The benefits of mindfulness meditation are plentiful and well-documented. Thanks in part to the work of doctors and psychologists advancing the cause in mental health settings, people like Jon Kabat Zin and Kristin Neff, there is enough data to impress the most skeptical among us, demonstrating the ways that mindfulness benefits the body, mind, and spirit. The value of a simple, widely accessible cure for mental-emotional pain, that costs absolutely no money and is so simple a child can learn to do it, cannot be overstated. Simply breathing in and out, while focusing attention on the in and out breaths that are taking place naturally all on their own, brings a long list of robust, natural benefits that should cause any pharmaceutic rep to quake in their boots.
Of course, there is a caveat. And that caveat is that for many of us women with trauma, just sitting still and noticing the breath feels like a borderline impossible task. Believe us, we know.
In this post, your friends over here at Villa Kali Ma dig a little deeper into the ways that trauma robs us of the ability to be present in the now moment, and how we can fight back to restore this basic right to find peace in our own bodies and breaths.
Just Be Here Now
Have you placed pressure on yourself to “be in the moment?” Do you tell yourself to lighten up, to relax, to not be so intense, or to let things go? Do you take your struggle to be in the moment as a sign of a further deficiency of yours? If so, you’re not alone.
As sensitive, perfectionistic women, many of us are very aware of all of the shoulds and should nots that are offered up by people around us. Where possible, we like to please, we like to match people’s expectations of us. We want people to see that we’re good girls.
There are so many ideas in the culture now, suggesting that you “should” have good vibrations, you “should” be positive, relax, and take it easy. There is certainly some truth in these suggestions – life is, indeed easier, when we can find our way to a state of peace, calm, and happiness.
Indeed, if that is easily available to you – if you are able to let go and go into a state of peace on command, then by all means do that. And also, you may not need to keep reading this article – because this post is for those of us who know mentally that being in the moment, being peaceful and calm, being relaxed and happy, having good vibes is what we should do, and yet it is still very hard for us to do. This post is for those of us who have runaway nervous systems, who are prone to bouts of intensity and fear, who may only know what peace is like when under the influence of drugs.
Inner Sabotage
If you feel like every time you sit down to meditate, or maybe even when you just try to follow your breath for five minutes, or tune into the moment for just a second, you start to feel very restless, nervous, agitated, and uncomfortable, it can feel crazy making. Why is it so hard to relax, to concentrate, to focus on breath, without getting overtaken, attacked internally, or even outright triggered?
The challenge lies in understanding how trauma works. Trauma develops in the brain, bodies, and nervous systems of women when they are exposed to overwhelming threats. These threats often take place in childhood, when we are physically small and biologically undeveloped, with limited understanding of what is taking place. Complex trauma develops at an age of maximum sensitivity and permeability to what’s going on in our environment. Many events that as adults wouldn’t phase us can be rattling and even shattering to a child.
In healthy, loving, attuned households, caregivers can help children process and release the fear that suddenly invades the body when exposed to loud noises, fights among family members, or any of the other sundry little events that affect a child’s emotional world every day. When a kind, caring, loving and attentive adult is there to help a child make sense of the experience, and to return to a sense of safety, goodness, being loved, and belonging afterwards, the child will learn that it’s ok to experience many little shocks throughout the day. The shocks are ok, because there is always a return to safety, belonging, and connection afterwards.
Through this process of repeated returns to safety, connection, and belonging, children’s nervous systems learn that it’s ok to get temporarily scared or upset. Feelings of fear pass after a short while, and usually everything is actually ok in the end.
In families where for whatever the reasons, there wasn’t quite enough attention to help a child process and deal with what she was exposed to energetically in the environment, the child is left to make sense of what’s happening on her own. The sense that a young child can make of her experience is cognitively limited by her brain development, which is why children tend to make black and white conclusions, and to use simple moral reasoning like good and bad, right and wrong. The most damning, and most common, conclusion is, “I must have caused this. I am bad”.
In situations where, in addition to having no help to understand events, adults were also abusers, violators, and dangerous people to be around, the child’s situation is even worse. Now not only does she not have support for understanding the shocks and hurts of everyday life dynamics, she also has a full time job of managing the adults around her, learning to control, predict, and make sure she herself (and often others around her) are safe.
Such a child is going to be completely preoccupied with survival, so much so that her own developmental years are spent completely focused on the outward environment. She becomes an expert at reading facial cues, sensing vibes, intuiting what state people are in, and what they will need in order to be disarmed. In a way, a child in a dangerous environment becomes a master controller, responsible for how things go in the family. This is often the case in families where one or more parent has alcoholism, a serious mental health condition, or another reason for regularly introducing emotional instability into the world of the child.
A woman who has a background like the one above, as many of us with addiction, mental illness, and trauma do, has trained several habits very strongly over her life. Some of the habits include hypervigilance, or never letting her guard down, never withdrawing focus from what’s going on in the outer environment.
Now imagine a woman who is hardwired to scan, predict, and control her environment, to ensure the safety of herself and others in her life. When she decides to meditate, to sit down, close her eyes, and focus inwards, to her inner sphere, two things will happen.
One, she will be interrupted by the part whose job it is to keep focus on the outer environment, to keep scanning, predicting and imagining what might be happening right now, what could happen next, and what actions need to be taken to control the situation.
Even if that part can relax and step back to make room for a little bit of meditation time, which it often resists doing, tooth and nail, the second thing happens.
The woman meets her long-neglected inner world. This is like the room where all the abandoned inner children live, many of whom are in serious pain. It is indeed, for all these reasons and more, quite overwhelming to try to “be present” with one’s feelings, sensations, and thoughts. If we manage to make it past the parts of us whose job it is to keep us from going inward, then we get flooded by the very large amount of dysregulation waiting for us to help it feel better.
How to Increase our Ability to be Mindful in the Moment
Here are some ideas that might make mindfulness practices, including meditation, a little easier for women with a lot of trauma symptoms.
Everything is Part of the Meditation
First off is a mindset shift. Instead of expecting that we will sit down and feel peaceful, or even be able to relax and deepen our breath, we should expect rather that we will sit down and meet whatever comes up with kindness. The practice isn’t to be calm, but to be nice to ourselves.
Trauma symptoms like agitation, anxiety, or going foggy are to be expected, not mistakes whatsoever. When we expect ourselves to have a lot of dysregulation, this can take the pressure off and shift us more into observer mode rather than self-disciplinarian. We are not bad people, but we are hurt people, and we need more time than other people to settle down and feel calm.
Accepting everything that arises as part of our practice is actually a part of traditional meditation too, but women with trauma usually need help normalizing and understanding just how much intensity they may meet when sinking into their own body experiences, for good reasons that are not their fault.
Observe Parts with Compassionate Detachment
The second suggestion, similar to the first, is to observe with friendliness the parts that take you out of the moment. Rather than saying to yourself, I keep doing this, what is wrong with me? you can try saying, A part of me keeps distracting me, how interesting. I wonder why this part feels it’s necessary to distract me. I trust that if this part is distracting me, it is doing that because it believes distraction is helpful or necessary. I wonder if I might someday be able to ask this part for a little bit more of a chance to focus and relax.
Understand All Symptoms in Terms of the Search for Safety
The third suggestion is to understand everything that’s going on internally as being about safety. If you cannot concentrate, consider that you do not feel safe to concentrate. If you can’t relax, consider that you must not feel safe to relax in this particular moment and setting. If you find that focusing on the breath is hard, consider that you do not feel safe to deepen your breath and go deep into your inner lifestream. Something is blocking you, but it is blocking you because it is concerned for your safety.
The first thing to do after realizing there’s a safety concern is to see whether there is anything you can do to feel safer. Do you need a blanket around your knees? A hot water bottle? Do you need to pull down the blinds, or apply some lavender essential oil? Do you need to journal out your intense feelings first? Would a short workout before trying to meditate be helpful for calming down a little bit?
Then, when you do return to your practice, understand your interfering parts as concerned about safety. You can say, Thank you part, thank you for keeping me safe. Thank you for all your hard work all these years, protecting me from overwhelming sensations and emotions in the moment.
When these safety-oriented parts get that you understand them and where they’re coming from, they often give a little more space for us to be present. But even if they don’t, you are still building trust and relational safety among your own inner parts.
Learn Gentle Approaches to Mindfulness at Villa Kali MaVilla Kali Ma is a licensed facility providing integrative mental health, trauma, and addiction recovery services for women. Our programs are designed from start to finish to help women who have a history of trauma, mental health problems, and substance abuse concerns to recover lives of meaning, joy, peace, and purpose, in part through learning to practice mindfulness. We warmly invite you to consider joining one of our healing programs for women who want to learn how to restore their natural right to happiness, health, and freedom.