Trauma Training Tip
It’s Spring in the Northern hemisphere. The season of the Wood Element in Chinese medicine – and the Sympathetic Nervous System in the West. Lots of “fight or flight” in our world right now – some on behalf of those perceived as more fragile, some in defense of our own safety and well-being, and some blind rage.
A healthy Wood Element, a healthy Sympathetic Nervous System, is able to mount protective, defensive responses that are commensurate with the level of threat being experienced. Sometimes we need a tack hammer and sometimes we need a sledge hammer. A flexible and wise Wood will make that distinction and benevolently protect life from danger or life threat without causing unnecessary harm. It is flexible even in the presence of strong winds, like this Weeping Willow tree.
Avraham, CC BY-SA 3.0 US, via Wikimedia Commons
The wonderful thing about our Sympathetic Nervous System is that it never turns itself off. It is always available to protect and defend us. Even in the deepest sleep, if we discern danger, we are readily called into high arousal to save our life.
The problem with the Sympathetic Nervous System is that it has no social intelligence. It requires a “brake” in order to use its gifts for the betterment of humanity. On its own, it will mount to indiscriminate rage or violence when threatened.
There are two brakes available to us – the Ventral Vagus Nerve, what Resmaa Menakem calls the “Soul Nerve” or Peter Levine calls the “Social Engagement System” or Chinese Medicine calls the Heart Spirit or Shen. When this brake is available, we see humanity in people who are different from us. We may experience disagreement with someone, but we are able to negotiate diplomatic, non-violent solutions to our conflict. We can even experience high arousal in a soccer or hockey game, but be “good sports” in midst of our aggressive expression. Our physiology doesn’t engage threat chemistry.
The other brake is the Dorsal Vagus Nerve. When our activation goes so high that it puts us at cardiac risk, the Dorsal Vagus protects our heart by helping our heart and viscera slow down. Chinese medicine calls this “Water overwhelming the Fire.” Western medicine calls it the Freeze Response. It is meant to be time limited. It we need to use it too often, it can become habituated, with grave physiological implications for our morbidity and mortality.
When we are put in a situation where our hearts are in such danger from the high arousal we are experiencing that we chronically use this freeze response to protect them, we are also challenged to make good use of our frontal cortex. When our heart slows, blood flow to our frontal cortex also slows. We think and act impulsively – neither strategically nor thoughtfully. It becomes almost impossible to find relational or diplomatic solutions to conflict without access to our Shen or Heart Spirit – and its support to our frontal cortex.
Perhaps you too see this description of the physiology of the self-protective response in both domestic polarization and international relations. Our nation, and our world, is a trauma survivor – trauma history manifests in social, cultural, and political terms as well as physiological and psychological ones.
This understanding of the neural platforms that inform our response to traumatic stress can help guide us to approaches that will engage our world’s Ventral Vagus brake and help bring regulation and awareness of humanity in people who are different from ourselves. It could guide actions that support diplomatic solutions to conflict and peaceful, less polarizing relationships.
Keeping our own hearts open to others is our first task.
I invite you to consider thoughtfully – how do you keep your heart open and engaged while witnessing and learning of loss of life, past and ongoing? How do you expand who you are in relationship with? How do you cultivate your Heart’s spirit as your primary and most important brake on your fight or flight response? Our world needs all of us to have the healthiest, most relational brake on our Sympathetic nervous system. Truly.
Alaine’s Two Cents
This poem by Rabbi Irwin Keller speaks to me. You?
Taking Sides
Today I am taking sides.
I am taking the side of Peace.
Peace, which I will not abandon
even when its voice is drowned out
by hurt and hatred,
bitterness of loss,
cries of right and wrong.
I am taking the side of Peace
whose name has barely been spoken
in this winnerless war.
I will hold Peace in my arms,
and share my body’s breath,
lest Peace be added
to the body count.
I will call for de-escalation
even when I want nothing more
than to get even.
I will do it
in the service of Peace.
I will make a clearing
in the overgrown
thicket of cause and effect
so Peace can breathe
for a minute
and reach for the sky.
I will do what I must
to save the life of Peace.
I will breathe through tears.
I will swallow pride.
I will bite my tongue.
I will offer love
without testing for deservingness.
So don’t ask me to wave a flag today
unless it is the flag of Peace.
Don’t ask me to sing an anthem
unless it is a song of Peace.
Don’t ask me to take sides
unless it is the side of Peace.
https://www.irwinkeller.com/itzikswell/taking-sides
Check This Out!
This is a presentation Linda Thai makes for the Trauma Research Foundation. She explores polyvagal theory and the eyes and the orienting response with exercises and didactic information.
Linda is a mental health clinician, storyteller, and educator who has had her own lived experiences of individual, collective, historical and cultural traumatization…and healing. She uses her background in trauma therapy, somatic therapies, and yoga to guide others through steps that help you to recognize and safely release tension through resourcing the body. She believes in empowering others through education and skills, thereby igniting potential and fueling your innate desire to learn, to grow, to heal.
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: My patient is a 45 year-old man, and is in terrific shape. He is an avid hiker. He often hikes alone and is inspired and invigorated by his forays into nature. A few years ago he fell down the side of a mountain, tumbling over and over before finding safe landing. He broke no bones and never lost consciousness – but still finds his neck stiff and himself frightened in unfamiliar ways when he thinks about what would have been a rejuvenating hike before this experience. How can I help him?
Injurymap, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A: So glad he has you!
When we feel physical danger, as he did when he lost his footing on that mountain trail, we will quickly use our orientation function to assess our surroundings and determine the direction, the power, the actions needed for our own protection.
We use our necks to move our sense organs around to determine a solution to our situation. In his case, he tumbled more quickly than his eyes could keep up with his location. His orienting response was thwarted before he could make effective use of it. This thwarted experience is likely stored in the sub-occipital muscles at the back of his neck.
Bring your thoughtful touch, likely the pads of your fingers, to just below his occipital ridge. Hold his head in your palms. My suspicion is that you will feel some measure of braced muscles or perhaps collapsed muscles under your fingers. Stay with your experience, and invite him to interoceptive awareness of the growing regulation that comes on board as he lets go of the brace or collapse that is stored in these muscles with tingles and shimmers.
As his capacity for visual orienting returns, he will likely find greater flexibility and capacity to move his neck. The sense of life threat that came with this tumble will move on out. He may find his experience of having survived this accident to be quite moving. Our Heart’s job in the self-protective response is to receive the message from the Wood element (“mission accomplished, the kingdom is safe now”) and to share that message with the kingdom of the body with a regulated heartbeat.
Benevolence returns to the liver. Equanimity returns to the Heart.
Beautiful!