The Living Trauma in the Body
For decades, traditional medical and psychological models treated trauma as something from the past to be analyzed, understood, and archived. Under this paradigm, many psychology schools perpetuated an approach centered solely on discourse, analysis, and intellectual comprehension. However, trauma is more than a memory; it’s an experience trapped in the body.
As Bessel van der Kolk asserts in his groundbreaking book “The Body Keeps the Score,” trauma survivors live in a constant state of alert, trapped in frozen relational patterns and physiological states that haven’t returned to calm. No discourse, no matter how insightful, can single-handedly alter a survival-focused nervous system.
Contemporary psychotherapy acknowledges this, yet our schools continue teaching XX-century psychoanalytic theories as dogma. They discuss “Electra Complex” and “Strengthened Ego,” but they don’t teach how to manage a panic attack or read the body’s language. They don’t teach how to approach trauma from a genuinely healing perspective.
An Outdated Model
It’s time to state clearly: much of traditional psychotherapy retraumatizes. It demands patients relive pain without containment, traps them in infinite cycles of analysis without action, and forgets that we are not just a thinking mind. We are body, emotion, energy, history.
As Gabor Maté, a physician and therapist, posits, trauma isn’t what happened to us but what broke inside as a result. This—what’s broken within—doesn’t heal by talking alone; it integrates mind, body, connection, and spirituality.
Maté proposes that addiction, anxiety, depression, and many physical illnesses are manifestations of unresolved traumas. Therefore, the return path cannot be solely pharmacological or cognitive; it must be deeply human.
Modern Tools, Real Results
Fortunately, we now have therapeutic approaches supported by robust evidence that help heal trauma from an integrative perspective. These include:
- EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), developed by Francine Shapiro, allows for the unlocking of dysfunctionally stored traumatic memories.
- IFS (Internal Family Systems), created by Richard Schwartz, views the individual as a system of “internal parts” needing to be heard and reintegrated.
- Somatic Experiencing, by Peter Levine, works directly with the energy retained by the body after a traumatic experience.
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy, which has demonstrated in clinical studies to generate profoundly transformative experiences when applied in safe contexts under professional supervision.
- Mindfulness, conscious breathing, neurofeedback, art therapy, dance therapy, family constellations, and many other practices addressing the human being in all dimensions.
These are not esoteric or fleeting trends. They are evidence-based approaches increasingly integrated into cutting-edge clinical centers worldwide. However, university curricula training our psychologists and psychiatrists remain stuck in the past. Programs ignore complex trauma, teachers still distrust the corporeal, energetic, and emotional aspects. Schools continue producing professionals unable to recognize dissociation, dysregulated nervous systems, or primitive defense patterns.
Where are EMDR, IFS, somatic therapies, AI in mental health, and affective neurosciences in these curricula? Why are we still training therapists without soul and doctors without bodies?
An Urgent Call to Transform the Paradigm
We cannot continue treating trauma with incomplete tools. Trauma is transversal, affecting abused children, violated women, migrants, burned-out doctors, hyper-digitalized adolescents, and racialized bodies. Healing it requires a culturally, technologically, compassionately, and deeply integrative approach.
This is not just a clinical call; it’s an ethical, educational, and social one. We need to redesign our teaching and mental health care models from the roots, leaving behind professional egos, outdated manuals, and theoretical frameworks refusing to see the real world.
Key Questions and Answers
- What is complex trauma? Complex trauma refers to the result of prolonged or repeated exposure to traumatic events, often beginning in childhood. It’s not just a single event but a pattern of experiences that disturb a person’s sense of safety and stability.
- Why is the body-oriented approach important in treating trauma? The body retains memories and responses to trauma, even when the conscious mind has forgotten or suppressed them. A body-oriented approach helps individuals access, process, and release these stored experiences.
- What are some evidence-based therapies for trauma? EMDR, IFS, Somatic Experiencing, Psychedelic-assisted therapy, and mindfulness practices are some evidence-based approaches that have shown effectiveness in treating trauma.
- Why is it crucial to update psychotherapy education? Current psychotherapy education often fails to incorporate modern, evidence-based approaches to trauma treatment, leaving practitioners unprepared to address the complex needs of trauma survivors.
