TRE Trauma Releasing Therapy

Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE)
Copyright © 2005 David Berceli

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ISBN: 1-4196-0754-5
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A Revolutionary New Method For Stress/trauma
Recovery.
David Berceli
2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: “Trauma recovery needs a new paradigm.” xi

MAN MADE OF CLAY: “Help me to heal myself!” 1
LETTING GO OF TRAUMA: “I don’t want to forgive.” 5
IDENTIFYING TRAUMA: “Am I going crazy?” 7
TRAUMA’S RESIDUAL EFFECTS: “I don’t know why I can’t control myself.” 11
PSOAS MUSCLE DEFENSE: “My lower back pains are unbearable.” 13
TRAUMA RELEASE MECHANISM: “I trembled uncontrollably three days after.” 15
ADRENAL CHANGES: “My body is racing at 1000 RPMs.” 19
OPIOIDS AND THE OPIUM SENSATION: “It was like it was in slow motion.” 21
INTUITION AND THE ABDOMINAL-PELVIC BRAIN: “I knew something was wrong!”25
NEUROLOGY OF TRAUMA: “Why can’t I control my thinking?” 27
CHILDHOOD TRAUMA: “I can’t concentrate or remember.” 31
ENEMY IMAGE SYNDROME: “I distrusted everyone to the point of paranoia.” 33
IMAGINATION OF TRAUMA: “I was more terrified and angry than my family!” 35
SUICIDE: A SELF-SABOTAGE OF THE LIVING ORGANISM: “Even death
was better than this inner numbness.” 37
DENIAL OF POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD):
“Things like that don’t happen to us.” 41
TRAUMA—THE NEW EPIDEMIC OF THE CORPORATE WORLD:
“Why aren’t our crisis management techniques working?” 45
FINANCIAL PROFITABILITY WITH A HUMANITARIAN FOCUS:
“What can I do to help my staff recover?” 49
TRAUMATIZED LEADERSHIP: “His objectivity seems to be impaired.” 51
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION AND TRAUMA:
“Why can’t we achieve peace?” 53
TRAUMA AND THE HUMAN BELIEF SYSTEM: “I no longer believed in anything.” 57
TRAUMA IS A STEPPING STONE TO WISDOM: “I live every day to its fullest.” 59
TRAUMA RELEASING EXERCISES 61
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 81
REFERENCES 83
***
Although this book needs to be dedicated to many individuals, it must first of all
be dedicated to all the traumatized people I have had the opportunity to journey
with over the past 15 years. The wisdom, insight and growth I gained from accom-
panying them in their painful struggle of recovery is beyond words. The countries
and cultures of traumatized individuals who have invited me into their homes and
lives made my journey of trauma and recovery a remarkable one.
The personal family and friends who have supported, encouraged and stuck with
me during the most difficult times of my journeys in and out of war torn countries
has truly been my saving grace. My mother and father, sisters Denise and Debi,
brothers Frank and Mike, and my sister-in-law Kathy. My dear friends Michael,
Kerry, Richard, Bob, Jim And Ricardo, have all provided me with such loving care,
support and encouragement. I respectfully and humbly thank them all and owe
much of my life’s amazing journey to them.
INTRODUCTION:
“Trauma recovery needs a new paradigm.”
During one of my visits to Ethiopia, I had the opportunity to attend several coffee rituals
with the Ethiopian people. Every morning it is a common custom for several families who live
close to each other to come together to have their coffee. They begin this process by roasting
the beans, grinding them, then boiling them into a fresh pot of coffee. This process takes about
two hours from start to finish. However, during those two hours, they talk about what happened
the day before. Since they were living in the war zone, it was common for them to discuss the
tragedies they experienced or heard about from others. As they shared their pain with each
other, they also received encouragement and support to continue. Through this experience
and many other similar experiences I had while working with traumatized people in family
and community-based cultures of Africa and the Middle East I began to recognize that many
war-torn countries have developed a natural method of trauma recovery right within their own
traditions. They did not need individual psychotherapy sessions. They did not need to know
about the ego or psychological principles. They did not need a “professional” to guide them
through their healing processes. They simply knew about pain, suffering and the necessity of
family support to help them through it. As a trauma recovery therapist working in war
countries, I would often have a family member come to talk to me about a specific problem.
However, they would come with either friends or other family members. They did not have the
concept that they should come alone to the session. After all, I was told, “We are his friends,
why wouldn’t we come to his therapy session? We are the ones who are going to help him heal.”
Many experiences like these in numerous African and Middle Eastern cultures caused me to
rethink my ideas of the healing process.
I began to realize that trauma recovery can and does happen quite often without the aid of
professional therapists. I also began to question the need and usefulness for individual sessions
of private therapy as the primary method of trauma recovery. I then began to ask myself about
trauma recovery in our own culture. Is it possible to develop a safe and effective method of
trauma recovery that individuals can use with their family, friends, community or support
groups? Do trauma survivors always need individual psychotherapy for healing or can some of
their healing process be done on their own within the healing relationship of those who love
them most?
Another profound experience that came from a very unexpected place caused me to
question the process of healing once again at a deeper level. One afternoon in the remote
town of Dembidolo, Ethiopia, I took a break from the trauma workshop I was giving to visit a
Catholic Church across the dirt pathway. The simple mud church I was sitting in was lit only by
the few rays of sun that managed to creep through the small door and windows. As I sat quietly,
I was struck by a very old man who entered the church. He slowly walked past me holding on
to one pew after the other to keep his balance. The pew he chose to sit on was just a few rows
in front of me. He sat down then knelt down on the dirt floor. The cotton shirt he was wearing
was worn so thin it was possible to see his bare skin beneath. When he knelt down with his
back turned to me, the bottoms of his bare feet were exposed. Because of the red clay of the
land and the dim lighting, I could not see where this man’s feet ended and the clay began.
Immediately the image of God making humans out of the clay of the earth came to mind.
This experience, coupled with the poor, uneducated and desperate war refugees to whom I
was giving the workshop, forced me to think deeper about the trauma healing process. The
questions that came to my mind at that moment were: How do we as individuals, as a people, as
nations and as a global community, plan to care about and resolve traumatic experiences and
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for large scale populations? Can a method of trauma
healing be developed that is immediately effective, easily taught and can be used without the
guidance of a professional therapist?
As I continued to watch this humble man pray, I could not help but believe that if trauma
can occur to every human being, then the trauma healing process must be inherent in every
human being. I also came to believe that trauma healing can occur anywhere, even with whole
populations in the most remote and destitute parts of the world. This is a clear departure from
the training I had received that taught trauma recovery should be facilitated in the office of a
therapist, under supervision and primarily through the understandings of the ego and western
psychology.
What I was beginning to realize was that the field of traumatology needs a new paradigm
for trauma recovery that can address multi-cultural and national levels of trauma and PTSD.
Traumatology is in need of alternative methods of trauma recovery that can be self-applied, used
on large scale populations and is not restricted to ego and western psychological concepts.
Since traumatic experiences are increasingly occurring on a national, international
and even global scale, researchers are beginning to recognize the seriousness of this new
phenomenon which has become known as “The Invisible Epidemic” (Bremmer 2002). With
our increased awareness of human-made and natural disasters as well as the recent events of
war and terrorism, work in trauma recovery is in great demand. Trauma research and recovery
programs are urgently needed in a multitude of public, community and social venues. However,
with this growing phenomenon of trauma and the increased knowledge of its damaging effects
on the individual, mainstream health care providers are finding they are unprepared, ill
equipped and lack the skills to deal adequately with this large scale problem. Additionally,
there simply are not enough trained counselors, therapists and medical practitioners to attend
to the overwhelming needs of trauma recovery.
This process of questioning the field of trauma recovery lasted for several years and took
me through many war-torn countries of Africa and the Middle East. The end result has been
the development of a revolutionary new process for trauma recovery called Trauma Releasing
Exercises (TRE). TRE is based on the premise that human beings possess an organic restorative
capacity within the recesses of the human body so that they can heal themselves from many
traumatic experiences. This book explains the theory behind this method and the way to use
this new technique at home within your natural healing relationships of family, friends and
community.
***
Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) [1]
MAN MADE OF CLAY

“Help me to heal myself.”
From my extensive experiences working in different countries with traumatized cultures
i.e., Ethiopians and Eritreans, Northern and Southern Sudanese, Israelis and Palestinians and
Muslims and Christians, I have learned that no matter what culture, language or psycho-social
background, all humans have an innate capacity to heal from traumatic experiences. We as a
species are genetically encoded with the capacity to heal ourselves. If we did not possess this
ability, our species would have become extinct shortly after we were born. Not only can we heal
from traumatic experiences, but trauma itself has been part of the natural evolutionary process
of our species, and all traumatized individuals have access to this natural healing method that
is genetically encoded within them.
Many fields of science are continuously researching trauma, PTSD and the intense and
overwhelming emotions that they cause. Over time, each of these scientific fields has cultivated
and developed its own understanding of how emotions are experienced by the human species.
Psychologists believe that emotions are controlled by the ego and the unconscious. Neurologists
believe that emotions are controlled by certain parts of the brain. Physiologists believe that
emotions are controlled by the nervous system. Psychobiologists believe that emotions are
controlled by the neuropeptides (chemicals) being created and transmitted through various
parts of the brain and body.
What is being revealed is that trauma reactions and behaviors are a combination of the
exquisite, mutual interdependency of these systems working together toward one goal—as
survival mechanisms guaranteeing the evolution of our species. The insight that these fields of
study have provided us is worthy of our admiration and gratitude. It is interesting however to
note that although we have such difficulty in studying and understanding how this mysterious
body works, the human body itself works with its own precision and simplicity when protecting
us from danger. Likewise, its recovery process from traumatic experiences, although complex
to our scientific scrutiny is also an intricate and precise process for the human body.
As these multiple scientific fields continue to share information, they are developing new
tools and methods of research that provide us with greater insight into the body’s workings. In
the meantime, the human body itself continues to go on working in its own perfect manner, as
best it can, without much concern for our research and methodologies. It simply continues to
use its own methods of recovery as it has for hundreds of thousands of years. Just as all roads
used to lead to Rome, we are discovering that all the emotional roads eventually lead to the
bodymind continuum. The bodymind continuum is the simple realization that what affects
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the body affects the mind and what affects the mind affects the body. There is no possibility
to change one’s thinking without the body being affected. Likewise, there is no way that one’s
body can be changed without it having a corresponding effect on one’s mind.
This bodymind continuum is precisely what needs to be considered when dealing with the
trauma recovery process. Just as this bodymind continuum is a natural mechanism that has
protected humans during their evolution, these same natural mechanisms continue to restore
us to health. What is important to remember in trauma recovery is that all our bodily systems
are working together toward one goal. During trauma they protect us, after trauma they relieve
and restore us. By studying the bodymind’s complexity we are eventually led to following this
simple reality during the trauma healing process.
The Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) ™ explained in this book are for the sole purpose
of empowering individuals to take trauma recovery into their own hands. As a client once told
me out of desperation, “For two hours a week I have your support during my healing process.
For the remaining 166 hours in a week I have to heal myself. Please give me something that I
can do to help myself when you are not around!” This trauma recovery method, although not
intended to replace some people’s need for professional counseling, is a methodology designed
to be used by self-help groups such as: rape recovery groups, battered women’s groups, other
self-guided support groups, families, organizations, police, fire, military, EMT and other
trauma-inducing lifestyles or professions. The exercises explained in this book provide the
reader with a methodology to use for life. They help keep a psychophysical balance that assists
the individual deal with life’s difficult experiences.
If this book achieves anything, it is my hope that it will cause people to change the way they
view trauma and the trauma recovery process. As much as is possible, viable and safe, I would
like to help individuals take the trauma recovery process out of the professional therapeutic
domain and bring it right into the household. To this end, I have included some non-technical
and uncomplicated explanations of the biological, psychological and neurological process
of trauma and the recovery process. This book and the methodology included in it is still
in the process of being researched. However, for the past fifteen years I have developed and
safely used this methodology. I have taught it to thousands of people from diverse cultural
and religious backgrounds. It has often proven itself reassuring, self-empowering and most
importantly, effective for those who were experiencing or recovering from trauma and its
sometimes debilitating disorders.
I was recently in the airport in Phoenix, Arizona and had a few minutes before my next
flight to Africa. I visited a small aerospace museum there and was stunned when I read a quote
from an astronaut. Paraphrasing, he said: On the first day in space we were all pointing out our
countries. On the second day in space we were all pointing out our continents. On the third
day in space we were all pointing out our planet. How wonderful it would be if we could all have
the experience of looking at our planet from a distance and seeing that all humans are a single
species dependent on one another for our survival and continued evolution.
***
The Specific Benefits of Using Trauma Releasing Exercises™
• Easily learned: These exercises can be easily learned and in many cases are immediately
effective.
• Natural deterrent: Under certain circumstances these exercises can be used as a natural
deterrent from and reduction of PTSD symptoms, thereby reducing the effects of
subsequent traumas.
• Self applied and self diagnostic: They can be used to self-diagnose the degree and severity
of tension from traumatic episodes.
• Integrated into daily routine: They can be integrated into a daily exercise routine as a
simple body-based prevention and recovery process.
• Restores healing faster: They help to restore a feeling of safety to the body more quickly,
facilitating a faster and more integrated healing process.
• Addition to counseling: In certain circumstances this method can be an alternative and/
or supplement to psychological intervention.
***
LETTING GO OF TRAUMA:
“I don’t want to forgive.”
“Letting go is not for the purpose of forgetting or forgiving the past, it is about releasing the
energy of the past to give us back our lives in the present which is necessary to deliver us into a
new future” (Holloway 2002).
Trauma and life’s tragedies often find their way into our lives despite our greatest attempts
to protect ourselves from the suffering and pain they inflict on us, our friends and our families.
As living organisms, our bodies know we are capable of experiencing, enduring and recovering
from even the most severe of tragedies. It is our egos that try to avoid, deny and refuse to
forgive and let go of our past tragedies, thereby denying us the opportunity to move into a new
future. What is being recognized in psychotherapy however is that it is precisely our inability to
forgive and let go that contributes to the pain and tragedy of loss. This inability to forgive and
let go leads us into an excruciating double bind. “Our refusal to forgive the past imprisons us
in our own resistance to our natural, evolutionary instincts and thereby has the power to deny
us a healthy movement into our future” (Arendt 2000). The question that haunts us is how do
we get through this painful, egotistical refusal to let go and move on? Why is this so difficult?
Once again we are faced with the paradoxical experience of being part “reflective human”
and part “instinctual animal.” On the one hand, the ego refuses to let go of the past because
it is equivalent to a second injury or death experience. The primary blow to our existence
came from the initial trauma and the second threat to our existence comes from our fear of
re-experiencing the painful scars and memories left behind in order to heal. This therapeutic
process of remembering forces us to face the residual reminders of trauma that belie our
fragility, vulnerability and precarious place on this planet. This experience is often a shattering
of one’s self-identity and can often damage one’s faith or belief system.
On the other hand, humans, like all living organisms, are compelled biologically to rid
themselves of anything that is obstructing their growth process. To exist and evolve we have
an instinctual (nature-like) mechanism encoded in us so that we can complete our process of
letting go of the past and beginning something new. (This mechanism will be explained in detail
in the chapter on Trauma Releasing Exercises.) This process is nothing more than part of our
unending cycle of evolution. This ability to let go only seems to happen when we diminish the
ego’s resistance and increase the body’s natural biological instincts. Increasing our ability to feel
our biological urge to heal allows the life-force to work in us with less constraint. In this respect,
forgiving and letting go are like natural control mechanisms in us that assure our unending
process of evolution. There is a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche in Untimely Meditations (1997)
[6] David Berceli
that says we possess “…the power to grow uniquely from within, to transform and incorporate
the past and the unknown, to heal wounds, to replace what is lost, and to duplicate shattered
structures from within.”
Inevitably, whether we like it or not, whether we want to or not, our trauma recovery process
will force us deeper into our bodies and further into the reflections of our minds than we would
dare to go. As painful as this exploration may be, in the end we have to resign ourselves to the
fact that “…this is the way things are and that they have been made that way by factors that are
not in the person’s control” (Holloway 2002).
Refusing to let go of the past can only force us into a neural feedback loop that causes the
trauma to be replayed over and over in our minds in an endless cycle of madness. Eventually,
the neurological process of our brains will transform this chaos into ideations of hate, revenge,
shame, suicide or depression. Once we enter this arena we can be trapped forever into the
compulsion and vengeance of victim-hood rather than the freedom and forgiveness of survivor-
hood.
Letting go of the past is, in the end, the individual responsibility of each trauma survivor. It
is each person’s responsibility to guarantee that revenge does not steal their future from them.
Only this radical experience of letting go can restore one’s natural biological process. This
restoration of our natural instincts of survival and evolution are so powerful that we even give
up the need for past ideations of hatred and revenge. With the recovery from each traumatic
episode of our lives, we give into and accept more easily the way the universe has treated us.
Paradoxically, the more we let go into life the more we discover that we can re-take control of
our lives and participate once again in the precariousness of being human. Only by letting go
can we unlock ourselves from the past, be delivered into the future and prepare ourselves for
our next evolutionary and/or transformational experience. Trauma in this light becomes not
only an integral part of our evolutionary process, but it is also our learning process towards a
more mature and wise humanity.
***
SUMMARY
***
Paradox: Humans possess a biological imperative to let go!
Human’s egotistical refusal to let go!
Letting Go: is genetically encoded in us to complete one process and begin something new
as a part of our unending cycle of evolution.
Refusal: to let go of the past is a resistance to our natural evolutionary instinct.
Resistance: to our natural evolutionary process constrains our life force and inhibits our:
Ability to grow, mature and develop wisdom.
Transform and incorporate the past into our present experiences.
Replace shattered structures with healthy ones.
***
IDENTIFYING TRAUMA:
“Am I going crazy?”
We dove through the doorway just before the mortar shell hit the very spot we were sitting
just seconds before. Dirt, mud and stones splattered onto our backs. We scrambled frantically
on our hands and knees down the short hallway and took cover around a bend in the hall.
Protecting our heads with our hands and sitting in a fetal position, we waited until the shelling
stopped. These fifteen minutes seemed eternal. I would only come to realize two years later that
multiple war experiences like these were creating traumatic reactions in me that would later
manifest themselves as PTSD.
It is unfortunate, but trauma and PTSD have forced themselves indelibly onto the global
scene as well as into the lives and psyche of this generation. Due to an increase in armed conflict,
violence, terrorism, extreme poverty, natural and human made disasters, trauma and PTSD
are terms that have begun to dominate this era of human history. As a result of the increased
awareness of trauma and its damaging effects on the psyche of individuals, institutions and
entire societies, medical science has begun to explore this phenomenon in a more thorough
and pervasive manner then ever before.
When I returned to the U.S., after having lived in Lebanon for a year during the height of its
violence in the late seventies, I began to have severe physical and psychological reactions that
appeared unexplainable at first. I had constant gastrointestinal problems, severe fatigue, mild
depression towards life, and bodily aches and pains that had no “medical” cause or cure. I felt
like I was going crazy because these symptoms were very real to me but were not acknowledged
or confirmed by medical professionals. All of this contributed to a constantly growing sense of
impatience and uncontrollable irritability about all of life. A good example of this occurred
one day when I went into a department store with my sister-in-law. Someone immediately
greeted us with a shopping cart, welcoming us to the store. At the same time, I noticed that the
return counter had a line with twelve people standing in it, and only one person helping them.
Immediately I was enraged at the injustice of welcoming us to the store and then making us
wait for their services. I started shouting to my sister-in-law about the injustices of the world.
It felt as though an inner rage was unleashing itself over this simple experience that, at the
time, possessed an intensity that was uncontrollable. My sister-in-law actually grabbed me by
the hands and shouted “Dave! We’re just in a department store!” When I realized the depth of
dangerous emotions I had tapped into, I left the store to retreat into the safety and seclusion
of my home.
In the seventies, PTSD was not a very well-known topic among therapists, so I felt very
[8] David Berceli
misunderstood and isolated in my quest to discover what was ‘wrong’ with me. Eventually, I
found a therapist who knew the theory of PTSD but was not very experienced in any particular
methodology to help resolve the symptoms or heal the causes. After several years of inner
searching, I came to discover a number of issues that were plaguing me. These issues are not
uncommon in society today, particularly among those who work in trauma-inducing professions
such as; police, fire fighters, emergency response teams, military, domestic violence counselors,
doctors, nurses and emergency room personnel.
Exploring the topic of trauma opened a Pandora’s Box of several other potentially debilitating
experiences. I would like to identify some of these because many people who are recovering
from trauma also endure other psycho-emotional complications along the way. Identifying
these trauma symptoms in the beginning of this book will hopefully help individuals recognize
and name their own experiences in their recovery process.
Trauma is any experience that overwhelms one’s normal coping mechanisms. This is why
trauma is so difficult to identify. An experience that might overwhelm one individual may not
be experienced as overwhelming by another. Traumatic reactions therefore should never be
judged as a weakness of the individual or an inability to cope. A traumatic reaction is simply
the basic emergency response of the human organism being activated to promote survival.
It is often predicated on a variety of circumstances such as the age, severity of threat to the
individual, the possibility of escape or the degree of physical harm that may be inflicted. Due
to one’s life history, one soldier could experience a battle as severely traumatizing and another
would only experience it as mildly traumatizing. One person in a car accident may be very
disturbed for years afterwards while another person in the same car recovers in a few months.
What is important to recognize is that our reactions are instinctual and therefore not under
conscious control. It is not our conscious decision to experience and react to a situation as
traumatizing. It is an animal instinct that forces us to respond in this manner.
Examples of common traumas that are experienced by large populations are natural
disasters such as: earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. Human inflicted traumas
would be experiences such as: transportation accidents, sudden loss of life of a loved one,
domestic and/or family violence, sexual or physical assault, explosions, and war. When people
read through a list like this, they often find they have numerous experiences in their lives that
are identifiable as traumatic, but they seldom give much attention to it because “everyone goes
though these things.” What is happening in our society today is that people are beginning
to realize that these experiences do affect the individual a great deal and may even alter the
very course of their lives. People are now recognizing that they have experienced and survived
traumatic episodes, but haven’t necessarily healed their injurious effects. This lack of attention
to these experiences and the subsequent lack of healing is what gives rise to post traumatic
symptoms, reactions and behaviors. These post traumatic symptoms are referred to as Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
PTSD is any physical, psychological or emotional anxiety disorder following a distressing
or overwhelming event. This anxiety can manifest itself in a multitude of ways. Individuals can
experience flashbacks, disturbances in sleep, memory loss, lack of concentration, nightmares
and symbolic avoidance. Since these experiences are not always obvious, many people suffer
with PTSD symptoms in isolation and silence with family and friends wondering, “Why can’t
they just get over it and move on with their lives?”
An example of this was when I received an urgent call by the faculty of a school in Africa
that had over 200 hundred boys who were refugees of war. The students’ extreme behaviors
of uncontrollable outbursts of anger, hyperactivity, depression and endemic absenteeism were
placing a severe strain on the faculty. My first step was to gather the entire student body together
and ask them questions. My first question was, “How many of you sleep all night long?” Not one
student raised a hand. When I asked why they were not sleeping well, many of them revealed
that they suffered from chronic nightmares and/or intrusive memories. Not one student had
slept through an entire night without waking up for one disturbing reason or another. And
when they were sleeping, if they heard another student in the dormitory having nightmares, the
boys sleeping closest to him would wake him up and help calm him down.
After continued questioning of both the students and the faculty, we discovered that the
children suffered from other PTSD symptoms such as lack of concentration and short term
memory loss. The faculty was shocked. None of them were aware of the post traumatic stress
these students had to endure which was causing them endless agony. These boys just could not
“let it go.” They just could not “get over it” and move on with their lives. Even though they were
safely out of the war zone, the inner psychological and emotional battle was still raging.
Vicarious Traumatization is another psychosomatic experience that can be very disruptive.
This is a change of one’s own thinking due to exposure to other people’s traumatic stories.
This was first studied among counselors, religious leaders and medical professionals working
in war torn countries around the world. It was recognized that although a bombing, shooting
or military attack may have happened once, professionals may listen to stories of the event
numerous times during the week from their clients, patients or parishioners. Eventually, this
can have an accumulative effect of causing fear, anger or emotional suffering in the individual,
even though they may never have experienced the initial trauma themselves.
Common examples of this in the U.S. culture are: witnessing a car accident, listening to
someone’s survival story of a natural disaster or seeing horrifying events on TV. In none of
these experiences is the listener in danger, and yet after hearing about or watching someone
else’s traumatic experiences, they became frightened, have disturbing memories or nightmares
about the event. A contemporary example for many Americans is the falling of the Twin
Towers. Each of the towers only fell once, but many of us watched them fall over and over again
on TV, thus compounding the vicarious impact of the trauma. In the end, an entire nation
was experiencing fear and terror as though they were the next to be attacked and possibly
annihilated. People all over the nation became afraid to fly, many suffered from nightmares
and reported having disturbing thoughts for days or weeks afterwards. Fear which fueled
discrimination against “Arab-looking people” increased dramatically. “Arab-looking” people
were suddenly seen as potentially dangerous even though they had nothing to do with the
traumatic events of that day. Many Americans in even the most remote towns thousands of
miles from New York and D.C. acted as though their lives were in eminent danger. This state of
deep fear developed vicariously because of someone else’s traumatic experience, but not their
own.
Compassion fatigue is another common experience of people who work in trauma-inducing
professions or live in violent environments. Compassion fatigue is any intense experience
in which one’s emotions are suppressed or unacknowledged. The Columbine High School
shooting is a perfect example. Many students were killed and the families of that school district
attended funeral after funeral and made numerous hospital visits to either their own or their
neighbors’ children. They visited the families and friends of the area to provide consolation. In
their attempt to be supportive of others’ pain, they often found themselves holding back their
own emotions and denying their own tears or trying to control the involuntary shaking that
often occurs when the body is extremely tense and exhausted. After doing this for several weeks
it is natural to begin to feel physically exhausted and emotionally drained. This is because our
bodies actually contract the musculature in the face, neck and torso as a way of holding back
tears and controlling its emotional expressions. If we do this for an entire day, week or month,
our bodies actually become fatigued. What is necessary to relieve this fatigue is simply to allow
ourselves to express the emotions that needed to pass through the body at the time of the
[10] David Berceli
emotional event. Once we have a good cry or prolonged period of rest, the body begins to slowly
restore itself. With the occurrence of one traumatic event, it is possible to experience many
psycho-emotional blockages that can exhaust the body; making the person feel depressed,
lethargic and emotionally disconnected.
***
SUMMARY
***
STRESS: Any experience that requires changes in one’s normal coping mechanisms.
TRAUMA: Any experience that overwhelms one’s normal coping mechanisms.
POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER: Any uncontrollable anxiety following the
traumatic experience.
* daily function is impaired * irritability
* exaggerated startle response * difficulty sleeping
* disturbing memories * lapse of memory
* nightmares * detachment
* flashbacks * difficulty concentrating
* symbolic avoidance
***
VICARIOUS TRAUMATIZATION: An unconscious change in one’s thinking due to
exposure of other people’s traumatic experiences.
COMPASSION FATIGUE: Any intense experience in which one’s emotions are suppressed
or unacknowledged.
***
TRAUMA’S RESIDUAL EFFECTS:

“I don’t know why I can’t control myself.”
Until recently, most research programs on trauma and post traumatic stress disorder were
conducted in the field of psychology; so consequently, most of the recovery programs designed
to help relieve symptoms of trauma and PTSD primarily addressed the psychological and
emotional dimensions of the individual. However, the most recent research in the field of trauma
studies is helping to expand and develop this limited view. The cross-fertilization of fields of
study such as psycho-biology and neuro-physiology are revealing new levels of understanding
of the effects of trauma on the body. This is bringing about an increased awareness of the
critical interaction and mutual interdependency of autonomic body responses and neurological
processes. Whether the trauma occurs in a psychological, physical, emotional or interpersonal
form, it inevitably expresses itself in the body. Anecdotal evidence is revealing that the field of
trauma, more than any other field of study, is demonstrating the undeniable link between body
and mind.
This shift in awareness is increasing the recognition that trauma is primarily an instinctual
bodily reaction. The body’s neurology, biology and anatomy change during exposure to
traumatic experiences. The personality of the individual simply readjusts itself to inhabit this
new body. In other words, the body’s primary defensive reaction to trauma creates a secondary
psychological adaptive response.
An example of this is when soldiers return from a war zone. They can often be distracted
by memories of the fighting, their adrenal responses can still be highly activated and their
bodies are tense and contracted. Because the body is still energetically charged and prepared
for danger, the personality of the individual can still be very volatile, defensive and emotionally
distant. Their reactions to minor stressors can be exaggerated. This is possibly what contributes
to soldiers who return from war and within months, get divorces or abuse their wives or
children. These otherwise normal, caring men, who had been role models in the military,
suddenly found their personalities hijacked by instinctual and uncontrollable reactions in their
bodies. Their neurological, biological and anatomical changes have caused a dramatic change
in their personalities.
Acknowledging that the body has an automatic systematic set of instinctual responses that
become activated during the time of trauma allows us to study these unconscious responses.
When these primary instinctual responses are restored to normal, the secondary personality
changes can be restored to normal.
***
[12] David Berceli
***
SUMMARY
***
• Trauma is primarily an autonomic, unconscious and instinctual response of a living organism.
• Neurological, biological and anatomical changes occur without the conscious decision of
the individual.
• Neurological + Biological + Anatomical = Psychological
• This somatic reaction of protection creates a secondary physiological response to adapt and
adjust to the new physiology.
• Psychology = confronting the ego before the trauma is dealt with.
• Body work = circumventing the ego to provide relief prior to insight.
• By working directly with the primary responses, ego defenses can be minimized in the
recovery process.
PSOAS MUSCLE DEFENSE:

“My lower back pains are unbearable.”
In order to understand how the body protects itself from trauma, it is important to understand
some basic anatomy of the body. The skeletal muscles in the body are designed to contract in
times of danger and relax in times of safety. During danger the muscles contract in order to roll
the body into a ball protecting the underbelly of the body from harm or possible death. (Koch,
1981). Once the danger has subsided, the body is designed to release the excessive muscular
tension that was needed during the traumatic episode.
One very important set of muscles that protects us during trauma are the psoas muscles.
[14] David Berceli
The psoas muscles are considered the fight/flight muscles of the human species. These
primitive muscles stand guard like sentinels protecting the center of gravity of the human body
located just in front of the 3rd vertebrae of the sacrum (S3). These muscles connect the back
with the pelvis and the legs. During any traumatic experience, the psoas muscles contract. To
heal from physical trauma contractions, this deep set of muscles must let go of their protective
tension and return to a relaxed state. It has been generally accepted that after particularly
tense, stressing or traumatic experiences, people could get a massage, take a hot bath or do
some exercises, and that will resolve their trauma and restore their body back to a healthy state.
However, this is not the case when it comes to traumatic tension in the psoas muscles. The body’s
ability to let go of the tension in these muscles has been diminished due to our socialization
process. (This will be explained more in the chapter on Trauma Releasing Exercises.)
It is often the case that contracted and even damaged psoas muscles create tremendous
lower back pains. This is very common among sexual abuse survivors. What is often overlooked
is when the psoas muscles contract and pull the body forward, they cause secondary muscle
contractions as the body tries to compensate for this forward pull. The erector spinae muscles
will also pull the body backwards in an attempt to keep it upright. These two opposite tensions
will actually begin to compress the lumbar spine as they pull the lower vertebrae together,
creating a spinal compression that can be damaging over a prolonged period of time. If held
long enough in this tension, this pull will eventually cause secondary shoulder and neck pain
as well.
The diaphragm muscle also adds to the tension in this area. The psoas muscle overlaps the
iliacus and diaphragm muscles along the spine. Together, they form a linking system of the
torso, pelvis and legs. Since this is such a strategic area of protection, the largest number of
sympathetic nerves (fight or flight nerves) are also found in this area of the body.
***
TRAUMA RELEASE MECHANISM

“I trembled uncontrollably three days after.”
As a society, we no longer find it acceptable to demonstrate signs of fear. A quivering voice,
shaking legs, knees and hands all reveal bodily fear which is interpreted as weakness. And
weakness is unacceptable in our culture. However, this natural bodily experience of shaking or
trembling during or after a terrifying event is completely common among humans.
A friend of mine explained a traumatic event in his life that helps to demonstrate the
common experience of shaking in our bodies. One day, he and some of his friends were sitting
around a group of cars just off the highway. Cars were speeding by and one of them accidentally
hit another car, flipped over and came careening towards them. They all scattered in different
directions as this car came skidding towards them. The careening car had come to a stop
upside down. All the guys went running towards the car to see if they could help the occupants
inside. They managed to pull out the occupants and provided first aid relief until medical
professionals arrived. The scene was bloody, violent and chaotic. Afterwards, they talked about
their different reactions. One of the guys went to a local bar and had numerous drinks to calm
down his nerves because he was shaking so badly. Another went home and went to bed without
talking about the incident; he said he took some sleeping pills to calm him down. Two others
said they were shaking so badly at the scene that the police offered to drive them home. What
was common among all of them is that they began to shake. One dealt with the shaking by
drinking and numbing his body so it would stop. The other went to sleep, but two days later
when he was alone in the house, he reported that he began to shake uncontrollably. The two
who had to be driven home, continued to shake for several hours after the accident.
We are all familiar with this experience of involuntary shaking that occurs when we are
scared, nervous or even angry. We even have cultural expressions that reflect this experience. “I
was so angry I shook.” “I was so nervous my knees started knocking.” “I was so scared my teeth
started chattering.” Even at happy occasions like weddings, we can become so nervous that
our hands shake uncontrollably. So what is this shaking all about? Why does our body do it?
Essentially, this shaking is the body’s natural method of discharging the high levels of tension
and chemicals that overcharge the body at the time of an incident. Through the shaking
process, the body discharges excess excitement and returns to a state of rest and relaxation.
Actually, one of the most primitive responses in the human animal is its ability to shake away
trauma.
In order to understand a human’s natural need to shake, it is helpful to understand how all
mammals deal with traumatic experiences. Animal species that are still living in their natural
[16] David Berceli
habitats often encounter trauma. They, unlike humans, still have not deadened or repressed
their natural ability to discharge the excess energy generated during trauma. Animals still
allow their bodies to shake out the tension of a traumatic experience and then move on
unencumbered with their lives. If a gazelle gets attacked by a lion but manages to escape, when
the gazelle is safe, its entire body will tremble until it has shaken out the excess charge; and it will
return back to the herd drinking water from the pond as though nothing had happened. Even
though our pets are more domesticated and now live in artificial or constructed environments,
we can still see this same type of trembling if they are afraid of thunder and lightening. They
will often come close to us and tremble. This trembling is the natural process of the body
discharging the excess energy simultaneously as it is being created in the body.
As humans, we possess this same mechanism. However, to our detriment, we have inhibited
or deadened it. As an example, when we get nervous or overexcited, we deliberately try not to
shake so as not to appear weak or afraid. This ego control places the body and mind into a
conflict. The body wants to shake to discharge the excess energy, but the mind refuses to let
it do so. The mind usually wins and the body must then find another way of dealing with this
hyper-aroused charge. The way it deals with it is by contracting the muscle and containing
this excess charge. The muscles in the body contract and hold onto the excess charge until
they are allowed to release it at a later time. If they do not get that opportunity, the contracted
muscles then produce a chronic state of tension in the body. Herein lays one of the root causes
of PTSD. If the muscles contracted during trauma do not release this high charge shortly after
the trauma, they will continue to try to do so at a later date as a way of restoring the body to a
restful state.
Post trauma reactions are caused by the residual undischarged excitement generated at the
time of the event. If this high state of aroused energy is prevented from being discharged in
the body, it remains trapped in a bio-neural-physical loop that causes a repetition compulsion
behavior. Until the body shakes out this tension, the body will continue to repeat this chronic
tension pattern of protection and defense. A major component to a successful recovery from
trauma is to activate the person’s natural release mechanism that signals the body to return to
a state of rest and recuperation.
For all humans, after the trauma is over, the nervous system should naturally activate itself
and begin to shake out any residual chemicals or tension remaining from the traumatic episode.
This shaking sends a signal to the brain informing it that the danger has subsided and it should
turn off its alert status. If the nervous system does not activate itself, the body continues to
remain in a kind of short circuit loop with the brain continuing to believe it is still in danger
and therefore continuing to command the body to stay in a state of readiness and alert.
The uniquely created Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) ™ at the end of this book are
specifically designed to artificially evoke this shaking mechanism. By evoking this mechanism
through these simple and painless techniques, you can release the deep, chronic muscle
contractions created by severe shock or trauma. They use nothing but the natural mechanisms
of the body. However, the key to the Trauma Releasing Exercises is that they evoke the shaking
from the center of gravity of the body located in the pelvis. When the shaking response is
evoked at this powerful center of the body, it reverberates throughout the entire body looking
for deep chronic tension in its path and naturally dissolving it.
By following the exercises at the end of this book, you can begin to release the chronic tension
in your body from the center of gravity outwards. Your body will begin to shake involuntarily
searching for the areas of tension and slowly discharging and relaxing these muscles. They will
initially begin in the upper thighs and work their way into the psoas muscles. The shaking will
then travel through the pelvis into the lower back and finally up the spine into the shoulders,
neck, arms and hands. This shaking can produce a feeling of exhaustion similar to the feeling
of just having finished a long workout; or, it could produce a great deal of energy making you
feel invigorated. Each time you do the exercises, the shaking pattern may change and various
types of shaking can occur.
Prior to doing these, or any other exercises, you should consult your primary health care
provider such as a physician, therapist or counselor. Although simple and easy to do, these
exercises can have a very immediate and deep effect on the person’s physical and/or psycho-
emotional state. They can quickly reduce blood pressure, cause strong trembling and a deep
release of emotions. They can also elicit past traumas for which you may want professional
guidance and/or personal support. As always, the key is to respect your own body, emotions
and psyche. If for any reason you feel the need to stop the exercises or the shaking, simply do
so by stretching your legs out flat onto the floor and just relaxing on your back or curling up
on your side. You can always return to them when you feel calm, safe and comfortable. This
shaking can also be used simply for the purpose of relieving the tensions created from the daily
stress of life.
Although I include this caution, I also want to assure you that if you have no psycho-
emotional connection that does not mean there is anything wrong. Simply enjoy the vibration
caused by the exercises and continue to repeat them. They have an accumulative effect of
relaxing the body at deeper and deeper levels. Many people who have done extensive body work
and trauma recovery simply find these exercises and the shaking to be a profound integrating
tool for the psychosomatic work they have already completed.
For the purpose of learning the exercises it is best to do them as they are shown in this book.
They begin from the toes and work their way up the feet, ankle, legs and finally the pelvis.
Working from the ground upwards helps establish a strong connection with the legs prior to
working on the upper areas of the body.
The difference between these exercises and other forms of exercise like jogging, weight
lifting, and aerobics is that is that most exercise routines are designed to release surface level
tension in the body. This is insufficient however when dealing with the deep chronic tension
created in a traumatic experience. Oftentimes when these milder forms of exercise are used to
try and relieve the tension created during trauma, they fail to go deep enough into the muscle
tissue to relieve the tension. This can leave the individual with feelings of helplessness and
hopelessness if they don’t release the tension of the trauma.
***
ADRENAL CHANGES:
“My body is racing at 1000RPMs.”
Domestic violence within families of soldiers who have recently returned from war zones is
noticeably higher than the normal population. Numerous studies have already demonstrated
that the chemical levels of adrenaline, cortisol and serotonin in the body are significantly altered
when individuals are exposed to prolonged or repeated experiences of trauma. One soldier put
it quite well when he said: “It’s like I’m running 1000 rpms and everyone else around me is
idling at 30 rpms. I feel all wound up inside and don’t have anywhere to discharge this energy.”
He could not have been more accurate. He was in fact on a chemical high commonly known
as the “adrenaline rush.” Although medical practitioners are very well aware of this adrenal
rush that is created during traumatic experiences, very little attention is given to reducing the
adrenal and cortisol levels of traumatized individuals. It is not only soldiers, but others such as
police, fire fighters, EMTs, victims of domestic violence and abused children who are living and
working in traumatizing environments. They are but a few of a growing list people who are in
need of a methodology to stabilize these significant biochemical changes in the body due to
trauma-inducing environments and experiences.
We have all experienced this adrenaline rush before. However, for most of us we return to our
normal lives and calm ourselves down. Unfortunately, this is not the case with individuals who
experience prolonged and repeated experiences of stress and trauma. After continuous and/
or repeated exposure to dangerous situations, the body becomes so accustomed to producing
high levels of adrenaline and cortisol that it automatically raises the baseline production of
these chemicals. In other words, we all have a natural baseline level of adrenaline in our bodies.
If we continue to produce higher levels of adrenaline on a regular basis our bodies will adjust
to producing adrenaline at these higher levels even when we no longer need them. Essentially,
we become addicted to our own chemicals.
Accompanying this adrenaline production is a reduction in serotonin. Serotonin is the
“feel good drug” in the body. It is the chemical that inhibits us from acting on our aggressive
impulses. Decreases in serotonin in humans have repeatedly been correlated with impulsivity
and aggression. In animals, a decrease in serotonin produces an exaggerated emotional arousal
and/or aggressive display (van der Kolk 1994). The combination of increased adrenaline and
decreased serotonin is precisely what causes an otherwise controlled and calm individual to
act on his/her aggressive emotions. In times of war, danger or trauma we want high levels of
adrenaline and low levels of serotonin. This combination of chemicals will guarantee that we
will have aggressive reactions and we will act on them. It is precisely this behavior that keeps
[20] David Berceli
us alive in the face of danger. The difficulty arises when the person leaves the dangerous
environment and immediately returns to a normal environment. Their biochemical responses
are still highly activated even though they are no longer necessary. This is what causes an
individual to have an exaggerated reaction to normal everyday stressors.
***
SUMMARY
***
• Trauma creates a new biological baseline of chemicals (adrenaline/opioids).
• The body is prevented from following its natural rhythm of excitement/rest.
• Adrenal glands become exhausted and the adrenals go into a forced state of
recuperation.
• Everyday stressors begin to elicit an exaggerated reaction.
• Trauma/stress becomes a state of preoccupation instead of a passing experience.
• This chemical reaction leads to a vulnerability of hypertension or depression.
***
OPIOIDS AND THE OPIUM SENSATION

“It was like it was in slow motion.”
Although we are familiar with the experience of an “adrenaline rush,” there are other
significant, although less familiar, chemical changes that can take place in the body during
traumatic episodes. These chemicals belong to a group of chemicals referred to as opioids.
During the attack of the Twin Towers many people who were within close proximity to
‘Ground Zero’ described their experiences like this: “I saw it happening but it was like it wasn’t
real.” “It was like it was in slow motion.” “I ran but I didn’t feel like I was in my own body.” “It was
like someone else was running.” “I heard screaming but it was surreal.” “Although I was badly
cut, I didn’t feel any pain until it was all over and someone else had to tell me I was hurt.” All
of these comments in any other circumstances would cause a suspicion that the individual was
on drugs. “Slow motion, surreal, out of my body, feeling no pain…” comments such as these are
commonly made by people who are on some kind of mind- altering medications. This is exactly
true. The body has the ability to manufacture mind and sensory altering drugs during a time
of trauma.
This process is a very primitive response of the human animal. An example would be
encountering a lion in the jungle and having no way to escape except to fight the lion. We
would have a very high adrenaline rush for the sake of increasing our muscle tone and strength.
However, if our arm is clawed in the process of fighting the lion our body would immediately
pump opioids into the arm so we would not feel the pain. Only after the lion is dead or gone
and our safety is assured would the body stop injecting opioids into our arm so we would then
feel the pain and seek medical assistance.
Another contemporary example of the activation of the opioid system is commonly
experienced during physical abuse. Many individuals will claim that “…it was as though I was
out of my body watching it happen.” “I screamed but it seemed like someone else screaming.”
“I fought and fought but at some point my muscles gave in and my body just collapsed.” All of
these experiences are opioid induced. It is helpful to realize that the body is not concerned
about how you survive the trauma, it is only concerned that you survive the trauma. In other
words, the body does not mind giving up and allowing itself to be abused. It is only concerned
that it survives the abuse. If numbing or dissociating is deemed advantageous by the body’s
system, it will stop pumping adrenaline that causes you to fight into your body and it will begin
to pump opioids into your system that will produce more passive defenses.
For the sake of a more accurate understanding of the chemical changes in the body,
[22] David Berceli
compare the adrenal response known as the “Hyperarousal Continuum” with the opioid
response known as the “Dissociative Continuum” in the following summary.
***
HYPERAROUSAL DISSOCIATIVE
CONTINUUM CONTINUUM
Alarm—vigilance numbing—compliant
fear—terror dissociating
Adrenal system is activated Opioid system is activated
Excitement inducing Euphoria inducing
Serotonin decreases Senses are altered
(impulsivity & aggression are altered (place, time, reality with exaggerated
emotions)
Heart rate (increases) Heart rate (decreases)
Blood pressure (increases) Blood pressure (decreases)
Respiration (increases) Respiration (decreases)
Muscle tone intensifies Muscle tone becomes flaccid/numb
Cognitive processing increases Cognitive processing decreases
Aggressive response Passive response
***
Another experience that is very common among traumatized people is called the bi-phasic
or bi-modal experience. This is when both adrenaline and opioids are working simultaneously
or in rapid succession of each other. Here is an example:
A Kenyan man who was at the U.S. Embassy during the time of its bombing in Nairobi in
2000, reacted by going into a state of fight/flight and dissociation at the same time. He literally
ran for one kilometer without knowing that he was doing it and without knowing where he
was going. When people finally stopped him from running, he sat on the ground and asked:
“Where am I?” What was also interesting was that this man had a huge gash in his upper leg that
was bleeding severely. In normal circumstances, this type of injury would not allow a person to
walk, let alone run, for one kilometer. When this gash was pointed out to him, he screamed out
in pain. Until that moment, he had never felt the pain. His system pumped both adrenaline and
opioids into his body simultaneously to save this man from possible death.
A similar experience that is quite common among traumatized people is that they will swing
back and forth from a dissociated or depressed state to a highly charged state of hyperarousal.
Life can be going along fine and someone simply makes a slight criticism to the individual and
they fly off the handle, expressing emotions of anger and even rage while screaming about
always being picked on and abused. Then a few minutes or hours later you can find the same
individual depressed and despondent to even the most positive of comments. This swinging
back and forth between extremes is very common among traumatized individuals.
Traumatized individuals have an imbalance of chemicals in their bodies that cause them
to react in these unpredictable ways. This can often be mistaken as manic/depression, bi-
polar or attention deficit disorder. It is in a non-clinical sense a bi-polar disorder. They are in
fact swinging between one pole and another. This is a post trauma reaction rather than the
disposition of the individual.
Traumatized individuals are often overly reactive to negative comments or experiences.
However, if they are feeling depressed they will be under-responsive to positive comments
or experiences. They can become overly attached to people or causes becoming obsessed or
excessively social. If they are feeling depressed, they will often isolate themselves socially and
detach themselves from important and supportive relationships. They may often experience
expressive emotions one moment and be emotionally numb the next. This rapid swing back
and forth between these extreme personalities causes the individual to appear hyperactive and
depressive.
The following summary explains some of the behaviors that this swinging can cause in the
individual’s personality.
***
PERSONALITY OF TRAUMA
Changes in the muscle tone, chemicals and thought processes will create attitudinal and
personality changes in the individual.
***
HYPERAERTNESS DEPRESSION
Over responsive to negative Under-responsive
comments to positive comments
Over attachment Detachment
(excessive socialization) (social isolation)
Explosive emotions Reduced emotions
(hostility/crying) (no feeling/numbness)
Hyperactive behaviors Tiredness/insomnia
***
In this summary you can see how an individual’s personality can swing from one extreme
to another. With the chemical changes in the body, an individual can be social and engaging
in the morning and by noon time feel depressed and isolate him/her self. Without knowing
the person’s trauma history, one could easily suspect the individual has some kind of mood
disorder.
Since trauma behavior tends to embed itself in the person’s natural characteristics, an
active individual may simply become more active and a quiet individual may simply become
more secluded. What I normally hear from family members is that: “Johnny has always kept to
himself, but since the accident he seems to be a bit more introspective.” This is a key insight in
recognizing trauma—“a bit more.” I want to know why he is a bit more. If the “bit more” has
manifested itself after a traumatic episode, there is a strong likelihood that it is a manifestation
of PTSD.
***
INTUITION AND THE ABDOMINAL-PELVIC

BRAIN
“I knew something was wrong.”
Prior to talking about the brain and how it functions differently during trauma, it is
important to give recognition to a less studied part of the human body called the Abdominal-
Pelvic brain.
A woman was walking down a dark street and she sensed that something was not right. There
were no obvious signs, images or people to logically confirm her ‘intuition.’ In fact, everything
seemed quite calm and quiet. However, an inner dialogue began to take place between the
abdominal-pelvic brain which is activated by sensation and the cranial brain which is activated
by obvious signs and images. Since our culture has discouraged and even diminished us from
relying on our intuition rather than our logic, her internal struggle intensified. “I’m just
making it up. There’s nothing wrong here. I don’t see anything dangerous. But I really feel I am
not safe.” Just then she saw a shadow of a figure close beside her coming out of an alley. She was
startled and screamed. Fortunately, this chased the ‘would be’ attacker away. After she arrived
home she continued to argue within herself. “Why didn’t I listen to my intuition? My feelings
were so strong, why didn’t I respect them?”
The Abdominal-Pelvic brain is a plexus or bundle of nerves located in the lower abdomen
and pelvis. They are directly connected to the autonomic nervous system. These nerve bundles
contain more sympathetic nerves (fight/flight) than any other part of the body. During trauma,
the body places a priority of the abdominal pelvic brain over the cranial brain. This is why
people often begin to ‘intuit’ danger prior to ‘knowing’ that danger really does exist. What
naturally occurs is that the abdominal-pelvic brain begins to sense that something is wrong
and sends signals to the cranial brain to be on alert. Because we place such a high priority
on the logic of the cranial brain, if there is no evidence to support the intuitive sensation of
the abdominal-pelvic brain, the cranial brain will override its sensations. This physiological
process is what produces the inner doubt and questioning that we experience when there is
no ‘logical’ reason for our sensations, but we are clearly experiencing sensations of danger or
alertness in our bodies.
It is interesting that our society diminishes this sensory experience in everyday ordinary
life. However, soldiers during a time of war are often encouraged to be alert to any sensations
of danger they may have even if there is no logical data to confirm the danger. Once again,
this trauma or danger activated mechanism has done well to help protect us during dangerous
situations of life, but has been disregarded or diminished by our society causing us to prefer
logic over intuition.
***
[26] David Berceli
***
SUMMARY
***
Abdominal-Pelvic Brain
Humans possess the capacity to communicate with and receive communication from our
internal physiological systems.
• A brain is an apparatus capable of:
1. Receiving information
2. Reorganizing that information
3. Emitting nerve impulses as a response.
CRANIAL BRAIN: Presides over our mental processes.
ABDOMINAL BRAIN: Presides over organic life. It is the autonomic reflex center of the
body.
IN TRAUMA: The body places a priority of the abdominal brain over the cranial brain
because of its significant importance in the continuation of the vital forces of life.
1. The abdominal/pelvic brain is fully formed and functioning long before the cranial
brain.
2. The abdominal/pelvic brain can live without the cranial brain but the cranial brain
cannot survive without the abdominal brain.
3. There is an exquisite mutual dependency between the abdominal/pelvic brain and the
cranial brain.
***
NEUROLOGY OF TRAUMA
“Why can’t I control my thinking?”
Much of the material written on the neurology of trauma is understandably technical and
sometimes confusing. However, since trauma affects the way individuals think and process
information, it is important that this subject be explained in a non-technical language so that
it is available to everyone. Therefore, I will present this subject in uncomplicated terminology
and concepts in order to help the reader understand how and why traumatic memories are
encoded differently than memories of ordinary events.
The brain can be divided into three major sections. The first is the Brain Stem which
controls our basic human functions of breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Second is
the Limbic System that develops later in life and controls our fight/flight and action/reaction
behaviors. This is a more emotionally guided part of our brain. And third is the neocortex
which is the last part of the brain to fully mature. It controls our logic and reasoning.
[28] David Berceli
Under normal circumstances, our brain takes in information, processes it though the
emotions of the limbic system and sends it to the neocortex for analysis, logic and a reasonable
response.
The process for this type of behavior is one of…
***
ACTION REFLECTION RESPONSE
***
However, this process changes during a traumatic event. In trauma, the individual must
act quickly and instinctively. In order to do this, the brain places more emphasis on the more
primitive parts of the brain (brain stem & limbic system) so that the action will produce an
immediate reaction without the laborious and potentially dangerous process of reflection and
a logical response.
A good example of this is when soldiers are sitting around talking and suddenly a mortar
shell hits close by and everyone jumps up and runs in different directions. Some dive for
cover, others jump behind something and some simply just run. None of these soldiers made a
conscious decision of what they would do. It was purely an instinctual response. Afterwards they
may even criticize one another or joke or laugh about their responses, but all of them will say,
“I don’t know why I reacted that way. I just did!” This sudden threat of death causes the brain to
react according to its animal instinct rather than to think and respond logically.
The process for this type of behavior is one of …
***
ACTION REACTION
***
This process of action and reaction occurs for the purpose of protecting us during a time of
danger. However, if we live in repeated or prolonged experiences of danger, we can reinforce
this thought pattern. The more we use this pattern the more our brain will default to this
pattern even when we are no longer in danger. In other words, the more this neurological
network is activated, the more this “temporary state” will develop as a “permanent trait.” What
eventually happens is this neural network of action/reaction will be activated even by minor
stresses and the individual begins to live life by using this traumatic neurological response. The
trauma is no longer a passing state for this individual but has now become a pervasive reality
in their lives. This has serious implications for people who live in situations of community
or domestic violence, have experienced regular physical or sexual abuse or who witness or
experience violent crimes or violent lifestyles.
Another element of neurology is how the brain encodes and processes traumatic experiences
differently than ordinary events. During ordinary events, the brain functions in the following
manner.
Certain areas of the brain (Somato-sensory areas) receive millions of bites of data or
information from outside every day. Once they receive this information they send it to another
area of the brain (Association area) where memories and emotions of similar past experiences
are connected to these new sensations. Now this information is sent to the third section of the
brain (Gnostic area) where a story is made about the experience. When this story is complete
the brain is satisfied and it continues to process more data. A simple example of this is when
you meet someone for the first time. You shake hands and their handshake feels safe, they smile
at you and make comfortable eye contact. Your somato-sensory brain takes in the sensation
of the handshake, smile and eye contact and sends it to the association area that attaches past
memories of these types of encounters as being safe and pleasant and then the Gnostic area
puts together a story that this new individual you just encountered is a nice person.
Traumatic experiences are processed very differently. The essential difference is that
because traumatic experiences are taken in as an overwhelming and intrusive arousal of
your system, they are taken in more as fragments of an experience rather than as the whole
experience. Instead of being processed immediately, they are stored in the somato-sensory
area of the brain until they can be processed at a later date. Essentially, the brain does not
process all the sensations of trauma because they are physically and/or psycho-emotionally
overwhelming. It now has billions of bites of data stored in the somato-sensory area that need
to be processed. Until these pieces of information in this area of the brain are associated with
feelings, memories and emotions and then sent to the Gnostic area to be told as a story, they will
remain as unprocessed and therefore unhealed memories, only to surface later for the purpose
of being fully processed.
These stored and unprocessed sensations are precisely what cause flashbacks, disturbing
memories and nightmares. Similar stimuli that closely match the traumatic event can often
trigger these unintegrated memories. If you were recently in a car accident and there was a
strong odor of leaking gas, you may not be aware of it during the accident. However, the next
time you pull into a gas station and smell the gas, you could have a flashback to the accident
and actually begin to tremble or become afraid even though you are simply pumping gas at a
station. The odor of gas was being sent from the somato-sensory area to the association area
where feelings and emotions were being connected to it. You may then go home and tell your
spouse about the event, cry, feel their support and be able to heal this part of the traumatic
memory.
One of the miracles of brain functioning is that as we pass through the various maturation
stages such as adolescence, mid-life and our later wisdom years, our brain will automatically
try to rid itself of any unresolved somato-sensory memories. It will naturally activate itself to
send these stored memories to the association area to begin being processed as a story. This
is why many people begin to remember childhood traumatic experience, particularly sexual
abuse, during these natural developmental stages of life. The brain is attempting to rid itself
of unnecessary baggage so it can prepare itself for the new stimuli that it will experience as it
passes from one stage of development to the next.
***
CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
“I can’t concentrate or remember.”
“It is an ultimate irony that at the time when the human is most vulnerable to the effects of
trauma—during infancy and childhood—adults generally presume the most resilient” (Perry
1996).
Conservative estimates of the number of children in the United States exposed to traumatic
events in a one year period exceed four million. These experiences include children who live in
the fallout zone of domestic or community violence, have experienced physical or sexual abuse,
have witnessed or experienced violent crime, or have been exposed to other sudden, unexpected
human- induced violence such as car accidents, burn accidents, kidnappings, etc. At least half
of all children exposed to traumatic experiences may develop a variety of significant psycho-
emotional symptoms in adolescence and adulthood. Depending on the severity, frequency,
nature and pattern of the traumatic event(s), these children are at a great risk for developing
profound emotional, behavioral, physiological, cognitive and social problems.
When an adult experiences a traumatic event, their maturely developed brain is capable
of creating a temporary traumatic thought process to help it deal with the trauma. Once the
trauma is healed, the adult can dissolve this trait and return to an integrated state within the
mature brain. This is not the case with children. If children experience trauma while the brain
is in its developmental stages, the temporary traumatic trait needed to survive the trauma
will be built into the brain as a permanent trait. Therefore, if a child grows up in a traumatic
environment, the more it is forced to use trauma thinking patterns, the more those patterns
will be embedded into their natural thought processes. Traumatized children will now begin
to process all unfamiliar and overwhelming events as though they had the potential of being
dangerously traumatizing. Their reactions will naturally be over-reactive to normal events
causing hyperarousal or dissociative symptoms and behaviors.
Parents, along with school teachers, administrators, and other important people in the
child’s life are often left alone to deal not only with the maladaptive behaviors of traumatized
children, but with the vicarious traumatization they develop as a result of being exposed to the
children’s PTSD symptoms on a daily basis. Given the daunting statistics of childhood trauma,
parents, educators and school personnel should receive education on the symptoms and effects
of trauma as well as methods for dealing with PTSD.
I had the opportunity once to work with an entire school system after the children had
a traumatic experience. Initially, I helped the faculty to reflect on their own experiences of
vicarious traumatization while dealing with the severe emotions of the children. When I
[32] David Berceli
explained that they too were victims of an overwhelming situation, the guilt, shame, anger
and hurt they had experienced about their reactions to the children began to be replaced
by a sense of renewal, understanding and self-acceptance. After several discussions, what we
concluded was that we would need to employ a two-fold process of recovery. First we needed to
resolve the vicarious trauma of the faculty in order to restore their healthy thought processes
and relationships. Secondly, we decided to redesign the school’s curriculum and class schedule.
We included specific exercises designed to release deep chronic tensions in their normal
physical education classes. This would help them to discharge the high adrenal and cortisol
levels created as a result of their traumatic experiences. We shortened the teaching segments
of each class by introducing 5 minute breaks every 20 minutes. This allowed them to be able
to concentrate for the entire segment. Eventually the classes would be lengthened until they
could concentrate for the entire class period. We introduced small study groups that allowed
the children to learn at their own pace, which eventually gave them more confidence. This gave
the children a sense of unity and cohesion as they all struggled together to regain their natural
cognitive processes. The final change we made was to include a story telling class into the
school curriculum specifically designed to safely elicit the multitude of traumatic memories of
these young children. These adjustments, over time, slowly reduced and even dismantled many
of the neurological, physiological and psychological defenses these children developed during
their traumatic experience.
Although these and many traumatized children like them have developed trauma behavior
patterns, they need not be debilitating and damaging to their lives. The sensitive and finely
tuned trauma traits and behaviors once understood and integrated into the personality can be
used in creative ways to encourage the unique development of these children.
***
ENEMY IMAGE SYNDROME

“I distrusted everyone to the point of paranoia.”
While I was living in Beirut, Lebanon in the late seventies and early eighties, I experienced
a strange phenomenon. I was living in east Beirut which was predominately Christian. I had
heard and seen first hand the kind of damage inflicted by those living in the west side of Beirut
who were predominately Muslim. I naturally developed an anger, hatred, distrust and loathing
for ‘those Muslims.’ Although I did not want to think this way because I knew it was wrong,
it inevitably got the best of me and I became as prejudiced as everyone else. Then, my house
was bombed by a Muslim faction group and I was forced to move to the west side of the city.
I rented an apartment from a wonderful Muslim family and we became close friends. During
my time with them, I began to experience the exact same bombing and shelling; only now it
was coming from the Christians. I was now witnessing the same horrors of human degradation
and suffering among Muslims that I had seen among the Christians. It astonished me that I
could gradually feel my prior anger, hatred, distrust and loathing for Muslims being projected
onto the Christians. They were now my new enemy. I wondered how my mind could so easily
transfer my feelings from one group to another. I had the same experiences when I personally
encountered conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis, Northern and Southern Sudanese
and Eritreans and Ethiopians. This same discriminatory thought process would attach itself
to whatever group I felt threatened by at the time. I began to reflect on how and why the mind
can so easily transfer prejudice and discriminating behaviors from one group of people to
another.
What I discovered is that discrimination is an animal-based instinctive protective behavior.
All animal species possess this instinct as a way of protecting and thereby preserving the
species. It works like this: As creatures of a more primitive time, when we saw a lion, we learned
that this was a potentially life-threatening animal. In order for us not to have to learn this
lesson through repeated experiences, the mind then took this discriminating fear and applied
it to all animals of a similar nature like, tigers, panthers, cougars, etc. Now we have successfully
learned to discriminate between whole categories of harmful and non-harmful animals. A
common contemporary example of this is when female clients who are recovering from sexual
assault come to my office. Often, their initial reaction is to say: “I hate all men.” or “No man can
truly be trusted.” This is a perfectly normal reaction to just having had one’s life threatened
by a male. The brain is simply applying its natural protective behavior and ideology to anyone
who resembles the dangerous person they just encountered—a man. As the client progresses
in their recovery process, this belief slowly gives way to identifying certain males as potentially
dangerous and others as safe.
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This whole process of discrimination can be recognized as the natural process of ‘selective
enemy imaging.’ This neurological process establishes certain beliefs designed to help us
discriminate for the sake of self-preservation.
As a primitive species living in the dangers of the jungle, this was a great protective
mechanism to possess and utilize. It helped keep our species alive. This same neurological system
of exclusivity and discrimination is still very protective when soldiers must quickly identify the
‘enemy’ so they themselves are not killed. However, it is this same primal mechanism that, when
unleashed onto and unchecked by society, produces discrimination based on race, ethnicity,
sex, sexual orientation, etc. These are not life threatening groups, but rather ego-threating
categories of people. Our current atmosphere of anti-Arab sentiment is a current example.
The American mind has taken many Arabs and assumed they are potential terrorist threats.
It therefore discriminates against them under the guise of protecting the nation. Essentially,
our more primitive brain is being used in a more sophisticated society where it is no longer
appropriate. How ironic that a mechanism that once helped protect the human species and
cultivated its survival, is now actually dividing and destroying our species. This discrimanating
mechanism is still useful and still continues to protect us when we are in real danger, such as in
times of war, but it can be equally as damaging and harmful when the danger is only imagined
and/or ego based.
Returning to our picture of the brain, we can see how this works. Under normal
circumstances, we use the logic of our neocortex to help us make decisions. However, whenever
we feel endangered the logical neocortex gets hijacked by the instinctual Limbic System to
protect us from the danger. This, as we have seen, proved useful when the danger was real.
However, in today’s society danger is more often imagined danger that simply threatens our
ego rather than our lives.
The following outline provides insight into the process of selective enemy imaging that is
referred to as the Enemy Image Syndrome.
***
SUMMARY
***
1. DISTRUST of everything originating from the perceived enemy.
2. Seeing the perceived enemy as GUILTY AND RESPONSIBLE for all the pain and tension
that exists in my life.
3. Belief that everything that the perceived enemy does is INTENDED TO DO ME
HARM.
4. Sensing that you NEED TO DESTROY the perceived enemy before they destroy you.
5. Assuming that anything that benefits the perceived enemy HARMS ME and visa versa.
6. De-individuaiton = Anyone within the perceived enemy group IS THE SAME no matter
of their age, actions, beliefs, etc.
7. REFUSING EMPATHY by denying that the two groups have anything in common.
***
IMAGINATION OF TRAUMA
“I was more terrified and angry than my family!”
One time I was working with a group of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia. They had not been
able to contact or visit their families for several months because of intense fighting. They had
no idea if their family members were alive or in what conditions they may be living. These
people were full of anxiety, anger, fear and despair. With each radio and TV broadcast they
could only imagine the worst. Finally, the fighting ceased and they were able to go to visit their
families. When they arrived they were astonished at the stories of hardship their families told
and the numerous near death experiences they had during the intense fighting. However, the
family members who had endured the fighting were less disturbed emotionally than the ones
who only imagined what their families must have endured. The ones who experienced the war
were more resigned to the fact that their belongings were destroyed, but they were also elated
at successfully struggling through the fighting and surviving as a family.
What was the difference between these two groups that could explain why those who
imagined the suffering were more bitter, resentful and less accepting than those who actually
endured the suffering? Why were those who experienced the war more positive, less fatalistic
and able to accept what had happened to them? The key difference between these two groups
is that one group’s experience was based on reality and the other’s on illusion or imagination.
The reality-based group had bodily sensations of aliveness, elation, comfort and safety of
having survived the ordeal. These physical sensations helped temper the imagination and
place their experience into a proper perspective. The other group’s imagination generated
a horrifying illusion that was completely divorced from the body’s senses. Thus, it was only
partially informed of reality and was lacking the bodily component of the feeling of survival to
help place an appropriate perspective on the traumatic experience.
It is very common for people who have not experienced the same trauma as their loved
ones to be even more bitter, vengeful, angry and resentful than the person who endured and
survived the traumatic experience. Imagination is a powerful thought process of the human
species. It can however, be a dangerous and powerful weapon if it is not connected to the body’s
experience of reality. This is why those who suffer can often forgive more easily than those who
only imagined another’s suffering. Those who imagine the suffering of another are ofter more
angry, bitter and vengeful than the victim. As a victim, it is oftentimes easier to forgive because
one’s own suffering and sorrow are informed by the reality of the body’s survival.
***
SUICIDE: A SELF-SABATOGE OF THE LIVING

ORGANISM
“Even death was better than this inner numbness.”
One of the saddest and most emotionally painful experiences is to have a loved one commit
suicide. The haunting questions of: “What could I have done to help? Why didn’t I see it coming?
Why did this happen?” can last for years or even a lifetime. Suicide is a very sensitive and
complicated subject. I don’t propose that I have a solution for such a difficult topic. However,
after having worked and spoken with numerous people who contemplated suicide, I began
to realize that suicidal individuals exhibit a common pattern of behavior in their body that is
worth mentioning here.
A young soldier I was working with had seen some horrible, inhuman sights during his
time in battle. I met him about a year after he had left the military and he was suicidal. He just
couldn’t stand living with the horrible memories. Even though he only saw these sights once
(which is bad enough), he had replayed the scenarios relentlessly in his mind until, as he told
me, “I have seen these sights over 1000 times.” When I asked him how his body was experiencing
the memory, he provided me with some profoundly deep insight. He said: “I have just numbed
out. I don’t feel anything inside. I don’t feel me and I don’t feel any connection to other people.
I am completely alone both inside and out.” I asked him if he ever has any feelings, what they
are and how he deals with them. His response to this was equally as enlightening. He told me
point blank: “Oh yea, I have occasional feelings but they are always feelings of anger, sadness
or rage.” “When I get any of these feelings, I numb out. If the feelings are too strong, I will take
drugs or get drunk to guarantee I get rid of them.”
It was this soldier’s insight that led me to question “How much of a function does the body
play in suicidal ideation?” Coming from a body sensitive background, I have begun to given
more credibility to the physiological sensations that seem to exacerbate suicide ideation. If the
human organism is a reflection of other living organisms on the planet, it stands to reason that
the human body pulsates with a natural desire to live life to its fullest. The question one must
naturally ask is: What happens when an individual deadens or numbs their ability to feel that
natural impulse to live?
The numbing of the body during the time of the traumatic event is a natural protective
mechanism of the body. However, the continuation of that numbing after the trauma has
ended is where the danger lies. If the individual continues to use substances to deliberately
numb the body from psycho-emotional pain, they are also numbing their ability to feel the
natural pulsation of life in the body. What occurs is that the ideation of the mind (ego)
becomes stronger than the pulsation of the living organism and the mind can override
[38] David Berceli
the body’s encoding ‘to seek life.’ In other words, the increase in suicidal ideation may be
directly connected to the decrease in physical sensation and the decrease in physical sensation
contributes to the increase in suicidal ideation. Once again we find ourselves in a vicious cycle
of a bodymind conflict.
It is clear that the brain must receive an appropriate amount of stimulation from the body to
function properly. If the brain lacks stimulus from the body, it actually creates its own. This has
the potential of the mind making imagination real. If that imagination is terrifying, grotesque
or horrifying, the body will continue to numb itself to escape this overwhelming ideation
produced by the mind.
With this understanding of the mind’s ability to disconnect from the body, I decided to
begin including body work (including Trauma Releasing Exercises—TRE) with counseling
of suicidal clients. What I discovered is that the deeper and more intense the body work, the
more connected the clients felt to their bodies and subsequently to me. The connection as they
described it was, “…a good feeling.” They often remarked that “…deep inside, under the pain
and numbness, I am still alive.” They couldn’t believe that someone was able to connect with
them despite their overwhelming feeling of aloneness. With each session, I would continue
working deeply with the client’s body and I would give them post session activities designed
to continue to stimulate positive bodily sensations. Gradually, the clients’ ability to feel their
natural body’s genetic encoding “to live” became stronger than the ideation of the ego’s
confusion “to die.”
What I stumbled upon with the insight of this soldier was that when intense body work
accompanied his counseling process, he seemed to be able to increase his body’s natural
pulsation to live and decrease his ego’s imagination to want to die. This observation has been
verified numerous times in my practice.
Research has already demonstrated that individuals possess the unconscious capacity to
communicate with and receive communication from our internal physiological systems. The
unconscious mind actually has a physiological center which is an extension of our nervous
system. I believe it is not only possible, but advantageous to capitalize on and use this psycho-
physical connection when working with suicidal ideation. The idea of a physical intervention
coupled with psychological counseling offers a more holistic explanation and resolution for
suicidal ideation than the traditional psychological concept. It incorporates the physiological
as well as the psychological aspects of the human person. Greater exploration of this concept
would certainly add to the growing body of knowledge concerning the possible psycho-
physiological bases underlying suicidal ideation. Identifying physiological correlates in suicidal
ideation is another direction for researchers as they keep striving to develop greater insight into
successful methods of suicide prevention.
***
SUMMARY
***
Muscles that do not move (experiences such as numbing, freezing or dissociation) are
muscles that are not sensed.
Numbing, freezing and dissociation disrupts our sensory/motor unity.
The mind needs physical movement and concrete sensations that directly informs it.
The absence or suppression of specific peripheral sensory input causes the mind to become
anxious.
Thought processes become confused and basic distinctions between internal thought and
external reality become distorted.
Imagination takes on as much palpable reality as anything else I am experiencing at the
moment.
***
DENIAL OF PTSD
“Things like that don’t happen to us.”
Thousands of soldiers were killed during the Vietnam War. However, thousands of others
have committed suicide since the end of that war. This is an appalling and shameful reality that
our society must eventually face. Even though Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been firmly
established and recognized in ex-war veterans for decades, our society still does not possess a
healthy national awareness or recovery plan to adequately assist our soldiers in their recovery
and reintegration process in the United States. Although the reasons for this are numerous and
complex, it still leaves this nation with the daunting task of resolving the disturbing symptoms
of PTSD on a national scale.
In the United States, “…roughly 3.6 days of work impairment per month associated with
PTSD translates into an annual productivity loss in excess of $3 billion” (Kessler 2000). If one
considers all the potential traumatic events that befall the people of our country in just one
year’s time: hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, car accidents, sudden deaths, social
and domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse, poverty etc., it is astounding to realize that we have
not developed and instituted a national awareness and recovery plan for PTSD. What could
possibly be the resistance to offering such a plan to schools, hospitals, emergency services and
national relief agencies?
There are a number of assumptions that maintain a belief system that has been unconsciously
accepted and perpetuated by humans for centuries. This belief system is a set of ‘positive
illusions’ about life that we do not want disturbed. Essentially, most humans believe that ‘if
they are good people, good things will happen to them.’ Thus, good people have no need to
establish trauma recovery programs because they are not expecting traumatic experiences to
befall them. This works fine until tragedy strikes and good people discover this positive illusion
is false. After a traumatic episode, many people often find themselves ill prepared to deal with
the fact that bad things (trauma) happen to good people.
The opposite illusion is also upheld by different belief systems. ‘People deserve what they get
in life.’ If they are bad, they will have bad experiences. This also comforts many of us because
we consider ‘others’ as bad and ourselves as ‘good.’ Therefore, bad things will only happen to
‘them.’
Trauma shatters these illusions. Trauma can happen to anyone. When trauma occurs, it
shatters our positive illusions and replaces it with the terrible knowledge that the positive
illusions are false. Since many of our Religious beliefs are based on this premise, people often
lose faith in their religion and their God when trauma forces its way into their lives. Our positive
[42] David Berceli
illusions about life are harmless under normal circumstances, but they leave us completely
unprepared to deal with the tragedies of life when they come our way.
By refusing to accept the reality that trauma and tragedy can strike at any moment, we
continue to perpetuate an unreal illusion of safety and indestructibility. Although we are
seeing a significant shift in global awareness regarding the possibility of large scale trauma,
this secret adherence to these positive illusions is precisely what has historically prevented us
from establishing and enacting plans to address this issue.
We should search within ourselves to reveal our hidden fear of our precarious reality on this
planet and learn to live with unpredictability rather than attempting to control the outcome of
our lives. Until then, we will continue to avoid instituting plans of recovery for the traumatized
segment of society that is in need of being healed. Until we recognize that the social cost of
PTSD outweighs the financial cost of healing our society, we are destined to continue to deny
and avoid large scale trauma recovery programs.
As trauma continues to affect this nation more and more, we are becoming acutely aware
and informed about trauma both as a community and a nation. There are some encouraging
signs that our schools, hospitals, police, fire and emergency units are beginning to develop
plans to support one another as they attempt to heal their local, national and even international
experiences of trauma.
***
SUMMARY
***
Society does not want to acknowledge trauma because it forces us to explore the darkest
corners of the mind and face the entire spectrum of human glory and degradation. In this
process, trauma shatters some basic assumptions we have about ourselves, the world and our
God.
Society has established POSITIVE ILLUSIONS….
• The world is basically a good and just place.
• People get what they deserve in life, and thus they deserve what they get.
• We ourselves are good and deserving of good.
• We are protected from serious harm by virtue of our goodness and God’s justice.
***
These illusions are harmless in normal circumstances but leave us totally unprepared to
face tragic misfortune.
***
Trauma victims are banished from society because….

• We are afraid to listen to their horrifying stories.
• Trauma victims are the bearers of the TERRIBLE KNOWLEDGE that the positive
illusions are false.
***
Expressions of denial of PTSD….

1. Reject the individual’s stories and blame them for their suffering.
2. There is a relatively low level of interest in the victim’s suffering.
3. There is a persistent lack of organizational planning to treat PTSD even when society,
organizations, the military or the community knows it is happening.
***
TRAUMA—THE NEW EPIDEMIC OF THE

CORPORATE WORLD
“Why aren’t our crisis management techniques
working?”
A new phenomenon is sweeping the corporate world. It is being called ‘organizational
trauma.’ After September 11th, I spoke with a number of personnel whose companies were
directly affected by this event. I asked them what type of debriefing and support they had
received from their company. Although many were grateful for the support they received, many
felt it was very inadequate. After the initial debriefing they were told that if they had additional
problems they should seek private therapeutic help or read some books that were suggested to
them.
Although this is fairly standard procedure, what this type of advice and behavior effectively
does is begin to divide the workforce and create a sense of isolation and lack of commitment
to the organization. Let me explain. If individuals continue to have difficulty with their PTSD
symptoms after having received the “official” help from the company’s “professionals,” they are
reluctant to speak about any psycho-emotional difficulties they continue to experience. They
will begin to feel as though everyone else is healing and that they must be the only ones having
additional problems. This will begin the isolation process. They will become more and more
quiet about their inner psycho-emotional struggle and eventually start to withdraw from their
colleagues and their commitment to the company.
As the CEO of Trauma Recovery Assessment and Prevention Services (TRAPS), I have
been working fifteen years with corporate, embassy and non-government organization (NGO)
personnel who are living and working in trauma-inducing environments. What I have learned
is that PTSD is a highly prevalent and debilitating condition that does not discriminate. Every
person who experiences trauma suffers from some symptoms of PTSD—it is simply a matter
of the degree that separates them. What I have recognized over the years is that trauma and
its attenuating consequences affect all institutions that have personnel living and/or working
in life threatening environments. Only now are we beginning to recognize the long-term,
damaging effects trauma has on the institutional, structural and relational fabric of many
corporations and organizations.
Given the medically established severity and potentially debilitating effects of trauma and
PTSD, the conventional range of crisis management techniques are revealing themselves as
unsatisfactory and ineffective. Human Relations and Public Relations personnel are finding
they lack the knowledge to adequately address the multifaceted dimensions of this rather
[46] David Berceli
severe and pervasive phenomenon. Corporate leadership needs to engage in a more thorough
examination of the options available to corporations following traumatic events since the
present methods are insufficient. To overlook or misunderstand this fundamental issue of
large scale traumatization is to trivialize the psycho-emotional complexities facing many
international corporations today. If left untreated, the long-term effects of unresolved PTSD
symptoms will give rise to forms of dysfunctional behaviors and relationships that can seriously
undermine any team, structure or partnership. The following example demonstrates the
extensiveness and insidious nature of post trauma behaviors within an organization.
In 2000, I was asked to work with the staff of one of the consulates in the Middle East. They
have a multicultural staff consisting of Muslims, Christians and Jews. The external tension of
the political situation was fragmenting the relationships of their otherwise cohesive staff. They
had already tried traditional programs of crisis management, cross-cultural leadership and
conflict resolution as a way of resolving the strained relationships. However, all of them failed
to rectify the intense divisions that were seriously fracturing their leadership team.
Since it was apparent that all of the staff members had either experienced trauma directly
or vicariously, I knew these techniques would be ineffective because they fail to take into
account some unique characteristics of trauma- induced behavior. The behaviors, actions and
reactions of the individual(s) during trauma are mostly instinctual and unconscious rather
than calculated and conscious. So, traumatic reprocessing cannot always be dealt with via
logical and systematic methods to achieve a resolution. It is precisely this conscious and logical
resolution of a crisis versus the unconscious and illogical creation of trauma that prevents
traditional crisis management models from working effectively. The ineffectiveness of present
crisis management techniques and the subsequent need for new options has tremendous
implications for corporations and organizations whose personnel are living/working in
trauma-inducing environments.
The most damaging effect of PTSD on this team was the breakdown in professional
relationships and trust among the team members. There were increased signs of isolation,
a sense of helplessness, hopelessness and powerlessness to the point that the team members
found themselves losing their sense of caring and concern for one another. All of this can have
devastating effects on intra and inter-corporate relationships.
The first of five dysfunctions explained in Patrick Lencioni’s (2002) book The Five
Dysfunctions of a Team is, “lack of trust.” This is a common experience in many corporations.
Leadership teams have hired numerous consultants to design exercises to restore trust among
their employees. However, traumatized individuals have a neural impediment to trusting that
is tainted with a life or death fear. They are neurologically encoded not to trust for fear that
their openness will expose them to a similar life/death possibility. Since this is unconscious and
many people are unaware of this psychic mandate, they cannot trust even when they consciously
want to do so.
The second of five team dysfunctions is “fear of conflict.” Fear is natural and possible
to overcome through various management techniques. Traumatized individuals often lack
the gradations of feelings so that simple fear can immediately become translated as terror
and their reactions will be overly defensive causing outbursts of anger, tears or collapse into
isolation, withdraw or depression. Although each of these behaviors is designed to protect them
from additional traumatic experiences, they now become an impediment to the building of
team and corporate relationships.
The additional three dysfunctions, “lack of commitment,” “avoidance of accountability”
and the subsequent “inattention to results” are all inevitable consequences of traumatized
individuals. Even the most clever strategies, insightful crisis management techniques and
sharpest of business acumen will not be able to rectify the psycho-emotional damages incurred
as a result of the unconscious infection of trauma within the corporate domain. However,
sensitivity to the signs of trauma infection will not only help to sustain the bond of relationships
within corporations, but if dealt with appropriately, will act as the nexus for rebuilding even
deeper relationships in the future.
Trauma can mercilessly fracture the cohesion of even the best of leadership teams and
corporate relationships. Due to the unconscious and insidiously eroding effects that trauma
has on interpersonal relationships, the corporations that will have the longest lasting and
most sustaining relationships are those who recognize, respect and resolve the active trauma
behaviors and relationships of their personnel. Some of the identifying behaviors of institutional
trauma are: an excessive need to control, becoming less caring about the company’s concerns,
becoming perfectionistic through compulsive behaviors and isolating oneself from other
employees. Any corporation that does not recognize and respect the potentially devastating
effects of trauma on its personnel will have a great deal of difficulty creating and sustaining
long-term trusting relationships among their staff.
Companies need to be more proactive in regards to trauma within the company. Not only
should they offer information and education about trauma to their employees, but they should
also provide them with effective techniques and practices to resolve their own trauma behaviors
within the company.
It is important to recognize that PTSD cannot be resolved though stress management
programs or conflict resolution seminars because they are instinctual reactions and non-logical
patterns of thought. Recovery from PTSD can be an extremely complicated and intricately
perplexing process. However, for a traumatologist it is also a fairly predictable and methodical
process that possesses its own logical solution. A skilled trauma recovery therapist cannot only
facilitate the resolution of institutional trauma but should be able to use the effects of trauma to
help restore an even stronger cohesiveness among work colleagues, staff and team members.
***
FINANCIAL PROFITABILITY WITH A

HUMANITARIAN FOCUS
“What can I do to help my staff recover?”
Even though trauma and PTSD are just making their way into mainstream consciousness,
they have been affecting us for many years. What is decidedly clear is that PTSD is a very real and
unconsciously destructive process from which corporations should protect their employees and
themselves. This unconscious behavior can, and often does, continue affecting the individual
and the institution long after the traumatic event is over. Interventions that attempt to resolve
trauma-induced behaviors cannot be rectified with the use of traditional crisis intervention
techniques that depend on logical, cognitive processing because trauma behavior is an illogical,
instinctual response not under control of the rational brain.
On a flight from Phoenix to Detroit, I sat next to a man who was given the task by his company
to design a process to help his employees heal from a devastating experience that affected the
entire company. He told me, “After reading several books on trauma recovery, I understand the
problem. But, none of these books proposed a methodology for recovery.” Having worked with
this specific issue with international corporations, I shared with him a workable plan I developed
that could be implemented by their own Human Resource Department. I explained that one
of the most effective ways of successfully circumventing the damaging effects of trauma on a
company is by providing short integrated seminars designed not only to educate personnel on
trauma and its devastating effects, but to provide them with the specific techniques necessary
for recovery.
All organizations whose personnel are living and/or working in trauma-inducing
environments would be well advised to follow a comprehensive approach of recovery. A
comprehensive approach would include the following three components.
PRE-ASSIGNMENT SEMINAR: If employees have been or are going to be exposed to
traumatic situations, the employee, their senior staff and co-workers should all receive training
in trauma awareness. The individuals being assigned should also be trained on how to use
specific techniques designed to reduce the psycho-neuro-biological and physical effects of
trauma. This educational workshop will assist the entire staff in recognizing the adverse effects
of trauma at both the personal and institutional levels. Already, a common understanding and
sense of cohesiveness is established around the issue of traumatic experiences.
ON-SITE VISITATION: After a traumatic experience or during their assignment to a trauma
environment, employees should be visited by their human resources manager and trauma
consultant who can provide personal support and administer a mid-assignment assessment
in an objective and professionally observing manner. In this way they will be able to assess
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the degree and manner in which the employee(s) are personally being affected by trauma.
They can either devise a personal plan to sustain or even improve their health during their
remaining time in the trauma zone, or recommend to their senior advisor that it is necessary to
temporarily or permanently remove the individual from the trauma area.
POST-ASSIGNMENT DEBRIEFING SEMINAR: When the employee(s) leave the trauma
environment they should be provided with a thorough post-assignment assessment. The
trauma consultant or human resource manager should administer tests that help to evaluate
the degree of trauma they may be experiencing and then outline a thorough plan of recovery
for the employee(s). If an effective plan is designed and followed, the employee(s) should only
require minimal reviews by the trauma consultant during the course of recovery.
This three step prevention and recovery process is not only effective for the health of the
company’s personnel, but it is also cost effective for the corporation. Professional awareness
seminars can help to sustain their employees during the time of traumatic exposure and assure
their healthy reintegration into the company afterwards. It is a wise and prudent investment
considering the fact that the dysfunctional behavior of trauma can unconsciously infect and
seriously disrupt even the strongest of teams. The cost effectiveness of providing trauma recovery
seminars far outweighs the cost of trying to repair the lower moral and confusion among team
members and the eventual disruption of the team’s effectiveness and productivity.
Aside from the personal and institutionally disruptive behaviors that are caused by
traumatized personnel, there is a growing legal consideration. A legal precedent has already
been set by several successful lawsuits for PTSD on the grounds that the neurological changes
in the brain during trauma constitute a physical injury. International corporations that have
personnel living or working in trauma-inducing environments are the most vulnerable to
litigation. With the rapid scientific advancement in trauma studies, it is becoming more evident
that trauma is the new epidemic of the international corporate world. Not only is it incumbent
on corporations to offer trauma awareness programs as a part of their work ethics, but
corporate employees who find themselves in environments that are prone to violence are going
to demand that their psycho-emotional physical health be attended to at the expense of the
corporation. It will soon become standard practice for employees to file for medical benefits to
cover the cost of their recovery process from PTSD.
In light of this, corporations should be more proactive in protecting their employees and
themselves. If dealt with in a proactive rather than reactive manner, the traumatic experiences
of employees can enhance rather than diminish their working relationships, providing a
stronger and more united individual, team and corporation. In the end, this always translates
into more dynamic working relationships, stronger and more sensitive staff management and
ultimately financial profitability with a humanitarian focus.
***
TRAUMATIZED LEADERSHIP
“His objectivity seems to be impaired.”
When I was working in a long term counseling center, I had a missionary come to work with
me who was suffering from depression, anxiety and extreme guilt. She told me the story of
how her inner struggle with these intense emotions began. She was a member of a missionary
community. She was the superior of a missionary group of women who had been living and
working in a North African country for years. Their presence among the local population was
well known and respected. However, the political atmosphere had become strained and radical
groups of extremists were springing up everywhere. There were numerous outbursts of violence
including kidnappings, bombings and shootouts among the various factions.
The superior had come from Europe to North Africa for a visitation. Her responsibility was
to assess the severity of the situation and provide any support that might be necessary. Shortly
after her arrival she was able to recognize the danger in which these women were living. She
voiced her strong concern to the women who had assured her that they were safe and that
they wanted to remain in the country to continue to work with the local people during this
time of suffering the people were enduring. Against her instinct, the superior agreed that the
missionaries could stay as long as they agreed to leave if the situation grew worse than it already
was. The women agreed and the superior returned to Europe.
Two weeks later, the entire group of women was killed. A rebel group of insurgents broke
into their home, accused them of being spies and killed them. The psycho-emotional distress
around this incident was overwhelming. The superior was devastated. She blamed herself for
these deaths and was constantly wondering how this could have happened and if there was
anything she could have done to prevent it from happening.
After discussing the incident with her, I explained how the neurological effects of trauma
can cause impaired judgment. The women living in this traumatic environment had been there
long enough that their natural capacity for objectivity regarding their own safety and health had
been obscured. Without knowing it, they actually needed external help in making a responsible
decision regarding their safety. This is a very common experience of individuals who live in
prolonged experiences of danger. They simply become accustomed to their environment and
adjust to living in extreme danger. It is natural for the mind to make this adjustment in order
to live under such circumstances, but this altered state of consciousness can also severely impair
one’s rational thought processes.
What happens under prolonged trauma is that the part of the brain that should normally
use the logic of the neocortex (see picture of brain) to make responsible decisions becomes
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hijacked by the Limbic System of the brain that often makes irrational, emotionally-based
decisions. The Limbic System, although protecting these women while living in violence, also
obscured their ability to recognize when they had to leave the situation to assure their safety.
What the superior didn’t realize was that her observations of the dangerousness of the situation
was more accurate than the group of women whose logic had been obscured and impaired by
living in the danger too long. Had the superior realized how trauma affects neural functioning,
she could have explained the difference between her assessment and their assessment of their
safety, and possibly have changed the decision of the group.
A more common example of this is someone who is in a car accident. Although they were
not injured in the accident, it is sometimes evident that this individual is still too shaken up and
possibly disoriented to drive themselves home. Even though they may try to assure you they are
physically OK—and they are—you are able to see that they are still too disturbed internally to
safely drive themselves home. Their natural capacity to assess their own safety and health has
become temporarily obscured and they need external intervention in their decision making
process.
***
INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

AND TRAUMA
“Why can’t we achieve peace?’
Oftentimes the need for international conflict resolution results from the inability of two
groups to reconcile with each other because of long standing wars, political violence or sectarian
armed conflicts. Since all serious conflict produces years of traumatic experiences, most, if not
all of the participants engaged in the conflict resolution process, will have experienced some
form of trauma either directly or vicariously. It stands to reason then, that these participants
may also be bringing a multitude of unconscious post traumatic stress behaviors and emotions
to the negotiation process. These unacknowledged traumatic expressions could introduce
numerous impediments to these negotiations or even pose serious threats that can undermine
the entire reconciliatory process.
In a workshop with Palestinian and Israeli participants that I conducted, I decided to
explore how trauma thinking and behaviors affected their relations with one another. I divided
the large group into pairs of equal numbers of Palestinians and Israelis. They were then given
a series of tasks and questions to work through. They all did this with great ease, comfort
and safety. I then divided the group into pairs of one Palestinian and one Israeli. The exact
same questions and tasks were presented to them. As they tried to work through these same
issues, they realized that it was excruciatingly difficult. The same words and phrases they had
previously used with someone from their own group were no longer safe to use in the mixed
group. A simple exercise of setting boundaries with one another erupted into arguments
and intense emotions. These two groups, although very willing and even desirous of healthy
dialogue and relationships, discovered that even their greatest of intentions could not override
the divisive effects of trauma thinking.
The group was then put through the Trauma Releasing Exercises and given a workshop
on trauma behavior and thinking. Through the physical exercises and psycho-emotional
understanding of the principles of trauma behavior, these two groups were able, with surprising
ease, to feel connected, safe and even emotionally caring towards each other’s pain. The
change was astounding. The two groups could not believe how much they were able to change
their thinking, emotions and behaviors by addressing the issue of trauma recovery prior to
attempting dialogue and resolution of their conflicts.
The reason for such a noticeable difference was that the Trauma Releasing Exercises helped
to discharge the high levels of anxious energy that were activated in the body. Once the high
energetic charge in the body was reduced, the logical and emotional parts of the brain no
longer perceived the questions and tasks as dangerous.
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Broome (2002) tells us that: “To be effective, third parties must have extensive and accurate
substantive knowledge of the context within which they will be working.” It stands to reason that,
if third party negotiators are to provide the best assistance possible to individuals who have been
living in cultures that have experienced prolonged war and violence, they should be familiar
with the devastating and damaging effects trauma has on individuals as well as the society as
a whole. Given the pervasive effects of trauma and the professional imperative to familiarize
oneself with substantive contextual knowledge of the culture, educating oneself on the effects
of trauma is not a luxury, but rather a necessity for conflict resolution professionals.
Oftentimes the participants in the negotiation process do not understand why they are
experiencing symptoms of emotional outbursts or withdrawal. It can be very useful for the
groups if this behavior is explained and acknowledged as a consequence of trauma. By publicly
acknowledging this behavior the third party negotiator provides a framework for understanding
and supporting individuals who are still experiencing a loss of emotional control. It also allows
the group to assist one another in actively working with this behavior rather than viewing it
(and the individual) as an obstacle to the group process.
Each person’s trauma experience in the group may need some degree of individual
consideration. Those whose family members may have been killed in a bombing for example,
may need more time to resolve their psycho-emotional pain than someone whose distant
acquaintances were wounded in the violence. All of these issues are better dealt with among
the members of the groups so they can gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of the
depth and diversity of painful experiences that each individual has experienced.
Unless the individuals in the groups have dealt with these painful experiences, their
participation in the group may be premature. Unless this is recognized, the conflict resolution
facilitator will spend many frustrating hours trying to sort out the multiplicity of psycho-
emotional problems that are layered beneath the group dynamics. If these emotional dynamics
are dealt with first, they can be used as a foundation for relationship building between the
groups. Inevitably, the groups will discover they have many experiences in common and they
are both in the process of healing deep pain and emotional memories. This can be a very
humane and bonding experience for the individuals in the groups. This common identity can
have a powerful impact on the individuals and help to dispel the image of the ‘other’ as the
‘enemy.’ Dispelling the image of the other group as the enemy is not only essential for healing,
but can be the nexus for the creation of a collective vision.
As a result of my work as a trauma therapist and third party negotiator, I found that it is
safe to assume that the degree to which the participants of each group have experienced war
or violence, there is a concomitant degree of post traumatic stress disorders that will need
considerable attention in the negotiation and mediation process. Therefore, I have often found
it useful to include some trauma awareness education and simple group recovery processes
to assist the negotiating parties in understanding each other’s experiences. The combination
of these two modalities has helped immeasurably to bring about a stronger sense of unity,
understanding and identification of shared pain among the reconciling groups. It has often
been the foundation of a mutual identification of the two groups as they begin to recognize
and accept the human pain and suffering experienced by everyone during times of violent
conflict.
It is important to consider that the ineffectiveness of some conflict resolution programs
and crisis management techniques is due in large part to the lack of awareness of trauma-
induced behaviors and reactions among the individuals involved in these processes. Having
an awareness of trauma and PTSD can help the third party facilitator make more accurate
calculated responses at pivotal times in the negotiation process. Traumatized people should
not be excluded from negotiation processes, but should be assisted in recognizing these
unconscious impediments so they can gain a greater awareness of how to deal with these
traumatic symptoms when they arise.
Given all these obstacles and impediments to peace and reconciliation, it may seem
overwhelming or impossible to bring about resolution of decades old conflicts. Continued
research on trauma and the human species suggests that trauma has been and will remain a
fact of human life. However, we also possess the capacity to heal even the most debilitating of
traumatic experiences. As Levine (2002) suggests, “A person who has successfully renegotiated
a traumatic event is transformed by the experience, and feels no need for revenge—shame
and blame dissolve in the powerful wake of renewal and self-acceptance.” Because of this I
have found that post traumatic stress reactions and behaviors can be used to build alliances
across opposing sides rather than cause them to break down into additional contentious
relationships.
This should be the unremitting thought of every third party negotiator as they begin their
process of skillfully and sensitively assisting others through the labyrinth of negotiation and
mediation.
***
TRAUMA AND THE HUMAN BELIEF SYSTEM

“I no longer believed in anything.”
Trauma is an overwhelming and seemingly unbearable experience. It is a reality that, until
it happens, was outside our range of the life experiences. However, once trauma happens, our
entire view of life can be forever changed. Our understanding of ourselves, our friends and
family, our place in the universe and even our belief system can be radically altered. It doesn’t
matter whether we are theists, atheists or agnostic, trauma causes us to question deeply our
understanding of our place in the universe and the seemingly precariousness of our existence
in the universe.
This questioning process and deep inner search for meaning is not simply a matter of one’s
faith being tested. It is far more complex than that. There is a natural neurological process
created by a traumatic experience that actually stimulates the reflective part of the brain
(neocortex) to help the individual reestablish their new belief system in light of this tragic
event. Built right into our human developmental process is the ability to experience a traumatic
event and restructure one’s thinking so as to be able to embrace the event, make sense of it and
gradually be able to return to a deeper embrace of life and a richer more meaningful belief
system.
Anyone who has struggled to recover from a traumatic event knows that they processed
the event over and over, intensely focusing on the trauma trying to find some sense in this
senselessness. Although logic never resolves the trauma, some kind of resolution eventually
comes that, once again, helps the individual rebuild a new belief system that helps them accept
life and incorporate this trauma into their history so they can move on in a new life direction.
Many people refer to this process as a deepening of one’s spirituality or faith. Although I
am not opposed to these terms, I have found that even people who do not embrace or espouse
any particular faith possess some understanding, no matter how vague or undefined, of how
they and their life fits into the bigger scheme of the universe—a personal cosmology. This
understanding is precisely what is undermined and often thrown into serious doubt under the
weight of a traumatic experience.
For example, a devoted Christian woman, whose daughter had been shot and killed, came
to me shortly after the experience and told me it was important that she not give up her faith
in God as a result of this experience. She said: “I am going to hold on deeply to my belief that
Jesus is Lord and God had a reason for this to happen.” From having worked with so many
people around trauma and their belief systems, I knew then that this woman was going to have
a very difficult time holding onto this belief system. She was simply going to try and fit this
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tragedy into her present day belief system without allowing trauma to shatter her belief system
and rebuild a new one. It has been my experience that people who try to force trauma into
an already established belief system inevitably become extremely rigid in their faith or leave
their faith entirely. They try to pray harder, be better and follow the ‘rule’ more ardently. In
my experience, this has never worked. Unhealed trauma usually produces two diametrically
opposed positions. It either makes a bitter, angry and resentful individual whose suppressed
rage and pain expresses itself though unbending doctrines, or it causes the individual to slide
into an apathetic view of all faith systems and completely abandon the idea of an inner belief
system. What people fail to realize is that because trauma is an experience outside one’s world
view, what it demands of us is that we expand our world view that actually includes the traumatic
experience as part of their new place in the universe.
Because a traumatic experience is so far beyond our normal world view, if we allow it, the
trauma recovery process will take us far beyond our previous view of the world and open up
for us an entirely new way of seeing and being in the universe. It has the potential of opening
up a place of deep inner wisdom about humanity that we would never have chosen to explore
otherwise. Trauma and the deeper moral and ethical vision and behaviors that come from it
are precisely what have the potential to lead the individual into a place of inner wisdom and
maturity.
If used correctly, traumatic experiences can help us to expand our vision of the world. They
can help us deepen our empathy for other’s suffering. They fill us with gratitude for the life
that we still have despite the damaging effects of the traumatic event. People who have healed
from trauma often reengage in life with a richer appreciation of humanity on a personal as
well as a global scale. This fact became very apparent after the Twin Towers collapsed. Many
people moved out of New York and back to their home towns; not because they were afraid, but
because they came to the realization that family, home, playing with their children and being
around their extended family was more important than the riches they were accumulating in
New York. The trauma of 9/11 opened their hearts to a deeper appreciation of life and a more
important way to spend their few years on this planet together.
***
TRAUMA IS A STEPPING STONE TO WISDOM

“I live every day to its fullest.”
“I do not wish tragedy on anyone, but ever since that accident, I never fail to tell my wife I love
her. I kiss my children every day. Life is richer, fuller and deeper than I have ever experienced.
It has more meaning and depth than it ever had before.” These kinds of statements and this
type of transformation of life after surviving a traumatic experience are very common. The
questions that beg to be asked are: “How and why does a traumatic experience cause us to
live a more profound life than we previously had? Why don’t we simply choose to live life at its
deepest level before a tragedy? Why do we need to have a traumatic experience to wake us up
to appreciate life to its fullest?” The answer to these questions will not be found in traditional
trauma studies, but rather through a deeper reflective approach to traumatic experiences and
the human species.
Humans are no different from other living organisms on this planet. We are genetically
encoded to let go of and recover from trauma as a way of ridding ourselves of any experience
that obstructs or interferes with the natural evolutionary process of the human body. Trauma
is not foreign to our species. It is in fact an integral part of our evolutionary process. We cannot
and will not rid ourselves of traumatic experiences no matter how much we try to isolate and
protect ourselves from these potentially painful and seemingly unbearable experiences of life.
Through the unending cycle of trauma and recovery, the human species learns how to adapt
to life threatening situations. This process of adaptation makes the species stronger and wiser
to protect it from future traumatic episodes. Trauma recovery is as natural and common as
trauma itself. Accepting trauma as part of life allows us to see trauma in a new light. With the
recovery from each traumatic episode of our lives, we give into and accept more easily the way
the universe has treated us. Paradoxically, the more we let go into life the more we discover that
we can re-take control of our lives and participate once again in the precarious nature of being
human. Only by letting go can we unlock ourselves from the past, be delivered into the future
and prepare ourselves for our next evolutionary experience.
When we experience one of life’s painful events, it initially feels overwhelming and
unbearable. The experience often overwhelms our entire sense of self. Our emotions, logic
and understanding of life can be shattered. We often wonder if we will ever recover from this
depth of pain and disruption. However, what we fail to recognize is that it is precisely this
shattering effect that forces us to think in new ways, feel emotions at deeper levels and relate to
others more compassionately. People who have healed successfully from trauma discover that
their life is richer, fuller and more caring than they had ever experienced before. This is what
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the evolution of the human species is about. The inner development of compassion, caring and
sensitivity to the pain of humanity emerges as a result of recovering from one’s own painful
experiences of life. This self-renewal that happens in the recovery process occurs because the
individual was forced to explore the painful depths of humanity they would otherwise not have
chosen to experience. This exploration creates a deeper sense of connectedness to life and
stronger bonds of connectedness to others and even the universe.
Once a trauma befalls us we are forced, whether we like it or not, whether we want to or
not, to follow its life-altering path. At times, this process often leads us through episodes of
helplessness and hopelessness. It can terrify us by unveiling the fragility, precariousness and
vulnerability of our humanity. It exposes us to the rawness of life as a living species on this
planet. It tears at the very fabric of our identity and radically redefines our view of life. However,
it is precisely because this experience has burned the bridges of our past ways of thinking that
we are forced into a new way of being in life. The old ways of thinking and relating no longer
suffice and a new way of being begins to emerge. We discover that on the other side of this
frightening journey we have the potential of emerging into a new life of maturity, compassion
and wisdom. People who consciously journey through this life-altering experience seem to
reintegrate and re-embody themselves in such a way that they are more receptive to a cosmic
or expanded experience of life that was previously unavailable to them. Maybe trauma is the
universe’s way of helping humanity to develop and mature as a wiser, more compassionate
species.
This era of human history is witnessing tremendous trauma on a global scale. It seems
impossible to stop such tragedy despite our greatest desires to do so. In light of this unstoppable,
irreversible and seemingly self-destructive era of our humanity, we need to ask: “What possible
good can come of all this violence?” Once again, if we view trauma as a part of life, we must
consider the possibility that the large scale trauma that we are experiencing has the potential
of helping us evolve into a more ethical, moral and caring species. This global trauma can be
viewed as the pain of the human species developing a greater wisdom which might possibly
lead us into a new era of human consciousness. It is Einstein who first recognized that with the
splitting of the atom our technology had advanced further than our moral and ethical ability
to handle it. Trauma, if used correctly, may be a way to help our species develop the moral and
ethical dimensions necessary to responsibly handle our technological advancement.
***
TRAUMA RELEASING EXERCISES
Dear Reader,
In most instances and for most people, Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) have
proven themselves to be safe as a self-administered process for trauma recovery.
However, the information and exercises presented in this book are not intended to
be a substitute for trauma recovery. Individuals with a history of physical limitations,
psychological or emotional stress should definitely consult their appropriate medical
health professionals for specific guidance prior to using these exercises. The author
is not a medical authority and is not qualified to diagnose or prescribe any therapy.
The information in this book is the personal opinion of the author and should not be
considered medical or psychological advice.Because of my sincere concern for your
health and safety I am including several disclaimers about these exercises. Given this
caution, the author and Trauma Recovery Assessment & Prevention Services (TRAPS)
shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, punitive, incidental, special or consequential
damages arising out of or in any way connected with the use of the Trauma Releasing
Exercises. Hopefully, this caution will help you to make an informed decision as to
how you should proceed with the Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE). My primary
concern is for your safe, expedient and healthy recovery process.
Respectfully,
David Berceli
NOTE: Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE) draw from the experience and wisdom
of other traditions such as: Bioenergetics, Tai Chi, Yoga and other martial arts and
eastern practices. The neurogenic tremors however belong to and come naturally
from the human body.
[62] David Berceli
***
Exercise # 1.
Turn both feet up onto the sides in the same direction. This will cause you to stand on the
outside of one foot and on the inside of the other foot. Hold this position for 30 seconds then
sway the body in the opposite direction and invert your feet. Continue swaying back and forth
like this very slowly five times in each direction.
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***
Exercise #2.
1. Take off your shoes and socks for best results.
2. Place one foot on the seat of a chair.
3. With the standing foot—come up and down onto your toes, raising your heal as high as
possible then lower your foot to the floor.
4. Repeat coming up onto your toes and back down about 15-20 times. This may cause
tightness, burning or pain in the calf muscle. This is normal, but you should stop if it is too
painful.
5. Now, raise your heal 1 inch off the floor and hold it there for 30 to 60 seconds..
6. Come to a standing position on both legs and vigorously shake the leg you just exercised
to eliminate the pain, burning or discomfort.
7. Repeat this same exercise with the other foot. When finished, vigorously shake the leg to
relax the muscles.
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***
Exercise #3.
Hold one foot with your hand. Slowly bend down and touch the ground with your free
hand. While touching the ground, bend your standing knee as deeply as you can and then
straighten it. Repeat this process 10-15 times, depending on the strength of your legs. Although
this exercise is a great leg stressor and very useful, many people may find it too difficult or
painful for their knees. This exercise can be modified by holding onto the back of the seat of
a chair rather than bending down to the floor. When holding onto the chair, simply bend your
standing knee as comfortably as possible and then straighten it. Repeat this about 5 times. If
this exercise is too difficult even with using the chair, please consider it an optional exercise
and move onto the next exercise.
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***
Exercise #4.
Stand with your legs spread apart so that there is some tension on the inner leg muscles
(1). Bend forward until you touch the ground (2). You should feel a stretch on the inner thigh
(adductors) and the backs of the legs (hamstrings). Then slowly walk your hands over to one
foot (3). Hold this position for three slow, deep breaths. Then, walk your hands over to the
other foot (4). Again, hold this position for three deep breaths. Then, walk your hands back
to the middle and reach between your legs behind you (5). Hold this position for three deep
breaths. You might begin to feel some mild shaking in your legs. Allow this to happen. To
complete the exercise slowly, come back into a standing position.
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[72] David Berceli
***
Exercise #5.
Make two fists and place them on the top of your buttocks. Push your pelvis slightly forward
so that there is a gentle bow in your back. You should feel a stretch at the front of your thigh.
Then, gently twist from the hips looking behind you in one direction. Turn again from the hips
in the opposite direction looking behind you. To finish, come to a standing position.
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***
Exercise #6.
Sit with your back against the wall as though there was a chair underneath you. This will put
stress on the upper leg muscles (quadriceps muscles). After a few minutes, you might begin to
feel some slight pain, burning, tightness or quivering in these muscles. When it becomes slightly
painful, move up the wall about two more inches. The quivering may get slightly stronger and
the pain will begin to subside. Once again, if this position becomes slightly painful, move
your back up the wall two more inches. You should try to find a position where your legs are
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quivering and there is no pain. After five minutes of quivering, come off the wall and hang over
forward. Keep your knees slightly bent while you touch the ground. The quivering will most
likely increase. Stay there for about three to four minutes.
***
Exercise #7.
1. Lay with your feet together and knees relaxed and open as far as possible.
2. Lift you pelvis off the ground for one minute being sure to keep your knees open.
3. Set your pelvis down on the floor and let your knees relax open for one minute. You may
begin to feel some shaking or quivering in your legs.
4. Close your knees together about two inches. Lay in this position for two minutes. The
quivering may get stronger. If you find it pleasant and comfortable, allow the quivering to
continue.
5. Close your knees again two more inches and allow the shaking to come into the legs.
The quivering will become increasingly stronger. At any point if you are uncomfortable with it,
straighten your legs and relax on the floor.
6. Close your knees again two more inches and allow the shaking to continue. At this point
you can continue shaking until you feel it is time to stop. Do not shake more than 15 minutes,
as your body can become fatigued.
7. To finish the exercise, turn the bottoms of your feet so they are flat on the floor. Keep
your knees slightly apart and the shaking will continue. Allow this movement to move into your
pelvis and lower back. To end the exercise, simply let your feet slide down so that you are laying
flat on the floor. If you prefer, you can roll over onto your side and curl up to rest.
[78] David Berceli
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q: How often should I do these exercises? A: Since these exercises are natural to the body,
they can be practiced every day without harm. Some people find them calming and therefore
do them in the evening as a way of relaxing. Others find them energizing and do them in the
morning or afternoons when they would like a bit more energy. It is often useful to incorporate
these exercises into your regular exercise routine. Simply add another 15 minutes onto the end
of your exercise routine so that you close with the shaking. This will relieve any stress created
in the muscles as a result of your work out. However, the most important point to remember is
to follow your body. When you become sensitive to your body, it will inform you of when you
need to relieve stress.
If you are just beginning the exercises and do not have any adverse physical, psychological
or emotional reactions to them, you can practice them every other day for a month. It helps
to orient your body to the shaking and allow you to gradually decrease the tension in your
body. After that, you can reduce the number of times you do them to every three days or
approximately twice a week. If you do them less than that, your body will once again begin to
accumulate stress and tighten up.
Q: Does the shaking ever stop? A: As long as you are inhabiting your body you should
be able to shake. Remember that it is a natural mechanism designed to relieve deep chronic
tension in the body. It should always be available to you in the event that you need it. Once the
deep tensions of the body are released and life’s traumas and tensions have subsided, your body
will simply produce a very fine tremor that feels a bit like a mild and pleasant purring.
Q: What does the strong or gentle shaking mean? A: If the shaking is obviously very strong
it is an indicator that the large muscles in the body are breaking up ‘iceberg-like’ tension in the
muscles. These tension blockages create strong shaking until they break up and the energy can
flow more easily. You often can experience very strong shaking give way to milder shaking and
then return to strong shaking again. This is simply the body’s way of systematically relieving
the patterns of stress deeply embedded in the muscles. Just allow the body to shake the way it
needs to. It fully understands what it must do next to soften and relax the patterns of tension
that have been created over the years.
Q: How should I be shaking? A: Since each person has a unique set of experiences in life,
we have all developed our own unique set of tension patterns. For this reason, there is no ‘one’
correct way of shaking. There are as many ways as there are bodies. You can often observe
similar patterns of shaking because the muscle structure of the human body is identical. It is
[82] David Berceli
simply a matter of following the shaking as it works its way through the body. The best advice
regarding this question is: NEVER JUDGE YOUR BODY—JUST OBSERVE IT! I have many
clients who say: “I wish I was shaking in a different way.” Or, “I wish my back would shake.” It is
not a matter of wishing your body to be shaking in any manner other than the way it is. It is the
body simply shaking as it needs to. It knows exactly how and where it must shake next to relax
itself. All the dialogue in the mind is simply ego interference and judgment. Try to avoid this
as much as possible.
Q: If I get more shaking in the standing position should I stay there? A: Different people
get shaking in different ways. This depends a lot on the tension patterns in the body and their
ability to release. If you get shaking standing and that feels more comfortable for you then
continue to stand and shake. Just remember that you may get the shaking in a different position
each time you do the exercises. Eventually, you should be able to get the shaking in a variety of
positions. Each one has its own value for the body.
***
REFERENCES
***
Arendt, H. (2000). The Portable Hannah Arendt. London, England: Penguin.
***
Broome, B., Murray, J. (2002). Improving third-party decisions at choice points: A Cyprus
case study. Negotiation Journal, 1, 75-98.
***
Holloway, R. (2002). On Forgiveness. Edinburgh, Scotland: Canongate Books Ltd.
***
Kessler, L. (2000).This report is from the Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard
Medical School, Boston, MA. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 61(5), 4-12.
***
Koch, L. (1981). The Psoas Book. Guinea Pig Publications. Felton, CA.
***
Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
California: Jossey-Bass Pub.
***
Levine, P. (2002). Trauma—The vortex of violence. Foundation for human enrichment. P.O.
Box 1872 Lyons, Co. 80540. Retrieved from http://www.traumahealing.com
***
Perry, B. (1996). Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation and Use-Dependent
Development of the Brain: How States Become Traits. Infant Mental Health Journal.
Retrieved from http://www.trauma-pages.com/perry96.htm
***
Van der Kolk, B. (1994) The body keeps the score: Memory and the emerging psychobiology
of post traumatic stress. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 1, 253-265.

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INTRODUCTION: “Trauma recovery needs a new paradigm.” xi

MAN MADE OF CLAY

TRAUMA’S RESIDUAL EFFECTS:

PSOAS MUSCLE DEFENSE:

TRAUMA RELEASE MECHANISM

OPIOIDS AND THE OPIUM SENSATION

INTUITION AND THE ABDOMINAL-PELVIC

ENEMY IMAGE SYNDROME

SUICIDE: A SELF-SABATOGE OF THE LIVING

Trauma victims are banished from society because….

Expressions of denial of PTSD….

TRAUMA—THE NEW EPIDEMIC OF THE

FINANCIAL PROFITABILITY WITH A

INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

TRAUMA AND THE HUMAN BELIEF SYSTEM

TRAUMA IS A STEPPING STONE TO WISDOM

TRAUMA RELEASING EXERCISES

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

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