Trauma ℉u©❄︎s with our Imagination

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk...

There is a well-known psychological test known as the Rorschach or ink blot test. When people look at these cards of meaningless blots of ink, what they see tells a lot about how their minds work.

Veterans may see traumatic images in these ink blots and experience flashbacks - seeing the same images, smelling the same smells, and feeling the same physical sensations they felt during the original event.

The most alarming response to the ink blot test is, "This is nothing, just a bunch of ink," because the normal response to ambiguous stimuli is to use our imagination to read something into them.

Now Bessel waxes poetic:

"The five men who saw nothing in the blots had lost the capacity to let their minds play...they were not displaying the mental flexibility that is the hallmark of imagination. They simply kept replaying an old reel.  

Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having the last word - all things that make life interesting. Imagination gives us the opportunity to envision new possibilities - it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes come true. It fires our creativity, relieves our boredom, alleviates our pain, enhances our pleasure, and enriches our most intimate relationships. When people are compulsively and constantly pulled back into the past, to the last time they felt intense involvement and deep emotions, they suffer from a failure of imagination, a loss of the mental flexibility. Without imagination there is no hope, no chance to envision a better future, no place to go, no goal to reach (p. 17)."

Self-Mastery after Trauma

Still reading, The Body Keeps the Score, by Van Der Kolk and taking notes...

How do you become the master of your own ship after trauma? Van Der Kolk has been studying and treating trauma for over 30 years. He summarizes what he has seen work:

• Talking
• Understanding
• Medications can dampen hyperactive alarm systems in the body
• Having physical experiences that directly contradict the helplessness, rage, and collapse that are part of trauma

I love the sound of that treatment plan. 

It's okay to talk about it - make sense of it and sort out feelings. It helps to create a coherent story -with a beginning, middle, and end - with lots of details about the good, the bad, and the horribly beautiful. 

Storytelling helps to develop an understanding and empathy for self and others. Sharing or reading stories is powerful because you start to see patterns and commonalities. There are common reactions to stress and trauma. Instead of judging or feeling out of control, you develop an acceptance and understanding of yourself and others - it can bring peace.

Medications are more stigmatized and feared than alcohol, pot, and street-level drugs. How did that happen? I am not afraid of taking advantage of anything and everything that is safe and good for my well-being, including medication that calms by hyperactive alarm system. I like sleeping soundly. I like being at peace in my own body. I like not reacting to everything like it's an emergency. I like screening what I want to focus on and put my energy and attention to - it makes me feel in control and not helpless.

Most intriguing is the idea that having physical experiences that directly contradict the feelings associated with traumatic events can help recovery. It sounds like what Peter Levine talks about in Waking the Tiger. Summarized brusquely, he asserts (based on his work with clients) that when the body freezes in a traumatic event, it later needs to follow-through with the movement in order to recover. This idea about having physical experiences also reminds me of how healing it is for some survivors of tragedy to set up a foundation and pursue social justice goals as a means of recovery.  Sometimes we just gotta do something to counter and challenge the feeling of helplessness. Seeking justice (and not revenge) can be an antidote for the rage.

Regaining self-mastery is the ultimate goal of trauma recovery. Addictions of all kinds are a short-cut to soothe the pain of trauma memories. Unfortunately, the side effects of addiction are feeling out of control and shame, which is farther away from self-mastery and recovery. 

The Physiological Impact and Treatment of Trauma

Negative Impact of Trauma on the Body
Research from neuroscience, developmental psychopathology, and interpersonal neurobiology tells us that trauma has a physiological impact:

• recalibration of the brain's alarm system
• increase in stress hormone activity
• alterations in the system that filters relevant information from irrelevant
• compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive

Hope & Healing

Methods and experiences that rely on the brain's own natural neuroplasticity can palliate or even reverse the damage so survivors can feel fully alive in the present and move on with their lives:

• Top down - talking and re-connecting with others, allowing ourselves to know and understand what is going on with us, while processing the memories of the trauma
• Taking medicines that shut down inappropriate alarm reactions, or by utilizing other technologies that change the way the brain organizes information
• Bottom up - by allowing the body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma
• Or any combination of the above

Reference

Van Der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score. New York, New York: Viking Penguin.

Notes on the Trauma and Resilience of the Mind, Body, & Spirit

First up in my summer reading is "The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, mind and body in the healing of trauma" by Bessel Van Der Kolk. Here are my notes...

The high prevalence of trauma:

• One in five Americans were sexually molested as a child
• One in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body
• One in three couples engages in physical violence
• A quarter grew up with alcoholic relatives
• One out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit

The impact of trauma is felt everywhere.

• Traumatic experiences leave traces on our histories and cultures, families, minds and emotions, our capacity for joy and intimacy, our biology and immune systems.
• Families are frightened by the rage and emotional absence of soldiers returning home from combat.
• Wives of men who suffer PTSD tend to become depressed.
• Children of depressed mothers are at risk of growing up insecure and anxious. 
• Children exposed to family violence as a child often makes it difficult to establish stable, trusting relationships as an adult.

Trauma, by definition, is unbearable and intolerable. 

• It is so upsetting to think about what happened that we try to push it out of our minds, try to act as if nothing happened, and move on. 
• It takes tremendous energy to keep functioning while carrying the memory of terror, and the shame of helplessness. 

The brain - the primitive, reptilian and oldest part.

The part of our brain that is devoted to ensuring our survival is not very good at denial. Long after a traumatic experience is over, it may be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and mobilize disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones. This precipitates unpleasant emotions, intense physical sensations, and impulsive and aggressive actions. These post-traumatic reactions feel incomprehensible and overwhelming. Feeling out of control, survivors of trauma often begin to fear that they are damaged to the core and beyond redemption.

The brain stem is the part of the brain that connects to the spinal cord. The brain stem controls functions basic to the survival of all animals, such as heart rate, breathing, digesting foods, and sleeping. It is the lowest, most primitive area of the human brain. 
(from "The Brain - Basic Information www.brainwaves.com/brain_basics.html")