Insights from Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine

I’ve been watching some of Irene Lyon’s videos about healing the autonomic nervous system, which seems to be at the root of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Irene uses techniques based on Somatic Experiencing and has trained with Peter Levine.

I own Peter’s book Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma, and have read it previously. At the time however, I was so anxious and desperate for a miracle cure that I didn’t really take the time to do all the exercises. Before I fork out for one of Irene’s online courses, I thought it would be worth revisiting the book… but this time taking it more slowly so my nervous system has time to titrate out the trauma; if that is, in fact, the problem.

Here are some quotes from the book that resonated with me on the second reading:

P11: Take it slowly and easily

I haven’t really taken it slowly since I wanted a quick fix. This time I’ll take the advice, thanks.

P16: Overwhelming Threat

Reminds me of my mother

P20: … what occurs in a car if you floor the accelerator and stomp on the brake simultaneously.

Sounds a lot like the physical experience of CFS, and of my mental experience of life before becoming physically ill.

P28: (traumatised people) are unable to overcome the anxiety of their experience. They remain overwhelmed by the event, defeated and terrified. Virtually imprisoned by their fear, they are unable to re-engage in life.

Felt a strong shiver reading this. Reminded me of a psychologist who told me that I needed to reengage with life, and I wondered how I was going to do that when merely getting out of bed was a challenge. Fortunately I’ve recovered significantly since then.

P32: When we do not resolve our traumas, we feel that we have failed, or that. We have been betrayed by those we chose to help us. … The solution to the problem lies in increasing our knowledge about how to heal trauma.

Reminds me of the anger I felt towards the psychologist I was seeing for anxiety/burnout when I came down with the dreaded “cold that doesn’t go away”.

P66: As we begin the healing process we use what is known as the “felt sense”, or internal body sensations. These sensations serve as a portal through which we find the symptoms, or reflections of trauma. In directing our attention to these internal body sensations, rather than attacking the trauma head-on, we can unbind and free the energies that have been held in check.

Reminds me of one of the main concepts of Mickel Therapy: listen to your body

P73: Be patient and keep reminding yourself that you don’t need to experience everything now. This hero’s journey proceeds one tiny step at a time.

Patience, patience, patience

P93: When an animal senses a change in its environment, it responds by looking for the source of the disturbance

I realise that I’ve suppressed my orienting response because I didn’t want other people to think that I was afraid.

P103: in post-traumatic anxiety, immobility is maintained primarily from within. The impulse towards intense aggression is so frightening that the traumatised person often turns it inward on themselves rather than allow it external expression. This imploded anger takes the form of anxious depression and the varied symptoms of post-traumatic stress. … trauma victims beginning to exit immobility are often trapped by their own fear of abrupt activation and their potential for violence. They remain in a vicious cycle of terror, rage, and immobility. They are primed for full-out escape or raging counter-attack, but remain inhibited because of fear of violence to themselves and others.

Describes how I felt generally around people even before developing CFS symptoms, after being bullied regularly at school while growing up.

P104: As the freezing response develops into terror, rage or a death experience, we respond emotionally, just as we did when the event happened.

Oh-oh… I’m fucked.

P106: Indeed, even the symptoms that develop out of the freezing response can be viewed with a sense of appreciation and even gratitude if you consider what might happen if the system did not have this safety valve.

Yeah… I’m just not there yet

P120: For each of us, the mastery of trauma is a heroic journey that will have moments of creative brilliance, profound learning, and periods of hard tedious work. It is the process of finding ourselves a safe and gentle way of coming out of immobility without being overwhelmed.

Safe and gentle. Not “smashing it”.

P122: The restoration of aggression is another key feature in healing the effects of trauma.

I’ve been working on this for a long time!

P122: We can use the felt sense to uncouple the maladaptive attachment between excitement and fear.

I’ve been feeling a lot of fear in the lead-up to going back to college this week and have wondered whether I might be misinterpreting the energy of excitement as fear.

P123: Aggressiveness is the biological ability to be vigorous and energetic, especially when using instinct and force. In the immobility (traumatized) state, these assertive energies are inaccessible. The restoration of healthy aggression is an essential part in the recovery from trauma.

I definitely feel like my instinctual aggression has been blocked for a long time by the fear of what other people will think of me.

P129: Arousal exercise

My reactions were all very similar: gasping a breath, feeling tense in the neck and widening my eyes. It was a little hard to tell when I had relaxed again due to the tense feeling in my head that is always present, but a little stronger than usual when I did the exercise.

P132: Hyperarousal

I think I’ve been hypervigillant as long as I can remember. I was in bed with a partner once and I flinched when she rolled over and touched me. “Don’t startle” she said. Even other people have noticed it.

P135: Constriction

Feeling shrunken in my personality & body. Probably a response the the bullies at high school where I got kicked if I stuck my head up.

P136: Dissociation

Frankly, on the days that I feel overwhelmed with anxiety about my symptoms, dissociation sounds like a pretty sweet option.

P142: Helplessness

What could feel more helpless than struggling to get out of bed when the doctors can’t seem to help?

P150: One of the most insidious characteristics of trauma symptoms is that they are hooked into the original cycle in such a way that they are also self-perpetuating.

Reminds me of the feedback loop in Ashok Gupta’s amygdala hypothesis.

P151: In it’s pure form, the energy generated by our nervous system to protect us from danger is vital. It feels alive and exhilarating. When this energy is thwarted in its attempt to protect us, a significant portion of it is re-channeled into fear, rage, hatred, and shame as part of the constellation of symptoms that develop to organise the undischarged energy.

Reminds me of how I traditionally suppressed my anger because it didn’t feel safe to express. I feel tense just thinking about it.

P156: The Threat That Can’t Be Found … Hypervigilance becomes one of the ways we manage the excess energy resulting from an unsuccessful defence against an original threat. We use hypervigilance to channel some of that energy into the muscles of the head, neck, and eyes in an obsessive search for danger.

That could explain the constant tension headache, stiff neck and sore eyes.

P175: Much of the violence that plagues humanity is a direct or indirect result of unresolved trauma that is acted out in repeated unsuccessful attempts to re-establish a sense of empowerment.

This is bigger than all of us