
Home Trustees Articles & Information Organisations Dissociation Trauma Attachment Self Harm Sexual & Ritual Abuse Working Approaches Spiritual Dimension of Recovery Books Book Reviews Book List (by Author) PDF Book List (by Title) PDF Book List (by Year) PDF Training Links Membership Contact	Trauma Early Life Trauma The Freeze Response Childhood, Society and Trauma DON'T RUSH IN - Report from Sri Lanka Early Life Trauma Impact of early life ‘trauma’ on a person’s ability to attach and the effect of a child’s attachment experience on its response to trauma. Trauma in this context is any globally overwhelming experience – it therefore includes neglect, abuse, abandonment, and medical intervention. The need to attach to the primary caregiver is innate and the power of the drive to attach cannot be underestimated. The trauma associated with abuse and severe neglect will inevitably disrupt a child’s capacity to attach securely. Conversely children who are insecurely attached are more likely to face difficulties in processing and coping with trauma and abuse. When working with survivors of early life trauma and abuse one will need to give regard to: Attachment Disorders Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Dissociative Disorders including for some people D.I.D. [back to top...] The Freeze Response This writing is based on a talk that I presented at the First Person Plural open meeting in London October 4th 2003. I am a full member of FPP and a member of the steering group. I speak as someone who has survived severe childhood abuse with dissociation and who began to look into current research into the effects of trauma on the neuroendocrine and immune system when my physical health collapsed. I believe that my current and growing understanding which I have been able to act on with the support of other people, has been crucial to the rejuvenation of my health on all levels of my being. I have also trained in a body centred form of psychotherapy, Post Reichian Therapy which I now practice and informs my understanding of bodymind (a term apparently first coined by Dianne Connely speaking from a Chinese medical perspective). I am currently training in Hakomi Experiential Method which brings together a body centred approach with mindfulness. I want to speak about the freeze response as a natural response of a living organism to an inescapable threat and it’s connection to dissociation and also to touch on moving towards “unfreezing”. Much of what I speak of is based on the work of Peter Levine who has practiced what he calls a “naturalistic approach” to healing trauma for the past 28 years or so. He says in “Waking the Tiger ~ Healing Trauma” which he wrote with Ann Frederick, “Increasingly I became convinced that the instinctual repertoire of the human organism includes a deep biological knowing, which given the opportunity to do so, can and will guide the process of healing trauma.” As Levine sees it “the roots of trauma lie in our instinctual physiology. As a result, it is through our bodies as well as our minds that we discover healing.” Levine says that “Post traumatic symptoms, the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, are incomplete physiological responses suspended by fear, that require discharge and completion….. If the discharge process is repeatedly disturbed (i.e. by ongoing abuse) each successive state of shock will last longer” ~ this is a freeze response. Levine’s Ethological Model “The orientating reflexes” When an animal is under threat, it instinctually goes into a whole repertory of automatic responses, mediated by primitive structures within the nervous system, which unfold in different directions in different circumstances. As soon as an animal senses a threat it attempts to orient to the threat. First it goes into an arrest state. Then it tries to locate the threat to a specific location. If it can't locate the threat the arrest state continues and can become a locked circuit where the animal is constantly searching in an arrested state (this can become chronic hyper-vigilance). When it locates the threat it will move toward the threat to try to evaluate the level of danger. Once the threat has been localised and evaluated, if it is determined that the threat is sufficiently great, the animal prepares for flight, by turning away from the threat and searching for a safe place or looking for a path of escape. Then the animal will run and hide. If the animal determines that the threat may be overcome or that there’s a compelling reason to, it prepares to fight (the fight/flight response was initially described by Dr Hans Selye and is the response that most people have heard of). Shock Reflexes If fight/flight defences fail (ie. if the animal cannot fight off or escape the attack) then the animal will go into a second line of passive defences, the shock reflexes. The shock reflexes serve important survival functions. First the animal freezes in a state of “tonic immobility” of which there are two types: a “frozen stiff” mode and a “waxy flexibility” mode (whereby a limb can move but stays where it is moved to like modelling clay). This freezing is a “playing dead” that is a successful survival strategy. It not only serves the individual but may allow time for other animals to escape. Simultaneously the animal goes into an analgesic response, into a dissociated state when pain is not experienced, but there is a keen, altered state of awareness of what is happening. Robert Scaer MD who has written “The Body Bears The Burden ~ Trauma, Dissociation and Disease” says “Dissociation very probably constitutes a major element in the freeze response, and people who report symptoms of shock and numbness after a traumatic event and exhibit symptoms of dissociation, are actually in the freeze response at the time.” Because lower brain stem activity takes over, there may also be a disconnection with rational, higher brain thinking, which is connected with the loss of memory often associated with shock events. One common experience of shock victims is the sense of “did it really happen or did I make it up”. This is partly because of the discontinuous states of consciousness which results in confusion and dislocation of different aspects of the shock event. The memory may be broken up into unconnected images, body sensations or a vague auric sense that “something happened”. Robert Scaer tells us that Nijenhuis, Van der Linden, and Sinhaven have drawn “ a parallel between animal defensive traits that are triggered by severe life threat, such as freezing, and the characteristics of dissociative states in patients with major dissociation”. The neuroendocrinologist Bessel Van der Kolk has postulated that the freeze/numbing response in animals exposed to prolonged severe and inescapable stress may be analogous to dissociation in humans exposed to trauma and that dissociation maybe mediated by endogenous opiates (opiates that are created within the body itself). The work of van der Kolk in researching into trauma and it’s effects has influenced my understanding greatly. He identifies immobilisation as being crucial to the development of trauma. Like beauty, trauma is in the eye of the beholder. What may traumatise one individual or group, community of people, may not have that effect on others. Traumatic experience is by its nature overwhelming and induces a physiological stress reaction. In the freeze state in animals there are increased levels of metabolic and neurochemical energy despite the immobility. If the animal survives there will be “somatic and autonomic responses including trembling, perspiring and deep breathing”. Peter Levine tells us that “humans tend not to dissipate this energy, possibly through acculturated social restraint or neocortical inhibition, resulting in the storage of arousal based energy”. In circumstances such as repeated instances of abuse and/or when someone who has suffered this abuse and does not receive the support they need afterwards, the discharge of this energy is prohibited. This is what leads to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and possibly dissociative disorders. Bessel points to the dorsal vagal system being involved in the freeze reaction, saying that this also prevents anything else coming into the mind, learning is prevented once this system is activated (this is a reason to avoid high levels of arousal). He also found that the Broca’s area becomes deactivated in this freeze reaction, preventing the ability to talk and so in healing from trauma it is necessary to circumvent speech, to draw, to use movement ~ to move out of immobilisation which deprives a person of being in the world, of communication, of choice and the ability to imagine how things could in fact be different. Being immobolised is a most uncomfortable place to be, I can vouch for that! I have also noticed how uncomfortable it is for others to be with, helplessness is often felt through the strong emotional impression of this wordless state. Towards Unfreezing “Body sensation rather than the intense emotion is the key to healing trauma”, Peter Levine. “Our feelings and our bodies are like water flowing into water. We learn to swim with the energies of the (body) senses”, Tarthang Tulku. “The body is the shore on the ocean of being", A Sufi saying. I use the phrase of moving towards unfreezing in the knowledge that I am just touching on a vast area of experience here. An experience which is as varied and personal to the individual as are the elements of what originally created the trauma and guided our responses to it. What is common to all of us in this area of experience, is the need to learn how to step down from overwhelm, how to not keep reactivating the freeze response. Levine emphasises staying with the body which means staying with the now, the “felt sense” in the present. If we listen to a piece of music now we would receive an impression of it rather than knowing what notes were played. Likewise bringing awareness to the “felt sense” (a phrase coined by Eugene Gendlin who developed Focussing) provides a key to healing the fragmentation of trauma, it gives us a unified experience. “We don’t confront trauma directly... or we could find ourselves seized in it’s frightening grip”. Levine reflects on the myth of Medusa who Perseus sets out to conquer. Athena warns him not to look directly at the Gorgon. Listening to this wisdom he uses his shield to reflect Medusa’s image, rather than being turned to stone, immobolised by fear, he is able to cut off her head. “Likewise the solution to vanquishing trauma comes not through confronting it directly but by working with its reflection, mirrored in our instinctual responses”. If we access the instinctual processes we can use them as shields to become unfrozen and to heal. In the myth when Medusa is slain, two creatures emerge from her body ~ Pegasus the winged horse, symbol of the human body and its instinctual nature and also Chrysaor, a warrior with a golden sword, the sword of truth. The truth being that transformation through embodiment brings both grounding and the soaring of wings, the streaming of energy. Some years ago I had the clear insight that although my body was a “target”, the site of the battlefield of the trauma that I had experienced, it was also a gateway to freedom. A prison and escape route both. I had the sense that I needed to “reassociate”, to come into my body to end the dissociation and fragmentation, if I wanted to be free of my traumatic childhood, which was literally frozen in my bodymind. One of the complications that can occur and that needs to be dealt with is the “overcoupling” (Peter Levine’s term), the strong association of fear (terror) with immobility and indeed with being in the body, with being embodied. As someone who has suffered trauma moves out of immobility, overpowering surges of emotion are likely to arise and when these are not acted upon, enormous amounts of rage and terror will be re-experienced. I personally have also experienced excruciating pain, both physically and emotionally as I have resolved, unfrozen, some of the frozen parts of myself. To me its not dissimilar to thawing out frozen fingers in the cold, it really hurts as the numbing, the analgesic response wears off. “Fear and the fear of violence to self and others reactivates the immobility, extending it, often indefinitely in the form of frozen terror. This is the vicious circle of trauma.” Levine states that “with full use of our highly developed ability to think and perceive, we can consciously move out of the trauma response.” As we all know this is not easy and is a gradual process that needs to be taken, one step at a time. In my experience it’s like trying to find the light switch in the dark in a house that is completely unfamiliar to you. It takes time to consciously learn the layout. “The drive to complete the freezing response remains active no matter how long it has been in”. Use this drive, these natural instinctive responses, as an ally and a very potent one at that. “Canst though not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?” Macbeth Act V scene iii Of trauma Levine says, “of all the maladies that attack the human organism, trauma may ultimately be one that is recognised as beneficial. I say this because in the healing of trauma a transformation takes place ~ one that can improve the quality of life... While trauma can be hell on earth, trauma resolved is the gift of the gods ~ a heroic journey that belongs to each of us.” Recommended Reading Peter Levine and Ann Frederick: Waking The Tiger ~ Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books, 1997. Candace Pert: Molecules Of Emotion Bessel Van der Kolk MD: The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and The Evolving Psychobiology of Post-traumatic Stress (Havard Review Of Psychiatry 1994) Bessel Van der Kolk, Alexander McFarlane, Lars Weisaeth: The Effects Of Overwhelming Experience On Mind, Body and Society (Adaptations to Trauma; The Psychobiology of PTSD) Robert C Scaer MD: The Body Bears The Burden ~ Trauma, Dissociation and Disease Sandra Sunfire [back to top...] Childhood, Society and Trauma Statements excerpted with permission from Alice Miller’s book ‘The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart’ (1985). The child is always innocent. Each child needs among other things: care, protection, security, warmth, skin contact, touching, caressing, and tenderness. These needs are seldom sufficiently fulfilled, and in fact they are often exploited by adults for their own ends (trauma of child abuse). Child abuse has lifelong effects. Society takes the side of the adult and blames the child for what has been done to him or her. The victimization of the child has historically been denied and is still being widely denied, even today. This denial has made it possible for society to ignore the devastating effects of the victimization of the child for such a long time. The child, when betrayed by society, has no choice but to repress the trauma and to idealize the abuser. Repression leads to neuroses, psychoses, psychosomatic disorders, and delinquency. In neuroses, the child's needs are repressed and/or denied; instead, feelings of guilt are experienced. In psychoses, the mistreatment is transformed into a disguised illusory version (madness). In psychosomatic disorders, the pain of mistreatment is felt, but the actual origins are concealed. In delinquency, the confusion, seduction, and mistreatment of childhood are acted out again and again. The therapeutic process can be successful if it is based on uncovering the truth about the patient's childhood instead of denying that reality. The psychoanalytic theory of "infantile sexuality" actually protects the parent and reinforces society's blindness. Fantasies always serve to conceal or minimize unbearable childhood reality for the sake of the child's survival; therefore, the so-called "invented trauma" is a less harmful version of the real, repressed one. The fantasies expressed in literature, art, fairy tales, and dreams often unconsciously convey early childhood experiences in a symbolic way. This symbolic testimony is tolerated in our culture, thanks to society's chronic ignorance of the truth concerning childhood; if the import of these fantasies were understood, they would be rejected. A past crime cannot be undone by our understanding of the perpetrator's blindness and unfulfilled needs. New crimes, however, can be prevented, if the victims begin to see and be aware of what has been done to them. Therefore, the reports of victims will be able to bring about more awareness, consciousness, and sense of responsibility in society at large. © Alice Miller, 1985. Reprinting of any part of this article is allowed only by the express written permission of Alice Miller. For inquiries, write to janhunt@naturalchild.org. [back to top...] DON'T RUSH IN - Report from Sri Lanka It is a few years back now that I recall the speed at which the Anglican dioceses of Derby and Leicester responded to the Kegworth air crash on the M1 and rushed to set up a quick response unit of neighbouring clergy who would be on hand and prepared to act as counsellors should there be a repeat disaster. To be fair I don't recall what training was given but I hope it was a little more than how to hold the hands of the hurting and praying with those who were desirous of such a ministry. At the time I write this Natascha Kampusch, after eight years of solitary confinement, has escaped and written a letter to the media who are clamouring to get a glimpse of her, take photos and be the first to profit from her money-spinning story. She is being sheltered and counselled in an operation that even keeps her shocked parents at bay. In a remarkably mature letter she has given a few details of her imprisonment and requested the press "to stop the insulting reports, the misinterpretations of reality, the commentaries that claim to know better and the lack of respect for me…At the moment I feel very well in the place where I am staying, although perhaps I feel a little bit too much controlled… I am the one who has decided only to have telephone contacts with my parents. I am also the one who will decide when I have contact with journalists. Everybody wants to ask intimate questions, but they have nothing to do with anybody else. It may be that one day I speak to my therapist about it and may be not. Please let me have some peace in the immediate future. There are many people caring for me now. Please let me have time until I feel I can talk for myself." A letter issued prior to her appearance on Austrian television, written from what appears to be a safe place with wise advisors and carers. A plea for space that she may come to terms with what happened in the past and what is happening as she enters a different world, becoming suddenly the centre of attention. At 9.35 a.m. on 2nd February 2005 my wife Uta and I stepped off the plane in Sri Lanka. The journey via Zurich and Dubai had taken twenty-five hours and we had not slept. At 10.45 a.m. we were ushered into an 'open to the street' funeral parlour where lay the body of the widowed mother of two adult children whom we were to counsel. We held their hands, let them tell the story and wept with them. From there, on to a Baptist Church where a New Zealand team of psychiatrists and psychotherapists were giving a very professional training course with very professional printed notes in three languages to members of the congregation and others who were seeking to respond to the tsunami tragedy. We looked in, engaged for thirty minutes and were then on our way to have some breakfast and the eight-hour journey to Kandy. At 5 a.m. on the following morning we were driven to the East Coast, to what was then, and remains still, the worst affected area of the country. By late afternoon we were on the sands getting our first impressions. It was just five and a half weeks since the waves had hit the beaches and wiped out a huge swathe of human life. The beaches were empty; emptied of houses (many built close to the shoreline), emptied of boats and any familiar industry, emptied of trees and emptied of people. We saw no corpses. They had been buried as they were found. But in all probability, beneath the sand, littered with all the debris of human belongings (sandals, toys, bits of domestic life) lay countless dead bodies, which may or may not be washed up in years to come. There was a sort of odour. Who would wish to walk there now, in the graveyards so to speak? Who would want to revisit the strand where their houses, shops, businesses had once stood and from which they and their loved ones had been swept so mercilessly inland? Who would revisit the place of personal terror where children were torn from their parents' grasp and families and communities destroyed? Our original call was to teach students through an interpreter the 'art' of counselling into trauma. It was made more difficult because most of the students were not on site at the moment of the tsunami. Term had ended and it was vacation time. Many were in their home villages up in the hills, celebrating Christmas in one way or another. Most were as shocked as we ourselves, visiting the sites of tsunami after the event. What we all encountered were the survivors; stunned, lost, bewildered, despairing, homeless, jobless, totally bereaved (one had lost seventeen members of his family), even having to prove their own identities and, without any title deeds to their properties, unable to prove that they had lived where they claimed and were entitled to help through the Aid Organisations; trauma on top of trauma. Some wandered around or stood on the flat foundation of their former dwelling (even if they could find that in the changed landscape) or propped against a toxic well or rescuing a brick or two, for some future rebuilding programme, if the government would allow them. Forty days on they had been told it was illegal to rebuild. Some homes were identifiable only by the family dog that instinctively knew where to go, waiting in vain for someone to come and feed it. We helped to clear the debris from a doctor's house. He had gone to church on Boxing Day. His wife, invalid father and brother had remained at home. She was found two miles inland. The other two died in the collapsed house. Everything we found that looked personal we placed in a largish waste paper basket, his ruined stethoscope for example. There were no patients' records, no medicines, no photos or personal valuables, no passport and no identity, no evidence to government officials that he was even a qualified practitioner other than his remaining few patients, scattered around the refugee camps, requesting his medical attentions. Half of what we found probably was not his but had been washed in from somewhere else. How would you begin to counsel him? Help clear the debris? Hold his hand? Give him a home? Put money in his bank account? Look compassionately into his eyes? Sympathise, even feel empathy, even advanced empathy? I don't know where he had been up to this point in time, but forty days on (by local tradition the period of mourning), he, a Christian, had returned to his former home, revisiting the place of good memories and horror. The best place had, in a flash, become the worst. He stood and watched as ten students, none of whom had witnessed the tsunami, cleared his ruined home and burnt the rotting rubbish. He was silent. Speechless. Numbed out. I guess, he did the right thing, he waited a good while before returning to the place where he had kissed his wife, left his family and gone to church that Sunday morning. I saw a man, a Muslim, sitting on a fallen tree trunk, staring out to sea motionless, perhaps watching, waiting for the boat to come in and bring back his fisherman son. Disturb him? Leave him for a while? When would be the moment to break into his silent world? What would be the loving thing to do? A young Hindu man, utterly beautiful, scanned the beach where the Sunday school had stood. His boy had attended and had never been found. The whole Hindu Sunday school was washed away. He 'owed' it to his seven year old boy to watch out for his return. "Would his son have wanted him to put his life on hold for good?" It was a simple question but perhaps opening up a different perspective. A deserted Christian woman with her two teenage daughters stood on the cracked floor of her wall-less house. There was no man in their lives and all else was lost, too. Where was hope to spring from? Growing out of the concrete, forty days on, a green shoot had appeared. That language was common to us; out of the ruins comes new life. Hope can be reborn. Counselling hardly seemed relevant. We went through a refugee camp for eight hours. Uta, visiting one side I the other, talking non-stop, tent by tent. The people chose to tell their stories and express their practical needs. No government official had visited them. The most moving moment before we left the East Coast was meeting a group of forty-one Hindus. They had been prepared for our coming and had gathered at the home of a local leader. They had their skills but no opportunities to practice them and no homes meant no place from which to work. All were staying with relatives and friends. It turned out to be a 'trade union' meeting, with much expression of anger and frustration, and an embryonic business plan was conceived. (We thought we were there to counsel!) The women were deeply anxious about their children, who would wake up in the night, screaming from their dreams. "Have you been back to the sea?" we asked. "No," they replied. "Would you come with us, if we walked together?" Hesitantly, "Yes", they would. We let a Hindu funeral party go by with all its clatter and fireworks and wailing and then set off. For about a kilometre we all walked across bleak sand to the edge of the water. Nobody fell out. At the waters edge we stood. Then some dipped their feet into the waves. Four men swam out to a marooned tree stump that had been washed across the Bay of Bengal. The children paddled. We took photographs, we laughed a lot. Some women could not look at the water and stood with faces averted. It was enough for them. Then, forty minutes later, we walked home. "Go again tomorrow, if you like." And some said they would. Hopefully many did and inspired others to come with them. Together we had confronted the enemy, the fearsome destroyer of their lives and found it toothless. A step of hope? It is now twenty-one months since the tsunami struck and counselling, as we have been trained to do, could now be relevant. But it won't be possible. The East Coast (where there are no hotels, no tourist industry, no Saga elephant riding, blue swimming pool holidays) is closed. Tamil country is back at war. The students won't yet be returning to their college in Trincomalee. The emails have shut down. New terrors have arrived. 65,000 had died in twenty years of civil war, twice the number that perished in the tsunami, and the death toll is growing once again and so is the number of displaced people. New refugee camps are springing up. And the trauma goes on. Water, food, medicine and shelter were provided in some measure. Homes, jobs and security were still awaited. 'Tsunami' was the password that let us through the roadblocks to bring comfort and consolation to a few shattered lives. The curtain to the East Coast opened for a short while. It appears now to have closed again. A number of studies, recently one by Dr Berthold Gersons (report in the British Journal of Psychiatry), have indicated that quick drug intervention and too hasty counselling into post-traumatic stress is counterproductive; not just unhelpful but actually harmful. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises the same in its guidelines. Certainly our experiences of trauma in Sri Lanka, compounded by our language difficulties, meant that we were effectively and quite naturally prohibited from premature counselling! Time was calming down the fear systems of the survivors. And we arrived still too soon for serious counselling. Our practical task was to hold hands, enter the culture of the sufferers and just be there with them. Most times there were simply no words. I am grateful for the experience. It may not come again so poignantly. Peter Vessey, 2006 [back to top...]
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Trauma

DON'T RUSH IN - Report from Sri Lanka

Early Life Trauma

Impact of early life ‘trauma’ on a person’s ability to attach and the effect of a child’s attachment experience on its response to trauma. Trauma in this context is any globally overwhelming experience – it therefore includes neglect, abuse, abandonment, and medical intervention.

The need to attach to the primary caregiver is innate and the power of the drive to attach cannot be underestimated.

The trauma associated with abuse and severe neglect will inevitably disrupt a child’s capacity to attach securely.

Conversely children who are insecurely attached are more likely to face difficulties in processing and coping with trauma and abuse.

When working with survivors of early life trauma and abuse one will need to give regard to:

Attachment Disorders
Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Dissociative Disorders including for some people D.I.D.

[back to top...]

The Freeze Response

This writing is based on a talk that I presented at the First Person Plural open meeting in London October 4th 2003. I am a full member of FPP and a member of the steering group. I speak as someone who has survived severe childhood abuse with dissociation and who began to look into current research into the effects of trauma on the neuroendocrine and immune system when my physical health collapsed. I believe that my current and growing understanding which I have been able to act on with the support of other people, has been crucial to the rejuvenation of my health on all levels of my being. I have also trained in a body centred form of psychotherapy, Post Reichian Therapy which I now practice and informs my understanding of bodymind (a term apparently first coined by Dianne Connely speaking from a Chinese medical perspective). I am currently training in Hakomi Experiential Method which brings together a body centred approach with mindfulness.

I want to speak about the freeze response as a natural response of a living organism to an inescapable threat and it’s connection to dissociation and also to touch on moving towards “unfreezing”.

Much of what I speak of is based on the work of Peter Levine who has practiced what he calls a “naturalistic approach” to healing trauma for the past 28 years or so. He says in “Waking the Tiger ~ Healing Trauma” which he wrote with Ann Frederick, “Increasingly I became convinced that the instinctual repertoire of the human organism includes a deep biological knowing, which given the opportunity to do so, can and will guide the process of healing trauma.” As Levine sees it “the roots of trauma lie in our instinctual physiology. As a result, it is through our bodies as well as our minds that we discover healing.”

Levine says that “Post traumatic symptoms, the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, are incomplete physiological responses suspended by fear, that require discharge and completion….. If the discharge process is repeatedly disturbed (i.e. by ongoing abuse) each successive state of shock will last longer” ~ this is a freeze response.

Levine’s Ethological Model

“The orientating reflexes” When an animal is under threat, it instinctually goes into a whole repertory of automatic responses, mediated by primitive structures within the nervous system, which unfold in different directions in different circumstances. As soon as an animal senses a threat it attempts to orient to the threat. First it goes into an arrest state. Then it tries to locate the threat to a specific location. If it can't locate the threat the arrest state continues and can become a locked circuit where the animal is constantly searching in an arrested state (this can become chronic hyper-vigilance). When it locates the threat it will move toward the threat to try to evaluate the level of danger. Once the threat has been localised and evaluated, if it is determined that the threat is sufficiently great, the animal prepares for flight, by turning away from the threat and searching for a safe place or looking for a path of escape. Then the animal will run and hide.
If the animal determines that the threat may be overcome or that there’s a compelling reason to, it prepares to fight (the fight/flight response was initially described by Dr Hans Selye and is the response that most people have heard of).

Shock Reflexes

If fight/flight defences fail (ie. if the animal cannot fight off or escape the attack) then the animal will go into a second line of passive defences, the shock reflexes. The shock reflexes serve important survival functions. First the animal freezes in a state of “tonic immobility” of which there are two types: a “frozen stiff” mode and a “waxy flexibility” mode (whereby a limb can move but stays where it is moved to like modelling clay). This freezing is a “playing dead” that is a successful survival strategy. It not only serves the individual but may allow time for other animals to escape. Simultaneously the animal goes into an analgesic response, into a dissociated state when pain is not experienced, but there is a keen, altered state of awareness of what is happening. Robert Scaer MD who has written “The Body Bears The Burden ~ Trauma, Dissociation and Disease” says “Dissociation very probably constitutes a major element in the freeze response, and people who report symptoms of shock and numbness after a traumatic event and exhibit symptoms of dissociation, are actually in the freeze response at the time.”

Because lower brain stem activity takes over, there may also be a disconnection with rational, higher brain thinking, which is connected with the loss of memory often associated with shock events. One common experience of shock victims is the sense of “did it really happen or did I make it up”. This is partly because of the discontinuous states of consciousness which results in confusion and dislocation of different aspects of the shock event.

The memory may be broken up into unconnected images, body sensations or a vague auric sense that “something happened”.

Robert Scaer tells us that Nijenhuis, Van der Linden, and Sinhaven have drawn “ a parallel between animal defensive traits that are triggered by severe life threat, such as freezing, and the characteristics of dissociative states in patients with major dissociation”. The neuroendocrinologist Bessel Van der Kolk has postulated that the freeze/numbing response in animals exposed to prolonged severe and inescapable stress may be analogous to dissociation in humans exposed to trauma and that dissociation maybe mediated by endogenous opiates (opiates that are created within the body itself). The work of van der Kolk in researching into trauma and it’s effects has influenced my understanding greatly. He identifies immobilisation as being crucial to the development of trauma. Like beauty, trauma is in the eye of the beholder. What may traumatise one individual or group, community of people, may not have that effect on others. Traumatic experience is by its nature overwhelming and induces a physiological stress
reaction.

In the freeze state in animals there are increased levels of metabolic and neurochemical energy despite the immobility. If the animal survives there will be “somatic and autonomic responses including trembling, perspiring and deep breathing”. Peter Levine tells us that “humans tend not to dissipate this energy, possibly through acculturated social restraint or neocortical inhibition, resulting in the storage of arousal based energy”. In circumstances such as repeated instances of abuse and/or when someone who has suffered this abuse and does not receive the support they need afterwards, the discharge of this energy is prohibited. This is what leads to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and possibly dissociative disorders.
Bessel points to the dorsal vagal system being involved in the freeze reaction, saying that this also prevents anything else coming into the mind, learning is prevented once this system is activated (this is a reason to avoid high levels of arousal).

He also found that the Broca’s area becomes deactivated in this freeze reaction, preventing the ability to talk and so in healing from trauma it is necessary to circumvent speech, to draw, to use movement ~ to move out of immobilisation which deprives a person of being in the world, of communication, of choice and the ability to imagine how things could in fact be different.

Being immobolised is a most uncomfortable place to be, I can vouch for that! I have also noticed how uncomfortable it is for others to be with, helplessness is often felt through the strong emotional impression of this wordless state.

Towards Unfreezing

“Body sensation rather than the intense emotion is the key to healing trauma”,
Peter Levine.

“Our feelings and our bodies are like water flowing into water.
We learn to swim with the energies of the (body) senses”,
Tarthang Tulku.

“The body is the shore on the ocean of being",
A Sufi saying.

I use the phrase of moving towards unfreezing in the knowledge that I am just touching on a vast area of experience here. An experience which is as varied and personal to the individual as are the elements of what originally created the trauma and guided our responses to it. What is common to all of us in this area of experience, is the need to learn how to step down from overwhelm, how to not keep reactivating the freeze response.

Levine emphasises staying with the body which means staying with the now, the “felt sense” in the present.

If we listen to a piece of music now we would receive an impression of it rather than knowing what notes were played. Likewise bringing awareness to the “felt sense” (a phrase coined by Eugene Gendlin who developed Focussing) provides a key to healing the fragmentation of trauma, it gives us a unified experience.

“We don’t confront trauma directly... or we could find ourselves seized in it’s frightening grip”. Levine reflects on the myth of Medusa who Perseus sets out to conquer. Athena warns him not to look directly at the Gorgon. Listening to this wisdom he uses his shield to reflect Medusa’s image, rather than being turned to stone, immobolised by fear, he is able to cut off her head. “Likewise the solution to vanquishing trauma comes not through confronting it directly but by working with its reflection, mirrored in our instinctual responses”. If we access the instinctual processes we can use them as shields to become unfrozen and to heal. In the myth when Medusa is slain, two creatures emerge from her body ~ Pegasus the winged horse, symbol of the human body and its instinctual nature and also Chrysaor, a warrior with a golden sword, the sword of truth. The truth being that transformation through embodiment brings both grounding and the soaring of wings, the streaming of energy. Some years ago I had the clear insight that although my body was a “target”, the site of the battlefield of the trauma that I had experienced, it was also a gateway to freedom. A prison and escape route both. I had the sense that I needed to “reassociate”, to come into my body to end the dissociation and fragmentation, if I wanted to be free of my traumatic childhood, which was literally frozen in my bodymind.

One of the complications that can occur and that needs to be dealt with is the “overcoupling” (Peter Levine’s term), the strong association of fear (terror) with immobility and indeed with being in the body, with being embodied.

As someone who has suffered trauma moves out of immobility, overpowering surges of emotion are likely to arise and when these are not acted upon, enormous amounts of rage and terror will be re-experienced. I personally have also experienced excruciating pain, both physically and emotionally as I have resolved, unfrozen, some of the frozen parts of myself. To me its not dissimilar to thawing out frozen fingers in the cold, it really hurts as the numbing, the analgesic response wears off.

“Fear and the fear of violence to self and others reactivates the immobility, extending it, often indefinitely in the form of frozen terror. This is the vicious circle of trauma.” Levine states that “with full use of our highly developed ability to think and perceive, we can consciously move out of the trauma response.” As we all know this is not easy and is a gradual process that needs to be taken, one step at a time. In my experience it’s like trying to find the light switch in the dark in a house that is completely unfamiliar to you. It takes time to consciously learn the layout.

“The drive to complete the freezing response remains active no matter how long it has been in”. Use this drive, these natural instinctive responses, as an ally and a very potent one at that.

“Canst though not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?”
Macbeth Act V scene iii

Of trauma Levine says, “of all the maladies that attack the human organism, trauma may ultimately be one that is recognised as beneficial. I say this because in the healing of trauma a transformation takes place ~ one that can improve the quality of life... While trauma can be hell on earth, trauma resolved is the gift of the gods ~ a heroic journey that belongs to each of us.”

Recommended Reading

Peter Levine and Ann Frederick: Waking The Tiger ~ Healing
Trauma. North Atlantic Books, 1997.

Candace Pert: Molecules Of Emotion

Bessel Van der Kolk MD: The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and The Evolving Psychobiology of Post-traumatic Stress
(Havard Review Of Psychiatry 1994)
Bessel Van der Kolk, Alexander McFarlane, Lars Weisaeth: The Effects Of Overwhelming Experience On Mind, Body and Society (Adaptations to Trauma; The Psychobiology of PTSD)

Robert C Scaer MD: The Body Bears The Burden ~ Trauma, Dissociation and Disease

Sandra Sunfire

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Childhood, Society and Trauma

Statements excerpted with permission from Alice Miller’s book ‘The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart’ (1985).

The child is always innocent.
Each child needs among other things: care, protection, security, warmth, skin contact, touching, caressing, and tenderness.
These needs are seldom sufficiently fulfilled, and in fact they are often exploited by adults for their own ends (trauma of child abuse).
Child abuse has lifelong effects.
Society takes the side of the adult and blames the child for what has been done to him or her.
The victimization of the child has historically been denied and is still being widely denied, even today.
This denial has made it possible for society to ignore the devastating effects of the victimization of the child for such a long time.
The child, when betrayed by society, has no choice but to repress the trauma and to idealize the abuser.
Repression leads to neuroses, psychoses, psychosomatic disorders, and delinquency.
In neuroses, the child's needs are repressed and/or denied; instead, feelings of guilt are experienced.
In psychoses, the mistreatment is transformed into a disguised illusory version (madness).
In psychosomatic disorders, the pain of mistreatment is felt, but the actual origins are concealed.
In delinquency, the confusion, seduction, and mistreatment of childhood are acted out again and again.
The therapeutic process can be successful if it is based on uncovering the truth about the patient's childhood instead of denying that reality.
The psychoanalytic theory of "infantile sexuality" actually protects the parent and reinforces society's blindness.
Fantasies always serve to conceal or minimize unbearable childhood reality for the sake of the child's survival; therefore, the so-called "invented trauma" is a less harmful version of the real, repressed one.
The fantasies expressed in literature, art, fairy tales, and dreams often unconsciously convey early childhood experiences in a symbolic way.
This symbolic testimony is tolerated in our culture, thanks to society's chronic ignorance of the truth concerning childhood; if the import of these fantasies were understood, they would be rejected.
A past crime cannot be undone by our understanding of the perpetrator's blindness and unfulfilled needs.
New crimes, however, can be prevented, if the victims begin to see and be aware of what has been done to them.
Therefore, the reports of victims will be able to bring about more awareness, consciousness, and sense of responsibility in society at large.

Reprinting of any part of this article is allowed only by the express written permission of Alice Miller. For inquiries, write to janhunt@naturalchild.org.

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DON'T RUSH IN - Report from Sri Lanka

It is a few years back now that I recall the speed at which the Anglican dioceses of Derby and Leicester responded to the Kegworth air crash on the M1 and rushed to set up a quick response unit of neighbouring clergy who would be on hand and prepared to act as counsellors should there be a repeat disaster. To be fair I don't recall what training was given but I hope it was a little more than how to hold the hands of the hurting and praying with those who were desirous of such a ministry.

At the time I write this Natascha Kampusch, after eight years of solitary confinement, has escaped and written a letter to the media who are clamouring to get a glimpse of her, take photos and be the first to profit from her money-spinning story. She is being sheltered and counselled in an operation that even keeps her shocked parents at bay. In a remarkably mature letter she has given a few details of her imprisonment and requested the press "to stop the insulting reports, the misinterpretations of reality, the commentaries that claim to know better and the lack of respect for me…At the moment I feel very well in the place where I am staying, although perhaps I feel a little bit too much controlled… I am the one who has decided only to have telephone contacts with my parents. I am also the one who will decide when I have contact with journalists. Everybody wants to ask intimate questions, but they have nothing to do with anybody else. It may be that one day I speak to my therapist about it and may be not. Please let me have some peace in the immediate future. There are many people caring for me now. Please let me have time until I feel I can talk for myself." A letter issued prior to her appearance on Austrian television, written from what appears to be a safe place with wise advisors and carers. A plea for space that she may come to terms with what happened in the past and what is happening as she enters a different world, becoming suddenly the centre of attention.

At 9.35 a.m. on 2nd February 2005 my wife Uta and I stepped off the plane in Sri Lanka. The journey via Zurich and Dubai had taken twenty-five hours and we had not slept. At 10.45 a.m. we were ushered into an 'open to the street' funeral parlour where lay the body of the widowed mother of two adult children whom we were to counsel.

We held their hands, let them tell the story and wept with them. From there, on to a Baptist Church where a New Zealand team of psychiatrists and psychotherapists were giving a very professional training course with very professional printed notes in three languages to members of the congregation and others who were seeking to respond to the tsunami tragedy. We looked in, engaged for thirty minutes and were then on our way to have some breakfast and the eight-hour journey to Kandy.

At 5 a.m. on the following morning we were driven to the East Coast, to what was then, and remains still, the worst affected area of the country. By late afternoon we were on the sands getting our first impressions. It was just five and a half weeks since the waves had hit the beaches and wiped out a huge swathe of human life.

The beaches were empty; emptied of houses (many built close to the shoreline), emptied of boats and any familiar industry, emptied of trees and emptied of people. We saw no corpses. They had been buried as they were found. But in all probability, beneath the sand, littered with all the debris of human belongings (sandals, toys, bits of domestic life) lay countless dead bodies, which may or may not be washed up in years to come. There was a sort of odour. Who would wish to walk there now, in the graveyards so to speak? Who would want to revisit the strand where their houses, shops, businesses had once stood and from which they and their loved ones had been swept so mercilessly inland? Who would revisit the place of personal terror where children were torn from their parents' grasp and families and communities destroyed?

Our original call was to teach students through an interpreter the 'art' of counselling into trauma. It was made more difficult because most of the students were not on site at the moment of the tsunami. Term had ended and it was vacation time. Many were in their home villages up in the hills, celebrating Christmas in one way or another. Most were as shocked as we ourselves, visiting the sites of tsunami after the event. What we all encountered were the survivors; stunned, lost, bewildered, despairing, homeless, jobless, totally bereaved (one had lost seventeen members of his family), even having to prove their own identities and, without any title deeds to their properties, unable to prove that they had lived where they claimed and were entitled to help through the Aid Organisations; trauma on top of trauma. Some wandered around or stood on the flat foundation of their former dwelling (even if they could find that in the changed landscape) or propped against a toxic well or rescuing a brick or two, for some future rebuilding programme, if the government would allow them. Forty days on they had been told it was illegal to rebuild. Some homes were identifiable only by the family dog that instinctively knew where to go, waiting in vain for someone to come and feed it.

We helped to clear the debris from a doctor's house. He had gone to church on Boxing Day. His wife, invalid father and brother had remained at home. She was found two miles inland. The other two died in the collapsed house. Everything we found that looked personal we placed in a largish waste paper basket, his ruined stethoscope for example. There were no patients' records, no medicines, no photos or personal valuables, no passport and no identity, no evidence to government officials that he was even a qualified practitioner other than his remaining few patients, scattered around the refugee camps, requesting his medical attentions. Half of what we found probably was not his but had been washed in from somewhere else. How would you begin to counsel him? Help clear the debris? Hold his hand? Give him a home? Put money in his bank account? Look compassionately into his eyes? Sympathise, even feel empathy, even advanced empathy? I don't know where he had been up to this point in time, but forty days on (by local tradition the period of mourning), he, a Christian, had returned to his former home, revisiting the place of good memories and horror. The best place had, in a flash, become the worst. He stood and watched as ten students, none of whom had witnessed the tsunami, cleared his ruined home and burnt the rotting rubbish. He was silent. Speechless. Numbed out. I guess, he did the right thing, he waited a good while before returning to the place where he had kissed his wife, left his family and gone to church that Sunday morning.

I saw a man, a Muslim, sitting on a fallen tree trunk, staring out to sea motionless, perhaps watching, waiting for the boat to come in and bring back his fisherman son. Disturb him? Leave him for a while? When would be the moment to break into his silent world? What would be the loving thing to do?

A young Hindu man, utterly beautiful, scanned the beach where the Sunday school had stood. His boy had attended and had never been found. The whole Hindu Sunday school was washed away. He 'owed' it to his seven year old boy to watch out for his return. "Would his son have wanted him to put his life on hold for good?" It was a simple question but perhaps opening up a different perspective.

A deserted Christian woman with her two teenage daughters stood on the cracked floor of her wall-less house. There was no man in their lives and all else was lost, too. Where was hope to spring from? Growing out of the concrete, forty days on, a green shoot had appeared. That language was common to us; out of the ruins comes new life. Hope can be reborn. Counselling hardly seemed relevant.

We went through a refugee camp for eight hours. Uta, visiting one side I the other, talking non-stop, tent by tent. The people chose to tell their stories and express their practical needs. No government official had visited them.

The most moving moment before we left the East Coast was meeting a group of forty-one Hindus. They had been prepared for our coming and had gathered at the home of a local leader. They had their skills but no opportunities to practice them and no homes meant no place from which to work.

All were staying with relatives and friends. It turned out to be a 'trade union' meeting, with much expression of anger and frustration, and an embryonic business plan was conceived. (We thought we were there to counsel!) The women were deeply anxious about their children, who would wake up in the night, screaming from their dreams.

"Have you been back to the sea?" we asked. "No," they replied. "Would you come with us, if we walked together?" Hesitantly, "Yes", they would. We let a Hindu funeral party go by with all its clatter and fireworks and wailing and then set off. For about a kilometre we all walked across bleak sand to the edge of the water. Nobody fell out. At the waters edge we stood. Then some dipped their feet into the waves. Four men swam out to a marooned tree stump that had been washed across the Bay of Bengal. The children paddled. We took photographs, we laughed a lot. Some women could not look at the water and stood with faces averted. It was enough for them. Then, forty minutes later, we walked home. "Go again tomorrow, if you like." And some said they would. Hopefully many did and inspired others to come with them. Together we had confronted the enemy, the fearsome destroyer of their lives and found it toothless. A step of hope?

It is now twenty-one months since the tsunami struck and counselling, as we have been trained to do, could now be relevant. But it won't be possible. The East Coast (where there are no hotels, no tourist industry, no Saga elephant riding, blue swimming pool holidays) is closed. Tamil country is back at war. The students won't yet be returning to their college in Trincomalee. The emails have shut down. New terrors have arrived. 65,000 had died in twenty years of civil war, twice the number that perished in the tsunami, and the death toll is growing once again and so is the number of displaced people. New refugee camps are springing up. And the trauma goes on. Water, food, medicine and shelter were provided in some measure. Homes, jobs and security were still awaited. 'Tsunami' was the password that let us through the roadblocks to bring comfort and consolation to a few shattered lives. The curtain to the East Coast opened for a short while. It appears now to have closed again.

A number of studies, recently one by Dr Berthold Gersons (report in the British Journal of Psychiatry), have indicated that quick drug intervention and too hasty counselling into post-traumatic stress is counterproductive; not just unhelpful but actually harmful. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) advises the same in its guidelines. Certainly our experiences of trauma in Sri Lanka, compounded by our language difficulties, meant that we were effectively and quite naturally prohibited from premature counselling! Time was calming down the fear systems of the survivors. And we arrived still too soon for serious counselling. Our practical task was to hold hands, enter the culture of the sufferers and just be there with them. Most times there were simply no words. I am grateful for the experience. It may not come again so poignantly.

Peter Vessey, 2006

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