How TRAUMA Is Preventing Your Progress In Fitness
Are you asking yourself right now… What does trauma have to do with my progress in fitness?
Well, the answer is.. ALOT.
A traumatic experience (big or small) (past or present) can affect personal actions, choices, and lifestyle. Also, trauma can find a permanent home in cells and can creates havoc on your physiology.
As a long time women’s Coach with a Masters in Psychology (Psychotherapist), I have witnessed countless women overreact to eating something, shut down because a workout didn’t go as expected, panic, avoid communication, rage, disappear and simply be unable to “cope” with the overwhelming urge to binge, restrict, workout excessively, or resort to other unhealthy behaviours.
So, my job is to look for signs of trauma to help explain their resistance to change and their bodys response to coaching.
What I found was painful childhood memories, abusive or absent adults, sexual assault, emotional neglect, substance abuse, military service, displacement, miscarriages, refugee status, natural disasters, divorce, grief and general loss.
But today more than ever, it’s apparent that trauma of all kinds can negatively affect client progress. Racism, homophobia, poverty, sexism, ableism, transphobia, fatphobia.
Unsafe neighborhoods and communities. Lack of power and resources.
Violence, abuse, and bullying from the people who are supposed to protect them, bad partners, police issues, workplace harassment, health systems, schools, the government. Economic uncertainty. A global pandemic.
No wonder many of us are having a hard time managing our eating, exercise, and self-care.
Thankfully, humans are resilience and can adapt and change, no matter what!
As a “Trauma Aware Coach” and Psychotherapist, I encourage clients to explore experiences and feelings that may give me clues to why they overeat/under eat and neglect their self-care. This helps me identify strategies that can help clients get unstuck and avoid being re-traumatized so they can progress.
Trauma is anything that overwhelms our existing resources and ability to cope.
How is trauma different from stress?
When we experience stress of any type, the body enters an alarm phase. In a normal situation, we eventually recover and get back to our baseline, or maybe even come away stronger and more resilient.
But with trauma, we experience the stressor so intensely that we’re unable to go through all the steps we need to recover. We end up worse off than where we started. Stuck in that alarm state.
There are several types of trauma with varying degrees of severity, but they all can affect our health, wellbeing, and ability to care for ourselves:
Big “T” Trauma
Little “T” Trauma
Collective Trauma
Intergenerational Trauma
But the commonality is that it is the person’s perception of the trauma (big or small) that determines the how they recover and grow from the experience.
Even though trauma is processed differently, we do see common struggles in how a person eats, moves and lives. Often, we can see evidence of trauma from the client to response to simple coaching practices. For example, let’s say I needed to add protein to meals, the client may become agitated, disengaged or agree with me and then not follow the nutritional guidelines.
How Trauma Affected How We Eat, Train And Live
Trauma affects each person differently, but trauma does take space within out bodies and cells. And.. trauma changes the brain.
Trauma can be seen in how a person responds, reacts, communicates and how they feel about themselves.
Here are a few common behaviours I may see in clients:
They cannot identify their emotional needs or physical sensations (ie) They do not know how to read their internal cues about being hungry or emotionally eating. Often, they cannot gauge their “pain” and “pleasure” cue… A common response is; “I just don’t know why I ate all this cookies.”
They have “memory issues” Often, they will not remember things easily, particularly events from their past. A common response is “I don’t remember what I had for dinner or what happened when…”
They often “freeze or are paralyzed” when they are responding to inquiries. They avoid topics in coaching and deflect behaviours of over eating or underrating to “ I don’t know… or I just found myself not wanting to workout.”
They are very negative towards themselves: For example they may say; “I hate myself, I’m a failure, I can’t do this, nothing is good.”
They overreact to simple coaching practice because they have learned a fear-based response to danger or things that may make them feel uncomfortable.
They “people please.” They will agree with absolutely everything you say, and not implement it or not discuss why it may not work for them. By making themselves invisible or “less troublesome” they avoid potential danger or conflict. This is a behaviour learned by victims of abuse and trauma.
The Physical Signs of Trauma
Inflammation: Heighten inflammation in the body possibly due to an overactive HPA axis and cortisol/adrenal production issues.
Chronic Illness: See clinically as, autoimmune disorders such as; rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, chronic fatigue, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), allergies and unknown food sensitivities.
Unexplained Pain: Some may have had even scan and test done, but there appears to be no injury, only consistent pain, restriction and tightness. With constant stress and hormone dysfunction, pain receptors may be sending the “wrong signals” to to the brain and it will cause a client to feel pain without a direct cause.
4. Hormonal problems, like an over-activated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a hormonal feedback loop that’s exquisitely sensitive to things like energy availability and stress.
Trauma Affect Ideas Of Food, Nutrition and Healthy Habits
When people struggle with their behaviours around food and fitness for years or decades, particularly with obesity or patterns of disordered eating, there’s a pretty good chance that something happened to them. And it doesn’t even have to be something “big.”
Clients with a trauma history may:
Overeat and/or binge: Losing themselves in a binge can shut out the world for a while.
Compensate after they feel they’ve overeaten: They may purge, or over-exercise, or fast. The endorphins released in a punishing workout, or from bingeing and purging, may provide a temporary high.
Control and restrict their eating: In fact, they may alternate between this and losing control.
Come up with strict “rules” with harsh consequences. Like “I must work out two hours a day or else I’m a lazy cow.”
Do things that seem confusing or contradictory: Like going on a diet in the morning and binge eating in the evening. Or keeping trigger foods around to “test themselves,” even though they often “fail.”
“Check out” or get “brain fog” around food. Like “I don’t know what happened, I sort of woke up and the bag of chips was empty.” Or, “I get paralyzed when I try to decide what to do. It’s just overwhelming.” Or, “I guess I’m just not motivated.”
The more intense the trauma in a person’s life, and/or the more frequent it’s been, the more likely they are to have physical symptoms and/or maladaptive behaviours, thoughts, and beliefs.
The Good New About Trauma
With the right support system and a “Trauma Aware Coach”, a client can share in post-traumatic growth and development; whereby, they can rediscover themselves, and find new meaning, change their physical body, all as a result of their painful experiences. Trauma can change a person for the better!
Love
Tania Atkin
