Somatic Experiencing Of Peter Levine

Xisca

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I have found the right forum for the topic!
I want to share about Somatic Experiencing, usually called SE.
I came here on this forum last year, when discovering Peat, and then found out that a lot is said on this forum about nerves. I came into answering with what I know, and also because when you ask for some help on a forum it is the right return to help with whatever you can.
I am going to look for what I posted elsewhere, so that I do not have to start all. I want it to be under the right title instead of "all around"
I 1st say a few things.
I do not have internet at home, so I can be very irregular for connecting and answering.
Then, I am trained into this method, I did the full 3 years course. I live in Europe and I do not look for any personal benefit.
I did the training in English with translation, but I am not English native and I am lazy for using a dictionary, so sorry for whatever will be badly said, you can always ask me to precise.
I have been looking for answers like you all in this forum, and I came across Somatic Experiencing exactly as I came across Peat! It is just pure logic after reading a lot.
I have given some sessions already, and I am just amazed at the results.
I am even jealous because people seem to react much better and quicker than me to the method....
I do believe that information helps to understand and be calmer when something happens and triggers a nervous reaction. So I would not inform about SE just to tell you to go and see a SEP (SE practitionner)! No, I believe we can fix part of our stuff ourselves. Actaully, I started this because I have no way to get sessions where I live, so I do them to myself. As this is no told into the course, I had to mix with other things.
Like for diet, I have tried quite a lot of things for my shyness and sensitivity in general. I had a quite healthy outdoor life, so I have never taken any drug at all for stress, and I can sleep well. I did have some traumatic experiences in my life, but most of all I had something happen before birth, well it happened to my mother, and she never was a strong person. I have learned that this triggers a global activation because the nervous system is not well finished before 6 months old. So, you become more sentive to little events! I wanted to say this also because it is very hard for people who were not hardly traumatised, to be said that they have to go on because you must be strong and forget about these "little things".
PTSD was known through the story of war veterans, and this can make people ashamed of being traumatized "for nothing".
Talking about trauma is quite a shame at least in my culture. People just say that they have overcome the events, and that they are not traumatized. So I never speak about PTSD not use the word trauma, when I want to inform people about SE around here.
Though SE is american, I was surprised that it was not apparently known. It is just showing up in Europe, but it called my attention just because 2 people talked to me about it at the same time, including the mother of a friend. So I went to the 2 days introduction course 5 years ago. I reacted so much and came into contact with my body sensations beyond emotions. I am a dog behaviorist, so I already knew a lot, except that I did not tiiiiiiiilt to all before this course. That was enough to decide to go for the full course.
So now that you get the story, I go and look for what I posted elsewhere!
 
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Xisca

Xisca

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It makes me laugh to see right away that all my sentences begin with I!!!!
Maybe because the emphasis is about putting some personal stuff...
The truth is also that it came all to me very naturally when I spoke about it in various topics (I just could not help it and was triggered to answer), and that I was nervous about having said that I would start a specific topic about it. sorry for the maybe akward way it shows up....
 
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Xisca

Xisca

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So, I have been gathering the already written texts, and I try to order this and put it here. Looking more into my motivation: I would like to understand more deeply and connect the SE core to other methods (similarity and differences) and to the physiology of the cell etc. Basically, how what Peat says connects to what Levine says. I have been thinking about this since the beginning of my Peat’s reading. I considere Peter Levine for nerves at the same level (or better because I know better!) as I considere Ray Peat.

So, I think that if you get to know more about SE, then you are more likely to make me reach my goal faster! I hope so, as while writing tonight, I turned my bone broth into carbon. This one will not make any ATP in my cells... (here I sigh... good as this is a sign of the nervous settling down of my system that got upset by the loss of the meal, the waste, and maybe the loss of the pot...)

In the SE course, which is to teach the technique, we never talk about anything at the level of hormones, nor hypocamp, amigdala etc. It does not mean it is not behind, but we use the felt sense approach, so basically, what are the physical signs of activation, of freeze etc. All what we learn can be personally verified, because everybody can see it and feel it, and it is especially relevant with ethology, animal behavior. If we correct the nervous activation, then hormones regulate on their own without taking any suplement. I am not going to doubt that taking some can help, as I take progesteron and I would take thyroid if needed. I would just do the necessary at nervous level, to stop having to take it.

In an SE session, we use talk, with the kind of vocabulary that is directed at the autonomous nervous system, to facilitate the felt sense and the resolution of unfinished defense behavior at neuro-muscular level, and we also use touch, to support nervous discharges.
 
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Xisca

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Now, this autonomous or reptilian nervous system... sympathic activation is not only fight and flight, it is the normal and sane way to ACT and LIVE. It just goes higher when there is a threat. Your nervous system is a marvel that makes you live without having to think about it. All is working by itself inside us. It does not mean we cannot influence it of course, but you have to respect its rules if you want to succeed at doing it. There is no direct access by the thinking mind on it. You need tricks.

Let’s go into details about the 2 parts of the ANS. I said it is what makes life possible, you breathe at night and even during the day without any concentation on this task. You cannot forget to do the necessary. The 2 parts are the accelerator and the brake, and so you drive your life like a car, go faster or slower when needed, as smoothly as possible, and without using more energy than what is needed. This is the basis, but of course what interrests us most is the extreme reactions when there is a danger. If you meet a free lion in the zoo, you go away without even having to decide where, as your system will decide with the informations that were at hand even before any danger was coming. You are always oriented. You can imagine that you would ask yourself who left a door opened only when you will be safe!

This is a marvelous system, and not only do we add stress by our way of life, by our food, by having to resist to pesticides or electric fields, but we nearly forgot how to shake off the stress! Stress is ok, but we need to know how to go out of it, to enter it again. Life is moving like waves, what goes up must go down, and what goes down must go up. Remember this last one when you feel bad: it will change.

Wim Hof uses his breathing to up his adrenaline. His core stays warm. His immune system is suppressed by his high stress level. I'm no expert; I could be misreading this, so...

I think you are right.
high stress = accelerator / activation of a lot of sympathic response = concentration on survival right NOW = suppress immune system, and also digestion, and also libido. And blood goes off the skin, to not loose blood in case of injury! And so less loss of heat as well...

Of course we do not recover from stress properly in our culture, because we overcome and go ahead without knowing how to discharge the activation of stresses. There are 2 ways to deal with an after stressful-event, either you keep the energy or you discharge it like earth rods do. It is basic electricity in a way...

By the way, Ray said that too much parasympathic stimulation (with acetycholine or histamines) may not be that good, that's maybe why he prefers people to have a high heart rate?

There is not ONE parasympathic. (Well, what did say Peat exactly?)
There is no fix state of either sympathic or parasimpathic, they move like waves, up and down alternatively, like the breathing pattern. The problem is when you stay stuck in one state, so that you are no more adapted to what happens around really.
What you mention from Peat can be when the slow heart rate comes from a parasympathic state AT THE SAME time that a sympathic state.
The para-sympathic is the brake, and it should ALTERNATE with the accelerator.
But when there is some freeze response, then the accelerator stays on, and the para-sympathic acts like a hand-brake, at the same time.
When some of this underlying activation stays, then you have a slow heart rate that is not what it should be. Of course, there are also slow rates because of sports. If it was simple we would know it!!!!
So we can say that when the activation gets too high, there is a shut off of the system = freeze response. This is a protection from over-heating the system, like in a car or an electrical installation.
According to the learned patern (experiences since even before birth), some people go quicker to the freeze response than others. You can even stay all your life in some partial freeze states, at least in some aspects of your life. But your energy is blocked, some of it at least, and this relates to the metabolic problems that Peat explains. Hormones and metabolism are modified. Modifying the way of eating cannot be enough for all cases.

The freeze response always means that the brake is on with the accelarator at the same time. The normal decelerator is not called freeze but relaxation. This part of the system is also responsible for co-regulation, which is what people do when they are together (and other animals do it as well).
They are just 2 parts of the same para-sympathic system. You need the relaxed para-sympathic state for some major body fonctions. The freeze response maintains the accelarator on = bad digestion and bad immune system.... Therefore it is important to go out of this state! And so yes, logically this should induce a return to a good cell respiration, so more co2.

ESSENTIAL TO KNOW: Going out of some old freeze response is not easy to do, because the freeze is a security to anaestesiate and not feel what is too strong. So there is a need to titrate, which mean to go slowly and small. The main tricky point is that you go out of the freeze by the same door you entered it... which mean that you will feel as bad as when you wake up from an anestesia. It hurts, but you cannot stay with the button off. It has to hurt before you get better. The problem is when it hurts too much, you can just faint. Fainting is a form of freeze. And surgery is also a major and unknown cause of trauma. Forgetting about the experience of child birth is a welcome form of freeze, so that you want to have more children! Loosing the memory of an accident is also a protection. But you need to shake off the energy. And after a serious accident, if you entered in an “emotional bubble” in terror, you will go out of it passing through terror again. If this is accompanied and done in several steps instead of one, then it is fine to do.

Trauma is not about the story, not about what happened, it is about how you got rid of the un-used activation. We all survived to what happened to us until now, but our system can still be running under un-discharged activations. In general it is, more or less. When you are on the "more" side, then you get diagnosed "something".
If you have ever escaped , let's say a car accident. You just escaped by turning the driving wheel the way it was needed. You absolutely know that you were more activated at this moment than you would have been to turn the same wheel to change direction! When your body notice a danger, it puts all its energy for reacting NOW, or else there might not be any tomorrow.
And then, you escape easily, and you have not used this energy, and it has to go away. When the energy is for defense it is called fight and flight. And you know that after such an event, you are very likely to need to stop driving because you are trembling. This is the sympathical discharge. If you block it with consciouness, it is sometimes possible, but you keep the energy inside. It will come back again, you might shake again at another moment, and if it does not, you will sooner or later develop some symptoms.
Just for a little accident, no, an escaped accident. then add multiple challenging situations, repetition, diversity, like poor eating, resisting polution, uncountless stresses. If you know that stress before 6 months are more damaging, and if you got some surgery, or accidents, child abuse etc, then I can tell you what you can just believe: we are really really VERY resistant not be in a worse state or more rapidly!
PTSD can be the real short cut to just say that we have residues of activation, and that they are different according to all the different factors. Yes, just complex PTSD.
Food is only a part of it. Of course it is fundamental to help recovery.
Hormons are fundamental as well, but their disbalance might be more a consecuence than a cause of the problems.
Undischarged activation is like driving a car with the hand-brake on: it sucks energy.
You can find many videos about animals, fight, flight and freeze responses.


And more interesting, the way they GO OUT of these states when it is over.
The going out is what makes you able to keep on handling stress with no trauma left.
They all shake when they get up. you can see this very easily with dogs. They shake as if going out of a bath all day long. They shake off stress residues. They do not order their fur when they do this! I am a dog behaviourist, and you can find out about what was called calming signals. If you add some neuro-science knowledge to it, then it becomes more scientific about what it really is. And it is all automatic, as when you start yawning, it just comes.
Study yourself by the felt sense and you will feel a world!
 

PeatThemAll

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Great posts! Thanks! There's a video on YouTube of a veteran Marine who started unlocking his tics by *slowly* unclenching his jaw until he reached a shaking/tingling spot. Let's suppose one has locked-in trauma but does not know how to activate the sensitive spot(s). Can slow, focused stretching like yoga be a solution for a DYI-type of person?
 
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Xisca

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Well, there is a lot more to know before you can do something like this the right way!

Before unlocking the past, you must train the present situations first.
I like DIY, so if some people in the forum want to do something for themselves, I will give all the informations I can. You have 1st to practise the felt sense in your daily life, and learn to feel the waves of change in your body, and the physical signs that accompagny this.

What I wrote is concentrated, so if something needs to be more precised or detailed...
 
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Xisca

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I was induced in talking about SE because of the high level of knowledge I find here in general, and also becaue a lot of times I could read good posts about knowledge of the nervous system.
So I was thinking of giving example I copied, and explain what can add the approach of SE.

As a better answer to your post Peatthemall, I can mention what Heidi said:


QUOTE : "As a way of coping with the emotions, I made a conscious decision to feel everything that I was feeling, and stay focused on the physical sensations, as opposed to getting too caught up in the story. This technique ended up being extremely helpful, and seemed to work synergistically with the reduced breathing. My breathing reduced every time that I did it. So then I started practicing it with more mundane little triggers. Whenever I noticed that I was slightly avoiding feeling something, I instead allowed for full sensory and visceral feeling. After practicing this for a week, it no longer feels like something separate from the reduced breathing, but instead feels like part of the same continuum. Both reducing breathing and feeling the physical sensations of emotions move one into a deeply relaxed and settled state. There's a feeling of emotions unraveling and resolving, or like layers being peeled back to reveal something underneath. Both practices feel deeply satisfying. They feel like they are one thing."

What she did is the 1st good useful thing you can do!
This reduces the stress, and allow more parasympthic state, so yes it goes withh the reduced breathing, that becomes automaticly.
 
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Xisca

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Onioneyedox said:
"bringing attention (sort of mental energy/focus), like body scan, you can relax diaphragm rather effectively in meditation. Just have energy in body (as in well eaten), relax everything, body and mind, so that just breathing and heart are working and when diaphragm is momentarily in rest just bring focus to it (not really any thoughts just attention) and the muscles sort of gets energy and relaxes. "

That's it too, your body needs some focus to be able to go on with its needs. The body is like a child pulling mother's skirt until getting attention.
It usually relaxes, except if the activation gets too strong for the person to stand it.
In that case you need to resource yourself with something you like, to help sustain the process, or else you could feel you are going down in a spiral.
The spiral feeling must go UP.
 
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Xisca

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Heidi said:
"When the grief finally left it was like an awakening experience."

Yes, this is great, it means that a big discharged took place!
Levine mention this and I also got it.
This is some energy coming back and it takes time to get used to the new state, and thenn it stabilizes.
 
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Xisca

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Thanks to Barefooter for sharing this, because it is necessary to know this before going there :

"There are a good deal of spiritual practices that essentially involve stressing the body to achieve an altered state of consciousness, at which point your supposedly connecting with some greater energy/power. I think people learned long long ago that things like fasting, breathing heavily, endurance activities, etc. caused changes in the way they perceived."

Technically, this means creating a freeze state! It is also called dissociation when you "go away", freezing being more to feel stuck inside and looking out through a little window.
You can feel in a bubble, which mimiks the distance to the danger, when you cannot go away nor make it go.

I am not going to say that there is no greater power.... it is surely a way to feel it, as in NDE.
BUT you must go out of it.
 
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Xisca

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And Tara said :
"Also, in a real fight or flight situation, adrenaline increases breathing when you probably need it, and improves blood flow to muscles while reducing flow to digestion etc. Short term, while being chased by something, this may be very helpful. We just don't want to be in chronic stress states - we're built to spend time resting and repairing in between short high-stress bursts, and to produce lots of CO while fighting or fleeing.

That is why it is important to be resilient, and be able to go in and out of those states. It is automatic, but we can mess!
 
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Heidi

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Xisca, thanks for doing this thread! I am really into the sensory/somatic experiencing and how it relates to breathing and meditation. It's great how sometimes just simple awareness can bring about an unraveling or release. I've notice that I often sigh before I have a release, and then there's a shift into deep relaxation with warmth and energy flowing to my extremities. Sometimes I get release with chills and chattering, like with being cold, but it's not from feeling cold.

I'm still practicing staying aware of the physical sensations of emotions. It fits for me with the reduced breathing. Feel free to give other tips or ideas of things to practice.

I think I can feel when I have a freeze response mixed into what I'm feeling. I think that my pulse is slower at those times. And then it increases when there is some shift or release. But I just started paying attention to this, and need to observe it more to be sure.
 
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Xisca

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Yes, those sighs are like the stages in diving, it is not easy to change stage smoothly, so there are some steps we can feel.
sigh is one, then, yawning.
Can you feel a difference according to the lenght of the exhale part?
I can feel when my system want to surrender but does not do it already, that I breath in more, and then there is the release coming a little later, and a real breath out.
I read that you intended to control your breath in sighing, I think it is better not to.
Let it spontaneous, that's what it is about with the ANS.
 
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Xisca

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Sometimes I get release with chills and chattering, like with being cold, but it's not from feeling cold.
This discharge is the most typical, may be more powerful than the respiratory ones.
Try to see if they move.
They can be in legs and move to the feet, where they can go out. In this case it usually is something that has to do with fleeing.
And in arm, it is about fight, logical.
They can also occur in the jaw.

You might notice some links to the emotional part of the felt sense, and you can also have some internal sensations, and also some images or memory of sounds, or even some meaning that come to be linked to the sensations.
Whatever, stay a lot with the physical part, it is the guide.
Always end by feeling VERY stable.
The energy that is reliesed has to be integrated, so stay stable and grounded for time to make its job.
 
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Xisca

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I think I can feel when I have a freeze response mixed into what I'm feeling. I think that my pulse is slower at those times. And then it increases when there is some shift or release. But I just started paying attention to this, and need to observe it more to be sure.

Freeze is very special and can be different from person to person and time to time.
It is not about cold of course, they want a name with F, to get the 3 Fs!!!!

It is about stillness of the body, and ffeling in a bubble.
Remember the basis, you want DISTANCE from a DANGER.
If you cannot get it physically, then it is too activating and come this inner distance.
You can either dissociate and feel out of your body, or burry inside.
In that case people feel they look outside as if through a window, or they can feel as if in a film and they look at it as if not real.
Anesthesia is a big case of freeze.

You cannot go out of freeze without going throught a big activation, which is the state that is below the apparent stillness. The motor is running at full speed with the had brake on. That is why those activations are the most difficult to get rid of. The anestesia can be very comfortable!
 
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There is still the usual amount of surface chatter, but I'm aware of a deep or expanded stillness underneath. Ironically this shift brings up a bit of anxiety. I didn't realize that I was afraid of my consciousness shifting in a good way. I'm also having a harder time getting enough sleep due to this shift in consciousness. So I'm feeling more stressed and work has been hard because I'm tired from not sleeping enough.

I have found it! Best for telling you! Your own example:
When you relax, then the activation you have "in stock" can show up. Because there is nothing that our body wants more than getting rid of our past activations....
So, you can put it on the same level as your shift in consciojsness, but may be not as the cause.
I would call the cause just mere "activation". And it feels like stress of course.
This activation is the one that wants to be discharged. And it has to be done little by little or else it can be overwhelming.
That is what is happening to me as well, and I slow down the breathing for this reason.
Our capacity to hold the activation is like a recipient, and it is not enough like a rubber baloon, it is stiff! Streching it is like body stretching: SLOW!
 

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Yes, those sighs are like the stages in diving, it is not easy to change stage smoothly, so there are some steps we can feel.
sigh is one, then, yawning.
Can you feel a difference according to the lenght of the exhale part?
I can feel when my system want to surrender but does not do it already, that I breath in more, and then there is the release coming a little later, and a real breath out.
I read that you intended to control your breath in sighing, I think it is better not to.
Let it spontaneous, that's what it is about with the ANS.
The controlling the breath when sighing was from reading that one can subtly hyperventilate by sighing a lot. So I experimented with sighing by exhaling more slowly. But I've noticed with the oximeter that a sigh indicates a release and a shift into better breathing. So I don't think that modifying it makes any difference. It can be tricky to find the right balance with when and how much to reduce breathing. Mostly I try to slow the breath down and lighten it, or shorten the inhale. I want breathing to feel fluid and natural. Breath holds and other breathing manipulations can interfere with that. I think you're right though about allowing for spontaneity with any sighs and release. Thanks for the feedback.
 

Heidi

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I have found it! Best for telling you! Your own example:
When you relax, then the activation you have "in stock" can show up. Because there is nothing that our body wants more than getting rid of our past activations....
So, you can put it on the same level as your shift in consciojsness, but may be not as the cause.
I would call the cause just mere "activation". And it feels like stress of course.
This activation is the one that wants to be discharged. And it has to be done little by little or else it can be overwhelming.
That is what is happening to me as well, and I slow down the breathing for this reason.
Our capacity to hold the activation is like a recipient, and it is not enough like a rubber baloon, it is stiff! Streching it is like body stretching: SLOW!
The entire process feels very much like peeling away the layers of an onion. When you remind me of a previous layer, I can see now how things have progressed since then. I'm no longer activated by that previous layer right now. Now there are more current activations scrambling to be felt and discharged. The process seems to have its own intelligence to it. If you just stay current with the feelings and activations of this moment, it unfolds effortlessly. It doesn't feel effortless in the moment however. Fully feeling things can feel hard, crazy, and like you're regressing. But looking back from a broader perspective one can see the beauty and ease of the process.

In terms of the specific example you referred to, I'm no longer feeling anxiety or having a hard time sleeping when I feel a sense of the expanded stillness. A number of years ago, my practice was to move into and try to live in the sense of stillness. I felt a lot happier and experienced more bliss, but was disconnected from my own and other's suffering. I think that spiritual states can be very disassociated. I'm relieved that I realized that. Working with the breathing, emotions, and somatic experiencing is incredibly grounded in comparison. When you're in touch with and fully feeling everything there is nowhere to fall.
 
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Heidi

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Heidi said:
"When the grief finally left it was like an awakening experience."

Yes, this is great, it means that a big discharged took place!
Levine mention this and I also got it.
This is some energy coming back and it takes time to get used to the new state, and thenn it stabilizes.
Xisca, I didn't have any feeling of discharge with the grief. I think it happened very gradually over a long period of time. I just noticed after awhile that this heavy grief that had been with me for as long as I could remember, was completely gone. At first I couldn't believe that it wasn't there anymore. But it never returned, and now it's normal to not have a feeling of perpetual grief underneath.

Sometimes I have a pronounced feeling of discharge and release, but sometimes there's a quiet shift that is almost imperceptible. Something lets go without any drama or fanfare. Sometimes things let go, but then something restimulates it again. Often big issues are partially resolved and then get activated again and again. The activation can sometimes seems endless with certain issues and situations.
 

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