A Lesson in Trauma

After repeating again and again the same arguments, I never really tire, because if people do not respond the first, second, third or umpteenth time, maybe the logic of the proposition will finally penetrate their dissociatively super-husked over fear-obsessed MASSIVE AMYGDALA which seeks to keep them utterly and completely afraid of connection. But why?

Ok, so you and the shrew, the beaver and the duck have an amygdala. If you make a beaver, a shrew or a duck afraid, their amygdala will inhibit their motor neuron system as well as their forebrain system, which means, the animal will either fight, fly away, or if either option isn't available, freeze. This applies to these little animals, and in studying it, it teaches us that our stupid-little-arrogant-human-minds do not seem to get how we work - at least not prior to the discoveries of contemporary neuroscience.

So I'm describing these three animals because they are less evolved than we are, but like us, their brains operate from bottom-up, which is to say, from fear and threat because survival is the interest of the body. This idea is the backbone of Tinbergen and Lorenz ethology, which has since entered academic and developmental psychology as the framework for human development and functionality.

As someone with a painful developmental history, I have a first-person inside look at what trauma does to the mind, and furthermore, that it NEVER GOES AWAY. I seek to stress this point again and again because I very much believe that there are people who don't believe it; who think they have 'risen above' their traumas and fearfulness even though they have a low tolerance for socializing with others. No. It doesn't work this way. There are two streams of meaning: existential, or vertical (the interest of the mystic) and the dynamical and horizontal (the interest of the social scientist).

The reason social trauma doesn't go away is for the simple reason that human trauma is SOCIAL, and thus, so long as there exist humans with unresolved traumas, you will have a brain-mind that reflexively - beyond your control - represents them. You could, of course, "reach the godhead" and transcend existence; sure: go do that. Bye-bye now. But this, as I very much seek to point out, is only a solution for you - not for anyone else.

Even more importantly: revelation is an impossibility in a fallen society. Impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. It's impossible for the above-stated reason: your brain cannot tell the difference between you and others - and neither can you. You, for instance, can't remember your earliest life experiences and cannot properly take account of the effects they had. You may become loving - but the assumption that the lovingness is license for "spiritual revelation" is a profoundly incoherent claim. Humans always confuse loving and good-feelings as a good-enough basis for imaging that everything they think is true.

Just as the body controls the shrew, beaver and duck to feel afraid and not move forward, so too the brain. The honest person doesn't care to go around claiming to "know the future" if they know the past, and how the past has structured and biased the present. The honest person doesn't trust themselves: doesn't trust the validity or certainty of "extra-sensory perception". But good-golly do western magicians feel certain that they "know the truth". How many swami's and guru's and 'secret ascended masters' have been projected and created by minds that dissociate their real motivations for concocting these ideas? Hasn't much of the world's problems, from ancient times till today, been a function of arrogant minds that think they are invincible?

Fear has the effect of making the organism care very deeply for its life. Fear is dialectically related to the desire to live. Fear, then, can make a human being afraid to give up their "identity", whether the fear be the fear of a person with social-anxiety disorder or the fear of a mystic who doesn't want to give up his individuality. The brain's amygdala underlies both these processes; the amygdala is simply doing what it has always done: protect the organism. Yet, of course, in humans, it causes more long term suffering than necessary.

Finally, in my opinion, fear makes the mind dualistic. The mind begins to think that there are two realms instead of one; a "thinking" mind and a mere illusory outside world. The truth, rather, is taht there is simply one continuum, and that the mind, if it were properly scaffolded by a loving early-life experience, wouldn't have this attitude of "this world" vs. "the higher world", as the mind wouldn't feel or experience a conflict, until, of course, it has the misfortune of meeting people who do feel this way. Because emotions are contagious, and so, self-object relations are "transferrable" through communications, even people with a good early life experience can be coaxed by interactions with others into a way-of-being that begins to introduce asymmetry into the system. It's not possible to know how many people with good early-life experiences succumb to this, but probably not very many, as it is well known taht people with early-life trauma "self select" themselves so that they turn to immediate pleasures to make themelves 'feel better' in the moment.

Psychological resilience, or the capacity to unconsciously regulate self-experience, is a matter of brain development, and neuroscientists and attachment researchers have discovered evidnece that the cingulate, insula and orbital frontal cortex are poorly developed in people with anxiety disorders, depression, autism, and sociopathy. In all these cases, the amygdala "barks" and the cingulate, which surrounds it, doesn't have the energetic means to contain its dysregulating bite.


I don't know about you, but I find scientific evidence into the brain, and the discovery of developmental trauma, to be very inspiring, particulary for those of us with "big minds" which think way too much and can come to think and believe things that are, from a more enlightened perspective, should be disregarded as unhelpful illusions.

The desire to "transcend" often results in megalomania - in people who think they "know everything" - which implies, in essence, taht they no longer care to read or learn or update their consciousness. It is precisely this sort of mind that gives-away their fearfulness, because otherwise, why be uncomfortable with information and knowledge? Why should it scare you?

a reply to: Astrocyte

I don't believe trauma lasts forever as a fresh wound but it can become a scar. New traumas can reopen that old wound too. But theoretically with the right treatment you could heal 100% over time though that may be somewhat unlikely.

I disagree completely with your entire discussion relating to "fear makes the mind dualistic".

The distinctions are well founded on philosophical, linguistic, and other grounds.

I highly suggest you study philosophy because your line of thought reveals you lack training in this discipline.

Start with René Descartes "Meditations on First Philosophy" and then move on to other major thinkers. This issue has been worked out very well already so there's no point reinventing the wheel here...

a reply to: Astrocyte

it sounds like you really want someone to listen to your trauma.

Go ahead.

You have my attention.

What do we want?

Browbeating!

When do we want it?

Now!

a reply to: Astrocyte

...brains operate from bottom-up...

That's a good way to put it. Thanks. There is a lot to consider in your post. I would agree trauma does not go away entirely. Some vestige of it is always there making its presence known somehow.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Finally, in my opinion, fear makes the mind dualistic.

It is the other way round - the mind is divisive - it divides the all into two - and when there is two there will be fear. If there was just one there would be nothing to fear.

The mind says that there is the world and me - two. When really there is just what is happening - one.

a reply to: Astrocyte

You still haven't given an explanation of what you classify as early trauma.

You take it as a given that most of your problems stem from that. If your underlying assumption and framework is questionable or undefined how can any discussion take place? Your lack of responses to others that respond to your post's hinders free flow of discussion.

Why is that?

a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Yes it's frustrating and a bit irritating.

The OP regularly creates discussions then abandons them the moment he hits send on the first posts.

I often respond but don't think I've ever been responded to yet.

Very bizarre behavior actually. Let's psychoanalyze it more. Any ideas why they fire n forget consistently over time like this?