Dang, it Happened Again-Breaking Free from Patterns.
- Stephanie Dasher
- Dec 13, 2024
- 5 min read
Breaking Free from Patterns: Understanding the Body, Mind, and Patterns
Have you ever felt like you’re stuck in the same patterns or cycles, no matter what you do? Maybe you’re fully aware of the habits that hold you back, or perhaps it seems like life keeps throwing challenges your way. It’s frustrating, right? The truth is, there might be biological and societal reasons behind why you can’t seem to break free.
Let’s examine how our bodies and minds hold onto stress and past experiences and how understanding this connection can help us shift toward a more aligned and fulfilling life.
Breaking Free from Patterns
The Body Remembers
Renowned experts like Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score) and Dr. Peter
Levine (Waking the Tiger) have explored how life’s experiences, including stress and trauma, are stored in the body. When stressful or traumatic experiences go unmetabolized—meaning we don’t fully process or release their effects—the body holds onto those energies. This is often called the incomplete arousal cycle, where the physical and emotional responses to an event remain “stuck” in the body (Levine, 1997; van der Kolk, 2014).
Stress is not just about big, traumatic events. Chronic stress, such as stress from work demands, caregiving, financial strain, or systemic inequality, can also dysregulate the nervous system over time. These experiences can become held in the body, leading to patterns of behavior and physical sensations that can feel difficult to shift.
Cultural and Social Causes of Stress and Trauma
It’s impossible to separate individual experiences from the cultural and societal contexts in which they occur. Social and cultural influences such as systemic racism, poverty, inequality, and lack of access to resources are also sources of chronic stress for many individuals that extend beyond personal stress or trauma. These stressors can merge over time, inhibiting both mental and physical health.
Some studies have shown that individuals who experience discrimination or financial insecurity are at greater risk of developing health issues related to chronic stress, including anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular disease (Harrell et al., 2011; Sapolsky, 2004). In addition, intergenerational trauma, which includes historical oppression or adverse events, can impact entire families and communities for years (Yehuda et al., 2005).
Understanding the broader systems at play is essential to fully addressing the effects of stress and trauma. Healing involves not only individual work but also creating equitable and supportive environments.
The Science Behind Stuck Patterns
Our nervous system plays a huge role in shaping our behavior and responses to stress. According to Dr. Stephen Porges and his Polyvagal Theory, the nervous system creates a cascade of physical and chemical reactions in response to perceived threats. These automatic responses influence our thoughts, emotions, and even the stories we tell ourselves about the world (Porges, 2011).
When stressors are ongoing, such as in environments of inequity or instability, the nervous system remains in a heightened state of vigilance. This constant activation leads to behavior patterns—such as avoidance, reactivity, or numbing.
How to Break the Cycle
These behaviors are not abnormal but are instead instinctual and a beautiful part of the body’s system to ensure survival. These reactions can help us ask for help, fight back, protect ourselves, and ensure our safety. Rather than feel shame for our body’s response to stress, we can honor its wisdom and ability to create behaviors and reactions that ensure our safety during distress. Breaking the cycle doesn’t involve getting rid of these innate defenses, instead it involves initiating awareness of unconscious behaviors and increasing our window of tolerance.
So, how can we metabolize stress and trauma to create lasting change in our lives? Here are some mind-body approaches that can help:
1. Somatic Experiencing
Somatic experiencing, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, focuses on gently exploring what’s happening in the body without reliving stressful or traumatic events. By tuning into physical sensations with curiosity, individuals can release stored energy and allow their nervous systems to complete the arousal cycles that may have been interrupted (Levine, 1997).
2. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
Pat Ogden pioneered sensorimotor psychotherapy, which combines body awareness with traditional talk therapy to address the effects of stress and trauma. This approach emphasizes noticing and shifting physical patterns—such as posture, breath, and movement—tied to past experiences. Clients learn new, more adaptive responses to situations that once felt overwhelming (Ogden et al., 2006).
3. Community and Cultural Healing
Metabolizing and integrating experiences aren’t just about doing individual work. It means that we need to address the cultural and social contributors to stress and trauma. Many
Individuals find it beneficial to connect to community support systems, advocate for systemic change, and reconnect with cultural traditions and rituals, which can assist in dealing with ongoing community and cultural stress and trauma. Connecting in these ways can help provide a sense of meaning, belonging, and resilience. Community activism and reconnecting with ancestral knowledge can help metabolize the collective impact of stress and trauma. Pat Ogden says, "People talk about ancestral trauma, but there is also ancestral wisdom and resilience. We can tap into ancestral resilience." It's also important to acknowledge that for marginalized people, or those in war zones, the trauma is ongoing, and they need a different kind of support that acknowledges this ongoing experience and is validating in addition to access to tools to support resilience and recovery in repeatedly stressful environments.
4. Mind-Body Integration
Somatic Experiencing, sensorimotor approaches, and mindfulness skills emphasize integrating the body and mind. By combining the mind and body, an individual can develop practices to help reduce “time travel” by increasing the ability to be present in the moment. This also allows individuals to notice and track internal physiological reactions to stimuli in real-time, allowing them to access resources and metabolize experiences as they arise.
Your Journey Forward
If you’ve been stuck, know you’re not alone—and there’s hope. Understanding how stress and trauma, both individual and systemic, affect the body and mind is the first step toward meaningful change. By working with somatic approaches and addressing social and cultural factors, you can create new patterns that align with the life you truly want to live.
Are you ready to start your journey? Your body already holds the wisdom you need to heal.
References
Harrell, S. P., Burford, T. I., Cage, B. N., Nelson, T. M., Shearon, S., Thompson, A., & Green, S. (2011). Multiple pathways linking racism to health outcomes. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 8(1), 143–157. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X11000178
Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the body: A sensorimotor approach to psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers: The acclaimed guide to stress, stress-related diseases, and coping. Holt Paperbacks.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Yehuda, R., Daskalakis, N. P., Lehrner, A., Desarnaud, F., Bader, H. N., Makotkine, I., Flory, J. D., Bierer, L. M., & Meaney, M. J. (2005). Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: Putative role of epigenetic mechanisms. World Psychiatry, 14(2), 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20205
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