Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 14/20)

Another Look at Reliving

We need to make sure that reliving is important in the therapy for all kinds of neuroses. Neurosis means that there is an early traumatic input that alters function and behavior; not one or the other but both. That is, there is pain and denial of need that overwhelms normal functioning and causes a diversion. We are no longer normal; things go wrong neurologically, biochemically and behaviorally. To cure we need to normalize the whole system, not just behavior or biochemistry. Otherwise we are condemned to treating behavior and physiology as two distinct problems when they are inextricably related.

That in a tiny nutshell is the story of neurosis. We are no longer ourselves; we are re-routed in function. To get back to ourselves we have to re-establish function in every aspect. Not just behavior. And when we are diverted and rerouted, there are marks that leave their traces; epigenetic marks. Being loved minimizes the marks on the genes. Being unloved increases them. For example, if we are loved and hugged and touched a lot there are changes in the brain where methylation patterns are changed so that we respond normally to stress. When there is trauma, the part of the brain that controls the stress response is tagged by methyl groups and produces alterations in how genes are expressed or repressed; shut down or opened up. And this changes us in profound ways. Our personality becomes different; we can be more open or closed off; more depressed or anxious depending on what genes do what.

So now we have those marks, methylation, which foretells of a life to come and how it will be lived. How do we change all that? We need to revisit those early experiences, those without words, go back and redo them. Change history and its chemical traces. We need to undo the damage and that means slowly demethylizing, in my model. One experience at a time; or one experience over many times. We need to find how the system was detoured and put it back on track, literally. This happened because pain installed itself and forced change. And this can be measured; the amount of methylation can be observed and changed. That is meaningful progress. It informs us about altering neuroses. In a way, the levels of methylation can be a marker for having been loved early on, or not having been loved. We could tell more than the statements by the person who claims he was loved in his childhood if he were indeed not loved. How much denial is there? We see how “under-funded” the notion of cognitive therapy is when it deals mostly with words and ideas; something that did not exist during the times of key imprints.

Neurochemistry may be a more reliable indicator because it has no reason to lie, or rather, no way to lie. It can be a marker for post-traumatic stress or how much repression exists in ADD, or how much pain/repression there is in Alzheimer’s disease. We already have some information in this regard because autopsies on depressive/suicides found them to have been heavily methylated in the hippocampal (feeling=memory) area. The more abuse as a child in these cases the more methylation is produced. When we add this to our future research on telomeres and cortisol we will begin to have precise measures of the pain in us. And we will know when a drug is too dangerous for us, particularly the drugs like marijuana that tend to open us to ourselves, to our feelings and pain. Finally we will have a marker for the efficacy of certain psychotherapies. Does the therapy undo the past? Does it help relieve repression and therefore depression? Is there great first line pain in anxiety states? I already can answer that in the affirmative, having treated person after person with anxiety.

The best way to reverse the imprint is through the slow, methodical process of therapy where the least pains can be integrated first, finally descending to the great early traumas and then measuring the results. In other words, we need to trust nature and all its processes; chemical reversal alone, without regard to total neuro-biologic state is far too general and non-specific to each trauma. It is a shotgun when we need a scoped rifle. It seems to me the natural way provides far less possibility for collateral damage to the system. We need nature as a reference. It is when we leave nature behind that we need the reference of statistics; never as good as nature itself.