I chose a compass and find the design and then waited for 2 years. I wanted something that meant something to me and my recovery. A part of my body that no one had touched or chosen for me. I had been thinking for a long time about getting a tattoo. I’m so overwhelmed with my own, I can barely take on anyone else. I also find other peoples emotions to be too much to handle at times. I don’t want others to see what I’m feeling. I do exercise daily to try to keep my muscles loose but strong. My stress is especially held in my shoulder and upper arms like I’m bracing to physically defend myself. I feel tight in my chest and sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Of course, I am no longer a child and my environment now is safe from the abuses I suffered as a child but I think sometimes my body is so ingrained to be tense, that it takes the slightest trigger to get me to go back into defense mode.I don’t have fibroyaligia and I’m lucky to not have debilitating pains that I know others suffer from but my muscles will frequently ache and feel tired. It also protects us from others emotions, sometimes I think either positive or negative because they can both be painful. If they’re buried under armor, no one can hurt them. It’s also a way for children and adults to protect their emotions. Muscle armoring is a way for children to coping when they are in a perpetually unsafe environment and are unsure of where the next threat is going to come from.

A large population of people with a history of trauma of chronic back and joint pain as well as fibromyalgia. Most of these issues involved chronic muscle aches and pains because the muscles are overused and an inability to relax.

This chronic tenseness and hyper alert state can lead to issues. We are constantly waiting to flee, preparing to fight, or stuck in a frozen state. Of course, like most survival responses, this is supposed to be short term but for those of us who have had to be in survival mode for long term, we become adapted to this survival technique and are always waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Muscle armoring is part of hypervigilance which is a hyper alert mental state. He said it’s the bodies way to be ready to fight, flee, or freeze. I like what Peter Walker called it: muscle armoring. I’ve heard it called chronic tension, muscle rigidity, and bracing. In his book Complex PTSD Pete Walker talks about the chronic tenseness most abuse survivors hold in their bodies.

Pete walker complex ptsd