Trauma Training Tip
There’s a pandemic of gun violence in America. Mass shootings, where 3 or more people are killed, rose 30% in 2021. In May alone, we wept for the 10 people killed and 3 injured in a racist attack at the Topps Grocery store in Buffalo, NY and then again for the 19 beautiful children and two teachers murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
There is a call for stronger legislation around the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians. Clearly, this is a critical element of a comprehensive response.
But it is not enough. All the legislation in the world will not stop impulsive and violent actions by people whose nervous systems have been distorted by trauma. They need competent healers who recognize their suffering and can support its transformation. If we can name the embodied experience of our anger and invite the biochemistry of pause to come forward – our anger will not turn into violence. We may find fear in that pause — and in staying with it, discover that we are more uncomfortable than we are afraid of actual threat. We’ve been socialized to behave more like reptiles than like mammals who rely on relationship and social engagement for survival. Our nation is a trauma survivor. Our nation needs its healers. Vibrational illness calls for vibrational medicine.
It’s all about the Ventral Vagus nerve and the function of oxytocin – or what the world of Chinese medicine would call the Fire Element – and all matters of relationship, connection, joy, passion, and compassion. Our Fire Element is most available for our healing and attention, right now – in the summer.
We are born with enough function in our Ventral Vagus nerve to support suckling. It needs experiences of love and attention in our infancy and childhood to grow its function. As infants, we can’t soothe ourselves – we need our experiences of calling out for a dry diaper, a warm blanket, food, and touch to be met in a timely way by loving and attentive caregivers to cultivate it. Co-regulating experiences like playing catch, singing in a chorus, line dancing, playing team sports, or playing a musical instrument in a band or orchestra continue to grow its function and capacity.
When our Ventral Vagus is working well, it serves as our primary and most important “brake” on sympathetic “fight or flight” arousal. We have capacity to inhibit anti-social impulses that too often and too quickly turn violent in words or actions. We can experience disagreement and stay in relationship. We can talk to our neighbor or friend about an issue between us and resolve it relationally – without escalation in our sympathetic system leading to violence. We have greater capacity in our Kidney/Heart axis to distinguish being “uncomfortable” from being “unsafe” with someone who we perceive as “other.”
The shooter in Buffalo touted the “great replacement” theory – a conspiracy theory that states that nonwhite individuals are being brought into the United States and other Western countries to “replace” white voters to achieve a political agenda. This theory is rooted in this person and is growing in our culture. It is an expression of white supremacy — and an inadequate support for and cultivation of the Ventral Vagus nerve and our Fire Element.
The social isolation of the pandemic has brought forward the many expressions of the impact of developmental trauma on Ventral Vagal cultivation in our citizens and our culture. We are at a critical juncture and we need help.
We can all play a role in healing this pandemic of violence by “tickling” our personal and communal ventral vagus. It has a vibrational quality – so small actions can have big impacts. Call forward your kindness, cultivate empathic connection with your coworkers, neighbors, and family, play, sing, dance, and most of all – support the creation of stimulating, playful, and relational activities for children.
You will be building a healthier future for them and our nation when you do.
Alaine’s Two Cents
Oxytocin, sometimes called the “love” or “compassion” hormone is the foundation of what makes us human – according to researcher Dr. C. Sue Carter.
The mother-child bond as well as our capacity to live in relationship and look to each other for help and support when we feel threatened is rooted in the biology of oxytocin, in partnership with the Ventral Vagus nerve.
It’s pretty fascinating. You can listen to her speak about it here.
Check This Out!
Sarah Peyton, author of the highly acclaimed book, Your Resonant Self, is offering an in-person workshop: Trauma and Our Broken Fields: Projection and What Others See.
June 3 to 5, 2022, at the Wellspring Conference Center in Germantown, Maryland.
Sarah is a Certified Trainer of Nonviolent Communication and neuroscience educator, who integrates brain science and the use of resonant language to heal personal and collective trauma with exquisite gentleness.
Here’s what she says about this opportunity: “Neuroscience, Nonviolent Communication, empathy and resonance let us enter the world of our relational shadows with more self-compassion and understanding. Each day will alternate between short lectures on neuroscience and constellation concepts with smaller group and dyad work to explore and practice the concepts. We will explore what relational neuroscience teaches us about projection and how to leverage our new knowledge.”
More event details and register here.
Clinical Curiosity
Where is your clinical curiosity carrying you?
Send me a question or two and I will explore them with readers in this corner next month.
Q.
We’ve all heard the challenging and horrible stories of a woman who was abducted by sexual predators and then was kept in bondage for years and years, with children born when she was very young. How did she survive such horror?
A.
Fascinating question. First off she made successful use of the most complex and sophisticated management strategy – appeasement. If her body had chosen fight or flight, she would have been killed. If her body had chosen freeze, she would not have survived as a whole person. She was able to give him the experience of connection and appeasement to save herself. Good job body!
Second, I believe, after hearing Sue Carter speak to the science of oxytocin, that she was saved by her biology.
When mammals give birth, there is a burst of oxytocin. More oxytocin is secreted with the let-down of milk in mammalian mothers. She actually nursed her daughters for 3 or more years. Oxytocin is a powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant and a regulator of the autonomic nervous system.
Without her capacity to create an experience of appeasement, and cultivate secretion of oxytocin through childbirth and nursing, she would not be the whole person that she is today.
Pretty amazing biology we have, yes!