Lessons from a splinter

A splinter and the wisdom of the body

I got a splinter in our hotel room here in Paris 

I didn’t have tweezers and it was Sunday- no pharmacies were open

It’s on my index finger in the exact place I use to do everything 

Extremely present and annoying

Today my first stop was the pharmacy for tweezers 

Over priced

Duplicative since I have some at home

But at this point I’ll pay whatever it takes

The splinter won’t budge

Yesterday it was protruding just out of grasp, but would have been an easy fix with the right tool

Today it’s buried, healed under a layer of skin

Encased in fluid

The body working to protect me from it, dissolve it, absorb it the best way it can- launching a brilliant response to a foreign object 

I’m sure eventually it would be able to fully get rid of it - this is why tattoos fade, the body will aways work at getting rid of things but it’s not always that fast or perfect at it, it takes time.  

Part of the beauty of being human is we can give our body tools that speed natural processes or aid the body in removing and repairing things.  

Plants and animals don’t typically have this ability (though a great ape was observed using a plant for medicine recently).

I say all this because it’s an excellent analogy to how the body responds to trauma

With immediate response to remove it from the body and the repercussions are minimal 

But wait a bit and it gets expensive and timely

The body will hold on and bury it

It will still hurt

You’ll have to modify your behavior to avoid that pain. 

You may even ask others to modify their behavior to avoid that pain 

Don’t touch, don’t trigger

So what are the ‘tweezers’ of trauma?

Expression through:

Movement and Voice

Movement:

When animals experience fight or flight (maybe avoiding being eaten or run over) they stop for a moment and then shake violently. They’re ridding their bodies of the excess energy that went into the nervous system response and their body becomes regulated again. 

Humans have forgotten/ socially restricted this shaking response. You still see it in extreme shock and sometimes in children. 

It’s still a great tool. Research Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) if you’re interested. 

Other options for movement for trauma release:

rage session- hitting a bed or couch with a tennis racket or bat with loud music

Dance without a mirror and eyes closed 

Tapping- EFT- emotional freedom technique - can retrain the nervous system 

Breathwork- David Elliott has some good recordings/guidance on Spotify

Other somatic therapy practices- there are lots but these are the ones I’ve used personally and am most familiar with

One more note about movement: a lot of people use exercise ‘as therapy.’ And there’s nothing inherently right or wrong about this. It’s always good to move the body and move energy. It’s just different than working with trauma in the body. Personally, I feel like cardio like running or spinning or other high stress activities are too intense for my system. I much prefer walking, hiking and Pilates for general movement. 

Voice:

The most obvious and probably under used mechanism is crying and screaming. Another response that has been socialized as bad, wrong and weak starting in childhood. 

This can actually be harder to access as an adult if you are really shut down. 

Your body wants to keep you safe. If your caretakers shut down your ‘negative’ emotions, they’re going to register as a threat to your nervous system. That’s why movement is first on this list- sometimes you can access deeper emotions by moving first, especially to music. 

With my toddler, I’m very convicted in letting her cry as much and as fully as she needs to.  I don’t tell her to lower her volume or try to minimize her pain, I don’t care if others are uncomfortable with this. I want her to release everything she needs to in the moment so she doesn’t hold onto any of it. 

I read recently that adults that were shut down as children emotionally fear crying as adults because they don’t know when it will stop- they’ve never reached the natural end of crying. 

Writing is a different form of voice - and an important one. It becomes a private mirror for you to see experiences from a new perspective. For me it’s been the single-most important tool to working through trauma. I write about my process on the internet but I write a lot more privately and have since I was a little girl. 

Talking is another way we process trauma. Whether to a professional or a friend or family member, being able to really voice your trauma is another tool to get at the embedded splinter. 

But it is not the only way and it is not absolutely necessary. We all process differently. 

It’s your job to learn your system and figure out which tools are most effective and gentle. You can go too hard with all of these, just like I could take a sharper tool than a tweezer and really mess up my finger in the process of getting out the splinter.

Trust the body’s response to tools, back off if things get too painful or overwhelming and try something different until you feel the trauma holds less charge and the splinter releases.