In reading "Understanding and Healing Emotional Trauma" by Daniel Sief, I was led to an interesting thought, provoked by the clinician J Bruce Lloyd. Lloyd says we need to "go into our pain", which, of course, is a common theme in psychodynamic theories of psychological healing. But Daniela Sief then mentions the viewpoint of the anthropologist Ralph Neese, who points out that evolution 'created' pain to signal to the central consciousness that something is wrong with the organism i.e. as a means to provoke the organism to do something to get away from the pain.
INDEED! A paradox at the heart of our condition indeed. What is psychopathology other than the failed effort to get away from ones psychological pain? Instrumental avoidance, earlier a motor strategy enacted by an organism to get away from a noxious influence, has somehow got 'inside us', with the external environment, earlier monitored by the amygdala, becoming mirrored by an internal environment of known properties.
Because we've evolved this thing called consciousness, the world, is no longer simply external. Now, the contents that arise within our perception and which we consciously reflect upon become an aspect of our "environment". The amygdala monitors and responds to percepts as if they were things "out there", in the external environment. Thoughts and feelings (what I've called "percepts") are now things to be avoided in an instrumental way. Echoing Bromberg, the functioning of the mind parallels the immune system of the body: whereas bodily integrity is the primary concern of the immune system, psychological health, or, in short, affect stability, or sanity, is the prerogative of the unconscious self-system of the mind-brain.
Neese, and perhaps Lloyd as well, see a contradiction here. But I see the evidence of a profound evolutionary process, hidden within ourselves. Lloyd says that we "go against our biology" when we go into our pain. However, I do not think this is the right way to understand the facts.
Since the human mind is itself a relic of our having evolved around one another, and thus evolving faces and nerve connections (such as the ventral nerve complex) that mediate a conscious connection of the body, it should be understood (but is hardly ever mentioned!) that the human "subject-object" polarity within our consciousness is a stand-in for our experience of relatedness to other humans. Thus, when a person 'goes into their experience', they aren't contradicting any biological rules or laws, but in fact are leveraging the very same processes that gave rise to our unique form of consciousness!
When I create distance between my subjective awareness and my immediate experience, I am embodying within myself the dichotomy of "self" and "other". I turn my experience into an "object" of thought. I, then, embody a perspective to my experience that is 'detached', insomuch as it utilizes compassion, and the power that this feeling and experience can unleash, to 'calm' the dysregulated affective state in question.
To recognize and appreciate this process first requires that one recognize that the self is not any sense singular or essential. What is singular is awareness. What is experienced is multiple, dimensional, and perspectival. We thus have within ourselves "selves" that become activated within different contexts. Contexts can be external or internal. Conditions such as how much sleep we got, the food we eat, caffeine intake (a problem for me!) are factors that affect our biology. External environments associated with a particular trauma (large social environments, for me) stimulate and prompt certain memory-affective processes in the brain.
An additional way to think of this, to add a greater layer of complexity, is in terms of homeostasis. When we do not take care of our bodies (sleep, eating healthy, going to the washroom when the body tells you!) we compromise our capacity to respond in sensitive environments. This is because, as the work of Antonio Damasio has made very clear, the body has a 'hierarchy' of priorities. The body, insomuch as it is as "other" to our perceiving consciousness, demands respect and care from us. When we do not get the rest or nourishment we need, the higher levels of the brain (dorsolateral complexes) receive less blood flow. Subjectively, we experience this as a reduced capacity to regulate our affective states - as well as a "drowsiness", or dissociation, from the world around us.
Since evolution has progressed, the higher levels accreted upon lower levels do not themselves arrogate any primacy in our functioning.The brainstem determines where blood-flow goes when energy resources our low. And the body, as a rule, is given number one priority. What else does the work of Stephen Porges - and the sheer existence of PTSD - suggest, other than that when affect rises too high, the lower brain 'shuts' down the higher brain. It even releases endogenous opiods to keep the worry-mongering mind 'stunned', so that the business of keeping the body alive can be carried forward.
Finally, that we can even exist within ourselves this way - be the compassionate eye, or gaze, towards our own experience, is truly a metaphysical wonder! (at least to me!). We embody within ourselves the context of our environment of evolutionary adaptedness. The cynics who decry "humans are selfish", fail to appreciate the relational neediness at the core of our selfishness! Were selfish for recognition, for being needed. We need to be recognized, because it was through such recognition, that these amazing brains, these knowing and self-knowing vehicles of consciousness, even emerged!
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