The Freeze Response At The Root Of "learned" Helplessness

[Amazoniac]

Hypnotic trance. As weird as it appears, I suspect subtle forms of these suggestions are more common than realized. I just posted a niacin experiment in which the subjects reported flushing from nicotinamide because they were antecipating it.

 

[Amazoniac]

I forgot to comment that Curt Richter is the author of the 'Learned Helplessness' experiment. So this subject stems from it.

- Voodoo Death
- Unexpected Death in a Patient who Wished to Die

 

[Regina]

Hypnotic trance. As weird as it appears, I suspect subtle forms of these suggestions are more common than realized. I just posted a niacin experiment in which the subjects reported flushing from nicotinamide because they were antecipating it.

I don't know about these MA guys, but in aikido we do learn to move. It gets conditioned into you after you get hit in the face a few times. Or if you just tense up to resist a joint lock, you soon learn to stay supple and feel out the shape where the lock can't effect you. And if you do a lot of randori bouts, both the defender and the attackers learn to keep moving.

 

[Amazoniac]

I don't know about these MA guys, but in aikido we do learn to move. It gets conditioned into you after you get hit in the face a few times. Or if you just tense up to resist a joint lock, you soon learn to stay supple and feel out the shape where the lock can't effect you. And if you do a lot of randori bouts, both the defender and the attackers learn to keep moving.

That's just too ridiculous to be staged. The reactions don't seem enacted, it's quite difficult to fake these things without becoming apparent at some point. They seem like an exaggerated response with the belief that the teacher has superpowers. The funny guy picks for demonstration the person who's immersed the most.

 

[Xisca]

Voodoo is about a freeze response, as shown obviously in the article you shared! And it is not triggered by fear exactly, but by being SURE to die soon.

 

[Owen B]

Some people are probably trying to eat their way out of a meaningless life. Diet should indeed adapt to the conditions, but sometimes what needs to be taken care of and undone is the voodoo spell. Initially it must not be a comfortable thing to do to justify settling or the attempts to work around it.

Some people are probably trying to eat their way out of a meaningless life. Diet should indeed adapt to the conditions, but sometimes what needs to be taken care of and undone is the voodoo spell. Initially it must not be a comfortable thing to do to justify settling or the attempts to work around it.

This is a nice citation but I believe that Cannon's speculations are in error.

So, while the summary of this citation mentions that Cannon's view is that the "voodoo effect" is about parasympathetic overstimulation, the gist of the article - I'm not great in following all the logic - is that the hopelessness is at first induced by sympathetic overstimulation. Too much adrenaline eventually reduces blood pressure and so the shock response is viewed as a "epiphenomenon" of this loss. Too mechanical.

The shock response occurs independently of SNS activity. The SNS stays activated as it does in chronic and acute stress, but the PNS initiates it's own reaction as a result of perceiving a total lack of options in the SNS. The hopelessness is not an aftereffect of too much SNS acting on the PNS. The PNS makes a judgment of hopelessness in it's own terms. That would be the freeze/immobility response which is primarily associated with endogenous opiates, enkephalins.

A freeze is also not a kind of misguided extrapolation of a "flight" response. A flight response as a SNS activity is a valid energy expenditure tactic; the body is in full energetic mode. All kinds of options could be used in this way.

William James: you don't run because you feel fear, you feel fear to the extent you can run. The problems come from the lack of active, pragmatic outlets.

Cannon was right to mention vagus nerve activity (PNS) but settled too quickly into a knee-jerk explanation of the trauma shock from the outside. That kind of thinking is all over conventional medicine and carries over into the obsession with cognitivism and the invocation of cognitive deficits as an explanation for everything.

The correct term for the voodoo effect is dorsal vagal response. As opposed to a ventral vagal response which is the newer, more adaptive end of the vagal system.

If anyone is interested, the best references on this are Allan Schore, "The Origin of the Self" and Stephen Porges' work on polyvagal theory.

 

[Xisca]

@OwenB as trained in somatic experiencing, YES...
And yes, I advise to read the pocketguide of the polyvagal theory, Porges.

The correct term for the voodoo effect is dorsal vagal response. As opposed to a ventral vagal response which is the newer, more adaptive end of the vagal system.

Ventral is first used: social engagement to try to get to a solution with another mammal, even try to make peace with the big dog that came out of nowhere.
Then fight and flight is used
And if impossible or has been impossible before (and memory still there, thi is where helplessness is, but it is NOT "learned"), freeze.

The PNS makes a judgment of hopelessness in it's own terms.

Safe as helplessness.... the word judgement is too mental, thus the cognitive therapies....

the hopelessness is at first induced by sympathetic overstimulation.

Well.... yes. But the body cannot keep this energy too long, thus followed by the pns colapse.

the PNS initiates it's own reaction as a result of perceiving a total lack of options in the SNS. The hopelessness is not an aftereffect of too much SNS acting on the PNS.

Yes! the pns shuts down the sns activation.

As a resume, the normal reciprocity of sns and pns is disregulated. And the best tool to ungrip a freeze charge, aka dorsal vagal, is social engagement, aka ventral vagal!

 

[Owen B]

@OwenB as trained in somatic experiencing, YES...
And yes, I advise to read the pocketguide of the polyvagal theory, Porges.


Ventral is first used: social engagement to try to get to a solution with another mammal, even try to make peace with the big dog that came out of nowhere.
Then fight and flight is used
And if impossible or has been impossible before (and memory still there, thi is where helplessness is, but it is NOT "learned"), freeze.


Safe as helplessness.... the word judgement is too mental, thus the cognitive therapies....


Well.... yes. But the body cannot keep this energy too long, thus followed by the pns colapse.


Yes! the pns shuts down the sns activat

As a resume, the normal reciprocity of sns and pns is disregulated. And the best tool to ungrip a freeze charge, aka dorsal vagal, is social engagement, aka ventral vagal!

I didn't mean "judgment" as a conscious decision; more as a tactic to ensure some kind of homeostasis.

About "social engagement".... Totally agree. It can't be said enough. In fact it's the main point of the whole school of developmental neurobiology (esp in Schore): the way the brain actually develops is relationally, recursively dependent on the way the caregiver modulates her arousal toward the child's arousal. Because the child's patterns of arousal are relationally dependent on the caregiver's patterns of relating.

The very structure of the brain is experience dependent. Hardware is software.

 

[Xisca]

I didn't mean "judgment" as a conscious decision; more as a tactic to ensure some kind of homeostasis.

I know, and I know that words are missing... I was just saying that words such as "judgment" or "tactic" too, are more adapted to the mental part of the activity of the brain.

The PNS makes a judgment of hopelessness in it's own terms.

...so when you say this, most people will think about something that is voluntary, no matter if you know it is not the case! Thus the present focus on cognitive therapies... Thus the believe we humans are able to control this with our powerful mind.

So what could we say instead of this sentence?
I propose... to use words like feel and feeling, because this is the language of the ANS. So... we could say that

when the sns activation is too strong too long and/or not efficient to put the threat at a distance, the pns automatically feels it is too much for the system, and shuts down the inefficient sns. This creates a "bubble" that protects us from energetic devastation.

The very structure of the brain is experience dependent. Hardware is software.

Wonderful image!

 

[smith]

What? Is it BS?

 

[Amazoniac]

Spoiler: Learn'd Hopefulness - Dan Tomasulo

@Xisca