Foreword by Gary Sharpe
Tremors (uncontrollable shaking) are commonly seen in many named chronic conditions, from Parkinson’s Disease, restless leg syndrome, chronic stress and anxiety, essential tremors, shell shock/PTSD, MS, panic attacks, etc.
In an episode of acute stress, tremors are an adaptive response. They are seen in animals and people, when their Nervous Systems are gearing up for fight-or-flight action, and also as a mechanism to discharge the energy/adrenaline after the danger or excitement has passed. Tremors are also seen when animals shake themselves out of a deeper freeze or tonic immobility stress response, as in the famous video of an impala coming out of a death feigning episode, shown in the video below.
In humans, tremors are also often seen in comatose people, also as people come out of general anaesthesia, and during electrical shock treatment for depression.
Humans, however, have a tendency to get stuck with tremors, usually when one or more body memories or trauma of stressful events are not processed properly at the time, and hence get installed.
Tremors are often the number one symptom that people with chronic issues would like to wish away. This is because they are so visible, and many find them embarrassing, which increases the stress of being in public, and can lead to isolation, which further increases stress, which can make the tremors worse. For a similar reason, people often say that their tremors are their most bothersome and stressful symptom, precisely because they are not able to hide it, and hence the fact they have health issues, e.g. from the boss or the family. This is unfortunate, because, as anyone with tremors can relate, acute or chronic stress tends to make the tremors noticeably much worse, so trying to hide them can backfire.
Fortunately, from the perspective that tremors are a manifestation of a stuck stress response, this type of symptom can be progressively alleviated through stress reduction techniques and therapy, by learning how to calm the nervous system, and by spending more time in totally relaxed states. Indeed, this is demonstrated by reports of people’s tremors disappearing while they under hypnosis and by common anecdotal reports that when meditating, the tremors are not present.
In this article, Danish Coach and Therapist, Lilian Sjoberg, relates her therapuetic experiences of working with people with tremors and Parkinson’s Disease.
My Experience of Working with People with Tremors
By Lilian Sjøberg, Danish coach and trouble shooter, good at seeing patterns, with a masters in biology, who has studied how to help people with chronic diseases such as Parkinson's Disease (PD) from a practical perspective for five years.
Introduction
Tremors come in many amplitudes and frequencies. They can even be only felt inside (internal tremors), When I started my studies, I picked four people, each with a chronic disease diagnosis, and one of them, Michael, had Parkinson's Disease with a very noticeable tremor. The tremor could move his hand as much as ten centimetres from side to side.
I soon discovered that I could always get Michael’s tremor down to nothing for several minutes via my calming techniques. Then the tremor would start again. After I had seen this pattern quite a few times, I started to get curious about this phenomenon.
I found that I could simply help him calm down his mind, which had an immediate effect on his tremor. To calm him down could take up to an hour, but we always ended a session with him having no tremor. Typically, we found a traumatic event in his life and resolved that memory to the extent he could talk about it without getting fearful feelings.
Example of a body memory
An an example, he recalled that when he was a four-year-old boy, he once overheard the grownups talking, and his grandma getting so upset that she left the house, saying the words “I am going to kill myself in the lake”. Even if it seems like a small thing in a grownup’s ear, it meant hours of anxiety for his boyhood self, waiting to see if his grandmother ever came back from her walk. These fearful feelings were lingering in my client’s body for years until we tapped into this, and I facilitated a new understanding of this situation, so this trapped feeling could be felt safely, and then dissipate.
We can say, in brief, that a memory with a feeling, which was not processed properly at the time, is a potential source for any symptom because the body somehow stores these together until it is safe to be felt. If it is a dramatic event, we call it a trauma, but, as in the above example, it can also be seemingly relatively small things to an adult’s sensibilities, so we more generally call it a body memory.
In the above example, this body memory gave the child, and now the man, a feeling that the world is dangerous and loved ones and protectors can disappear and die. Having several similar episodes causes tension in the body build up.
However, it is indeed possible to reduce these triggers, and hence the tremors. Here is Michael, my guinea pig, in an old video, where you can see him, after the 148s timestamp, slowly is learning to find a peaceful place in his mind and reduce the tremors. When people with tremor have experienced this several time they surrender to the biological fact that stress and tremor is connected. and we all know that stress is treatable.
To what extent is it possible to reduce tremors?
If you do not have a lot of traumas in your past and have an open mind toward this alternative, it is possible to get free of your symptom, like my client Bjarne.
He was lucky that he got a new neurologist, that thought it was strange that his tremor had gone, and sent him to a new datscan, then declared him free of PD. If you have lots of traumas it just takes a longer time, but in the process, the days with fewer symptoms are also worth it.
Tremors are Natural
While damage to your body or seizures can produce tremors, in my perspective, most cases of a tremor are not pathological, but due to a natural response, induced by anxiety, excitement, fears, and being overwhelmed by other strong feelings.
Indeed, anyone can get a natural tremor in the following situations:
when you are cold or need a fever to naturally stop a germ/virus, your muscles start to tremor to produce heat;
if you witness something terrible, e.g. a horror movie - your body wants to flee and a tremor is preparing you for this;
if you witness or participate in a very exciting game (watching your favourite team in an important game) – this puts your body is in fight preparing you for a battle or competition;
when you are so filled with worries or regret that tension builds-up, you want to fight or flight from a situation you are just thinking about – e.g. you suddenly remember that you have forgotten to prepare a crucial task for your job tomorrow;
when you have been in the freeze survival instinct for several minutes, tremor is important in the process of returning to normal body function;
if your body has been shut down due to an operation - general anaesthesia mimics the chemical response to being in a full freeze, or playing dead as we call it – e.g. as in the video of the polar bear experiencing both stress and anaesthesia;
after or during a workout when you are starting up an exercise habit.
I think it is fair to say that tremor is a signature symptom of survival instincts, fight, flight, and freeze. I found that tremor being so visible is actually a help in my therapeutic practice because I can enquire what is on the person's mind when the tremor starts again after a break. The answer is an indication to the next body memory to deal with.
When healthy people get a tremor, they do not think or believe that they are diseased, they know they are stressed.
Adrenaline and Dopamine
Adrenaline is the hormone/neurotransmitter that causes stress responses, of which tremors are a part. Indeed, when adrenaline is actually injected as a drug in cases of severe allergic reaction tremor is a common side-effect. In a similar way, when we are overly stressed, with too much of our adrenaline released in our bodies and brains, tremors become prominent.
A crucial point to note is that adrenaline is created from dopamine, so being stressed too much means we are constantly converting our dopamine supplies into adrenaline. Conversely, this is why it is harder to work with people on high levels of dopamine replacement therapy, as in the case of the mainstay medication for Parkinson’s Disease. As people step up in the medication, this just provides more dopamine feedstock for their adrenaline production, so it becomes more difficult to know whether the tremors are due to medication enabling the stress response, or else are due to natural body memories. In my experience, more medication causes more tremors.
As we are biological creatures, it is wise to obey the signals from your body. Run if you can, fight with your pillow or in a boxing class, in order to eliminate the adrenaline from your system. When adrenaline begin to piles up in you and the tremor returns, one thing I have found that helps my clients it to go with the tremor, double the intensity, speed and size, and continue for as long as possible. After a few minutes of doing this, the adrenaline is used up. Your body thinks you have done the job and is safe again. You will get a few moments in peace… until you start thinking stressful thoughts about your to-do list or regrets again. Repeating this, you can hopefully see this pattern, and you start to understand that the tremors are part of your biological nature
This is why I prefer to have sessions with people when the medication has somewhat worn off, so that it is clearer when the tremors are connected to body memories in childhood or the past where small and big traumas have piled up, until the day that the person is constantly in fight or flight, and hence the natural tremors come frequently and are pretty persistent.
In the end, the daily tremor is so persistent that they cannot feel the variation or see the connection to the stress triggers. My task is helping them to see these connections, and facilitate the removal of all the triggers that can make their body release adrenaline. This can be done via coaching, where we look and see if there are unnecessary triggers in their daily life and environment, or whether it can be to see old traumas and body memories that are getting triggered by seemingly random things. If you get different symptoms levels in different environments, it is often an old body memory trying to protect you from ending in the same painful, scary episode again.
How I Can Help
More specifically, here is how I help people with tremors.
I acknowledge the fact that we are biological creatures with the same intact survival instincts which we know so well from animals.
I embrace the fact that the body contains memories loaded with feelings from past events, and by unwinding the most important traumas you slowly regain better health. Even science is slowly onboarding this idea. If you have doubts about this idea then look at old photos and see if emotions are stored together with the memory. Yes, we all know that this can be the case.
As it is a long-term process, you I teach you the skills and tools to do so yourself. The healing process gets kickstarted.
I have created a programme to help people reduce, and even eliminate, tremors, based on stress reduction principles, specifically in resolving the body memories that resulted in people getting stuck in the first place.
The step-by-step plan includes:
Taking our free online course to learn all about body memories.
Taking the online Stress Test to determine your “Stress Type”, and learn about your strengths and weaknesses in coping with stress.
Watching the videos “Disease and New Hope”, “Stress”, “Exercise – Check Your Stress Levels”, “Physical and Mental Symptoms” and “Body Memories” in the H-module of the HOPE-shortcut online course.
Learning the symptom tracking technique in the O-module of the HOPE-shortcut online course, and implementing this for tremors as the symptom, to build a map and get a good understanding of when and why the tremors are better or worse.
Book therapy sessions with Lilian to identify and remove the specific body memories causing the tremors, using a highly tailored approach, via a toolkit of coaching and therapy which helps you to change your mindset towards one that support healthy living, to get in contact with troubled periods in your life, and, in the gentlest way eliminate the root causes of trauma and the associated symptoms or feelings.