Six Steps to Build Resilience and Find Inner Peace

Trauma has profound, debilitating effects on our ability to self-regulate, feel grounded in our bodies, and connect with ourselves and the world around us, leading to a perpetual state of threat, hyper-alertness, and often overwhelm.

Trauma is inevitable and can range from the simple fact of having developmental needs unmet in childhood to more terrifying events that strip our sense of safety, trust, and belonging in the world. In all cases, trauma means that a particular event or situation has felt so overwhelming that it bypassed our capacity to process and assimilate the experience in a coherent way.

When left unattended, trauma can lead to several mental, physical, and physiological issues. However, with sufficient support, it is possible to heal and avoid the further development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As a body-centered therapist focused on healing trauma, I can assure you that healing is possible.

Healing Trauma Through External and Internal Resources

Trauma happens due to the absence of safety. Healing from trauma, therefore, involves reclaiming a sense of safety through building inner and outer resources. "Resources" are the internal and external tools that allow you to feel grounded in the present moment and capable of welcoming challenging experiences without getting hijacked or feeling overwhelmed.

We all have the capacity to cultivate inner and outer resources that we can draw upon when we feel triggered or emotionally overwhelmed. Resources restore a sense of safety, inner calm, and choice about what to feel or actions to take.

Resources can be drawn from external sources such as friends, family, therapists, and/or environments that foster your sense of safety and belonging. These are ways of creating a sense of calm from the outside in. Resources can also be created from the inside out through learning to change your internal response to the environment. Tools of inner resourcing include breathing, grounding, visualization, movement, and meditation.

Somatic Resourcing

One of the powerful ways of building an inner sense of calm and emotional resilience is through Somatic Resourcing.

Somatic Resourcing is the practice of inviting our mind/body to attune to sensations of safety or goodness, however small they may be. The process of attending to a felt sense of "okayness" begins the process of teaching our nervous system that it can experience stress and then come back to a state of calm.

Below are six simple steps you can take to somatically resource yourself:

1.    Bring a pleasant situation or a benefactor to mind

Close your eyes and consciously recall a recent experience in which you felt good or at ease in some way. For example, an interaction with a loved one or a walk in the forest, a swim in your favorite beach, and so on. It doesn’t need to be a super strong feeling; it can be as simple as a subtle sense of ease or absence of discomfort when smelling a flower.

2.    Use your imagination to deepen the experience

Bring that experience to mind in a very vivid way as if it were happening right now.

3.    Become aware of every detail

Make the experience as real as possible by paying attention to every detail. For example, if you are thinking of a friend – how is she/he dressed? Is she/he smiling? Which setting is she/he in?

4.    Find where it lives in your body

Identify where this experience is more alive in your body. For example, a warmth in the heart, a softness in the belly, a sense of space or expansion through the torso, and so on.

5.    Let the Felt Sense infuse your whole being

Drop the current image from the initial step and begin to immerse yourself fully in that experience through the felt sense in the body.

6.    Savour the experience

Intentionally savor each aspect of that experience in an embodied way. Take in every aspect of it by identifying the felt sense in detail. For example - tingling, vibration, a sense of space through the torso, and so on. And let yourself be fully immersed in it for as long as possible.

It is common to have other parts of you intruding and trying to take you out of that pleasant experience through distraction or overthinking and self-judgment; please know that this is a natural response. When that happens, all you need to do is to simply acknowledge what is happening and welcome that part by saying hello or giving it a gentle smile. Let it know you will get back to it at another time.

The more you somatically resource yourself, the bigger the capacity to hold and be with challenging experiences. You can begin to find safety again, even in the face of chaos.