The Silent Scream

I was looking around at some people I know and at least 1/3rd of them had the malady of needing to move constantly;  organizing trips, making reasons to go here and there, and, in general keeping on the move. Does all that constant going and coming lead to strokes and heart attacks?  I do think so. Why?  Because below all that movement is a giant silent scream.  So, if they scream it out will they stop moving? Nope.    We have so many assumptions here, so let’s take it slowly.

I have seen thousands of patients relive all kinds of traumas: one key one that is widespread is being trapped in the womb, suffocating and unable to get out.  Trapped. Suffocating, Unable to move; those are the key feelings involved.  They could scream then and they cannot scream now but once they as adults are in the feeling they can first grunt and try to move and feel then, later, At birth…..    scream.  It is not the screaming that is liberating.  It is the reliving.  And then the scream to express the agony of all that.  Reliving changes the imprint, reduces it, and begins the resolution process - demethylation which I have written about extensively.  Screaming alone is not what we are after; it is the total agony of the reliving, and then the reaction—screaming.  Reactions alone cannot do it.  And that is what is wrong with all those early Scream Clubs in universities that began with the publication of the Primal Scream.  Yes, screaming relieves the pressure involved in the reaction but does nothing to the imprint.

So now we see the tremendous pressure in the build up after the traumatic event early on; not only the birth trauma but many other traumas where the mother is taking drugs or smoking and drinking and the fetus/baby cannot escape.  He can turn his head away as if to escape but, alas, he is trapped.  And that feeling impressed into a vulnerable body remains there as a engraved memory and will drive her behavior thereafter.  “I have to move.  I have to get out of here.”  That is the leitmotif of his or her life.  And it never ever leaves!  The person is literally trapped in the memory, a trap that has chemicals stronger than steel to bind them forever.  One of those chemicals is methyl.  Another is serotonin, and there are many others. But is is a chemical conspiracy to make sure we never ever feel free or liberated.  Now do they feel bound?  Of course not. They are too busy trying to get unbound, yet never knowing the feeling and where it comes from.  Can you imagine someone saying to himself, “Wow.  I am bound by a feeling in the womb!”  In that womb there are obviously no words or concepts or scenes. Only a physical feeling.  So how can there be a memory?  There is no memory as wee think of remembering, but the body remembers exactly.  It remembers trapped and suffocating because in the Primal that is what comes up and what we see.  And in everyday life we lug those feelings around as a weight as if carrying a ten pound steel bar around constantly.  We are carrying around those devilish chemicals that trap us, however.  And what changes those chemicals?  Primals.

Can you guess?  Less methylation, decreased serotonin (which we have measured) and on and on.  We change the chemical composition and diminish the memory so that we can really change our behavior and our proclivity toward disease.  So screaming won’t do it. What will?  How about dampening drugs, SSRI’s?  They shush the scream but never never change the memory, the imprint.  And how about slowing us down so we don’t move so much?  That just helps the build-up of pressure.  It exacerbates the problem and aggravates the need to move.  What helps? Nada!

So when we see the constant motion we understand, but we never see the agony. Why no agony?  Because it is busy being acted-out to relieve the agony before it is fully felt.  So we cannot possibly see it and the person in motion cannot feel it; that is the idea, that it disappear before it is evident.  Now we know why psychotherapy is at such a loss.  And now we know what could be behind high blood pressure and migraines. I had one patient who was sexually never satisfied.  When she could not have sex her blood pressure rose to dangerous heights.  Drugs could not help her. What could?  Feeling the need to discharge pressure,, a Primal; that helped.  That cured.    Why cure? Because it dealt with the origin of it all.  The original methylation and imprint.  What caused all that need for sex; to say nothing of her first-line imprint which was so strong.  An imprint on the physical level that had no words, nor screams.  A constant smoking mother who was literally killing her baby.  Or a chronically anxious mother who could not shut off her anxiety.  The brainstem, almost fully developed at the time absorbed all that trauma and is therefore heavily methylated. We never will see that until we bring patients down to that level; yet that could take months and then we need to know what to look for.  That is why it took me decades to figure it out.  It is not evident.

So why aren’t they all walking down the street screaming?  It is not done and not polite, but what they can do is scream out the agony of the migraine or heart constriction (angina).  And we rush in to treat the heart condition or migraine or high blood pressure.  That is where it is obvious but that is NOT where the problem lies.  It lies hidden in the lungs and surroundings.  In the arching back and the constant movement.  We see what we see, the obvious, and miss what we cannot see.  That makes sense.  Maybe we should be searching for what cannot see: a lens that magnifies primal pain.  dHey,I have it and I am giving it away.  Oh you mean no one wants it. Why? They are too busy treating what they see.

On the Science of Psychotherapy

Sometimes I realize I am getting science heavy but what is happening today is so exciting, especially since it supports what I have been writing about for almost 50 years.  (See the following:  T.J. Rebello, et al., “Postnatal day 2  to 11 constitutes a 5HT sensitive period.”    G. Perna: “Panic and the brainstem: clues from neuroimaging studies.”  2014 1996 Betham Science Publishers (see an abstract at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24923341).    Justin Feinstein (my colleague) with E.G. Velez and D. Tranel  “Feeling without memory in Alzheimer Disease.” see http://journals.lww.com/cogbehavneurol/Fulltext/2014/09000/Feelings_Without_Memory_in_Alzheimer_Disease.1.aspx)

I will try to sum up the implications of their research without all the scientific lingo.  Let’s start out with the urgency of early love.  Eric Nestler, (Mt. Sinai Hospital, N.Y.)  writing on epigenetics states the following:
“There are epigenetics effects that last a lifetime.  Rat pups that are rarely licked are more susceptible to later stress.” (see the full article at: http://211.144.68.84:9998/91keshi/Public/File/34/490-7419/pdf/490171a.pdf) And of course rat pups licked and love do much better later in life.  They are more adventurous and curious.  What is important is that we can begin to zoom in on why, and the answer seems to be that damage means heavier methylation.  And what is that great damage?  Early lack of love.  It takes many forms in humans, but poor nutrition, a mother drinking, smoking and taking drugs and later abuse found in neglect and lack of touch (licking).

Methylation seems to be an important marker for lack of early love, both in animals and in humans.  What new research is finding is that so many diseases are methylation dependent, including MS, Diabetes and heart disease.  Again, these are stress related, and the great stressor seems to be a simple lack of love.  And lack of love means ignoring and denying the baby’s basic primal needs.  Not surprising in the rat study was the fact that heavy methylation occurred in the limbic/feeling structures such as the hippocampus which has to do with memory.  It doesn’t take an Einstein to see the possible later relationship with Alzheimer’s disease.    Above all, we need doctors to stop asking “Have you been in any unusual stress recently?”  They need to ask the right questions if they want the right answers.  And that includes research scientists who must delve into the marks of damage to key cells that will provide answers.  Since we cannot ask the fetus about his stress we need to do the next best thing and sniff out biologic damage.

Remember when there is very early stress (womb-life) the genes can be up or down regulated, and here starts the origins of depression and anxiety. It becomes the crucible for later disease.  When we add abuse in infancy in childhood, given away to foster parents, a  mother too sick to care for the child, etc., we can almost be sure that neurotic behavior and disease will follow.  That almost surely will involve ADD, lack of concentration and learning disorders.  The DNA has been chemically modified and it reroutes normal reactions for behavior and disease.  These changes are not neurotic; they are often normal to the noxious intrusion of things like a mother’s smoking or drinking.  The fetus is trying to adapt as best she can.  Neurosis is an adaptive reaction to threat.  It is in that sense, normal.  Behaviorists are trying to change a normal adaptation into something else that is not organic nor adaptive.  They are basically moralists, trying to get patients to adopt healthy behaviors when they are already in normal behaviors depending on their early experience.  Or they concoct exercises for relaxation when the only proper relaxation is to deal directly with the imprint.  Otherwise, they are still behaviorists trying to find ways to change our response to early damage without acknowledging that damage.  My patients do not need special relaxation ploys because when we take the pain out, they are very relaxed and that state endures.

Now the important part:  they are finding where all this begins, and like my mother used to say, “Columbus discovered America”, early damage, the primordial primal imprint involves the brainstem.  Phylogenetically this is an ancient brain system that we share with sharks.  It makes us hyperaware and hyper-reactive. It is the source of basic biological impulses, fight or flight.  And research points to this key structure as where anxiety emanates from.  Something I have seen and written about for many decades.  Somehow,  “objective” research has credibility.  What imprints here do is adversely affect the serotonin system which should help dampen panic but it cannot.  So what do we do years later for panic? We offer serotonin pills in the form of SSRI’s.  And what does that do? Make up for what was affected during brainstem dominance.

What the Perna group did was do a complete literature search of many databases for panic disorders.  Yes the brainstem was involved. The brainstem, which registers very early trauma and sets the tone for how we respond to it later in life.  So  mother’s drug taking and later birth anesthesia sets up a panic reaction to lack of oxygen.  Later in life, closed doors or windows become a threat and can set up a panic attack.  Their summary was as follows: “Panic patients tend to have abnormal brainstem activation to emotional stimuli when compared with healthy controls.”

Here is my question for them but it cannot be answered by research alone?  Where does that come from?  What causes that brainstem reaction?  Or does the brainstem just go off and do its own special thing?  What is the exact relationship between certain experiences and brainstem activation? Those are the answers that will lead to proper therapies.  Above all, why is the brainstem so involved?  Maybe the damage is registered there because it dominates during the first weeks or days of life in the womb.  And the brainstem becomes methylated early on.  And as I say, it is the earliest imprints that are the most damaging; there is where therapy needs to begin.