When I was young I felt my feelings and displayed them with ease. I often found myself in trouble for crying as a child and, in my marriage I was discouraged from laughing too loudly or having 'too much' fun. Regardless of the life lessons in all this, I learned to stop feeling - a form of 'dissociation'. I'm a fast learner and I learned to stop feeling so thoroughly that I almost ceased to exist. I experienced related symptoms of dissociation like self harm, suicidal behaviour, addictions and depression. Depression is described in the dictionary as something that is hollowed out, pushed down, lower than things around it. I became all of those descriptions by denying my feelings completely. What is really amazing to me now is knowing how simple it is to program our own brains that way without even knowing we are doing it. It's also just as simple to re-program our brain to be healthy.
Neuroscience knows that most people have a fight/flight mechanism that helps us to preserve our life. Whenever our brain perceives a danger of any kind, our major muscles and organs are prepared to fight or run and the rest of our body's systems get shut down to ensure action is the only thing possible. We will survive whatever the cost. It has been proven that in fight/flight, rational thought; feeling emotions; digesting food and sometimes even speech is not physically possible until the danger has passed. Even more incredible is the fact that if there is no way possible for us to fight/flight, the brain goes to 'freeze' instead. When the brain perceives annihilation is imminent, we are flooded with naturally occurring opiates that alter our reality and reduce pain, increasing numbness and euphoria as a final gift to us before death. The ego cannot however, tell the difference between a physical, spiritual, psychological, financial, metaphorical, emotional, natural or forced annihilation (death). Any change, however small can be perceived by the ego as an attack and a big change on any level can be perceived as dying or annihilation. The ego in fact, even perceives sleep as death because when we sleep deeply, our ego does not usually have any control and this lack of control is the ego's biggest fear. Each time the ego perceives this annihilation, it registers in the limbus part of the brain as traumatic - too much for the ego to associate in the moment. These 'traumas' get stored away until life reminds our brain again and we get another opportunity to reconnect and integrate the experience. I have found now that life keeps reminding me until I assimilate these experiences and recognise the learnings and blessings they have afforded me at a soul level.
The brains of people who experience repeated abuse or trauma in their childhood can become so unconsciously used to fight/flight/freeze that they stop feeling any emotion at all over time. Adult life is then lived in an alternating state of abject numbness interchanging with explosive/implosive and often irrational behaviours. Self harm, depression, addiction, criminal/abusive behaviours, ill health and mental illness are just some of the ways that the brain tries to reset and reactivate the body's own natural healing state again.
Fight/flight/freeze is not only activated when we perceive an external danger, internal dangers set it off too: overeating, illness, excessive exercise, stress, anaesthesia, sex, childbirth, being too cold or hot. These and much more can throw our body into fight/flight and even freeze. If we are in fight/flight for more than a matter of minutes; if our system goes too high, our brain then perceives an internal threat and applies a brake which is where we 'freeze' at. This brake is normally supposed to engage after danger passes so we can rest and digest; so any damage can be repaired, so we can sleep (repair), eat (refuel), make love (reproduce), and restore homeostasis (reset) our bodies naturally. If this rest and digest state is rarely or inconsistently engaged, our body begins to break down, play up and become ill on every level eventually creating dis-ease until the balance is restored.
The great thing is that once we know about how all this works we can support ourselves in healing whatever is necessary to restore balance within. We can learn all we can about our bodies and recognise the benefits of both states of being. We need fight/flight to help us act when we need to and we need rest and digest to help us be still. It's learning to balance them that is key to good health and wellbeing. Balancing these systems goes a long way to integrating our brains and being able to access our full potential. Meditation, mindfulness, breathing, movement, yoga, walking, healthy nutrition, learning to feel emotions in the body, relaxation, music and sleep are just some of the ways we can really support our brains in restoring and maintaining this glorious balance.
Some great information can be found from people like Linda Graham, Peter A Levine, Louis Cozolino, Alan Schore, Joseph LeDoux, Daniel Siegel, J Douglas Bremner and many others.
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