Dr. Van Der Kolk has decades of experience dealing with traumatized persons - mostly in the Boston area. His training goes back to the state hospital days, including a stint at Kankakee State Hospital (Illinois), with a disturbing description of anesthetized patients, naked, being hosed down like animals to clean them.
Dr. Van Der Kolk's summary of widespread trauma feels spot-on. More women die from domestic violence than breast cancer, and more kids die from guns than cancer. At the root of gun violence is poverty, lack of resources, and childhood trauma. While PTSD is usually thought to impact soldiers, it's quite common in the general population. Medication is usually how doctors treat trauma. But anxiety and depression can be addressed through other means, including breath work and yoga which treat the brain stem - where trauma is stored. Trauma is also stored in the frontal lobes and amygdala - with various treatments available besides medication. This doesn't mean medication is bad. But in order to heal from trauma, dealing with its roots may be the only means to healing what was hurt long ago.
MY NOTES:
Trauma disrupts the mind, brain, and body.
Traumatized people tend to superimpose their trauma on everything around them and have trouble deciphering what's going on around them. Eg, a man walking down the street is just talking a walk, but to a rape victim, he is a rapist intent on doing harm.
Sophisticated imaging helped identify the origins of PTSD in the brain, so that we now understand why traumatized people become disengaged, why they are bothered by lights and sounds, and why they might withdraw or blow up at the slightest provocation. Basically, it comes down to the amygdala (the brain's alarm system) and the frontal lobes (the watchtower, which assess whether the amygdala's warning is correct, and if there's no danger, then the frontal lobes endeavor to calm down the brain/body).
Understanding the fundamental processes that underlie traumatic stress opens the door to an array of interventions that can bring areas of the brain back online - brain areas related to self-regulation, self-perception, and attention. It's not all about meds. It's about getting to the core of the trauma. Helping the person feel safe so that they can heal. It might be through Top-Down treatment, or Bottom-Up treatment.
With PTSD or other trauma, the balance between the alarm (amygdala) and watchtower (fr lobes) are off, making it hard to control emotions and impulses. There are TWO WAYS to change the threat detection system -- from TOP DOWN, via modulating messages from the MPFC (Medial Prefrontal Cortex) -- or --from BOTTOM UP, via the reptilian brain (brain stem), thru breathing, movement, and touch.
The goal of trauma recovery is to restore ownership of your body. Trauma robs you of the feeling that you're in charge of yourself ("self-leadership"). Restoring ownership of your body (self-ownership) means feeling free to know what you know, and feel what you feel, without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this means: (1) find a way to become calm and focused; (2) stay calm & focused in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past; (3) find a way to be fully in the present & engaged with ppl around you; (4) NOT having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways you've managed to survive (eg, keeping quiet during a rape may bring shame later, or, not standing up for oneself when physically abused may bring anger or self-loathing---instead, we can learn compassion for the person we were in that situation).
Dr. Van Der Kolk goes into many ways of addressing trauma. I did not want to take notes on all - but the following are ones that jumped out at me.
*****ADDRESSING TRAUMA
**EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
The patient watches the dr's finger while "living thru" the trauma. No one knows exactly why this works, but it's shown positive, even amazing results in some ppl.
**Yoga - Bottom up regulation
Combo of breath practice, stretches/postures, and mindfulness.
SNS - Sympathetic Nerve System uses adrenaline to fuel the body to take action.
PNS - Parasympathetic Nerve System also uses chemicals - to regulate digestion, sleep/dream cycles, etc.
HRV - Heart Rate Variability measures how well these two are balanced (SNS & PNS).
When we inhale, we stimulate the SNS - heart rate up.
When we exhale, we stimulate the PNS - slows heart.
Good HRV is a measure of basic well-being.
Yoga helps with this.
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