Being With Your Body's Traumatic Memories During the Holidays in Food and Non-Food Ways
The holiday season is often associated with warmth, joy, and togetherness. However, when you've experienced past trauma with family or in the environment you grew up in, this time of year can be a source of stress, triggering your body's survival states. This can also be a time when you're face to face with expectations of how you're supposed to show up or what you're supposed to do to celebrate, unresolved family issues, and your body's memories of being around specific environments, homes, or people.
The somatic memory of trauma refers to how the body retains the physical and sensory experiences associated with a traumatic event. Trauma can leave a lasting imprint on the body's nervous system and musculature. The body's somatic memory is a complex interplay of various physiological and neurological processes.
Here are some ways in which the body somatically remembers trauma:
Neurobiological Changes:
Traumatic experiences can lead to changes in the brain, particularly in areas related to the stress response. The amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex may be affected, influencing emotional regulation, memory processing, and decision-making.
Hormonal Responses:
Trauma can trigger the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones play a role in the fight or flight response and can have long-lasting effects on the body's stress reactivity.
Muscle Memory:
The body remembers trauma through muscle memory. Chronic muscle tension, pain, or changes in posture can persist long after the traumatic event. This is often the body's attempt at trying to protect itself from perceived threats.
Autonomic Nervous System Dysregulation:
Trauma can disrupt and dysregulate the autonomic nervous system resulting in heightened arousal, hypervigilance, and/or difficulties returning to a calm state.
Sensory Triggers:
Certain sensory stimuli associated with the traumatic event, such as smells, sounds, or visual cues, can act as triggers. These stimuli can activate an emotional or physiological response, even in the absence of immediate danger.
Dissociation:
In response to trauma, you may disconnect from your thoughts, identity, consciousness, memory, emotions, and where you leave or detach from your body.
Interoception:
Trauma can impact interoception, which is your ability to know how your body feels and sense and interpret signals from your body's internal environment. You may struggle with accurately perceiving and understanding bodily sensations, leading to difficulties in regulating emotions and responding to stress.
Implicit Memory:
Traumatic memories are often stored in implicit memory, a type of memory that operates unconsciously. This can lead to the re-experiencing of trauma through flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive thoughts.
Understanding the somatic memory of trauma is important when it comes to the holidays, holiday gatherings, and your relationship with food. Your body remembers what has happened in different environments. If your holidays are filled with going to homes and places where events occurred that put your body into a fight, flight, freeze, or flop state, you may notice an increasing urge to reach for food. Your body is trying to do what it did back then to protect itself.
When the sympathetic nervous system is activated, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol. These hormones can influence your eating behaviors, often leading to cravings for foods that will support the production of serotonin and dopamine to feel some comfort and calm. Regulating with food becomes a way to navigate the traumatic body memories arising and the heightened emotional state triggered by being around family and specific environments. Yet, I know for many that they're tired of turning to food to help them feel safe. You may be here listening to this episode because you deeply desire to navigate this holiday season staying connected to your body and no longer self abandoning.
Even when your body's somatic memory is activated, with practice, you can still feel like you have a choice in how to respond to your body that guides it into a sense of safety where you can make different food decisions.
So here are three somatic explorations you can dive into this holiday season:
1. Get curious about your self expectations
Check in on your inner dialogue going into any holiday situation. Do you have any expectations that this is going to be the year you don't binge eat? Or promising yourself that you're not going to eat X, Y, Z things? This sends the message to the body that you're not allowed to rely on some really effective food and food behaviors. You might play with creating a simple intention like you're going to practice being kind and compassionate to yourself no matter what you do or do not eat. Providing your body with a sense of empowered choice can start now before you even get to any holiday events.
2. Look out for cues of safety
Trauma can prime your body to look out for cues of threat. Have you ever noticed walking into a holiday party and immediately scanning your environment and looking around? Throughout human evolution, being aware of our surroundings was crucial for survival. When entering a new environment, we needed to quickly assess potential threats. Your brain is wired to scan for danger. This instinct can be used in your favor though. When you walk into any holiday or family gathering, consciously scan your environment for cues of safety. That might be a person who provides you with a sense of calm, smiling faces, the temperature of the room, the sparkle of lights, the smell in the air, or the sound of music or laughter. You can show your body that even in an environment that may have been remembered as threatening in the past can be processed differently in the present. Point out to your body what's different. Sometimes when an environment feels familiar, your body goes into its familiar response. So you can show your body that you're not in that past situation and assess what feels and looks different about this current situation.
3. Connect first, then eat
Regardless of how much you prepare and how many regulating resources you have, your body's sympathetic nervous system still may get activated. Your body is doing what it's meant to do and moving you into a state to keep you alert to protect you. This means that you will be biologically drawn to specific foods and it will feel difficult to stop eating them. I want to normalize that when you're having a hard time not overeating a particular food, this has more to do with the state that you're eating that food in. You can't simply tell yourself to stop. That would be like telling yourself to stop running when you know there's a tiger chasing you. So you can go into this experience prepared that some foods will be hard to stop eating if you're body has moved into a survival state. The practice can be to slow down before you make any food decisions and check in with yourself. Self connection can be a regulating experience as you connect with what is and make space for your emotions and sensations. From here, you can do your best to reference your body and sense what food decisions will support you in feeling safe and secure in that moment. This may mean that you own the decision to eat a particular food that you know supports you in feeling temporary inner calm where you can give yourself space to receive what you want from that food and welcome the urge to keep eating it knowing that this response may also be present.
Whatever ends up playing out with food this holiday season, please know that this was you doing the best you could navigating your body's memory and nervous system. I've been told by many of you that this podcast has been a regulating resource in your life. What you might also explore is choosing an episode you might listen to on your drive home to bring in a cue of safety in this transitional time. I hope this holiday season goes smoothly for you and looking forward to connecting with you all next week!