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I have an honest yet disheartened post in me today. I might as well write it so I can move on. I am spending time working to digest the information presented in visual form on a PowerPoint page I posted the link to recently that comes from the work of Dr. Bruce Perry.
Neurodevelopmental Impact of Childhood Trauma: Adaptive Responses to Childhood Trauma – Focus on Dissociation
A ChildTrauma Academy Presentation
I haven’t yet gone to look for any text that might accompany the diagrams, graphs and images that this site presents. Nor can I tolerate considering the facts on this webpage for very long at a time. Because this information concerns me so personally as a severe infant-child abuse survivor who suffered Trauma Altered Development, it all just plain hurts too much.
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This webpage is visually clarifying the difference between an infant-child who responds to trauma with HYPERAROUSAL compared to one who responds to trauma with DISSOCIATION (as a HYPO- rather than a HYPERarousal state).
As I have been outside working on building my garden today I have found myself thinking that having patterns of HYPERAROUSAL built into one’s body from birth might be far more useful in the long run that DISSOCIATION can ever be.
It seems that hyperarousal would give one a fighting chance.
Then I think about my mother and HER fighting chance! Oh my GAWD the harm she was able to do, particularly to little tiny ME! (Considering the link between shame-dissociation as an opposite physiological response to trauma than hyperarousal is, maybe I don’t have to wander very far at all in my wondering about why-how my mother never had a shame reaction for what she did to me — as her FIGHT over-arousal escalated for my entire 18-year infant-childhood into violence against me.)
Dissociation, even as it is contrasted to hyperarousal on this webpage seems to be directly connected not only to the vagus nerve system, but in the bigger picture to the calm end of the stress response system — the “STOP” arm of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) that halts the overwhelming experience of TOO MUCH “GO!” When I am dissociating my body is regulating the physiology of my body back to CALM in the way that was built into it from birth.
(“Rest in peace.” Death must be the ultimate calm! I find it interesting that in online Google searching there does not appear to be the same direct line of thoughts appearing that connect DISSOCIATION with suicide like there are connecting DEPRESSION to suicide. Someone is missing a very BIG BOAT!)
(By the way: The neurological-physiological dissociation response pattern that the above webpage describes appears to be nearly indistinguishable from the neurological-physiological reaction of SHAME that developmental neuroscientist Dr. Allan Shore describes as a one-year-old infant experiences it as soon as their body has developed far enough to have the physical capacity to feel its first shame reaction. See also: The Shame Transaction and PTSD AS A SHAME DISORDER)
Also see:
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Because I have an appointment with and oncologist on the 6th of January I find myself thinking a lot about what I want and what I need. I have suffered increasing stress complications most definitely escalating my preexisting PTSD, depression and dissociation I suffer as a consequence of being a survivor of sever infant-child abuse after having the doctor who treated my advanced and aggressive breast cancer (there were two cancers) tell me on my last session 2 ½ years ago, “By the way, I wouldn’t bother having breast reconstruction if I were you. You aren’t going to live long enough to enjoy them anyway. Besides, we’d just have to cut them off again when the cancer comes back.”
I am going to request a body scan that will show whether or not I have cancer NOW or NOT.
Then I think about the fact that I have no desire or intention of fighting the cancer if I do get it back. (Knowing I felt this way when the first diagnosis came around created a profound conflict of emotions within me during the grueling chemo-surgery treatment regime I went through so that I can be alive today.)
Then I think about how the dissociation reaction described visually in the webpage I am referring to MUST be tied to both ‘passive’ and ‘active’ suicide. Dissociation as a ‘going away’? Death as the ultimate ‘going away’?
Then I think about my mother’s mother who gave up and died. I think about my father who gave up and died. I think about my mother who gave up and died.
The deaths of both of my parents was directly tied to a lack of desire to seek and receive appropriate medical care for conditions that were treatable.
That’s exactly the same thing I see myself doing if cancer returns in my body.
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Hyperarousal? It looks for this webpage as if this is a reaction that older children and adults utilize, not helpless tiny infant-toddlers who are overwhelmed by abuse and trauma from the time of their birth. I don’t HAVE a useful hyperarousal reaction. I believe I experience all the ‘symptoms’ of it listed on page 2 on this webpage (keep track of page numbers in the gray bar at the top of the pages). But all that hyperarousal response does to me is open my dissociation floodgate – and I am DISSOCIATED again.
And what if the link between hypoarousal-dissociation means that sometimes people simply cannot find the hyperarousal energy continuum necessary for them to continue using their will-life force to FIGHT for their own continued life? This seems especially likely if dissociation was formed into a person’s body due to extreme abuse and trauma during infant-toddlerhood so that a person has been forced to dissociate all of their lives due to overwhelming pain.
See: +SUBSTANCE P – IT’S OUR BODY’S BIOLOGICAL LINK TO FEELING EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL PAIN
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I found this post online today. I believe it’s critical to realize that people like me (and my parents) who suffered ENOUGH ALREADY do not want a LONG LIFE. Some do not want their suffering to continue and continue and continue. I believe I am one of those people.
What I do know is that refusing medical care must be related to dissociation in some way — dissociation from pain? Dissociation from a future? I will be spending much more time on the site I mention above — it has certainly gotten me thinking about connections with me that go all the way back to how my body-brain was made in/by nearly continual trauma and abuse from my mother from the time I was born.
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Suicide and Mental Health: They’re Cooking the Books
— Thought provoking post on a healthyplaces.com blog
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Stop the Storm 