‘islands of safety’ a person can return to when touching into trauma responses get too much. It’s a gentle, titrated process (avoiding overwhelm). I think it’s curiosity that keeps me learning and researching and trying to understand what is happening, kind of like unraveling a mystery.

[Driffle]

There's been a couple of times for me when my days were looking like they might be numbered. On both occasions pathways for survival opened up, and that happened because I was doing what you're doing - keeping on looking for and working on those pathways.

[Eagle Ray]

Thanks so much Driffle. I’m glad you’ve overcome and gotten through those things.

 I think there are many times people are given a poor prognosis but it’s not necessarily dire. There’s a chapter in Norman Doidge’s book The Brain’s Way of Healing about a man with Parkinson’s. He retrained his own brain through developing his own walking therapy. Despite significant disability and years with the disease he greatly improved and was able to come off his meds, and started helping others with Parkinson’s with a walking program. He grew better, not worse. He still has it and has to maintain his walking practice, but his improvement goes directly against the prognosis he’d been told to expect.

This morning the GP put me on an asthma med. Despite pulmonary hypertension commonly co-occurring with liver disease, me never having had asthma previously, and the most common disease pulmonary hypertension is misdiagnosed as being asthma, he seems to think this is the way to go. I’ve now booked a second opinion. I don’t want to have PH, but if it is that and it goes undiagnosed and untreated, my lifespan will be significantly shortened. I haven’t found a GP yet who has an understanding of the liver disease I have, so I am forced to learn and learn and learn on my own. It’s a rare disease and it’s like you have to learn and then explain it to them, if they will listen.

But I’m tenacious and I’ve learned to trust my own intuition. It’s when I haven’t trusted my intuition that things haven’t gone well.

 If I do have PH I believe there will be much I can do on a number of levels to manage it and even turn it around. It’s sometimes eliminating all sources of stress that you can from your life and every action of daily living being towards healthy homeostasis. I really feel the body knows how to heal itself.

Im sitting now on a favourite rock by the ocean and feeling better for it. 

Thanks again for your encouraging thoughts 🙏

[Driffle]

With at least some conditions there is definite scope to improve your predicted outcomes by taking the right action, because of how medical science works. Scientific conclusions require controlled conditions, which in medicine tends to mean that the patient does nothing to help themselves and relies completely on whatever medical intervention is being applied. Many of the things we can do for ourselves, like many of things you're doing for yourself and what Norman Doidge did, are considered unmeasurable and/or uncontrollable in an experiment. Thus they can never become "scientifically proven" and thus can't be dispensed as evidenced-based medical treatment or advice.

The first time I thought I might be doomed was due to asthma. My asthma was getting worse so more and then stronger drugs were prescribed, which only served to make my asthma worse. I had been on a range of asthma medications for 20+ years by then so I have first-hand experience of some of the side-effects of some of them, which is something to keep an ear out for when you're listening to your body. Reliever medication can upset the ANS, for example. Personally I would want to avoid most asthma medications if they weren't absolutely necessary and I think your pursuit of another opinion is an excellent idea, especially given that overmedication is a thing and you've got multiple conditions in play that your doctors don't understand.

[Eagle Ray]

You are absolutely right re: the way medical practice requires an evidence base of substantially tested, controlled studies before certain treatment approaches will be supported. Often clinical research has findings but it can take years to gain full acceptance. Recently I decided to try a dietary intervention based on some preliminary research on what I was experiencing. I had two doctors advise it would make no difference. I did it anyway and had multiple significant improvements. I then searched for further clinical research and found several studies supporting what I’d done, indicating that gut dysbiosis and intestinal permeability are very likely at the core of the condition I have (chronic ANS dysregulation being at the core of these issues too).

 I’m definitely not taking the asthma med. I’ve also read about it’s potential effect on the ANS, and given I know ANS dysfunction is a central health issue for me I know it isn’t the right option. Seeing a more integrative doctor soon whom I’m hoping will have a broader and deeper understanding of things.

Thank you for your balanced perspective and insights from your own experience. I think listening into our own bodies is the best thing we can do, in conjunction with doing our own research and finding practitioners we can work collaboratively with.