PTSD Professional Perspective: PTSD and Touch Therapy, Part 1
Friday, July 23rd, 2010 • PTSD Guest Post: Professional Perspective •
For many survivors, bodywork can bring great relief and forward motion in PTSD recovery. Today, Kimberly Pledger explores the benefits of massage.
How massage can help the ten physical symptoms of PTSD
The French have an expression — ‘être bien dans sa peau’ — which literally translates as “to be well in one’s skin” meaning “to be at ease with oneself.” If you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, you will know that you are no longer at ease. Aside from the flashbacks that torment your waking hours and the nightmares that haunt your sleep, there is an overriding sense that you are not yourself. It is bad enough that you feel disconnected from other people, but worse you feel detached from yourself. Not only is your mind playing tricks on you, but you can no longer trust your body because now it’s stiff when it used to be supple, it’s tired and weak when it used to be strong and a lot of the time you just can’t feel it at all.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is classified as a mental health diagnosis and the primary methods of treatment involve anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medication and talking therapies. Yet, despite its classification, PTSD is a prime example of the body and mind working as an integrated whole, where changes happen in tandem on a mental, physical and physiological level. In other words, PTSD exists in the mind and the body. This means that the current treatment models for PTSD, based as they are on an outdated separation between the functioning of the mind and body, overlook the physical symptoms of this disorder. Recovery from PTSD is not just about minimising or eradicating the psychological symptoms, it’s also about feeling yourself again, which means feeling in charge of your body and being able to trust it again. This article will review the physical symptoms of PTSD and consider how touch therapy (massage), as a complement to medical and psychotherapeutic treatment, can help you regain your sense of self.
The Physical Symptoms of PTSD
There are ten physical symptoms commonly associated with PTSD so lets look at each of them in turn and consider how regular massage can help to address them.
Insomnia
Insomnia is itself a symptom of the hypervigilance experienced with PTSD — it stands to reason that if you’re always on guard and you never switch off then you’re going to struggle to get to sleep and stay asleep. The physiological reason you are hypervigilant is that your sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive. The sympathetic nervous system is made up of the parts of your brain and body that kick in when you’re in danger and control whether you fight back, flee or play dead. Positive touch stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system — the parts of your body and brain that are activated when you are relaxed and experiencing something that gives you pleasure. The rhythmic stroking and kneading of the body that takes place during massage activates the parasympathetic nervous system and induces a feeling of sleepiness. This feeling normally starts a short while into a massage and is accompanied by a sense of well-being which should last for several hours after the massage has finished. In fact, it is not uncommon for a person to feel the effects of a massage for a few days afterwards so you can see how regular massage could really help someone with PTSD to overcome insomnia.
Exhaustion
Exhaustion as a symptom of PTSD is partly the knock-on effect of insomnia, but also a result of the body being stretched to its limits because it is always on alert. Massage deactivates the parts of the body and mind that are stimulated when under threat and effectively reverses the effects of hypervigilance. Instead of feeling wide awake and jittery you feel sleepy and calm; instead of working in overdrive your body moves into cruise control and eventually slows down into sleep. If this happens regularly it reminds the body that rest is possible and desirable so over a period of time you start to wake up feeling refreshed instead of exhausted.
Accelerated Heart Rate & High Blood Pressure (Hypertension)
In order to maintain the heightened state of readiness demanded by the sympathetic nervous system in a person with PTSD, the heart beats faster so it can quickly pump blood to where it is needed most — the larger muscles to get them ready for fight or flight. One of the factors in high blood pressure is an accelerated heart rate, which is why hypertension is commonly found in people with PTSD.
Massage effectively switches off the sympathetic nervous system and activates the parasympathetic so the heart slows down, breathing becomes deeper and a feeling of well-being spreads through the body. There have been several studies showing how regular massage can help to keep blood pressure at lower levels.
The hormone cortisol is known to be a factor in hypertension and is also evident in high levels in people with PTSD. Although it is not yet fully understood how cortisol contributes to either PTSD or high blood pressure, what is known is that cortisol levels drop following massage.
Kim goes over the remaining 6 symptoms in Part 2.
Kimberley is a touch therapist practicing in London. She specializes in mental health and the body and is the only massage therapist in Great Britain to be a member of the UK Register of Trauma Specialists.
For more information about Kimberley’s work visit her website www.kimberleypledger.com
Follow her on Twitter http://twitter.com/KimbersP
Read her blog http://ahealthydebate.com/
The opinions in this post are solely those of the author. To contribute to ‘Professional Perspective’ contact Michele
Tags: Body Therapy, Exhaustion, Hypertension, insomnia, Massage Therapy, post traumatic stress disorder, ptsd, symptoms, Touch Therapy
Thank you for this post. I’ve been lurking here a bit, but this entry really touched me (pun intended
).
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia five years ago, and because of this site I was able to tell the drug-pushers to go to blazes and search for a therapist to heal my mind and, by extension, my body.
Massage was the only thing that helped with the pain to begin with. After I started researching PTSD and worked with my new therapist, I now realize why it worked, and this post details those reasons quite nicely.
And, by the way, I now have no physical pain at all. Still working through some emotional issues, but being pain-free is a miracle and inspires me to keep going every day.
@GC — !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Congratulations! Truly a wonderful story. I suffered with horrible fibromyalgia, too. Was bedridden with it for a while. Amazing what healing work can be done in the mind when the body is more at peace, isn’t it? I think sometimes all of the coping drains our ability to focus and have strength to do healing work. And then, we find a little (or a big!) relief and the whole game changes. Thank you so much for sharing your story.
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[...] Last week Kimberley Pledger introduced us to 4 of the physical aspects of PTSD and how massage can help. This week she gives us 6 more…. [...]
Hello,
A well written blog.
PTSD is tricky. It is strange that the symptoms seem to be the same for everybody. However, both the signs and the remedies seem to be different according to the different personalities.
Andy
@Andy — Absolutely true! We are all individual in our traumas and healing journeys, but I believe we can gain strength from each other’s similar experience of symptoms.
Hello Michele,
Thanks for the reply. My first message was written when I had a bad case of swine flu. This is now on the mend.
I know how (in theory) to resolve my PTSD Exhaustion problem (written on the Doctor’s certificate). But the practice is a different matter.
Andy