On Being Non-Functional

We can easily understand when all kinds of things are happening around us and we get confused and don’t know what to do first. But suppose all kinds of thing are happening not around us but inside us, things we cannot see or even imagine? And we get all confused, cannot concentrate or focus and stop functioning. Too much input, but from where!? Let’s see, hummm, maybe from inside? From all those imprints down low in the neuraxis that are constantly sending messages to the top cortical level, trying to inform us about danger down below. So many strong messages from preverbal imprints, messages with no special content but simply high-level electrical charges to try to enter our conscious-awareness, only to be rebuffed by the gating system.

So now imagine when there is all this current tumult going on that sets off the internal tumult and begins to overwhelm us; we can no longer focus and get immediately overwhelmed by the simplest of tasks to be done. It is all too much. We imagine it is because we are being pressured by domineering bosses but in reality we are being pressured first and foremost from inside, by importuning painful memories hidden away seeking exit and surcease. They are groping for priority, for access to top level processes that will allow for some peace. But they are competing with other external priorities that must be done…..now! Who wins? No one; nothing gets done as we break down and become non-functional.

Primal memories don’t just go away; they are as yet not connected, held back by the gates and so are unresolved and non-integrated. And the biologic system “knows” that connection means liberation. So they continually send their message higher up for connection. Alas, it is not to be. But those inchoate messages enter the cortical arena and create chaos because of their inability to connect. They have no specific content to allow them to be relived and be done with. They are preverbal, by and large, and can only be relived and resolved after many higher level imprints are integrated. And then, as we relive lower level, earlier imprints there is a resonance effect, a kind of dredge which raises up the earlier imprints. They now merge with imprints from infancy and earlier childhood providing the energy component to the feeling and making the reaction all the more powerful. Making a rather banal feeling incredibly strong. We may not understand what is going on because we have neglected the resonance factor that makes similar feelings connection or bind with each other, remained stored in memory and tend to rise together when the time is appropriate. So we feel disappointed at age seven but that triggers off the preverbal sensation of deeper aspect of the feeling, which can be many things but often is simple hopelessness. They now rise together and, as the reliving goes on there is a simultaneous reliving of the preverbal, energy part of the feeling, as well.

That same resonance goes on all of the time, higher level deception can trigger off deeper feelings but those feelings do not get resolved and simply create burgeoning chaos and tumult. They do not get resolved because not enough of the less powerful feelings have been integrated as yet. The system is simply not ready yet. And that sometimes can mean pockets of insanity as the system struggles to hold back feelings or perhaps tries to make sense of them, but to no avail. Enough premature breakthroughs and we have frank psychosis, which is when painkillers are necessary. And those same painkillers can, paradoxically, make us functional, as the painful imprints are held down below, out of harm’s way. It is when the pain is so strong, so many imprints that tranquilizers can no longer do their job. So we have to titrate the dose to make sure the patient gets enough to hold back the input from inside. After more pain is felt the person will need less and less painkillers.

Those early pains broke open the gating system initially because serotonin supplies could not keep up with the demand. So what is in those tranqs? Serotonin. All the pills are doing is doing what the system could not do at the beginning because it ran out of supplies. And it ran out because those early life endangering events demanded too much of the gating system. Don’t be afraid of offering chemical help because the system is demanding—non verbal therapy for non verbal pains. We just need to understand and comply, and above all, to tell our patients what is going on inside them. We are only boosting repression for a time until their system can take over.

On the Difference Between Help and Cure

Most of my readers know about my notion of the three levels of consciousness. That what happens to us in the womb, at birth and infancy is registered low down in the neuraxis and constitutes what I call the”first line.” As we grow up we may suffer neglect, trauma and/or lack of love; that will take place on what I call the “second line.” And what happens to us in adulthood and in the present is called the “third line.” It is possible to relive events that happened on any of those lines, but they have to be in order; feeling the third line first, second on the second and first line last. What is clear is that so long as we leave one level untouched we can get relief from reliving on the various levels but not cure; because the traumas on the first line have not been addressed. Final resolution means reliving on ALL levels, otherwise we have only skimmed the upper levels, leaving the powerhouse first line untouched. That is, to be clear, we can feel real feelings with their real force from the second line, in the first months of therapy but if there has been first line trauma it must be experienced. If it has only been minimal it may not ever have to be addressed. That is rare, indeed. All in all, it is the difference between relief and cure. Lots of relief from second line primals but not cure.

After 45 years of primal therapy we know that what is often behind later strokes, schizophrenia, epilepsy, severe addiction and heart attacks are first line traumas. They are nearly always packed with force and are also most often life-endangering. So one can spend months in therapy and still be prone to a stroke or heart attack because the basic primal imprint, the generating source upon which later traumas are added or compounded is first line. Yes, we can get increasing relief as we go on in our therapy but if we are to discuss cure there must be obligatorily reliving of first line. That has the strongest valence and remains the most dangerous imprint lodged in our system.

The first line left unfelt will always be a danger in later life. We may have take out fifty percent of the emotional force in primals about childhood but gestation trauma can still kill us. That is why it is not a good idea to do this therapy half way. You can say, “I got what I wanted out of the therapy.” But the system is insisting, “Not enough! You’re life is still in danger.” None of us want to say to patients, “You know you must go on with the therapy.” It makes us look avaricious, wanting to keep the patient with us. That is not the case. We want to save lives through the integration of feelings, and that cannot happen in a few weeks or several months of therapy. It is indeed dangerous to allow patients to go to first line when starting therapy. That can upset everything and only insure major symptoms from migraines to epilepsy. That means first line events are pressing at the repressive gates; if allowed to erupt too soon, the system cannot integrate it all and the result are symptoms. When a medical patient is given medication that is much too strong the system cannot integrate it and its excess force is flushed out through, perhaps, diarrhea. Nearly all key symptoms are the result of overload. We take pains to make sure it does not happen. The aim is integration and resolution, not feeling as a thing in itself such as crying or screaming out or pounding the walls. That feeling has to become part of us. Until it does it remains alien, an external force treated is an enemy of the system; and when those feelings are strong the person can run a high fever; the system feels it is under attack—danger is imminent. The feeling is pushed away; not accepted as part of us, and of course, not integrated. The feeling must become part of the “family.” Not an outsider that has to be shunted aside. Once it is part of us we can grow; we no longer have massive blockages impending our progress. Expressing our feelings can only have meaning after we have been in the feeling; otherwise neurology and evolution is backwards; using the third line intellect to get us to feelings, when it is the third line that must recede in order to permit access to full feelings. If the notion and the decision about where we need to go comes before feeling, the evolution is reversed and we will fail in therapy. Even while we think we are doing marvelously in a so-called feeling therapy. We cannot abrogate evolution and do well in therapy because evolution is how nature acts. It is an iron law of human behavior.