Just roll with it

**I have been toying with whether to write about my night sweats for a few weeks now. It feels a bit too personal. However, I think that it might be quite helpful as it is relevant to my experience of living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). What’s more is that these somatic events provide a wonderful opportunity to cultivate kindness and self-compassion in the face of adversity in a safe way, and in moments that are without emotional charge. This is practice for when life throws those curveballs that have the potential to feel overwhelming and to feel not safe. So here we go…

I am a woman of a certain age, (looking straight down the lens of my 51^st year), who has started to have night sweats. These hot flashes start as a low rumble that slowly move their way down my shoulders, into my arms and radiate throughout my whole torso. They are very much like a wave slowly swelling before tumbling through my body and gradually subsiding.

When I first felt one, it was strangely familiar. Where have I felt this before? And then it came to me. I have felt this every time my body is filled with the fear and dread of the anxiety that comes with a PTSD flare up. The only difference is that with these night sweats my mind is stable and not in a negativity thought loop. I know what is happening to me. It’s no big deal.

This differs from when I am in the midst of a trauma moment as it can feel like there is no clear explanation for why I am feeling this bodily invasion. Nor is there anything rational about the thoughts and images that flash before my eyes. A hot flash is acceptable and explainable, whereas my trauma flare ups usually come without apparent reason and have traditionally been something to recoil from. Well, until I sought help and learned new ways of relating to these episodes.

I was diagnosed with PTSD due to surviving an explosion and sustaining a large burn injury. I have experienced what the specialists like to call trauma with a big T. This means trauma that is a life-changing event that involves a direct threat to safety or survival. However, it has been my trauma with a little t, or the smaller, more enduring, painful experiences that have more day to day impact. Thankfully, the skills I learned in managing my PTSD have helped me keep my balance and keep moving, one step in front of the other, whenever trauma has resurfaced.

From living with trauma, I have since learned that experiencing such a strong response in my body is normal. Bessel van der Kolk (2002), a Boston-based psychiatrist, author, researcher and educator, wrote an article titled “Beyond the talking cure: Somatic experience and subcortical imprints in the treatment of trauma”. In the article he states that “trauma is not primarily imprinted on people’s consciousness but instead becomes deeply imbedded in people’s sensate experiences”. Indeed, this is what was happening to me with these waves of anxiety inducing heat. Only, without a reference point, it was debilitating. I became frozen with fear and my life was interrupted. I needed to learn ways of experiencing my body and notice my thoughts without getting caught up in the tsunami of disorienting distress AND without shutting down. Like being caught in a wave, I needed to learn to roll with it so that I could get back up with ease.

My night sweats have become microcosms of what this process feels like. Whenever I feel the wave gathering momentum, I notice what is happening and I stay with the sensations in a kind and caring way. I attend to my body. I do not move up into my mind where the panic lives. Knowing that I am safe and in my bed and that there is nothing to fear, I can allow the wave of heat to pass through me.

If only it was this easy with trauma! Unfortunately trauma has the propensity to become stuck which can create a feeling of not being safe, feeding insecurity and keeping us in a state of hypervigilance. Why is this? Well there are various neurological reasons, as well, there doesn’t seem to be the same normalcy afforded to a trauma response as there is to a woman in her fifties having night sweats. There should be, as there are just as many people living with trauma as there are women.

Yet, with a bit of training, we can learn to notice the onset of a trauma response- there are always signs of this in the body- and move towards staying with the sensations (rather than the thought loops) with a kind and caring attending to. In this way, the trauma has the potential to move through without getting stuck. When trauma gets stuck, physiological problems can occur such as chronic pain, sleep disturbances, and gastrointestinal problems. If we can learn ways in which to allow trauma to complete its full cycle (without becoming overwhelmed), we are able to move out of fight/flight/freeze mode and get back up.

So as I lie in bed, I smile at each night sweat. It’s an opportunity to practice staying with the sensations, attending to the body with kindness and care and allowing the somatic experience to complete its cycle and flow through me. I can do this so that I know the process for when I experience a trauma response. There are other ways to do this- for those of you without night sweats and for those of you who experience different somatic symptoms. (Not everyone who has trauma responses feels heat radiating through the body). It involves reconnecting mind and body in a safe way so that we can notice what is happening while it is happening. This is mindfulness. It also involves actively cultivating self-compassion to hold painful experiences safely and from a place of grounded courage so that these experiences can flow on through.

This week, I will be guiding a self-compassion practice called Soften, Soothe and Allow that works with discomfort in the mind and the body at the Sanctuary’s Tuesday morning online session. Why not join me?

If you would like to explore understanding and renegotiating trauma in our lives further, Dr. Liam MacGabhann and I will be delivering a two day workshop in the Sanctuary on June 11^th and 12^th. For more information: click here.

Click here to join me at the Sanctuary’s online meditation session on Tuesday morning at 10am

To listen to and download a meditation called Soften, Soothe and Allow, click below: