As the DSM-5 was being drafted, Bessel van der Kolk (of The Body Keeps the Score fame) advocated for a new diagnosis, Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). This additional category recognizes that there is a difference between the trauma experienced in a one-time incident, like a car crash for example, and an ongoing developmental trauma like repeating abuse. They are obviously different, thought often treated the same. The new category was not included in DSM-5, but practitioners everywhere recognize the difference, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has now set up Complex PTSD as a separate diagnostic category.

Complex PTSD results from repeated traumatic events. Some of the characteristics typical to C-PTSD are as follows:

• Difficulty controlling emotions.
• Negative self-view.
• Difficulty with relationships.
• Detachment from the trauma.
• Loss of a system of meanings.

Though cognitive therapies have provided helpful, somatic therapies have proven especially healing, such as EFT and EMDR.

Complex PTSD results from repeated traumatic events. There are distinctive differences between PTSD and C-PTSD. The sources of Complex PTSD abide beneath the level of the conscious mind and body-based methods often provide the best path to healing.

The after effects of your trauma – whatever it was – do not have to afflict you forever. There is hope.

One of the remarkable insights of integrative approaches to healing is the somatic dimension, the body. Our consciousness manifests traumatic memories that live in the energy fields of our bodies.

This is why embodied pain/conflict/suffering manifests in our bodies in particular places. Because the emotional energy is localized in our bodies we are provided a powerful tool for both identifying and healing all that is blocked or unresolved. Our bodies speak to us and provide a channel for touching the untouchable.

If you ever wonder how it is that pain can actually move around our body it is because energy is fluid, shifts and may be shifted. In EFT there are many times that we “chase the pain” as it moves around the body – and therefore around our consciousness. It starts one place and moves to another, usually to the more important place.

The wisdom of our bodies speaks and provides a pathway to wholeness and healing.

In the most recent issue of Energy Psychology (vol 8, no 2), Dawson Church, PhD, presents research that identifies the link between our triggers – those events that signal our defense mechanisms including the autonomic “fight/flight/freeze” response and bring them into play – and the “set points” that make those triggers more or less easily activated.

Our set points for almost any emotion or cluster of emotions are learned and shaped by deep experience and continual reinforcement. And what starts as a behavioral adaption becomes translated into an automatic biological/neurological function. Church draws an analogy between the presets on your radio in the car; each of those stations have a particular level at which they are activated. Under stress certain stress points become obvious. And they vary from person to person.

For example, the same event is received very differently by different persons. A lamp unexpectedly falls over and crashes to the floor and one person is mildly interested, the next irritated, and the next diving under the chair. Their set points are located very differently and automatically so. Over time the set points become habitual. Some people have very low set points for sadness, anger and fear and they are triggered easily while others have much higher set points and it takes much more intensity to affect them. The same can be said of pain and what is experienced with or without great suffering; people have different set points for the experience of pain.

Initially set points served as part of the evolutionary survival instinct. They keep us alive. But when activated too easily in settings that are not representing real threat they become maladaptive.

Thankfully, it is possible to reset these set point presets. This is where energy psychology comes in. The practice of tapping on meridians – the body’s energy points – while imagining or experiencing triggers actually soothes and helps reset the triggering intensity. In clinical trials EFT and EMDR have been shown to have high effectiveness in decreasing Beta brain waves and increasing Alpha waves. Of special importance is the way that coupling tapping or eye desensitization with verbalizing, imagining and experiencing those triggers soothes the amygdala, seat of the fight and flight response which releases cortisol into our system to mobilize our defenses. Persistent and constant cortisol presence is destructive to the brain, resulting in decaying quality of life. Tapping on body meridians while exposing troubling images, memories and emotions reverses the stress response and resets the set points.

The good news is that set points can be changed. We can actually shift our habitual set points from terrible emotions to the set points of greater relaxation, peace and happiness. It is what the great spiritual traditions have taught and practiced for centuries. Now we call it mindfulness. But in the past it was simply called prayer, contemplation or meditation. Coupled with the ritualized behavior of tapping which stimulates the meridians of our natural energy network healing is more possible than ever before.

I have just received certification as a Matrix Reimprinting Practitioner. Matrix is an advanced specialty of EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques). Matrix work involves going into the subconscious, past memories and energetic selves where we may resolve that which still operates beneath the surface of our awareness. Through a variety of techniques we clear the painful and troubling emotions and thoughts affiliated with past trauma. It is a wonderful extension of and accompaniment to EFT.

Nothing stands in isolation, and that is especially true of trauma.

Most usually current traumas are preceded by early forms of the same thing; there is a progression of occurrences and the emotions/thoughts that have been attached to them. If we address and clear the present struggle its more complete resolution is most usually found as we follow the energy to the early places. Once visiting, clearing and reframing those energetic aspects that are alive and functioning in our subconscious the present challenge frequently resolves very quickly.