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"The longest journey is from the head to the heart."
It is not uncommon for people who have suffered complex trauma to be extremely intelligent. It makes sense that if the amygdala is overactive, and because of this, we find that emotions are not necessarily our friend, it only seems natural that we make up for this through exercising our intellect or the left side of our brain. Perhaps there is a secret hope that if we are just smart enough then we should also be able to figure out what the heck is going on with us.The journey to healing, however, does not lie in self-help books, get-well quick gimmicks, seminars, gurus, or even school. The journey to healing is in releasing energy. The energy that has become stuck or trapped in the nervous system at the time of the traumatic incident(s). Unfortunately, talking about the trauma, while in some settings can be therapeutic, often becomes an episode of an intellectual festive.In other words, as long as we stay in our heads, we never have to move to the heart. We never have to move through the feelings. We never have to move through the body sensations and eventually move through it until the distress is gone.Perhaps this is why certain therapies like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, and Art therapies, are in my opinion, the most successful in helping people release distressing symptoms. We can analyze what happened, why it happened, who did it, why they did it, where they did it, and how they did it to death.But the fact remains until we release it through our feelings and body sensations these memories just stay stuck. Stuck in our nervous system. Stuck in our brains. Forever.
