Articles on Primal Therapy, psychogenesis, causes of psychological traumas, brain development, psychotherapies, neuropsychology, neuropsychotherapy. Discussions about causes of anxiety, depression, psychosis, consequences of the birth trauma and life before birth.
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Epigenetics and Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis (Part 18/20)
Years ago, we did research showing that after one year of Primal Therapy our patients had enhanced production of natural killer cells (NK cells). These immune cells look out for developing cancer cells, then attack and devour them. I assume this means better control of cancer among our patients. But why would reliving those early imprints increase production of NK cells?
Here I have to make an assumption: when we have traumas during womb- life there is a deregulation of many bio-chemicals, hormones and neurotransmitters. The whole system, in short, changes to accommodate the input; and what that does is alter set points. How do we know that? Because in all of our studies we have found that set points seem to change after therapy and “normalize.” thus, for example, NK cells seem to change set points and come back to normal after one year of our therapy, as do levels of the stress hormone, cortisol.
There are many existing studies that correlate parental abuse with later cancer. One study from Purdue University found that adults who were emotionally and physically abused as children had a much greater likelihood of cancer as adults (Morton, Schafer, & Ferraro, 2012). The more intense the abuse, the more likely the cancer. Imagine now if we have left out of the mix one of the greatest risks of all: constant abuse while in the womb – a drugged or depressed mother, or one who is chronically anxious or tense and angry. Add that to it all and you have one of the great causes of later cancer.
So once we go back to those generating sources, those early imprints, the system appears to re-regulate itself back to what it should have been before the trauma intruded itself. Our therapy seems to “erase” the input and allow the cells to normalize. It is as if the trauma never happened; which is why I maintain that we can go back and undo and redo our early lives. The mechanism for this may well be the pattern of methylation that “seals in” the trauma – cancer is characterized by “methylation imbalance” (Baylln, Herman, Graff, Vertino & Issa, 1997). For example, depressives who relive deep and remote imprints will find their normal body temperature go from 96 degrees to 98 degrees. They normalize, which means that they do not go from 96 to 101; that is abnormal. That has no part in normalizing. The body system seeks out its own limits. Here again we see that there is no need to work on body temp, as such. We work on central factors and the system adjusts all on its own. There are other factors, as well, which are being sussed out anew each and every day by biochemists and other specialists. We will leave that to those experts. But it seems as though we are reversing those early changes that caused a detour of biochemical set points. Along with this was a rerouting of brain circuits as well. The neurotic system changed.
So what happens when the NK cells are increased? We have a stronger army to fight cancer, an army that was weakened by trauma occurring during our womb-life (and also possibly during the birth process). The system has a normal amount now and can amass a greater force to fight cellular anomaly. The cells seem to know when something is amiss and rush to correct it in the same way that repair cells rush in to stem the flow of blood and help in healing when we cut ourselves. We are a naturally healing system when given the chance; and what is wonderful is that we always have the chance in our lives to go back and re- stabilize the system. That is why when NK cells are extracted from tumor cells, processed and reintroduced to the system there is an increase in cancer fighting ability.
Here is the good news: when the NK army is bolstered there is less cancer, and when there are even metastasized cells the NK cells can fight each and every appearance of abnormal cells, no matter where they are, and stop them in their tracks. It is not like chemotherapy, a poison that destroys the malignant cells and also healthy cells along with them. Here, it is but a matter of increasing the health of the cells in order to combat the intruders: a much healthier way to go; in other words, the system now has a normal amount of NK cells, which it should have had early on but did not. And the same trauma that may have lowered the set points of NK cells could have also increased the likelihood of cancer. What may well happen is epigenetic changes can affect the tumor- suppression genes, leaving the system open to later cancer. The problem is that the distance between the early trauma and the appearance of cancer at forty is so vast as to be incomprehensible. It is only when we allow patients to go back and relive early trauma that we see the connection. And for now, it still has to be an assumption. But what we do see is how completely systemic are the effects early imprinted pain; when terror and pains are relived, the healing effects are widespread.
Wilson and Wilson (2015) examine the nature of emotions and feelings in their book,"Understanding Emotional Development", in which they state that, " the unstoppable nature that is so defining of emotion is there precisely because it is a quality of feeling" and that, "This unstoppable uncontrollable quality is also true of other feelings...such as fatigue, heat, cold, pain and sexual desire. All conscious emotions and moods have this quality". Well in my experience that is simply not accurate and therefore not true.
ReplyDeleteStopping feeling is precisely the way that we survive an unfeeling environment. The whole problem is that we do stop feeling . Anyway....it's pretty alarming seen as these are the research findings of a senior lecturer in psychology at Sydney University.
If people who are doing research about emotional development are not feeling, then how are they going to investigate the development and experience of feeling emotions? They don't even know that they don't know, because they've stopped feeling. Their psychological measuring tools are blunt and out of date to say the least! Katherina
Gotcha Katerina, we all need to learn. art
DeleteHi Katherina,
DeleteI wonder if this is another good example of people confusing 'passion' for feeling? And by proxy confusing abreaction for reliving? Thus remaining firmly in the territory of the repressed.
But until they have this explained to them, they will continue to have a fuzzy boundary about all of it, no matter how hard they 'try to understand' emotions instead of actually having them. Perhaps it's our responsibility to find ways, a new social kind of access if you like, to get people who don't know they don't know, to begin to see a new possibility.
I feel that Epigenetics & Primal are so fundamental that the dialectic can and should be applied in many new ways. People already do. However, the specific facts (& idea) of the critical window with 'up / down / up access' further refines the dialectic. You could even write a new kind of law. . .
Part of the problem is the relationship that people have to 'reformation' which is merely an institutional pastime, a kind of game which only requires bureaucrats. Primal is really 'revolutionary'. People can't see that both are needed. Revolution has a bad image (!) Maybe some can see that both are needed and that's a potential hook. But we don't have to tear down the old institutions either. . . Most of all it's important with revolutionary matters not to give up.
Don't give up.
Paul G.