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The brain and therefore the mind of a person who has been traumatised functions in a different way from a person who has not been traumatised. Perceptions of massage are mediated through the nervous system, and so the experience of massage may differ between the traumatised and non traumatised person. For the former, massage may not be relaxing. Like stress, trauma has become overused and devalued. For example 'I'm traumatised, my cell phone is broken!' Even involvement in a genuinely traumatic event doesn't necessarily mean that the person will suffer trauma. With the support of others and with rest and time, many recover from the traumatic event. But others don't and develop post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). For such people, their brain functioning and central nervous system functioning has altered. Simple Trauma and Complex Trauma Leading trauma expert Babette Rothschild describes two main categories of trauma. Simple trauma refers to the effect of a single, or series of unrelated trauma events that occur to someone in adult life, whose previous life experience has been relatively ordinary. Such a person's CNS becomes stuck in fight and flight. Complex trauma is concerned with chronic abuse and/or chronic neglect that happens early in a child's life when the brain is still developing. What happens in this case is that the usual pathways of information flow are reversed. Instead of transmission from the top downwards i.e from the cerebral hemispheres to midbrain and hypothalamus to brain stem, it flows the other way. The normal route fails to develop and so the bottom up pathway form brain stem to hypothalamus to cerebrum is switched on permanently. For a sufferer of complex trauma, the information relayed from sensory receptors and proprioreceptors stimulated by massage arrives at the cerebral hemispheres, the part of the brain that registers meaning, but then fails to have any impact on the autonomic nervous system or the hypothalmic-pituitary-adrenal axis. (Alan Schore). Relaxation Can Be Undesirable It's like the brain has got itself stuck in the general adaptation syndrome, except that in addition there are a host of dysfunctional thought processes going on that relate to the trauma. These include and inability to relax. The person suffering trauma may fear lowering their mental defenses in case something undesirable happens. There may be an inability to switch off from the event. There may be flashbacks. There may be intrusive thoughts. Physical relaxation through massage brings mental relaxation, which, for a trauma sufferer, may be undesirable.
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The author is a massage therapist, psychotherapist and craniosacral therapist and supervisor in private practice in London, Britain. She can be contacted at her london psychotherapy practice or at london psychotherapy.
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