| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| All1Spirit |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 10:24:03
I am trained in clinical biofeedback - with two Velcro/sensor straps around your fingers(or toes) I can see a troubling thought register on a GSR meter in less than 2 seconds.
With a pair of EMG sensors on your temples and I can see increased muscle tension in less than 5 seconds. We also have chest bands that can measure the change in your breathing and Heart Rate Variability finger sensors that show the through/stress response.
This is the basis of lie detectors – thoughts are electrical energy and when you see that the mind/body response can go from the brain to the toes and fingers in less than 2 seconds you have to respect the power of thought.
The problem is that children that grow up with adverse experiences have neurologically hard wired thought tracks that attempt to cope by expecting the worst. Called a negative bias it is totally in the unconscious and we only rarely get glimpses of it.
Not only is there a negative bias but also for me a sadness and perhaps a rage of not “Getting Ours” meaning that we don’t like the emotional baggage and ill feelings generated by many family dynamics. Children are great observers and have emotions that aware extremely powerful due to the lack of cortical control and limited socialization at a young age. These electrical firestorms are then imprinted into the primitive brain and obscured.
Children want to play and be carefree – when the family imposes emotions that a child with an undeveloped cortex is challenged to cope with there is no ability to use rational thought to process it, it is stored as non-verbal memory in the limbic system. This is much like binary code that we can not read or understand.
My personal challenge is in becoming aware of these hidden emotions – learning to honor them as they become apparent and to appropriately respond to new one instead of sorting those I want to feel from those that bring unwanted information/sensations.
"Around and Around the Circle We Go....
The Answer Sits In The Middle and Knows..." |
| 8 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| chickenbone |
Posted - 02/14/2013 : 12:50:36
Thank-you for your answer, Dr. James. It helped me because it is important for me to understand these are just all manifestations of unconscious emotional turmoil. I sometimes feel as if there is a ball of negative energy in my mind/body that has been there almost all my life. It goes dormant for periods of time and then gets stirred up and starts crashing around inside of me. There is no escape for it. I have repeated dreams where I am living in a house or someplace with uncaring faceless people with whom I have absolutely no attachment and a very uneasy coexistence. I am constantly attempting to create some safe and secure space for myself within this context, but throughout the dreams, I never make any progress. The faceless people in my dreams are not bad, just that I wonder if they will do something to me or throw me out. It is almost like they look like human beings, but are really not.
Sometimes I wonder if, now that I am approaching old age, I am 63, if I fear that I will have to experience the helplessness and abuse that I experienced as a child again, only this time at the end of my life instead of at the beginning. I dread being dependent on anyone.
Dr. James, I feel like I should be paying you. |
| Dr James Alexander |
Posted - 02/13/2013 : 02:50:48
chickenbone- my view is that TMS is related to most forms of psychological distress, in that all psychological symptoms (and symptoms with psychological origins like chronic pain) are there for very good reasons. They represent a 'solution' to an overwhelming problem and made sense in that original context (perhaps when we were children). Each symptom, whether it be TMS or hypochondria, if it persists, is being generated by an unconscious schema which contains some kind of implicit learning, e.g the world is dangerous, or i cant trust anyone, or i am of no value, etc. This was learnt in a particular context, and the symptom often represents a solution to that problem, e.g 'stay withdrawn and quiet because to bring attention to myself is dangerous'; or 'i am so unworthy that the only way i can get any validation is by being sick'. To a neglected child, this may make a whole lot of sense.
Chronic pain has its own logic, as people like Freud, Franz Alexander, Sarno suggest- 'as long as i feel physical pain i have no need to focus on the emotional pain'. None of these are conscious strategies, but they are solutions to very painful problems which are devised at an unconscious level as per the implicit emotional learning which the original bad situation necessitated. In that sense, i would say that all forms of psychological suffering which persist (including TMS) are related.
James |
| Birdie78 |
Posted - 02/13/2013 : 01:51:44
Wow, this unlocking the emotional brain seems to be very, very interesting, although it's witihn a therapeutical frame!Thanks for this, Dr. James Alexander!
Here's a radio interview-trancript with the author Bruce Eckert, he gives a short summary of what is called the "reconsolidation":
http://www.shrinkrapradio.com/330.pdf
Kind regards from Germany sends Birdie |
| chickenbone |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 20:02:23
Does anybody know how TMS relates to hypochondria? Is TMS a form of it
or just related? I ask because, for a long time, before I knew about TMS, I thought of myself as just a run-of-the mill hypochondriac.
|
| All1Spirit |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 16:40:15
Recovery from informaition is common with anxiety disorders - once you pull the fear plug and they no longer think a pimple is cancer the whole house of cards falls!
"Around and Around the Circle We Go....
The Answer Sits In The Middle and Knows..." |
| Dr James Alexander |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 15:23:18
Birdie- thanks for that- very interesting stuff, and no doubt, potentially really helpful. I think there is a convergence happening with many of these 'bottom-up' therapeutic approaches winding up with very similar conclusions. It is clear that if people want to actually resolve this stuff, they need to delve into the depths of their emotional brains/implicit memories/unconscious minds.
I have seen it happening many times (even with my self) that people can overcome chronic pain with just pure information- i find this kind of odd, but undeniable. When i overcame my chronic pain of 18 years, it was not through a bottom-up therapy. It was through a combination of cognitive learning (via TMS books etc) and well... an experience (returning to my accident site 20 years later). I guess there was in fact a bottom-up process happening, ie. i was experiencing heaps of pain in the days prior to revisiting my accident site (no doubt, lots bubbling away at an unconscious level in anticipation of being there again)- however, when i was there, i found i was actually safe (I wasnt about to die again). This is a disconfirming experience, wherein the sense of impending death was challenged by a sense of safety- according to Ecker etal, this type of experience is what sets up re-consolidation, which will result in therapeutic change (bottom-up).
In regards to people who have got better with just information (and i have worked with many of them), it is wrong to think that there is anything such as pure information. Every chunk of information also entails emotions and somatic resonance. I think its a fallacy that information (thoughts) can exist in some kind of emotional/somatic vacuum. This would perhaps explain the success of purely cognitive approaches, when they happen, as the cognitive changes is attached to loads of emotional/somatic change- really cant have one without the other.
James |
| Dr James Alexander |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 14:25:27
All1Spirit- sounds like you are trained in psychological/health sciences. As such, i can recommend to you a book titled 'Unlocking the Emotional Brain' by B. Ecker, R. Ticic & L. Hulley (2012). It is about consolidation of implicit memory in limbic/right hemisphere regions, and the experimental research on re-consolidation processes of emotional memories; and how various forms of psychotherapy achieve their results through replicating what re-consolidation researchers have done, but in a therapeutic setting. This allows the 'emotional brain' (aka. the unconscious) to release the distress relating to experiences to the extent that the person becomes unburdened of the symptom producing schemas which operate at an unconscious level. Really interesting stuff. They have developed a therapy which is based solely on this reconsolidation process. As you are interested in becoming aware of these hidden emotions (and the schemas, or implicit/unconscious 'knowings' which drive them), you would find their Coherence Therapy illuminating- it does honour these implicit emotional knowings (viewing them as solutions which were developed in relation to terrible situations, but continued into other situations), and which served the person to prevent an even worse assault (had the symptom not been developed). It is non-pathologising, affirming, and enlightening. And apparently, it works really well with a range of problems (including chronic pain). See my description of it on my website (www.drjamesalexander-psycholologist.com)
James |
| Birdie78 |
Posted - 02/12/2013 : 12:03:31
All1Spirit, that's exactly the theme I am dealing with in the moment!
If you or someone else is interested in early trauma I really recommend (sorry, one further book) this: it's called "Healing Developmental Trauma" by Laurence Heller & Aline LaPierre.
It's written in a very clear and well-grounded way and is kind of an advancement of the so called "Somatic Experiencing" by Peter Levine, named NARM.
It will be too hard for me to describe this theory short & understandable, so I will post a few excerpts.
In advance: The authors describe 5 "core needs" of the child. The need for connection (0-6 months), attunement (6 months to 15 yrs), trust (2 to 4 yrs), autonomy (2 to 4 yrs) and love-sexuality (4 to 4 yrs). This book is about the "adaptive style" of whom very early needs for attachment were disrupted and frustrated by shock or ongoing developmental trauma.
The authors, and that seems important to me, make a difference between two different styles of how the brain works. Bottom-up means the way brain stem ---> lymbic system ----> cortex. Top-down means the way in converse:
"Top-down, our thoughts, judgements, and indentifications affect how we feel and impact the nervous system's capacity for regulation. Bottom-up, regulation/sysregulation in our nervous system affects our emotions and thoughts. […] Top-down therapeutic approaches focus on the cortical functions of cognition. Bottom-up therapeutic approaches focus on the body, the felt sense, and the instinctive responses as they are mediated through the brainstem and move upward to impact the limbic and cortical areas of the brain. Continuous loops of information travel from the body to the brain and from the brain to the body. Similar loops of information move among cognitive, emotional, and instinctive structures within the brain. It can be argued that babies mostly rely on bottom-up perceptual mechanisms. When a child experiences trauma the stress cycle is set in motion that initially moved bottom-up and later top-down and continuous self reinforcing loops. Bottom-up, trauma creates nervous system dysregulation. {…] chronic bottom-up dysregulation and distress lead to negative identifications, beliefs, and judgments about ourselves. These negative identifications, beliefs, and judgments in time trigger more nervous system dysregulation, and a distress cycle is created. Most therapeutic and personal growth traditions tend to focus on either top-down or bottom-up aspect of the circular flow of information, working either from the body to the brain or from the brain to the body; as a result, they do not address the self-perpetuating aspects of the information loop and, by not doing so, often miss the pernicious links that keep the distress cycle in operation.”
“NARM works with the vulnerable preverbal and nonverbal elements of an individual who has suffered early shock or developmental/relational trauma. Individuals manage this kind of early trauma by developing the Connection Survival Style. “
“In early attachments dynamics, the baby's nervous system is first organized in an implicit way, responding to and being regulated by the healthy nervous system of the mother. Because the process of attachment follows a nervous system-based developmental sequence, it is premature to focus on transference dynamics when self-regulation has been strongly impaired or disrupted by early trauma. The underlying deficits in nervous system organization must first be addressed.”
“Particularly when working with early trauma, cognitive therapy is only minimally effective. In the case of the early connection survival style, for example, focusing on changing distorted cognitions is particularly difficult because with early trauma, the cortex is not yet fully developed, and it is mostly the underlying bottom-up nervous system and affective imbalances that drive the cognitive distortions. NARM presents a broader clinical application of mindfulness than is found in cognitive therapy by separating the story related to the distress dates from the physiological distress itself. As the nervous system becomes more regulated, many cognitive distortions drop away. Elements of cognitive therapy are useful in working with the top-down aspects of the distress cycle, but particularly when working with someone who has experienced early trauma, it is essential to work with the distress cycle both top-down and bottom-up.”
“When, for a child, the need-satisfaction cycle is significantly interrupted, healthy development is disturbed, and the environmental failure triggers both tension and bracing in the musculature and activation and imbalances in the nervous system and biochemistry - all of which sets the stage for symptoms and disease.”
“Our survival styles are reflected in our bodies into ways: as areas of tension (hypertonicity) and as areas of weakness or disconnection (hypotonicity). Patterns of tension and weakness reveal the ways we have learned to compensate for the disconnection from our needs, core self, and life force. Muscular constriction, bracing, and collapse is the physical mechanisms of adaptive survival styles.”
“Infants react to negative emotion that arousal by instinctively contracting. They manage high-intensity activation though the contraction of the viscera and joints us through tension in the eyes, ears and base of the skull. Adults who developed these patterns in childhood are habituated to them and continue to use these same patterns of muscular tension and visceral contraction throughout life”.
“Many individuals with the connection survival style, not knowing the actual source of the distress, create explanations that are designed to help them make sense of the symptoms. Once the nameless dread has been named, it becomes what in NARM is called the designated issue. […] the pitfall is that because of chronic dysregulation, many individuals develop real physical problems that then becomes the focus of their lives. Designated issue is, whether or not they have a basis in physical reality, come to dominate a person's life, covering the deep distress and masking the underlying core disconnection. Unfortunately, creating a designated issue ultimately causes more distress. Designated issues may take many forms and occupy a person's attention, becoming the focus for his or her lifelong struggle. The designated issue functions protectively, giving a frame of reference for the Underlying feeling of distress. […] focusing on the designated issue diverts attention from the underlying unrecognized high arousal, dysregulation, and disconnection that drive the nameless dread.”
“Adults with the connection survival style have split off significant amounts of aggression. They present as meek and mild, sometimes very cerebral and sometimes otherwordlsy and ethereal. They don't know that they are angry except total of themselves, often to the point of self-hatred. Integrating this split off aggression – learning neither to act it in nor act it out, transforming it into healthy aggression - is key to reconnection with the bodily self and the world, to increased aliveness, and to coming-out of dissociation. They fear that if they allows themselves to feal their anger, they might hurt someone. “
Ok, to cut a long story short: Sarno says we don't need to re-experience these underlying issues. But if you feel you need so, then "somatic mindfulness" or other ways of bottom-up-approaches may be a way to access the experiences which are stored in the implicit brain, weather there's early trauma or not 
Kind regards from Germany sends Birdie |
|
|
