"Neural WiFi"

"One writer compared mirror neurons to 'neural WiFi' - we pick up not only another person's movement but her emotional state and intentions as well. When people are in sync with each other, they tend to stand or sit similar ways, and their voices take on the same rhythms. But our mirror neurons also make us vulnerable to others' negativity, so that we respond to their anger with fury or are dragged down by their depression...trauma almost invariably involves not being seen, not being mirrored, and not being taken into account. Treatment needs to reactivate the capacity to safely mirror, and to be mirrored, by others, but also to resist being hijacked by others' negative emotions."

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Parents, Children, Trauma & Neuroplasticity

"During disasters young children usually take their cues from their parents. As long as their caregivers remain calm and responsive to their needs, they often survive terrible incidents without serious psychological scars."

"...early explorations shape the limbic structures devoted to emotions and memory, but these structures can also be significantly modified by later experiences: for the better by a close friendship or a beautiful first love, for example, or for the worse by a violent assault, relentless bullying, or neglect." 

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Notice, Feel, Be Here

"No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality...It is so much easier for them [people who have gone through the unspeakable] to talk about what has been done to them - to tell the story of victimization and revenge - than to notice, feel, and put into words the reality of their internal experience...Our scans had revealed how their dread persisted and could be triggered by multiple aspects of daily experience. They had not integrated their experience into the ongoing stream of their life. They continued to be 'there' and did not know how to be 'here' - fully alive in the present."

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Our two brains

Left-brain

• rational, logical
• images of past trauma deactivate the left hemisphere of the brain
• does all the talking
• linguistic, sequential, and analytical
• we know the left hemisphere has come online when children start to understand language and learn how to speak. This enables them to name things, compare them, understand their interrelations, and begin to communicate their own unique, subjective experiences to others.
• remembers facts, statistics, and the vocabulary of events. We call on it to explain our experiences and put them in order. 
• deactivation of the left hemisphere has a direct impact on the capacity to organize experience into logical sequences and to translate our shifting feelings and perceptions into words. Without sequencing we can't identify cause and effect, grasp the long-term effects of our actions, or create coherent plans for the future. 

Right-brain

• intuitive, artistic
• images of past trauma activate the right hemisphere of the brain
• emotional, visual, spatial, and tactual
• the right half of the brain carries the music of experience. It communicates through facial expressions and body language and by making the sounds of love and sorrow: by singing, swearing, crying, dancing, or mimicking. The right brain is the first to develop in the womb, and it carries the nonverbal communication between mothers and infants. 
• the right brain stores memories of sound, touch, smell, and the emotions they evoke. It reacts automatically to voices, facial features, and gestures and places experienced in the past. What it recalls feels like intuitive truth - the way things are. 

The two halves of the brain speak different languages and process the imprints of the past in dramatically different ways. Under ordinary circumstances, the two sides of the brain work together more or less smoothly, even in people who might be said to favor one side over the other. However, having one side or the other shut down, even temporarily, is disabling.

From The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

Trauma Healing & Autonomy Restoration

"...four fundamental truths:
(1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being;
(2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning;
(3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and
(4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children can feel safe and where they can thrive."

Bessel van der Kolk in The Body Keeps the Score.

Love, loss & facing the truth

"Semrad taught us that most human suffering is related to love and loss and that the job of therapists is to help people 'acknowledge, experience, and bear' the reality of life - with all its pleasures and heartbreak. 'The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves,' he'd say, urging us to be honest with ourselves about every facet of our experience. He often said that people can never get better without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel."

Bessel van der Kolk writing about what he learned from his great teacher, Elvin Semrad, in the book, The Body Keeps the Score.

My "Student Evaluations of Faculty" Results

After every semester, I get to read what students thought about our time together.
Usually comments are very positive and encourage me. Sometimes there is one that is just mean.
This semester was awesome - teaching the right class makes a difference!
Here's an original that made me smile :)

"Dr. Acuña worked it - put her thang down, flipped it, and reversed it. Best professor for that class."

I'm going to really review comments for themes, but I already know that I am happiest (and so are my students) when I teach classes that I love. SWRK 601 & 602, here I come!!