Show Me Where It Hurts

Posted by Cassidy Miller, MA, MFT Therapist at Cascades on June 27, 2016

Clients come to the wilderness wounded. Some wounds are obvious and come with overt behaviors that identify them as in need of repair. Some wounds one is not yet even aware of, having lived life a certain skillful way orchestrated to disguise and not feel pain. Often words don’t suffice in the healing of this sort of trauma and deep seeded hurt.

"From my vantage point as a researcher we know that the impact of trauma is upon the survival or animal part of the brain. That means that our automatic danger signals are disturbed, and we become hyper- or hypo-active: aroused or numbed out. We become like frightened animals. We cannot reason ourselves out of being frightened or upset. Of course, talking can be very helpful in acknowledging the reality about what’s happened and how it’s affected you, but talking about it doesn’t put it behind you because it doesn’t go deep enough into the survival brain."
-Bessle Van der Kolk

In the wilderness we implement an eclectic use of interventions to help clients become aware of their wounds, know them, fully feel them, honor them and begin to let them go. Yoga, art and music are some of these tools we offer to help young people begin to express themselves. Engaging the whole brain, in the collaborative project of becoming present to become whole, is essential.

“In the long term the largest problem of being traumatized is that it’s hard to feel that anything that’s going on around you really matters.”
- Bessle Van der Kolk

Creativity is a powerful vessel by which to access otherwise untouchable information stored away in the psyche. Whether by poetry, song, sound, melody, painting, drawing, or dancing, connecting the body and mind in these ways has a profound impact on ones sense of themselves and of what is possible.

Unresolved loss and grief, common chronic symptoms of trauma, can suffocate a spirit. Life can feel unmanageable without an elaborate system of avoidance and numbing. Most addictions and destructive life habits form from this place of suffering. When one learns new ways of accessing and expressing themselves the fog lifts and more effective therapeutic work can address the issues underlying. “Trauma has nothing whatsoever to do with cognition. It has to do with your body being reset to interpret the world as a dangerous place. It’s not something you can talk yourself out of” Bessle Van der Kolk. So we teach young people the language they need to put words to their experience as they need to. But more, we teach them how to show us where their wounds are. In so doing they stumble into the opportunity to also see where their gifts dwell. Through guitars, drums, paints and space and we guide them back to themselves in ways in which words would never suffice.