Your World Brain On Fire
Long Covid + Covid-19 Trauma Response and Treatment
No escape, uncertainty, isolation, time warp, fear. These are the ongoing earmarks of Covid-19 and now Long Haul Pandemic Trauma. We cannot wait for “scientific and medical” research to validate and understand the emerging symptoms of Covid Trauma and Long Haul Covid as a somatic “trauma” response.
Being unable to help yourself ask for help is the definition of trauma. A single defined trauma is one thing. Ongoing trauma embeds itself in the tissues of the body. This is a known subject of research. Physical anomalies and compensatory safety measures emerge in our vulnerable spots. An old knee injury acts up, the back goes “out”, balance is off, tingling in the body—there’s not enough drugs or palliatives, bed is the only safe place. A host of weird symptoms arise—vertigo, allergies, digestive problems, sleeplessness, and the doctors say you are fine. You are not fine. Your resources are over-taxed trying to cope with the unfathomable, continuous experience of today global trauma response. The systems we turn to most in crisis --medical, pharmaceutical and psychiatric, are also overtaxed, unavailable and undereducated.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the newly emerging condition, Long Covid, are a global paradigm for somatic trauma, and they trigger ancient traumatic experiences that we haven’t dealt with. Scientific research is just beginning to understand this as a very real problem.
Border and business closures, lock downs, face masks, social distance—all the external solutions for this extended pandemic trauma create a secondary very real problem—global and interpersonal trauma response. Sickness, addiction and mental instability are the result.
We are wired for tribe. In isolation fear breeds invisibly and unaccountably and has the capacity to wreak havoc on the physical body. The somato-psychic response of Covid- 19 Trauma and Long Covid is a real thing. Central nervous system disorders, rapid heart rate, sleeplessness, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, addiction, dizziness, emotional overload are your body screaming to escape from this prison.
Brittonrx Long Covid and Covid-19 Trauma Response Bodywork unwinds these sources and afflictions through the lens of somatic trauma and hands-on trauma treatment. Long Covid and Covid-19 Trauma response is complex. And yet totally treatable. Not just treatable, but an inspiring source of power.
On a massage table, breath techniques, visualization, manually manipulated postures, meditation and gentle conversation directly intended to heal this type of traumas brings you back to homeostasis. The body relaxes. The mind begins to rest. Cortisol and adrenaline (the fear chemicals) subside. The nervous system repatterns. The fear, memory and pain brain—the amygdala releases. The fight, flight, freeze and fix muscles of the iliopsoas and diaphragm spread, lengthen and soften. Hormones come back to balance.
You find a safe home in both the inner and the world.
The BrittonRx Long Covid and Covid-19 Trauma Response team is made up of global experts in research and development, acupuncture, functional nutrition, breathwork and bodymind training methods.
Research tells us that the consequences of ongoing trauma are much more severe than single experience of trauma. But we don’t need scientific research to come to that conclusion. By definition trauma is an ongoing experience unless treated on the level of its bodily (physical), psychological and spiritual components.
Covid 19 is an ongoing biorisk trauma: enter Long Covid, whose treatment and recovery potential has put the medical system both technically and structural at a loss to treat. The pandemic of Covid -19 and now Long Covid has exposed many cracks in our health and belief systems--these issues are not new. People with chronic illnesses and disabilities have long experienced doubt from clinicians and difficulty getting benefits and economic support.
Patients with “mysterious illnesses” from fibromyalgia to AIDS have had to fight for recognition and research money. We’ve seen this before with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Because ME/CFS, as it is also called, is difficult to diagnose, many patients have gone uncounted, and research into treatments and cures remain underfunded compared to other illnesses. As a result, clinicians tend to be under-educated and patients are less likely to receive adequate care and government support. There’s a risk of repeating this cycle with people with Long Covid and Covid-19 trauma syndrome. Across the globe, people with Long Covid report problems getting medical care and some have even been told their symptoms are all in their head.
Long Covid: Individuals suffering with horrendous symptoms long after they test negative and who simply are at a loss in treatment techniques for the biopsychosocial crisis of Covid – 19 and Long Covid.
In defining trauma as an experience in which we cannot help ourselves nor ask for help, the Covid 19 pandemic represents a biorisk safety and security trauma of epic proportions.
Studies show that when we cannot resolve a disaster or run for safey, the entire biological system becomes overwhelmed and the experience stays in our tissues and systems: biochemical, neurological, hormonal—an invisible experience that is driving our responses on every level long after the experience is over.
When a biopsychosocial crisis occurs, it is hardly “all in the head.” Looking at Long Covid and the pandemic through the lens of painful psychosomatic experience that is the result ongoing trauma-- Long Covid becomes treatable. Safety, security and well-being returns.
Long Covid, one of the most devastating outcomes of the pandemic, will likely put a strain on our society’s psycho soma and economic stability both personally and globally for years. Global solutions on both the governmental agency and medical parts actually contribute to traumatic experience. Border closers, business shut-downs, social isolation, fear of breathing, touching, interacting—the unknown future, lack of treatment—all of these experiences are embedded in our system—the solutions have become the source of the problem.
While scientific research into Long Covid and the extended effects is just beginning, the current visible, experiential threat to our biorisk safety and security triggers both old tissue-held trauma and creates new ones. Viewing this health crisis through the lens of trauma treatment is extremely effective. Long after the initial Covid-19 illness, up to nine months to a year, people with Long Covid report symptoms such as:
Headaches (migraines)
Exhaustion
Random Neurological Pain
Vertigo and dizziness
Anxiety and depression
Despair
Hopelessness
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented global biorisk crisis, single countries and multilateral organizations have come to the same conclusions— There is no foreseeable respite to threats to international health security from infectious disease outbreaks, especially given the growing level of global interconnectedness. Ongoing trauma response is the result.
From a trauma point of view, we call this right brain meets right brain. Personal fear and biorisk insecurity spreads like wildfire.
Eighty-eight percent of people reported cognitive issues like memory loss that in many cases impaired their ability to work, have conversations with others, maintain medication schedules or drive.
Until a clearer picture emerges, neurologic symptoms, particularly "brain fog" and numbness or tingling throughout the body, as well as mental health challenges including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) cannot be treated. Unless the whole being in a traumatized state is addressed. Kathleen Bell, MD, Kimberly Clark Distinguished Chair in Mobility Research at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas stated recently:
"We have people in the hospital for 3 months, and in a large percentage we are seeing mental health symptoms including PTSD, anxiety and depression.”
A local outbreak increases risk for mental health issues. Again, right brain meets right brain on a global scale.
Survivor Corps a facebook page for Long Covid sufferers and survivors facebook page is full of statements such as: “my doctor thinks I’m crazy”. Yet there are very real psychobiosocial symptoms:
Memory loss
Migraines
Suicidal Thoughts
Dizziness
Exhaustion
Spike in Heart Rate
Allergies/Hives
Loss of full usage of lungs
Heart palpitations
BrittonRx Bodywork uses these symptoms as a doorway to create new power and patterns and trauma recovery. The origin of this body work is that one cannot separate circumstance from physical response.
