About halfway through the book.
I'm reading it alongside "
Thinking, Fast & Slow" & Porges' "Polyvagal Theory" arrived today :D
With the tritation, pendulation & containment that Levine speaks about, how would these occur in a practical sense? Different for different people?
Sometimes after/before/during EE, I would experience shakes & trembles. In fact, in allowing my body to do as it wishes, I find my body running & performing repetitive defensive postures, sometimes feeling as though someone is literally shaking me - buried rage, pleasant/unpleasant feelings.
My mental state seems to be doing overtime. Being in familiar circumstances but perceiving differently, old ways of thinking are seen very differently. It's like taking a trip down trauma-ville - it was rare for me to open up to anyone, if I even registered what I felt, & tried to keep this bravado of 'strength' or 'impenetrability' [rather, project my deficiencies onto others]. Especially when attempting to open up to be met with rejection - intended or otherwise.
In a general sense, fear of feeling hurt/unpleasant emotions. More applicable to the social sphere - several group 'rejection' scenarios [the entire year group/school not wanting to associate with you, or feeling uneasy because it was against the status quo] - it correlates with the rough time I had adjusting after moving from country to country, school to school & never finding a place I 'belong' [dual-natured: not being comfortable in the sphere or vice versa, the sphere not being comfortable with me].
The 'running' to me signals having been under threat, in fight-flight-freeze mode, many times but remaining there, in freeze mode which naturally lead to immobilisation & dissociation. Oh & being increasingly defensive, self-critical, anxious/paranoid, stoic & uptight... not rigid outwardly, though much so in thoughts, emotions & feelings. Had to feel a certain way, think a certain way, act a certain way, be a certain way. An optician once told me I had very good control/command of muscles [eye muscles in this case].
I wonder if that has anything to do with not being able to sense threat signals, but the energy being milked up by highly charged emotions & coupled with images & thoughts? As in sensation is so tightly linked with emotion & thought that it happens instantly & is hard to separate?
It could just be years of malpractice...
Mariama said:
obyvatel said:
[quote author=In An Unspoken Voice]
1. Establish an environment of relative safety - through a calm, compassionate and soothing presence.
2. Support initial exploration and acceptance of sensation - this requires the therapist to be aware of non-verbal signals given by the patient to indicate proper timing when exploration of sensations can proceed without overwhelming the patient.
3. Establish pendulation and containment - involves engaging the body's innate restorative rhythm of expansion and contraction when dealing with difficult sensations and feelings.
4. Use titration to create increasing stability, resilience and organization - by carefully touching into the smallest "drop" of survival based arousal, and other difficult sensations to prevent retraumatization
5. Provide a corrective experience by supplanting the passive responses of collapse and helplessness with active empowered defensive responses.
6. Separate or uncouple the conditioned association of fear and helplessness from the normally time limited but now maladaptive biological immobility response
7. Resolve hyper-arousal states by gently guiding the discharge and redistribution of the vast survival energy mobilized for life preserving action while freeing that energy to support higher level brain functioning - the discharge of the energies is generally achieved through involuntary shaking and trembling.
8. Engage self regulation to restore dynamic equilibrium and relaxed alertness
9. Orient to here and now, contact the environment and reestablish the capacity for social engagement - thus engaging the phylogenetically recent myelinated vagal component of the autonomic nervous system.
I felt happy and at the same time got a small shock, when I read about pendulation and containment.
Years ago, after having gone into therapy and having realized what had really happened during my childhood I would have these
moments where I just could not believe that I would be able to integrate the sexual abuse that I had just discovered. I remember washing the dishes and
thinking to myself how on earth I could live with this new-found knowledge. I couldn't see while I was thinking these thoughts that at the same time I was doing the dishes and taking care of my very young kids. I wasn't huddled up in a ball somewhere. Life went on. To my amazement and without much effort I continued my life with my kids and integrated my new knowledge at the same time. I remember feeling better and better each time we would go to the playground and I could see progress.
So, I think that I may have used this pendulation and containment technique naturally. Our visits to the playground in lovely weather were like these small islands of safety Peter Levine talks about.
Peter Levine said:
With the Zen master's critical intervention, the samurai held back and felt the preparation to strike with his sword. In this highly charged state he paused and was able to restrain and transmute his violent rage into intense energy and a state of clarity, gratefulness, presence and grace. It is the ability to hold back, restrain and contain a powerful emotion that allows a person to creatively channel that energy.
The uncoupling of sensation from image and thought is what diffuses the highly charged emotions and allows them to transform fluidly into sensation-based gradations of feelings. This is not at all the same as suppressing or repressing them.
It is remarkable, but if I contain my outrage I come up with the same image like the samurai.
In my mind's eye I see myself lift an axe above my head and slice my ex-partner in half. When I just accept this image and stay with it nothing bad happens. In fact, my anger subsides afterwards. The wish to slice my ex does come back again and again, but my outrage is slowly fading. And because of the containment I am able to entertain creative ideas in my mind, such as focussing on a course where I could learn more about trauma, as it is such an interesting field. And capable trauma workers like PL are sorely needed, especially during the times ahead.
When I had just started therapy and when I was on my own (my kids were in bed) I felt this terror welling up inside me. I was very much afraid, but just held on. And this image appeared in my head where I saw myself standing behind my father who was sitting in a chair (I was actually standing behind the rocking chair we had at the time) and saw myself acting the way the samurai did. In my memory there is just the wish to cut him in half, but it stops right there. Until now I never knew what to make of it, but knew I shouldn't repress it. Now I understand that it was a sign of healthy outrage directed at my father who hurt me so deeply.
We do not get to hear a lot about the outrage that people feel towards their parents. In many cases, people are still held back by fear or guilt and keep their outrage hidden. To be outraged at your parents is still a taboo, OSIT. Or they do not even know that they are angry at their parents, but project their outrage instead onto others?
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I'm currently going through something similar - how to integrate & live/function on a daily basis. In some ways, it was easier when I had studies to occupy my mind... an idle mind being the devil's playground. The change has been substantial enough for others to recognize. I don't know what to do with myself when I'm physically around others sometimes.
When Levine wrote about the 'initiation by fire', it reminded me of an image I had of literary being surrounded by fire. It wasn't unpleasant, close to the ground, & I was processing these trauma-related emotions & states. I have a hard time functioning when things are uncertain because I feel anything I do will effect the outcome - sometimes geared towards a 'desired' outcome, but mostly it's just trying to prevent bad things from happening. Images of violence or of me holding a knife or sword, especially when coupled with this rage, generally send me into a tailspin then shame & fear run the game [until I'm sick of being paralysed of course].
Trauma, rage & inverted anger are rampant in our times. On the outside or in public, people generally appear one way quite diverse to the private, inner, subconscious modus operandi. Prolonged observation of body language & actions says much.
My least favourite thing about fear is how alienating it has proven itself to be.
