The best way to deal with trauma goes through cycles in terms of treatment options. Some folks think we need to just power through it and “toughen up” after seeing story after story of folks on social media discussing how their trauma has impacted their lives. Others turn to talk therapy and psychological techniques to process their trauma, but with many still struggling and dealing with it, looking and not finding the thing that can properly kick it to the curb.
The thing is, the trauma might not just be trapped in your brain, but your body, too. The solution might not be an oral medication or a brain exercise, but a natural process. The key to unlocking this modern problem could come from a doctor in the 1970s. If you’re going through trauma and talk therapy isn’t cutting it, somatic therapy might be what you need.
A post on X has been going viral discussing Dr. Peter Levine and somatic therapy. Dr. Levine was studying wild animals and asked: How do wild animals process their trauma? On the surface, one can wonder why no one had looked into this before? After all, humans are animals themselves, and by modern day standards wild creatures tend to experience more threats and trauma than we do. Unless you’re Tarzan, most of us don’t go through day to day risking your life for food or becoming food for some other animal. So how do these animals process a near death experience, moments of high panic, or pain?
Levine noticed that after surviving a traumatic event, mammals in the wild convulsed, literally shaking and shivering in place, then a period of deep breathing before getting up and going about their day. These animals saw their trauma as a physical problem rather than just a mental one. They processed trauma as a part of the mind and the body.
Upon this observation, Levine believed that the stress, anxiety, and trauma built up in the body in the nervous system. This is what causes these animals to literally freeze and humans to “freeze” when experiencing post-traumatic stress. He thought that trauma was best processed and treated from the “bottom-up,” treating the reptilian fight-or-flight-or-freeze survival section of the human brain and the body so that the mammalian and neo-cortex section can follow through. This is how he developed his version of somatic therapy, which he dubbed somatic experiencing.
Current somatic experiencing (SE) practices typically involve a practitioner helping a patient allow their body to tremble to let the pent up stress and energy go when recalling a traumatic event. Many people who commit to this practice allows people to address their past trauma and literally “shake it off” then recenter themselves to the safe, comfortable present. This holistic approach has been used to aid people suffering from trauma, anxiety, grief, chronic pain, and even sexual dysfunction.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
If you’re dealing with trauma, it’s best to seek professional counsel. If you don’t believe talk therapy is working, ask your treatment team to see if somatic experiencing could help you. Skepticism is understandable, but if your trauma has become a recurring stumbling block in your life, it might be worth exploring options to attack the issue through mind, body, and spirit to achieve relief and move forward.
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Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Pictured: A healthy practice?
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.