Trauma, Shock, and Dissociation: Part 1 - Origins
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Trauma is not an experience.
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Trauma is a name given to the pain/imprint held in the bodymind as a result of an overwhelming experience.
If an adult has a moderate collision and manages to get support and express the feelings and tension, the nervous system may not hold any residue—no trauma. But if a small child is exposed to a massive parental fight, that child—with a sensitive, developing brain—will feel overwhelmed. With no safe parent to run and cry to, that incident may stay in the child's system, as a trauma, for years. Therefore a trauma is dependent on both conditions, severity, and sensitivity.
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Traumas also exist on a spectrum from standard repression to outright dissociation. Some of us in this field refer to the extreme as shock-level trauma.
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Typical trauma repression works by storing painful feelings below everyday consciousness to allow normal life to continue. Shock-level events, comparatively, are too extreme for the body to handle in that manner, because the organism perceives the situation as life-threatening. When we cannot escape the feeling of impending death by fight, flight, or repression, we go into shock. In the face of expected death, the organism escapes by dissociating consciousness from the body.
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In the book Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857) Dr. David Livingstone clearly describes this dissociation:
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Starting, and looking half round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me. I was upon a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain nor feeling of terror, though quite conscious of all that was happening. It was like what patients partially under the influence of chloroform describe, who see all the operation, but feel not the knife. This singular condition was not the result of any mental process. The shake annihilated fear, and allowed no sense of horror in looking round at the beast. This peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora; and if so, is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.
Livingstone survived when the lion was distracted by another person. If he had not been saved, he may have further dissociated and perceived that he was "leaving his body" as near-death survivors often describe.
Speaking of shock, author Peter Levine, in Facing the Tiger: Healing Trauma states that:
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It is one of the three primary responses available to reptiles and mammals when faced with an overwhelming threat. The other two, fight and flight, are much more familiar to most of us. Less is known about the immobility response (shock). However, my work in the last twenty-five years has led me to believe that it is the single most important factor in uncovering the mystery of human trauma.
The body is more likely to go into shock when it is vulnerable and developmentally fragile. For this reason, pre- and perinatal traumas (before, at, or after birth) are often interpreted by the body as life-threatening and result in a shock response. At this stage, seemingly innocuous events such as loud noises, bright lights, and isolation can result in shock.
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In later childhood and adulthood when the body becomes more resilient, shock will only occur in response to more severe situations such as personal violence, sexual abuse, witnessed violence, serious injury, life-threatening illness, life-threatening disasters, some surgical interventions, and the death of loved ones.
Shock-level trauma is essentially a surrender to the potential entry of death. The perceived destructive force bursts through the physical or psychological boundaries of the self, causing consciousness to fragment and shift to an altered state. Our perception sometimes seems to leave the event, and witness from outside the body.
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People with considerable shock-level trauma are often disconnected from their feelings, their bodies, and from other people. They feel "spaced out," "not with it," and have a hard time focusing and concentrating. They can easily become startled, surprised, stunned, or "frozen." Their sense of self can be weak and fragmented, and they often find it difficult to assert or even know their own boundaries and the boundaries of others. They are often hypervigilant and have extreme reactions, as if everything is "life or death." They tend to expect "the worst" and often have a sense of being "fatally" flawed.
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What Happens in Shock?
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When we are violated by a situation so overwhelming that our system dissociates and goes into shock, a number of things happen.
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1) The body feels powerless and disintegrated.
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2) Attention is shifted away (dissociated) from the painful violation, resulting in disintegrated memory.
3) the system in chaos is unable to construct the normal trauma defences required for everyday functioning.
The powerlessness, confusion, disintegration, weak defences, and incomplete memory that accompany shock become the main themes in the symptoms of adult survivors. Knowing how shock affects the body, it is easy to see why this is so.
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Traumas are normally contained within defence structures so they can be released later. In that way, trauma victims are like a turtle in a hard shell. Therefore, healing trauma is about allowing defenses (the shell) to soften and eventual release traumatic pain. A shock victim, on the other hand, is like a turtle with no
shell. Take a minute to feel that image. In general, a shock victim lacks adequate defences.
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Therefore, to resolve shock, a new safe "shell" has to be created with the help of a support person or group, followed by the development of new defences and life skills. Within this protective shell, the process of opening to communication and feeling expression can unfold in a slow, gradual, "unshocking" manner. Any attempt to force the process will simply cause the person to freeze, get stuck, or even retreat.
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Shock and the Imprinting of Memory
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Memory is really not as complex as scientists would have us believe.
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A footprint in clay is a memory. A parting of grass on the hillside is a memory. A shallow ravine cut into the desert is a memory.
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These are all traces—imprints—of things that have happened in the past. The footprint is the imprint of a raccoon as it came down to the river. The path on the hillside is the imprint of a deer that travelled the day before. The shallow ravine is the imprint of water that cut through the sand during a flash flood last month. Each imprint tells some of the story of the event that created it—but not the whole story.
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Our brains are organic forms just like clay, grass, and sand.
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Sensation passes through us in continual surges of electrochemical activity. Every experience moves through us like the rain running down a ravine. From neuron to neuron, spreading through our brains like branch lightning, the signals travel complex pathways.
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Experience is not imprinted in a single location, like a footprint. Rather, it is imprinted as a pattern that passes through us. If the same neurons fire in the same pattern, we have what is called a "memory." This isn't the original, 3-dimensional, full-body experience, it's a replay of a neuronal pattern. That replay is available for our reference as a memory.
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A photo of a mountain is not the mountain. A memory of being on the mountain is not the actual experience of being on the mountain. So a memory of a frightening event is not the frightening event. The event, thankfully, is gone.
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Memory imprints are only as good as the degree of experience gathered by the senses. If the eyes are closed during an experience, our memories will not include a visual representation. A camera will not get a picture if the lens is covered. If anything blocks, distracts, or interferes with our senses, the accompanying memory will be a less accurate impression of the event. Shock events often cause the senses to be distracted or disabled, which will interfere with the accuracy of the imprinting into memory.
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Imprints are also only as good as the condition of the medium that receives the imprint. A footprint in sand will not be as accurate or last as long as a footprint in clay. If our brains and bodies are in an injured or dysfunctional state they will not imprint experience accurately. This is a crucial point. Shock is often a state that anticipates death. In severe cases of shock, the body slides towards disintegration and records the experience in a distorted and fragmented way. Like the images captured by an automatic camera in the face of a volcanic eruption, the images will distort more and more as the camera is damaged by the heat.
Whether imprinted accurately or not, the repressed memories of shock/trauma cause survivors a great deal of stress and dysfunction. This stress may be unconscious (but active), or break out in flashbacks, anxious feelings, and negative thought patterns. Sometimes physical symptoms and anxiety are “free floating” or move from one area of the body to another. It can be very confusing not to find a specific source or cause. Many people may realize that the problem is psychologically based, but feel they need exact memories/events before they can proceed.
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To clarify this confusion, consider the following three points:
1) Nothing can create an exact imprint of an event. Therefore human memory is an
impression, not a perfect replica.
2) Memory is only as accurate as the senses were open and the system was
functional at the time of imprinting.
3) The past does not exist. Memories are not the past, they are impressions/imprints
laid down in the past that activate in the present.
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When we suffer from shock/trauma memories, we are disturbed by old troubling imprints that are being reactivated now—and these imprints may never be complete copies. In order to process and resolve traumatic overload, however, perfect memories are not required.
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(continued in "Trauma, Shock, and Dissociation: Part 2 - Solutions")