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.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
About What Embeds Neurosis in the System
I have been wondering why it is that battle in combat did not seem to make me neurotic while seemingly innocuous events during home life did. I think I found one answer. That old devil… need … raises its ugly head. What happened early in life when need was at its asymptote, our system made sure that even banal events were embedded in our nervous system. When we needed holding and touch in the first months of life to mollify the appearance of agonizing pain, we found ways to encase the pain (defenses)and made the pain bearable when love went missing.
It seems that it is not like I need a piece of cake every afternoon; rather it is something essential to life and development; it is part of our biologic development that goes missing. Need is basic to fulfillment; they form an equation and when that equation is unbalanced we become so, as well. It is not just what goes into the mouth; it is what enters the whole system. It is like touch. It is not what we feel on our cheeks. It is what that does to the whole system; the warmth, the caring and love. A ruffling of the child’s hair can carry with it a note: you are loved, appreciated and wanted. A mussing up of hair carries a biologic message that says so much. You are wanted, I feel close to you and want to be near you. One touch contains pages of monologue without any verbal discussion. Touch is the message without words. But words without touch dilutes and vitiates that message into a loss of meaning. Words without feeling do not travel to the feeling centers. The actual message is lost and we are left with vacuous meaning that has lost its power to move others. It can no longer convey love. It becomes an empty vessel with no place to land. One then lives on a barren island bereft of meaning and above all, bereft of love.
Combat is not based on biologic need; quite the opposite. it is what happens then there is no chance for it.
So a slap on my face at age five conveyed a new message: you are not loved there is need to afraid. Do not look to me for understanding and compassion. Beware! You must obey without question. And you slip into obedience as a normal thing. You no longer expect kindness, just the lack of rage. There is a new “normal” in life: the lack of anger and the lack of danger. No needing love; needing just to avoid menace and threat.
The last paragraph has an unbelievably profound meaning and projections!!
ReplyDeleteA really good one, Art, a really good one indeed...
Hi Art,
ReplyDeleteI so well recognize what you're talking about. I believe this is what DSM 5 labels cPTSD, a chronic traumatic stress level. That, plus the ordinary PTSD surely ruins life, both emotionally and physically.
Without insulin, and without you, I would have been dead decades ago. Thanks.
Erik
Art
ReplyDeleteIn the bull's eye. Touching as usually.
Love is an emotional experience which we suffer from without it and we become thinkers... in to "hell" if so!
ReplyDeleteNo thoughts in the world can solve the issue of their cause (there is a cause for them) without first having been there thoughts have their source for its importance... only then we see how thoughts have limited ourselves... why they never been able to answer the question of the significance of missing LOVE!
Primal therapy is very... very... very much more serious than what we could ever imagine. Primal therapy gives life which is impossible to imagine that it do! What I mean is that there are no living thinker who can empathize with what primal therapy is all about... it is very... very... very much more serious. It gives us life from a totally different perspective... a physiological perspective... which we otherwise repress with all that we are in the sense of being thinkers.
Frank
Frank, A pretty profound idea, there are no great thinkers who can understand what feelings are all about. That is why most Ph.d s cannot master the therapy. You need the opposite of smarts. For my therapy I would choose those who care for animals. Requirements for doing our therapy includes a sense of empathy, above all. If applicants cannot relate to animals they may not do well in our therapy.
DeleteOr, as Jethro Tull sang: "and your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick..."
DeleteErron
Hi Art,
Delete-"Requirements for doing our therapy includes a sense of empathy, above all. If applicants cannot relate to animals they may not do well in our therapy"-.
Of course all therapeutic methods (and medical/nursing training) make this requirement of trainees & practitioners but the interpretation of the words is very different depending. Let me elucidate: At a corporate coaching event I attended the facilitator asked us to define the difference between empathy and sympathy; I said empathy is an emotional response and sympathy an intellectual response. He argued that each was nothing of the sort. . . Then much later agreed with me. I feigned and changed the subject - which is exactly what some 'facilitators' want you, their 'client' to do when faced with the need for empathy from them.
It's like the menu at that cheap diner: - Beans on toast is on the menu and you ask for beans on toast but it's not available today, nor is anything else on the menu except what you don't want.
This is exactly what therapy is like in so many other methodologies, the blurb (menu) mentions 'empathy' but when it comes down to it words is all you get.
I am reminded of a book by Eric Berne on Transactional Analysis, I think it's called: "I'm OK, you're OK", in this book the author discusses the cognitive understanding of small children and cites the situation where a Dad is explaining something to his 5 year old. The child says: "You tell me what words to say Dad and I'll agree" (or words to that effect). My point (and Eric Bernes) is that we can act out a feeling life and deceive ourselves that we understand and have empathy when in reality we are merely repeating words parrot fashion. Sadly that is exactly what is expected by some therapists and professional helpers.
Of course the irony of this particular scenario is that the 5 year old probably has more empathy than his Dad. An irony that perhaps did not escape the author, and certainly not this reader.
Paul G.
Hi Art
ReplyDeleteHello compadre art
DeleteTo quote an excerpt from the above article:
ReplyDelete"... It is like touch. It is not what we feel on our cheeks. It is what that does to the whole system; the warmth, the caring and love. A ruffling of the child’s hair can carry with it a note: you are loved, appreciated and wanted. A mussing up of hair carries a biologic message that says so much. You are wanted, I feel close to you and want to be near you. One touch contains pages of monologue without any verbal discussion...."
Totally.
Marco
I do not go to bed in life, I go to bed and suffer for what life has been!
ReplyDeleteFrank.
Excellent writing... Thanks Art.
ReplyDelete