How Do I Stop Shaking?

[Hashi]

Deimos,

I am right there with you. The shaking came with the released anger that I've held for 30 years toward my abuser. Then, when any significant anger surfaces, I shake some more and sometimes feel cold, too. As you said, therapy brings it all up to the surface, and the body will react to it. Why not? It's waited a long time to have it's say.
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Trauma therapist Peter Levine has written about this as a release of the fight or flight energy that was held in our cells at the time of what happened. When we freeze for our own safety, we're holding anger (fight) or fear (flight) energy ready to use at any opportunity. Then when the danger is over, what should happen naturally is we shake straight away and discharge it. But with trauma, we keep holding it frozen, and over time as it tries to unfreeze/surface and we push it back down we refreeze it so it becomes even more entrenched.

If you're shaking, you're actually releasing some of that energy and therefore some of the trauma that your body has been holding. Often, you can feel cold as well, sometimes itchy.

I have a somatic therapy (craniosacral therapy) that works gently with this principle, and for the first few months I shook for hours some days. I would also get extremely cold, especially on the soles of my feet. (I've had severe trauma which had been frozen for years due to amnesia.) It was weird but I was so glad to feel that trauma energy leaving me. The more that happened my PTSD symptoms got less severe, especially the anxiety (I'd been holding a lot of frozen fear and I think what the shaking was releasing was related to that).

Peter Levine explains it in his book "Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma".

 

[mamachick]

If I have been triggered today, I dont even know it. I just am shaking and dont know why. I know I have been feeling sad about the holidays and almost dreading (wishing I could jump forward past the new year). As I am writing this, I just realized that I was assaulted dec 16 2008, and have hated the holidays ever since. The guy is in trouble for something else that I was made aware of a few days ago. It has been in the back of my mind ever since but I dont know if that is the cause. Just felt restless and then started shaking to the point that I could not hold the blow dryer still. I feel like I could jump out of my skin, yet I do not think anything happened to provoke this.

I do feel helpless in some ways as I was never able to do anything about the assault. I hate that feeling of having absolutely no power. I go from helpless to hopeless to verbally beating myself up to feeling like noboly should care because I am worthless. My self talk/thought gets really ugly. I start reflecting on the past few years and start to believe that things will never be better and dont know why I am here. My muscles are weak and painful. It is overwhleming, but does not feel like a panic attack. I dont know what it is but am even having trouble writning this.

 

[Marie E.]

(((Hugs))) for everybody!

 

[mamachick]

Im feeling really stupid because I must not even recoginize my triggers. Sometimes I just feel like a dead person walking thru the motions of life, invisible and very unreal. I guess that is the aftermath of the shaking

 

[soph]

Last night the shakes happened again.. I dont know what the trigger is, but I ended up in full blown anxiety attack. Crying shaking hot, cold, tummy ache, headache, feeling sick.

The worse thing was my 3 girls saw me like it and it made everything worse as I was aware of how afraid I was I was thinking of how afraid they might of been. It seems to happen to me just as I'm trying to drift off to sleep. In the end after around an hour I took myself to bed and tried to sleep again.

They are getting worse and they are bleeding into my days now. I've just come back from the doctors today with a script for Citalopram, can anyone relate to these meds as part of my problem is feeling like I've poisened myself.

 

[Powder]

Living with such quick body-mind responses to triggers of all kinds, some so subtle that they escape our notice, is one of the worst challenges we face.

This week, I was humbled to find out that even those people who do not have PTSD can have triggers, and have similar responses, only more emotional or self talk based than physical. The person who taught me this, I am indebted to for many reasons, and now this lesson.

Here's a chance to grow, even if we can't beat the whole trigger thing all at once: Watch everyone else, other adults with plenty of life experience, and look at their facial muscles and eyes, mouth. If you watch someone for a long time, you can start to see differences, and you will eventually see more subtle changes in them when they are "triggered." No, it's not the same as PTSD. No they don't have nightmares and shaking, or dissociation. But they go "cold" and "numb" for a while. And they have emotional spells or they "stuff it."

It is important that we look at "normal" people when triggered so that we can see it's a matter of amplitude. We are human after all. Growing your own sensitivity to the things that have triggered non PTSD folks might help you to feel more connected to others and more accepting of your own vulnerability to this all. I have known I had PTSD 15 years now. I've had trouble enough accepting it; and accepting the triggers and what they do to me. Now, I see it with other people, only it's more subtle. And, today, it just feels like that matters somehow.

Please share your observations, no matter how small, and be proud of your ability to see your own patterns and those of others.

I hope this is a help to someone. It's taken me a long time to be able to really get past myself and my condition to see how this all looks in someone without the condition.

 

[Powder]

Soph, I understand your anxiety is taking into account medication. I have felt my heart begin to race at the thought of having forgotten my medication, and wondering if I'd get a nightmare or flashbacks again. I know it's just fear, which is not always rational, especially at night.

It's okay to take medication, with due caution, and as prescribed. Usually, it does more harm not to take it, if the doctor really thinks you needed it. They don't hand it out for no reason. Just research it a little with a friend until you can feel it's reasonably safe to take it, and then don't think about it for two days. Allow a break between the "worrying." Two days won't hurt you, and so on. Promise you will reassess the meds often, and make a decision one way or the other.

You may be able to get some rest and feel stronger if you get the right medication and dose. This has helped many with PTSD; a sleep without fear.