The Freeze Response At The Root Of "learned" Helplessness

[Amazoniac]

The main sentence they repeat us in SE is "Take your time"...
I thought hearing Irene's story could be a good embodyment of what this kind of work bring to lingering health problems....

Xisca, it seems harder to recover humans from traumas than other animals, even domesticated ones. There are many stories of animals that were found extremely debilitated and recovering fast with ordinary correction: some basic veteran care, a crappy feed, and comfort. In humans it's usually less smooth and more struggling, it has to involve ingrained thoughts and memories somehow.

 

[Xisca]

Xisca, it seems harder to recover humans from traumas than other animals, even domesticated ones. There are many stories of animals that were found extremely debilitated and recovering fast with ordinary correction: some basic veteran care, a crappy feed, and comfort. In humans it's usually less smooth and more struggling, it has to involve ingrained thoughts and memories somehow.

Hi Amazoniac... I am a dog behaviorist, so who do you tell this to!
That is how I got interested, because I finally understood what and how they were doing this. Yes we have ingrained memories, and from a long time, more than animals.

 

[Owen B]

Right...that's why Levine gave up trying to treat emotional/family/ambient trauma and concentrated on treating infant trauma. And started writing books on pets. Better to try and get at the trauma as soon as it happens before it compounds and proliferates through one's system over time.

Also, I think Levine's book is clearly about shock trauma. I think he states that. His techniques (SE) are not going to work well on long-standing trauma of a different nature. Even a shock trauma left untreated for a long while becomes very refractory to treatment.

Chronic stress: the ANS is coupled and reciprocal. Acute stress: coupled and non-reciprocal. Traumatic stress: non-coupled and non-reciprocal. It's the non-coupled aspect of traumatic stress that has the freeze. The foot is all the way down on the gas and simultaneously all the way down on the brake. A freeze response is a non-adaptive move of the parasympathetic system. The vagal brake is adaptive for chronic and acute stress, non adaptive for trauma.

Freeze (Immobility response): adaptive for reptiles, slightly less adaptive for mammals and really non-adaptive for humans. It's a massive parasympathetic energy conservation/withdrawl response when the organism perceives no viable energy expenditure options by the sympathetic NS. Watch the eye of the antelope that has just been run down by the lion. It goes milky and glazed as it's NS switches from SNS overactivation to PNS immobility. Massive endogenous opioid dump. Anesthetization.

It's also in the underreported incidence of heart failure in long-distance runners, esp. marathoners. Prolonged endurance exercise like marathoning allows the organism to view the intense exhaustion of the SNS as an exhaustion of all options. Then the only option is an immobility response which floods the system with endogenous opioids and stops the heart. The death certificate would contain something like "idiopathic cardiopathy" but it would have been a freeze/immobility response.

The psychological analogs are dissociation and shame. Dissociation allows a person to psychologically separate oneself from a threatening or unsafe situation while at the same time maintaining the attachment (which is the only attachment the person has at the time). Dissociation = splitting. Shame, though it seems like an emotion, is really an emotion to end all emotions, so they cannot be formed and expressed in dangerous situations.

 

[Xisca]

Great!
I would also love to think children first....

His techniques (SE) are not going to work well on long-standing trauma of a different nature. Even a shock trauma left untreated for a long while becomes very refractory to treatment.

It does work but takes more time. The best case about long standing trauma treated fast is ONE session to solve a 20 year old impossibility to drive, from an accident.
Then I know a THREE sessions result to treat an impossibility to go to work for a shocked metro driver.
And I also know a phobia for planes solved in TEN sessions, plus TWO to secure the result.

Levine's book is clearly about shock trauma.

It is used for developmental trauma too, cptsd, but it is not stated in the books. Then there is also NARM that is the adaptation for cptsd.

Chronic stress: the ANS is coupled and reciprocal. Acute stress: coupled and non-reciprocal. Traumatic stress: non-coupled and non-reciprocal. It's the non-coupled aspect of traumatic stress that has the freeze.

This you have to explain because i do not understand the terminology and what it means. ANS coupled to what? Many things and parts can be coupled and not only the ANS globally.

The vagal brake is adaptive for chronic and acute stress, non adaptive for trauma.

Same, what do you mean by adaptive and non adaptive?

It's a massive parasympathetic energy conservation/withdrawl response when the organism perceives no viable energy expenditure options by the sympathetic NS.

You are talking about a total colapse, and there are minor freeze responses as well!

as it's NS switches from SNS overactivation to PNS immobility.

SNS is not switched off during this immobility...

The psychological analogs are dissociation and shame.

Dissociation is also physiological, and this is the very same mechanism as freeze. There are different ways to used the words, as Freeze was chosen for the F! The way I feel it is that in freeze you feel stuck inside you, and in dissociation you feel you go out of yourself.

Also dissociation alone as a word is a short-cut, because we need to say what is dissociated from what... And as I said before, there is much more than only the big colapse or anestesia. when you go home by car and did not see anything because you were dreaming this is already dissociation. When you do not hear people talking because you focus on your favorite piece of music, this is dissociation.

Shame is an emotion and as such includes the limbic brain. It of course includes an ANS reaction. Shame is meant to make people stop having an unwanted behaviour, ut it should not be a problem is the ventral vagal was working... When shaming children, for the right things of the culture they need to internalize, the trick is that it should never be done by cutting the social engagement, which is the ventral vagal part, all the social engagement. Shame the act and maintain the love with the living being!

Dissociation = splitting.

Freeze as well, and it needs to be linked to a context, and say what is splitted from what. Also there are intensities, and intensity itself is never included in the name!

 

[Owen B]

Great!
I would also love to think children first....

It does work but takes more time. The best case about long standing trauma treated fast is ONE session to solve a 20 year old impossibility to drive, from an accident.
Then I know a THREE sessions result to treat an impossibility to go to work for a shocked metro driver.
And I also know a phobia for planes solved in TEN sessions, plus TWO to secure the result.


It is used for developmental trauma too, cptsd, but it is not stated in the books. Then there is also NARM that is the adaptation for cptsd.
What is cptsd? And what's a NARM?

This you have to explain because i do not understand the terminology and what it means. ANS coupled to what? Many things and parts can be coupled and not only the ANS globally.
Coupled: an action of the PNS is met by an action of the SNS. (Vice versa). Reciprocal: the action keeps the ANS from staying out of balance for too long. So, acute stress is still coupled, PNS and SNS still communicate with each other, but reciprocality lost because SNS or PNS stay out of zone for too long. Chronic anger, anxiety and depressiveness begin to take hold. Traumatic stress loses both coupling and reciprocality. Stimulation of PNS or SNS can cause large spikes of arousal in the each, independent of the other. Or, a small stimulation on one side can cause a disproportionately large response on the other.

Same, what do you mean by adaptive and non adaptive?
Adaptive: maintaining adequate energetic response to a situation, esp. oxygen. A reptile does not have a circulatory system so when heated up how does it cool down? It hops up on a rock, goes immobile with a stony stare in its eyes. It has rapidly turned down it's metabolic level and shut of it's oxygen demand. A freeze. In mammals, Ray has talked about hibernation in bears a lot. But the bear has to wake itself up several times during the hibernation because it's catabolic state is becoming too intense. A seal can compartmentalize it's energy system from the conservation system allowing it to hold it's breath for a long time while it stays under water hunting for food. Nice trick! Playing possum is an obvious freeze. A predator would be reluctant to eat what it perceived to be a dead animal.

You are talking about a total colapse, and there are minor freeze responses as well!
I'm not sure what you mean by "minor freeze responses" but I think you're referring to your comment below where you say that a freeze is physiological as well. If so, then I agree with you about the physiological but I don't see the advantage of calling each such state a freeze. I think you would agree that what we come to describe in later life as social, emotional and psychological problems are state-bound. Not just endogenous opioids (the freeze; trauma) lay down patterns of arousal but every chemical including cortisol and adrenaline imprint their reactions in the body and will continue to functionally communicate those reactions into the present. The concrete unconscious?

I think the best way to think about something like a freeze response is as a general, bio-psychological strategy that we only become aware of well after the actual stressful event(s) have occurred. It's a way of diagnostically thinking about the effects of continuous patterns of reaction so psychology (much less medicine) can treat these concretely unconscious problems better by treating them on their own terms.

None of that happens in psychotherapy because the field is institutionally and intellectually committed to promoting itself as an adjunct to medical science. Professionals in psychology (and psychoanalysis) would get much better results, both quicker and longer-lasting, if they adopted adaptational thinking and adaptational techniques like so much of the advice on the RPF about diet and metabolism, body centered therapies, breathing techniques, meditation, biofeedback and neurofeedback. It also should be a part of medicine but the reason this kind of thinking is absent there is one of the main reasons so many people are on the RPF.



SNS is not switched off during this immobility...
Yes, that's why I said coupled, non-reciprocal is the foot down on the gas and the brake at the same time.


Dissociation is also physiological, and this is the very same mechanism as freeze. There are different ways to used the words, as Freeze was chosen for the F! The way I feel it is that in freeze you feel stuck inside you, and in dissociation you feel you go out of yourself.

Also dissociation alone as a word is a short-cut, because we need to say what is dissociated from what... And as I said before, there is much more than only the big colapse or anestesia. when you go home by car and did not see anything because you were dreaming this is already dissociation. When you do not hear people talking because you focus on your favorite piece of music, this is dissociation.

Shame is an emotion and as such includes the limbic brain. It of course includes an ANS reaction. Shame is meant to make people stop having an unwanted behaviour, ut it should not be a problem is the ventral vagal was working... When shaming children, for the right things of the culture they need to internalize, the trick is that it should never be done by cutting the social engagement, which is the ventral vagal part, all the social engagement. Shame the act and maintain the love with the living being!


Freeze as well, and it needs to be linked to a context, and say what is splitted from what. Also there are intensities, and intensity itself is never included in the name!

Great!
I would also love to think children first....

It does work but takes more time. The best case about long standing trauma treated fast is ONE session to solve a 20 year old impossibility to drive, from an accident.
Then I know a THREE sessions result to treat an impossibility to go to work for a shocked metro driver.
And I also know a phobia for planes solved in TEN sessions, plus TWO to secure the result.


It is used for developmental trauma too, cptsd, but it is not stated in the books. Then there is also NARM that is the adaptation for cptsd.


This you have to explain because i do not understand the terminology and what it means. ANS coupled to what? Many things and parts can be coupled and not only the ANS globally.


Same, what do you mean by adaptive and non adaptive?


You are talking about a total colapse, and there are minor freeze responses as well!


SNS is not switched off during this immobility...



Dissociation is also physiological, and this is the very same mechanism as freeze. There are different ways to used the words, as Freeze was chosen for the F! The way I feel it is that in freeze you feel stuck inside you, and in dissociation you feel you go out of yourself.

Also dissociation alone as a word is a short-cut, because we need to say what is dissociated from what... And as I said before, there is much more than only the big colapse or anestesia. when you go home by car and did not see anything because you were dreaming this is already dissociation. When you do not hear people talking because you focus on your favorite piece of music, this is dissociation.

Shame is an emotion and as such includes the limbic brain. It of course includes an ANS reaction. Shame is meant to make people stop having an unwanted behaviour, ut it should not be a problem is the ventral vagal was working... When shaming children, for the right things of the culture they need to internalize, the trick is that it should never be done by cutting the social engagement, which is the ventral vagal part, all the social engagement. Shame the act and maintain the love with the living being!


Freeze as well, and it needs to be linked to a context, and say what is splitted from what. Also there are intensities, and intensity itself is never included in the name!

Great!
I would also love to think children first....

It does work but takes more time. The best case about long standing trauma treated fast is ONE session to solve a 20 year old impossibility to drive, from an accident.
Then I know a THREE sessions result to treat an impossibility to go to work for a shocked metro driver.
And I also know a phobia for planes solved in TEN sessions, plus TWO to secure the result.


It is used for developmental trauma too, cptsd, but it is not stated in the books. Then there is also NARM that is the adaptation for cptsd.


This you have to explain because i do not understand the terminology and what it means. ANS coupled to what? Many things and parts can be coupled and not only the ANS globally.


Same, what do you mean by adaptive and non adaptive?


You are talking about a total colapse, and there are minor freeze responses as well!


SNS is not switched off during this immobility...



Dissociation is also physiological, and this is the very same mechanism as freeze. There are different ways to used the words, as Freeze was chosen for the F! The way I feel it is that in freeze you feel stuck inside you, and in dissociation you feel you go out of yourself.

Also dissociation alone as a word is a short-cut, because we need to say what is dissociated from what... And as I said before, there is much more than only the big colapse or anestesia. when you go home by car and did not see anything because you were dreaming this is already dissociation. When you do not hear people talking because you focus on your favorite piece of music, this is dissociation.

Shame is an emotion and as such includes the limbic brain. It of course includes an ANS reaction. Shame is meant to make people stop having an unwanted behaviour, ut it should not be a problem is the ventral vagal was working... When shaming children, for the right things of the culture they need to internalize, the trick is that it should never be done by cutting the social engagement, which is the ventral vagal part, all the social engagement. Shame the act and maintain the love with the living being!


Freeze as well, and it needs to be linked to a context, and say what is splitted from what. Also there are intensities, and intensity itself is never included in the name!

Great!
I would also love to think children first....

It does work but takes more time. The best case about long standing trauma treated fast is ONE session to solve a 20 year old impossibility to drive, from an accident.
Then I know a THREE sessions result to treat an impossibility to go to work for a shocked metro driver.
And I also know a phobia for planes solved in TEN sessions, plus TWO to secure the result.


It is used for developmental trauma too, cptsd, but it is not stated in the books. Then there is also NARM that is the adaptation for cptsd.


This you have to explain because i do not understand the terminology and what it means. ANS coupled to what? Many things and parts can be coupled and not only the ANS globally.


Same, what do you mean by adaptive and non adaptive?


You are talking about a total colapse, and there are minor freeze responses as well!


SNS is not switched off during this immobility...



Dissociation is also physiological, and this is the very same mechanism as freeze. There are different ways to used the words, as Freeze was chosen for the F! The way I feel it is that in freeze you feel stuck inside you, and in dissociation you feel you go out of yourself.

Also dissociation alone as a word is a short-cut, because we need to say what is dissociated from what... And as I said before, there is much more than only the big colapse or anestesia. when you go home by car and did not see anything because you were dreaming this is already dissociation. When you do not hear people talking because you focus on your favorite piece of music, this is dissociation.

Shame is an emotion and as such includes the limbic brain. It of course includes an ANS reaction. Shame is meant to make people stop having an unwanted behaviour, ut it should not be a problem is the ventral vagal was working... When shaming children, for the right things of the culture they need to internalize, the trick is that it should never be done by cutting the social engagement, which is the ventral vagal part, all the social engagement. Shame the act and maintain the love with the living being!


Freeze as well, and it needs to be linked to a context, and say what is splitted from what. Also there are intensities, and intensity itself is never included in the name!

 

[Owen B]

My reply to Xisca's post self-destructed. I tried "replying' to your post but a the whole post came up and I thought I was replying to the individual comments in your post paragraph by paragraph. I probably put the reply in the wrong place. My computer skills are awful. I'll post a separate response tmorrow.

 

[Xisca]

My reply to Xisca's post self-destructed. I tried "replying' to your post but a the whole post came up and I thought I was replying to the individual comments in your post paragraph by paragraph. I probably put the reply in the wrong place. My computer skills are awful. I'll post a separate response tmorrow.

your replies are in the quote, just expand!

 

[Xisca]

It is used for developmental trauma too, cptsd, but it is not stated in the books. Then there is also NARM that is the adaptation for cptsd.
What is cptsd? And what's a NARM?

dev trauma is also called cptsd, for complex ptsd, post traumatic stress disorder.
I would say the difference is that ptsd is from shock and from definite short big events. The problem is when you have the same but with no recognised shock.... so there is shame about it, if you are feeling bad without being a war veteran! You were just and only agressed and did not spend weeks at hospital etc.

When complex, it means it is recognized you have some ptsd from "minor" events, because they were repeated in time and you were for example a child. The real difference I think is that the social connexion is mainly touched, the ventral vagal social engagement skills are impaired.

NARM is the name of a technique elaborated by a SE teacher, to adapt SE more specifically to dev. trauma. It is nearer to what we call psychotherapy.

 

[Xisca]

Coupled: an action of the PNS is met by an action of the SNS. (Vice versa). Reciprocal: the action keeps the ANS from staying out of balance for too long. So, acute stress is still coupled, PNS and SNS still communicate with each other, but reciprocality lost because SNS or PNS stay out of zone for too long. Chronic anger, anxiety and depressiveness begin to take hold. Traumatic stress loses both coupling and reciprocality. Stimulation of PNS or SNS can cause large spikes of arousal in the each, independent of the other. Or, a small stimulation on one side can cause a disproportionately large response on the other.

"SNS is not switched off during this immobility..."
Yes, that's why I said coupled, non-reciprocal is the foot down on the gas and the brake at the same time.

Yes SNS gas and hand brake over it... All blocked and immobile but with raging motor below!
I understand reciprocal and you reminded me what I had forgotten... If we relax without the SNS on, then SNS and PNS are reciprocal as the 2 plates of the scale. In a freeze response, the balance of the scale comes from the 2 plates being overcharged.

I am still a bit "out" concerning the way you use "coupled"... I understand somehow maybe the "vice versa" option.... if activation of the SNS brings too automatically a PNS freeze response, they are coupled.

I also use "coupled" for any link between 2 things that could be unrelated. If you feel bad in presence of any black dog even one that is not the one who bite you, and even if the dog shows friendlyness, then the biting is coupled to the color of the dog. It can be a green car or the smell of a pizza! And I call this over-coupling.

 

[Xisca]

"what do you mean by adaptive and non adaptive?"
Adaptive: maintaining adequate energetic response to a situation, esp. oxygen. A reptile does not have a circulatory system so when heated up how does it cool down? It hops up on a rock, goes immobile with a stony stare in its eyes. It has rapidly turned down it's metabolic level and shut of it's oxygen demand. A freeze. In mammals, Ray has talked about hibernation in bears a lot. But the bear has to wake itself up several times during the hibernation because it's catabolic state is becoming too intense. A seal can compartmentalize it's energy system from the conservation system allowing it to hold it's breath for a long time while it stays under water hunting for food. Nice trick! Playing possum is an obvious freeze. A predator would be reluctant to eat what it perceived to be a dead animal.

Ok I see! may be lol... For us, freeze is also adaptive. This I am sure. The fuses go off to protect us.

I do understand that it can also be non adaptive, as when you freeze when any dog come around, and even more if it looks like the one who bite you before. It means in that case that there is still some activation from the old bite. When the SNS activation is not all removed, then we get into problems wild animals rarely get. They do not keep past activations. They let it go. They let it happen on its own, as this cannot be forced.

Our ANS makes no difference between reality and imagination, so we can have flashes from imagining what could happen.

"You are talking about a total colapse, and there are minor freeze responses as well!"
I'm not sure what you mean by "minor freeze responses" but I think you're referring to your comment below where you say that a freeze is physiological as well. If so, then I agree with you about the physiological but I don't see the advantage of calling each such state a freeze. I think you would agree that what we come to describe in later life as social, emotional and psychological problems are state-bound. Not just endogenous opioids (the freeze; trauma) lay down patterns of arousal but every chemical including cortisol and adrenaline imprint their reactions in the body and will continue to functionally communicate those reactions into the present. The concrete unconscious?

Freeze is as physiological as any ANS action of orchestring our inner intelligence.

What I mean is that the same mechanism is at work in all sorts of freeze or dissociation, aside from the intensity of the freeze response.

If talking about the SNS, I would say that it is not only a fight and flight reaction, because the same is at work when we get up from bed or run. We just put different intensity of gas!

I am just sad that we prevent a better use of the ANS knowledge just because we reduce our view of the ANS to its most noticeable part of saving our life. At psychological level, that would be the equivalent of considering that fear starts at the level of terror, and that being shy has nothing to do with fear! So i really want to "un-couple" concepts from the notion of intensity. You can also see that it is a shame to be traumatised by less than a big event, for the same reason of deciding theoretically which intensity makes a reaction acceptable or shaming!

I have no idea about what you say next, as I am not sure that cortisol etc imprint anything separately from getting the order from the ANS! You would have to explain better what you mean by state-bound too. My limit can there be about english language, as I understand the words but not what you mean, the words in this context.

I think the best way to think about something like a freeze response is as a general, bio-psychological strategy that we only become aware of well after the actual stressful event(s) have occurred. It's a way of diagnostically thinking about the effects of continuous patterns of reaction so psychology (much less medicine) can treat these concretely unconscious problems better by treating them on their own terms.

None of that happens in psychotherapy because the field is institutionally and intellectually committed to promoting itself as an adjunct to medical science. Professionals in psychology (and psychoanalysis) would get much better results, both quicker and longer-lasting, if they adopted adaptational thinking and adaptational techniques like so much of the advice on the RPF about diet and metabolism, body centered therapies, breathing techniques, meditation, biofeedback and neurofeedback. It also should be a part of medicine but the reason this kind of thinking is absent there is one of the main reasons so many people are on the RPF.

Indeed the freeze can be only emotional, or emotional first, as when you learn the death of somebody and after a while you still say "I cannot belive it, it sounds unreal". The common point is there, freeze would be best said to be an anestesia, it prevents from feeling what is too painful.

I fully agree that we are aware of a freeze response only after, as this is a bottom up reaction. I can even say 2 more things, and they are even more from my experience than from any theory.... you can spend your life with no awareness of a freeze, or keep a partial freeze on one aspect of a trauma (thinking it is all overcome until you react to the sensitive part one day....). Even if you know the topic well, this still apply! The difference I have found by being informed is that I can guess from some signs that i still have some activation from an event, I can guess it for others, according to some hints too. And if I freeze or dissociate, I can notice it much quicker than before.

What we call unconscious certainly has to do with dorsal PNS reactions!

Then what do you advise for the difficult part of coming out of freeze/dissociation/anestesia?

 

[Owen B]

Yes SNS gas and hand brake over it... All blocked and immobile but with raging motor below!
I understand reciprocal and you reminded me what I had forgotten... If we relax without the SNS on, then SNS and PNS are reciprocal as the 2 plates of the scale. In a freeze response, the balance of the scale comes from the 2 plates being overcharged.

I am still a bit "out" concerning the way you use "coupled"... I understand somehow maybe the "vice versa" option.... if activation of the SNS brings too automatically a PNS freeze response, they are coupled.

I also use "coupled" for any link between 2 things that could be unrelated. If you feel bad in presence of any black dog even one that is not the one who bite you, and even if the dog shows friendlyness, then the biting is coupled to the color of the dog. It can be a green car or the smell of a pizza! And I call this over-coupling.

I think you're using "coupled" in a different sense than my post. You're using it in the sense of a "trigger". Which would be a mental/emotional/physiological response to past patterns of arousal which were initially physiological but which stayed present as ongoing, continuous, functional patterns of energy. That's "state-bound" or "experience dependent". The past is present; the concrete unconscious.

I'm using "coupled" (and "reciprocal") as ways to think about functional physiological action so it can be used diagnostically and clinically in medicine (LOL) and in psychology. I'll find you some links that you might be helpful to you. They could explain it a lot better than I could.

 

[Owen B]

Ok I see! may be lol... For us, freeze is also adaptive. This I am sure. The fuses go off to protect us.

I do understand that it can also be non adaptive, as when you freeze when any dog come around, and even more if it looks like the one who bite you before. It means in that case that there is still some activation from the old bite. When the SNS activation is not all removed, then we get into problems wild animals rarely get. They do not keep past activations. They let it go. They let it happen on its own, as this cannot be forced.

Our ANS makes no difference between reality and imagination, so we can have flashes from imagining what could happen.



Freeze is as physiological as any ANS action of orchestring our inner intelligence.

What I mean is that the same mechanism is at work in all sorts of freeze or dissociation, aside from the intensity of the freeze response.

If talking about the SNS, I would say that it is not only a fight and flight reaction, because the same is at work when we get up from bed or run. We just put different intensity of gas!

I am just sad that we prevent a better use of the ANS knowledge just because we reduce our view of the ANS to its most noticeable part of saving our life. At psychological level, that would be the equivalent of considering that fear starts at the level of terror, and that being shy has nothing to do with fear! So i really want to "un-couple" concepts from the notion of intensity. You can also see that it is a shame to be traumatised by less than a big event, for the same reason of deciding theoretically which intensity makes a reaction acceptable or shaming!

I have no idea about what you say next, as I am not sure that cortisol etc imprint anything separately from getting the order from the ANS! You would have to explain better what you mean by state-bound too. My limit can there be about english language, as I understand the words but not what you mean, the words in this context.




Indeed the freeze can be only emotional, or emotional first, as when you learn the death of somebody and after a while you still say "I cannot belive it, it sounds unreal". The common point is there, freeze would be best said to be an anestesia, it prevents from feeling what is too painful.

I fully agree that we are aware of a freeze response only after, as this is a bottom up reaction. I can even say 2 more things, and they are even more from my experience than from any theory.... you can spend your life with no awareness of a freeze, or keep a partial freeze on one aspect of a trauma (thinking it is all overcome until you react to the sensitive part one day....). Even if you know the topic well, this still apply! The difference I have found by being informed is that I can guess from some signs that i still have some activation from an event, I can guess it for others, according to some hints too. And if I freeze or dissociate, I can notice it much quicker than before.

What we call unconscious certainly has to do with dorsal PNS reactions!

Then what do you advise for the difficult part of coming out of freeze/dissociation/anestesia?

I think you're using "freeze" in the same way you use "coupled". They're not the same. If you have a fear reaction to a dog even if it's not the dog that bit you, that's a "trigger". A trigger is kind of a translation of a freeze.

A freeze is the body's reaction to the perception of helplessness. No options in the expenditure system (SNS). Those reactions will compound and proliferate over time and deeply impair metabolic, social, emotional and psychological functions. I don't see how it could be called adaptive.

I agree with you totally about "bottom up" as a clinical, therapeutic theory. It's just that that's missing from medicine and psychology. Top down, cognitivist theories don't understand intrinsic, state-bound functional reactions that eventually condition so much a person's physical and mental behavior.

Nervous arousal to a serious stressor mobilizes enormous amounts of energy in the SNS. To the extent that that energy is not pragmatically released, one can no longer say that the person's reaction is fear. Because physiological reactions are functional, the fear quickly becomes the fear of fear, then the fear of fear of fear. Medical psychology assumes all reactions are scientifically realistic, being mediated only by the SNS.

Cannon studied immobility states decades ago but erroneously assumed they were caused by overactive SNS. I think this was roughly round the same time that acetylcholine was discovered and was attached to the same mistaken theory.

William James, before Cannon, was also very dubious about cognitivism. The James/Lange theory: do you run because you feel fear or do you feel fear because you run? It's the latter. To the extent that a person's emotion and behavior co-originate, there's less of a symptom. The pragmatic response to the fear/emotion is the condition for the behavior/symptom. Not the other way around. The brain is not a digital computer; it is a digital and an analog computer.

You sound like you're very interested in this subject and I'll drum up some links you might like.

 

[Xisca]

I agree with you totally about "bottom up" as a clinical, therapeutic theory. It's just that that's missing from medicine and psychology. Top down, cognitivist theories don't understand intrinsic, state-bound functional reactions that eventually condition so much a person's physical and mental behavior.

Top down exists and is also real afterwards, but the bottom up is exactly what you say... missing.

The James/Lange theory: do you run because you feel fear or do you feel fear because you run? It's the latter.

Yes, bottom up... ! At least for the first event.

Cannon studied immobility states decades ago but erroneously assumed they were caused by overactive SNS.

He is not that wrong.... because the SNS is overactive beneath the grip of the dorsal vegal reaction of freeze... And a normal immobility can create reaction for people who have suffered from the immobility of freeze.

No options in the expenditure system (SNS).

YES, this is absolutely the cause of the colapse, and it is automatic. That is why "the perception of helplessness" might not be the best words, as helplessness is very much considerdd as mental. In real, I agree, I would just precise that this is the bodily perception, or global perception, of not succeeding with the help of SNS in fight or flight. The moment you feel the sensation of "impossible" is the moment of freeze. Bottom up, so of course it reaches emotional level, and then the cognitive level. What is missing is the awareness that it started in the ANS. It is all fast but there is an order of happening.

I think you're using "freeze" in the same way you use "coupled". They're not the same. If you have a fear reaction to a dog even if it's not the dog that bit you, that's a "trigger". A trigger is kind of a translation of a freeze.

No I do not! The dog is indeed a trigger, but what happens in us is an overcoupling between the image of the present dog and the past event. It signals that fear is still active, thus a flight reaction has not been completed properly in the past. It can come from the fact that the flight reaction was frozen, but not obligatory. It can have been just unsuccessful because you were bitten while running.

Those reactions will compound and proliferate over time and deeply impair metabolic, social, emotional and psychological functions. I don't see how it could be called adaptive.

I think it was adaptive at the moment it happened. What you describe is what happens when we do not GO OUT totally of the freeze response after the event. Freeze is adaptive up to the point it is momentary and not permanent. What is non adaptive is to stay in a freeze state. What animals do is coming out properly out of the frozen state.

I'm using "coupled" (and "reciprocal") as ways to think about functional physiological action

coupled for me is what works at the same time, and reciprocal is what works alternatively, right?
Action - relax is reciprocal, with an immobility without fear.
Freeze is immobility with fear, or tonic immobility. It is SNS and PNS at the same time. Is it how you use coupled?
Then when saying coupled, many different things can be coupled. Freeze is not equivalent to coupled, but in freeze, we can say that SNS is coupled to PNS? Then part of the experience the person lived can be under-coupled and part can be over-coupled.

When a person has several car accident from a car coming from the same side, there is undercoupling, because the person is litterally blind on the side of being hurt on the first accident. So, at the moments come a car on this side, there is a partial freeze reaction that uncouple the sight from the rest of the person. This signals usefully that some SNS activation of the 1st experience is still active. Then if there are several accidents, I can give an example of my use of over-coupling, the different accidents might become over-coupled.

I'll find you some links that you might be helpful to you. They could explain it a lot better than I could.

Thanks!
Do you work like in a hospital and in traumatology?

 

[Owen B]

Top down exists and is also real afterwards, but the bottom up is exactly what you say... missing.


Yes, bottom up... ! At least for the first event.

He is not that wrong.... because the SNS is overactive beneath the grip of the dorsal vegal reaction of freeze... And a normal immobility can create reaction for people who have suffered from the immobility of freeze.

YES, this is absolutely the cause of the colapse, and it is automatic. That is why "the perception of helplessness" might not be the best words, as helplessness is very much considerdd as mental. In real, I agree, I would just precise that this is the bodily perception, or global perception, of not succeeding with the help of SNS in fight or flight. The moment you feel the sensation of "impossible" is the moment of freeze. Bottom up, so of course it reaches emotional level, and then the cognitive level. What is missing is the awareness that it started in the ANS. It is all fast but there is an order of happening.



No I do not! The dog is indeed a trigger, but what happens in us is an overcoupling between the image of the present dog and the past event. It signals that fear is still active, thus a flight reaction has not been completed properly in the past. It can come from the fact that the flight reaction was frozen, but not obligatory. It can have been just unsuccessful because you were bitten while running.
Do not work

I think it was adaptive at the moment it happened. What you describe is what happens when we do not GO OUT totally of the freeze response after the event. Freeze is adaptive up to the point it is momentary and not permanent. What is non adaptive is to stay in a freeze state. What animals do is coming out properly out of the frozen state.



coupled for me is what works at the same time, and reciprocal is what works alternatively, right?
Action - relax is reciprocal, with an immobility without fear.
Freeze is immobility with fear, or tonic immobility. It is SNS and PNS at the same time. Is it how you use coupled?
Then when saying coupled, many different things can be coupled. Freeze is not equivalent to coupled, but in freeze, we can say that SNS is coupled to PNS? Then part of the experience the person lived can be under-coupled and part can be over-coupled.

When a person has several car accident from a car coming from the same side, there is undercoupling, because the person is litterally blind on the side of being hurt on the first accident. So, at the moments come a car on this side, there is a partial freeze reaction that uncouple the sight from the rest of the person. This signals usefully that some SNS activation of the 1st experience is still active. Then if there are several accidents, I can give an example of my use of over-coupling, the different accidents might become over-coupled.


Thanks!
Do you work like in a hospital and in traumatology?

Do not. I suffer from this every day. A family trauma and a brain injury when I was much younger. I wanted answers badly from a medical and mental health system that did not have them. If I wanted answers I had to learn to trust my own instincts and adjust my expectations about what to expect from the professionals. And unlearn a lot of the received wisdom. I learned a lot in the process and it helped me to make better choices. On paper, using an integrated approach to these kinds of problems is best. But you have to find the right people and there are precious few, even in psychotherapy and in "trauma therapy". Neurofeedback, for example, is an excellent treatment (and would IMO work well with any other type of therapy, including the metabolic approach at RPF) but they mostly don't take insurance and some modalities are over-focused, symptom-based, medical models.

For TBI, there's nothing. It's not really diagnosed. It's not really a neurological issue; no matter how many scans they take they're not going to find a neurological hotspot.

Most psychotherapy, as I mentioned, has no idea about bottom-up, functional, ANS type of treatments. 95% of it is cognitivist and top-down. (Medical model).

I'll send you some links soon.

 

[Xisca]

For TBI, there's nothing. It's not really diagnosed. It's not really a neurological issue; no matter how many scans they take they're not going to find a neurological hotspot.

Most psychotherapy, as I mentioned, has no idea about bottom-up, functional, ANS type of treatments. 95% of it is cognitivist and top-down. (Medical model).

If they do not find anything, then you are left with a general trauma, whereever the damage was done. Psychotherapy does not help. If you want free ressource, read Irene Lyons website, watch her videos and apply them. They are good and she is good. There is even a free facebook group. Old shock traumas get better with this kind of work, and developmental ones too.

What is important in this sort of work is also that you learn better what to do when you are stressed or when you are involved in a new accident, or when you have to help as a witness. At least we can avoid being traumatised more!

 

[Amazoniac]

Xisca, it seems harder to recover humans from traumas than other animals, even domesticated ones. There are many stories of animals that were found extremely debilitated and recovering fast with ordinary correction: some basic veteran care, a crappy feed, and comfort. In humans it's usually less smooth and more struggling, it has to involve ingrained thoughts and memories somehow.

Xisca, I was getting paid by the big pharma.

It escaped me that these rescued animals have a drastic change in environment and support, which doesn't often happen for people. The animals go from mistreatment and abandonment to an envigorating place with caring humanoids.

Hugging the Johnsons created a thread for awareness of unnecessary imposed stress but it's only part of the story. Conditioning can indeed mess up the perception and distort reality, but that should dissolve fast as soon as we sense that the environment is now supporting. Which is what happens in those raescued animals.

This must explain rites of passage, that serve to illude you that something greater happened and you're now in a different place than before.

 

[Xisca]

@Amazoniac great wise answer!

Imagine how is treated a rescued dog, and it becomes obvious that we do not offer to a human what we can offer to an animal!

A supporting environment is key. There is one subtle reason why we do not give the right support to our fellows.... Just tell anything that upset you in the past, and you will be answered something like "Ho this was such a long time ago, you know it is better to let go now..." or.... "It was not such a big trauma, there is much worse." or "why did you take such a risk as being there!"

All very supportive indeed!

A rite of passge is a very good example not only about change but about a support that is given by all your environment!

We need the same as when we go up to the surface after diving: decompression stops. Our bodies are slow to adapt to abrupt changes, and they need support including "take your time". This is a protection while you are anavailable to protect yourself, because you are processing what has just happened. It is very visible in states of shock after accidents but it should be the same for all the we need.

And only the person in shock or stress should be judge of what she needs, how much and how long. Any judgement or pression will make the person try to hasten a process that cannot be pushed more than you can push the river! And when you try to pressure time, then you loose time, skip part of the process, and accumulate a charge inside you.

This is what we must change in our society.

 

[Owen B]

All of animals are in humans but not all of humans are in animals.

That's why the problems created by society are not ingrained. Getting at this problem requires relinquishing the idea that the social is in the physical or even moving beyond the idea that the social is a kind of degenerated version of the physical. And that if we could just change the social that would purify the physical because, after all, the social evolved out of the physical because it was already in the physical.

Of course support and compassion are necessary to deal with complex problems like trauma (for animals and humans) , but human trauma is exponentially different than animal trauma.

 

[Xisca]

That is a bit concentrated and I could not understand very well your point, especially "ingrained". I agree if you say that changing the social is not enough. We need to repair the personal as well. And the social change that would be the most useful would be to know how to give the right support for people to let go their charges. Then our body is very much self healing!

There is no definitive purifying, nothing but permanent processes up the wave down the wave. If you mean that the social we have is the logical result of how humans who compose the society made it, I also agree. But we are absolutely able to decide to make some changes in our society. New laws, revolutions... Montessori has tried to think about a new type of class to make a more adapted frame to children for example.

It has been shown in anthropology that we cannot suppress any major custom without making a society fall down, because everything is linked. Who are we to judge from the outside... Even when people judge our homestead habits, who are they to know why we do in such a way and not another? Who can judge all the points leading to choose high carb or high fat diet? lol here in the forum there is not one member who has eaten the same diet since birht.... this is the physical, we were eating in a way that came from our family, and indeed we have decided to change diet! Can it be the right paralel showing that i understand what you mean?

Yes evolution made us like russian dolls, and what we have extra is a big cortex, that let happen the first part of the autonomic reaction, which is quick and life saving, BUT it is "big enough" to be able to bypass or block the other side of the wave, because it is slow. So we do not go back to base line properly. Animals do.

Then, I had written a paper about the difference between puppies and wolf puppies and the main difference is that dog pups have the same time to adapt to a world that is more complicated, and that we do not do the right job to profit of this opened window of tolerance.

So the main difference is how to adapt to a different environment, which is the social part. When we plan our life, our cities, our working places etc. I meant that we do not take into account our animal part and think we can override it all thanks to our cortex! But not true, so we get back the boomerang in the head.

Trauma and recovery still work the same. What is exponential is the permanent pressure and the lack of enough frequent recovery moment, the noise, it is all about increasing intensity.

But the definition of trauma is about what stayed in the nervous system and disregulate it. And you can be disregulated by such small things that you would not even imagine that this can be the cause of some present problems! I was more damaged at nervous level by a surgery than by some accidents. But I did not relate the event with the consequences until I learned about how we work inside!

 

[Amazoniac]

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.