Trauma is defined as " a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to long-term neurosis. physical injury." What we see as trauma and what others feel is trauma can be different based on perceptions in life. We all have experiences that define actions and emotions in our life. We develop this through life, some believe that by the time we are 7 years old we have done a lot of this defining. Traumas can be brought back to life through smell, sounds, and even someone behaving a certain way and can trigger us without us even realizing it. Depending on how severe these traumas are, which what one person sees as nothing can be a huge trauma to another, this can put us in a constant state of fight or flight.
Fight or flight mode is set up for us to run away from danger. During fight or flight mode, digestion is shut down, any rebuilding or healing is also shut down. Everything is shut down except the ability to run away, and the systems that support it. If we are constantly brought back to fight or flight our immune system and the healing process can not happen. The more it happens to us on a regular basis we can often get stuck in fight or flight mode. The body will adapt to the situation of protecting itself from perceived danger. Many of us hold ourselves in fight or flight mode with anxiety and stress. We even keep ourselves on the go, constantly needing a boost of energy so we take in food and drinks to make us go go go engaging fight or flight mode. This can become our new norm so we have a harder time seeing it as fight or flight, when we do this too much we are forcing the body to overwork and break down. We begin to wear out the body, our endocrine, and nervous system. These systems can only last so long in this mode before it starts to shove you to parasympathetic with constant digestion, running for the bathroom, tired, want to sleep all the time, depression, and no energy.
How we feed our body can support the ebb and flow of the autonomic nervous system, or aspects of anxiety, fight or flight mode. Most wait until they need a prescription to do something about this which often then leads to more imbalance. Your diet, bacteria, and toxicity can all impact if the body can relax or push you into flight or fight mode.
We can choose to support the body to learn to balance keeping the ability to ebb and flow. Through meditation, working on the trauma, perceptions, and diet. Eating foods to calm the body, and help to rebuild organs, support endocrine systems (hormones). Foods such as fats, liver, proteins, and minerals. Our body uses fats to feed the brain and create hormones, we use protein to rebuild organs and calm the body, and minerals for metabolic activities like digestion and sleep. Supporting these with whole food is a great way in helping to provide the nutrients we need to build, calm emotions, support the brain, and nervous system. Allowing us to put in the work to reshape the perspectives that push us into fight or flight mode. To have good health we have to calm the storm, deal with the traumas of our lives, and find new paths that serve us.
Educate yourself and assess where your foundational issues are. Then we can find the foods and tools that help to support balance. YOU ARE WORTH IT!