Why medical procedures can be traumatic — and how to recover
Nobody talks about it. Yet every day, people leave an operating theatre, a course of anaesthesia, or a hospital stay carrying something more than stitches: an invisible imprint on their nervous system.
If since your procedure you have been sleeping poorly, feeling strangely disconnected from your body, avoiding hospitals or white coats, or no longer quite recognising yourself — what you are experiencing has a name. It is medical trauma. And it is possible to recover.
The origin of Somatic Experiencing: an operating theatre
This is a little-known story, but it deserves to be told.
In 1969, during a session with a young woman named Nancy, Peter Levine — the future founder of Somatic Experiencing — experienced the founding moment of his entire career. Without warning, Nancy froze, her pulse racing, as she relived the moments of a traumatic surgical procedure from her childhood — including being strapped down and anaesthetised with ether.
It was from this experience that Levine understood something essential: trauma is not in the event itself, but in the nervous system's response to that event. And medical procedures — however necessary — can trigger exactly this response.
Why the body experiences surgery as a threat
During general anaesthesia or a surgical procedure, the body is placed in a radically paradoxical situation: it undergoes intense physical aggression — incisions, tissue manipulation, total immobilisation — without being able to flee, defend itself, or even cry out.
The nervous system registers this as an overwhelming threat and activates survival responses — fight, flight, or freeze. If this energy cannot complete itself, it remains "frozen", manifesting later as persistent symptoms: chronic tension, hypervigilance, unexplained pain, fatigue, sleep disturbances, anxiety in medical environments, or a sense of disconnection from physical sensations.
Dr. Marcus Kurek, a physician, writes in an article published by the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute: "I myself had experienced many surgeries with ether anesthesia as a child, including loss of an eye at age four. I never realized that those experiences were traumatic and had shaped much of my life."
This is not a question of fragility. It is biology.
The most commonly traumatic medical procedures
Not all procedures are experienced in the same way, but certain situations are particularly likely to cause trauma:
General anaesthesia plunges the body into an altered state of consciousness where the usual regulatory mechanisms are suspended. The autonomic nervous system continues to react to surgical stimuli — it records, even if the patient has no conscious memory of it.
Unprepared emergencies and hospitalisations — accidents, heart attacks, emergency procedures — combine the initial state of shock with the hospital environment (noise, lights, pain, separation from loved ones) in an experience that is often overwhelming.
Repeated or prolonged procedures — cancers, chronic illnesses, intensive care — expose the nervous system to cumulative stress that can exceed its adaptive capacity.
Invasive procedures experienced without sufficient support — colonoscopies, biopsies, punctures — where the person is conscious but immobilised, without any possibility of reacting.
What I have been through myself
A few years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. What followed — surgery under general anaesthesia, then chemotherapy — was traumatic in two very different ways.
The anaesthesia left something indescribable in my body: the sensation of having been absent from myself while my body was being operated on — present without being present, unable to defend myself, to react, to say stop. A loss of continuity and sovereignty over myself that words can barely describe.
The chemotherapy was a slow, repeated assault — my body subjected, session after session, to something toxic that was necessary for its survival. Two experiences, two types of imprint on the nervous system.
It was ten sessions of Somatic Experiencing that allowed me to emerge from this. Not to forget, but to find a nervous system that is no longer in a state of permanent alert. A body that feels liveable again.
This is also why I now support people who have been through difficult medical procedures — because I know, from the inside, what it leaves behind.
How Somatic Experiencing helps
SE does not ask you to recount the operation in detail. It does not relive the event. It works with what the body feels now — tensions, areas of numbness, micro-movements — to allow the nervous system to complete the survival responses that were interrupted on the operating table.
SE facilitates the safe completion of these responses without asking clients to relive traumatic memories in detail. Gradually, the nervous system learns that the threat has passed. That the body can feel safe again.
A word about your own experience
If you are reading this article because you recognise something in what you have just read — a procedure that hasn't passed, an anaesthesia you are still carrying something from — know that it is not in your head. Your body did what it had to do to survive. And there is a path to recovery.
Would you like to know more or book an appointment? Contact me here.
Sources
- Levine, P.A. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books, 1997.
- Somatic Experiencing International — SE 101
- Wholeness Collective Therapy Group — Relearning Safety After Medical Trauma
- Kurek, M. cited in: "Doctor Addresses Prevalence of Medical Trauma", Somatic Experiencing International, 2022. Read the article
- INSERM — Why do we lose consciousness during general anaesthesia?