“The body has ancient wisdom. It has the ability to always return to balance, even after events that overwhelm us “. Dina Barnett, 54 and a former breast cancer patient, does not hide the emotion. Her voice is cheerful, ringing and reveals the passion for what – she says forcefully – has changed her life and has become a very important part of her life itself. He talks about Somatic Experiencing, a method used in the treatment of post-traumatic stress, developed by the American psychologist Peter Levine, which is spreading more and more also in Italy and about which we tell you this week in the newsletter of Breast Health (here the link to register for free). Somatic Experiencing starts from the observation of what happens at the neurophysiological level in all animals when they perceive a threat to their life, and how, once the danger has been escaped, they return to a normal state.
I due cervelli
According to another psychologist (this time Israeli), Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002, there are two brains: one of fast thinking and one of slow thinking. The first is the instinctive, ancestral one, which allowed our primate ancestors to shoot at the slightest rustle of the grass. And that today saves our lives every time we instinctively brake as soon as we see that the car in front of us is slowing down. Mechanisms of this type are always observed in nature: flight, attack or freezing reactions compared to a threat. Levine’s hypothesis is that, when this energy is not discharged in some way, the body maintains a state of alert and, thanks to slow thinking, the person remains in a sort of “freeze”. In essence, that he cannot overcome the trauma.
The traumas of medical acts
What does all this have to do with breast cancer? “Post-traumatic stress disorder does not occur only following major tragedies, such as earthquakes and wars: whenever a person experiences an experience from which he feels he cannot defend himself, and which puts his life in danger, she gets somehow traumatized, ”she says Dina Barnett, who met the method Somatic Experiencing two years after the illness, in 2014, and then followed the three-year course to become practitioner: “I’m not necessarily talking about the disease itself, which in my case was resolved positively with a mastectomy and without having to undergo chemo, but about the overall experience and medical practices to which one must necessarily undergo. Medical acts are a much neglected source of trauma. Every time you get on the bed, you have to make a visit, an infusion, an intervention, the body, instinctively, would like to run as far as possible. On a conscious level you know that it is necessary to undergo all this to save your life, but on a subconscious level the body perceives the scalpel and the extraneous invasion as a danger. In my case this experience was very negative due to a medical environment that I experienced as hostile, and the pain that I continued to feel after many years was so great that I could not overcome it. I thought I was wrong, that I had something wrong: I had never considered that there could be a biological explanation behind the tremors or shortness of breath ”.
The beginning of a new life
“Thanks to this methodology I understood what was happening to me and I learned to manage what was in effect post-traumatic stress”, continues Dina: “For me it was such an important change that I decided to do the training to be able to help other people in my turn. It was my dream and now it has become my profession, thanks also to the great opportunity that the association has given me ‘Friends holding hands‘of Bergamo “. In fact, during the first lockdown, the association organized an online course for a small group of patients (6-7 at most), which was a great success. So much so that now the sixth group is about to leave and in April there will also be a second level course.
Il metodo Somatic Experiencing
The method uses many different techniques. As the rooting: “In post-traumatic stress our body sometimes behaves as if the danger were still present”, explains Dina: “Rooting, which focuses attention on the feet and on contact with the floor, sends signals to the brain that they make him return to the here and now, distracting him from that present which is no longer real, but which we relive in the mind. We work on breathing, on movement – which is not physical activity but the opposite of immobility, of that freezing that derives from fear and which leads to the development of physical tension and pain – and we also work on space and borders ”. A very interesting aspect of this approach is that it seems to work right away. The courses last two months: one lesson per week for 8 weeks, with a break before the last one to reflect on the work done. “Many women with breast cancer think the body has betrayed them. This is the feeling, but all the more reason we need to regain confidence in what I believe to always be our greatest ally ”.
Psycho-oncology beyond words
Breast cancer can cause profound discomfort that often occurs psycho-oncology helps elaborate. “The traditional approach is based on parole, but those who work every day with women with breast cancer know that not all of them have the inclination or the desire to take this path, because they may not feel it in their own ropes. For this we need other tools, other languages ”, he explains Emanuela Saita, lecturer at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, who has been dealing with psycho-oncology for twenty years. And who, together with Dina Barnett and the Amiche per mano association, has developed a study on these different languages. “The Somatic Experiencing method – explains Saita – which is based on reacquiring the ability to feel the body as something that still works well to overcome post-traumatic stress, is a good candidate. However, there are still not many studies on the subject in the oncology field: hence the idea of starting a research project to verify whether participation in somatic experiencing courses leads to an improvement in the quality of life of patients “. represents one more possibility of intervention. To understand this, Saita asked the women who decided to participate in the courses to fill in, before and after the course, questionnaires that will allow them to evaluate theiranxiety, the depression, the ability to cope with stress and the adaptation strategies (coping) put in place. “We are only at the beginning of the work, so we cannot yet express ourselves at the level of statistical significance, but the impression we had from the first exploratory analyzes is positive”, says the researcher: “We also observed a change in coping strategies implemented: they increase theavoidance (that is, avoiding thinking about the disease in order to go on day by day, ed.) and the combativeness, while they decrease anxious worry and fatalism, that is, the attitude that makes use of destiny as an entity stronger than the will and efforts put in place by the human being in determining the outcomes of the disease “. The study has some limitations, Saita admits: “It does not allow us to understand, for example, if the women in our sample are representative of the world of breast cancer patients or if they represent a particular category united by specific inclinations. The intent – he concludes – is however to continue the research to answer these questions too “.
And the patient association also creates jobs
Somatic Experiencing is one of the many courses that can be followed (now virtually) within the association “Friends holding hands“. Which strongly believes in a 360-degree approach to the pursuit of well-being: patients pay a small fee of 30 euros for an entire course, while the association bears almost all of the cost. With an important implication: “It is something that I realized a little at a time: that in this way we are acting as a driving force from the working point of view for women who had had a stop with the disease”, she says. Paola Cornero, president of ‘Friends by the hand’. Cancer usually requires an interruption of life, plus many women after the illness have problems at work or are forced to leave it. This is why the association is trying to bring together those who have skills that can be useful to others, and is transforming these activities into paid work: “The dignity of work passes through remuneration”, concludes Cornero: “Dina has managed to do what her profession helped her, and it’s a beautiful thing ”.
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