Childhood A Possibly Helpful Model Structural Dissociation And Childhood Trauma

[Eleanor]

Here is what I've learned in the last few days:

Human beings are not born emotionally integrated - we have different basic emotional systems (neurologically based) and it is an achievement of development to integrate them. As an analogy, when we are born, the images from our two eyes are not integrated. It is hard to say what babies see exactly but it is not a 3-D image like adults. Given a sufficiently rich environment with lots of motor and visual and tactile feedback those two images get neurally connected and integrate into a 3-D image that we have as adults. In some very severely neglected children, they don't. It is hard to know what they see exactly, but it is not a single image with depth. In the same way, it is an accomplishment - and one that takes a great deal of time to integrate the basic emotional activation systems.

Jak Panksepp is an affective neuroscientist who has mapped seven basic mammalian emotional systems across several species - knowing what they are can help organize our understanding of what happens (or fails to happen) when children have experiences, particularly repeated experiences that they cannot integrate. The seven systems divide into two sets: the old "reptilian" brain systems, and the newer "mammalian" brain systems. Panksepp writes the names of the systems in all caps to indicate that they are highly organized response systems.

Reptilian brain systems and their full activation response, and their minimum activation feeling:
1) FEAR - this is the gut churning feeling you get in the face of "I'm going to get eaten (or maimed) now." Adrenaline kicks in. You prepare to fight or flee or freeze - this is an alarm systems that requires action to evade a threat. Uneasiness is the initial activation - the hair on the back of you neck rises... It motivates us to do something to do something to de-activate it.
2) RAGE - this is the seeing red total activation that puts you into battle frenzy. The threat is upon you and you must fight for your life. The low activation state is irritation... annoyance. It motivates us to do something to de-activate it.
3) SEEKING - this is the system that feels like interest, or active pursuit - "Focused on the Hunt" Is the experience of full activation of this system. It is absorbing... It is what finds food, or shelter or whatever we need. Its low level activation is mild awareness of the environment. It's activation feels good - it motivates us to start of keep doing something.
4) LUST - this is the system that feels like, well, lust. The drive is to find a mate and reproduce. Basic rutting. Think alligators here. It motivates us to keep doing something.

Mammalian brain systems are built on top of these, literally, around them in the brain - but are discrete centers that are satisfied in different ways. They are social emotions - they embody and motivate our connection with others:

5) PANIC - this is the uncomfortable activation of anxiety - scanning the environment, uneasiness. It is the emotional response to being distant from caregivers necessary to your survival - think a kitten crying for it's momma. At the extreme activation it is PANIC. It is what signals the parent that the baby is out of their comfort zone. It is the first emotion of attachment and bonding.

6) PLAY - This is the feeling of fun and mutual connection - playing with siblings or relatives to learn adaptive behaviors for later life, or cooperative habits. It is the emotional response to interacting in non-threatening ways with others. It is what creates bonds among members of species who are not parent/offspring dyads. (I understand this one the least, so if this seems a bit vague, that's just me being vague.) It provides fertile ground for integrating the responses of other systems.

7) CARE - this is the momma emotion. This is the system that makes it hard to NOT do something when babies are crying. It motivates us to integrate and protect the well being of others. It is the foundation of mirroring and attachment of mommas (and others) to babies.

Conscious awareness is specific to each system. When we integrate the systems by making connections between them (think, walking and chewing gum..) the consciousnesses of them integrate. Memories get indexed by emotional system activated. Which is why we have state dependent memories - It is hard to remember things we learned when we were mainly bored or just curious when we are angry or anxious , hence the failure of "anger management" and the commonness of test anxiety.

When these systems don't integrate structural dissociation happens. The SEEKING system tends to organize what it can into an "Apparently Normal Personality" or ANP - the systems that don'g get integrated (commonly PANIC and or FEAR and/or RAGE) end up with their own consciousnesses or Emotional Personalities or EP's. At the extreme end of failure of integration, the consciousnesses of the EP's and ANP won't communicate and they will each "lose time" when they are off line.

End of Chapter 1:
More later...

 

[Lucycat]

https://www.myptsd.com/threads/structural-dissociation.44021/

Hi Eleanor,
His is a link to a thread I started about this some time ago. Clearly you have gone into it in a lot more depth. It is a fascinating topic!

 

[Eleanor]

And I have all unknowing continued the topic of that very thread!

Chapter 2: Emotional Needs are not what you think.

People have needs. Most of us are pretty clear about what the basic physiological needs to regulate metabolic homeostasis are. The solution to hunger is food. The solution to thirst is drink. The solution to exhaustion is sleep. etc. Those feelings are needs. They are signals to take action to put the organism back into a balance for optimal sustainable functioning.

We talk about emotional needs. This is kind of confusing, because while emotions signal "needs" like hunger and thirst do, they don't have straightforward satiation conditions. Because their function is to guide our interactions with the environment necessary for the bare physiological survival of the species (in the case of the four reptilian brain systems) and our interactions and ability to cooperate with others of our species (in the case of the three mammalian brain systems.) We are motivated to turn off the FEAR, RAGE and PANIC systems. We are motivated to turn ON the SEEKING, LUST, PLAY and CARE systems. And both can be overdone. You don't want any one system on ALL the time. They need to be conditioned/calibrated to respond to the environment in ways that actually further the cause of survival of the individual and the species. Thus they are all systems that Learn. They are trained, or habituated as a young creature grows up. In social animals like us there is a great deal of plasticity in how they can be trained to turn off and on, and how they can be integrated to respond to complex situations. As a general rule, the longer it takes an animal to mature, the more flexibility there is in how the systems can be trained.

Jak Panksepp discovered power of the SEEKING system by accident and with tragic results. He placed an electrode in the "SEEKING" center of the brain of a rat. He then dropped the rat on a lever that activated that system. And the rat didn't stop like rats do when they work for food rewards. So he put a little catheter into the rat's stomach that delivered a drop of sugar water every time the rat pressed the button as well. He figured that the rat would then stop pushing the lever when it was "full." And he went to lunch. And he came back and the rat was dead, having OD'd on sugar water. And he didn't leave any rats alone after that. (Part of the reason I like Panksepp.) So whatever inhibitory mechanism there is, wasn't getting activated THAT way.

http://discovermagazine.com/2012/may/11-jaak-panksepp-rat-tickler-found-humans-7-primal-emotions


At a fundamental level the emotional "need" (and it is kind of an unfortunate way of talking about it as you will see) is just this: The negative valence systems need to get turned off (or at least down.) RAGE, FEAR, and PANIC are to get turned off once the problem is solved. LUST, SEEKING, PLAY, and CARE feel good and should motivate more of the same toward appropriate objects. FEAR and PANIC are alarm systems. You don't need to justify or affirm them, you need to figure out if there IS a problem to be addressed (Is the kitchen on fire? Or is the toaster oven just smoking crumbs?) Good alarms give false positives (they go off when they don't need to) you don't want an alarm that gives a false negative (that doesn't go off when the kitchen IS on fire.) So how do these come to be turned off? In babies when the need is met - and the danger is past - back in the nest, connected with the caretaker and no longer threatened from without. When they are turned off we feel: Safe, peaceful, protected and attached. These systems are quite rigid when we are babies and over time we learn to associate certain things/circumstances with safety and nurture (comfort foods, stuffed animals etc.) and we can self sooth by deploying physiological, psychological and behavioral strategies to quiet the alarm systems. Mostly we learn to activate the positive systems

The positive systems LUST, SEEKING, PLAY and CARE "need" to get turned on and activated in a sustainable way.

What happens in structural dissociation is that the systems don't get integrated. Some (the EP's ) stay on their own, and cope well only with one kind of situation. Commonly the FEAR system gets overwhelmed and stays unintegrated. Fear experiences don't get processed and become memories, they stay active states. FEAR gets activated. Eventually the organism switches to another system. When FEAR gets activated again (by a new danger, or suitable reminders of the still active FEAR experience aka a "trigger') the person experiences STILL BEING IN THAT SITUATION to a greater or lesser degree. That consciousness (and it may be but doesn't have to be entirely distinct from the other systems consciousnesses) can't self regulate and/or remember what to do, access skills and knowledge that were acquired in the other states. It doesn't have the connections to do it. It just keeps sounding the alarm. In the limiting case, the ANP doesn't remember what happened when the EP was activated. And the EP doesn't remember what happened when the ANP was activated.

ANP's generally get organized around the SEEKING system. Since the CARE system is generally not active in a lot of childhood trauma (it comes into its own later in development) SEEKING and CARE are two of the major modes of the ANP. So they do pretty well as parents and friends. The problems arise when there is some perceived threat to the relationship and the PANIC system gets activated and the expression of this system in adult social animals is often guilt and shame - highly conditioned emotions with a lot of cognitive content. The good news is that to the extent that we can shift our focus to connecting with, appreciating, and protecting others, we can reactivate CARE. To the extent we can get focus on looking for solutions, or understanding what is going on we can re-activate SEEKING. This is why LUST can be addictive - it is a potent way to turn OFF the negative systems. PLAY is also extremely useful, to the extent that we can focus on behavior that requires coordination with others we can activate the PLAY system which has the happy consequence of also making us feel more connected and attached (It is kind of the natural antidote to PANIC.)

As an example of habituation regulation of responses one might take peek-a-boo. It is a game (PLAY) it is appealing and fun when separation anxiety (PANIC) is very much primitive and getting activated regularly. It is a game best begun NOT with one's mother, but someone else. The person's face disappears behind a visual barrier - confusing! how do people disappear - and before FEAR can kick in SURPRISE the face appears smiling, eliciting a delighted giggle. We are doing several things at once here - teaching object permanence (a higher order cognitive habit) AND regulating FEAR and PANIC responses. Once it is mommy behind the barrier - a teeny bit of PANIC starts when she disappears, and then she is smiling connecting and back and PANIC is relieved, and PLAY and connection are re-established. In securely attached children the experiences with and feedback from their mothers teaches them to self regulate the alarm systems relative to situations (what should elicit the response) and actions (what actions should be taken)

Even as adults we can habituate connections and responses to "stuck" systems. This can often be done by simply practicing eliciting the low level of activation of a system (imagining something that makes us angry - e.g, triggers RAGE - just enough to make us a bit annoyed and then quickly and consciously activating a different system, say SEEKING by asking questions and creating curiosity, and then mentally following it up with a proposed solution/resolution that supports our personal integrity (understood to include connections with appropriate others.) It takes a bunch of practice to inculcate a habit - something like 10-12 repetitions a day for a number of weeks, like, minimum 15. Just about the same as a physical habit.

The key to integrating the systems is to give them experiences that elicit/activate other responses and results while in that state. This is why play therapy, exposure, psycho-drama all work. Or maybe I should say how they all work.

 

[Ice_Fire]

I need to re-read this sometime. Very interesting.

 

[Eleanor]

People and their complicated emotions:

These basic emotional systems operate most "purely" in their animal form. People start learning and laying down memories from the get go - so we don't see pure PLAY much in people. To think what that looks like think... puppies. So the basic forms of these activation systems is what you'd see in other animals. Think alligators for the basic reptilian functions (SEEKING = hunting, FEAR = vigilance, retreat, RAGE = attack, LUST = mating.) Think puppies for those and the rest (PANIC = crying, CARE = licking, nursing, PLAY = playing.)

People start modifying the conditions that stimulate these and the behavior they elicit from the get go. So we have secondary and even tertiary expressions of all of these.... as we incorporate more knowledge of the world and a wider range of "interests" into our motivational system via memory and habituation.

 

[Pencil]

Even as adults we can habituate connections and responses to "stuck" systems.

What if the EP is stuck in panic due to abandonment? Each time the EP is activated the panic increases. It has to do with the attachment cry and attachment fear, which are evenly matched.

 

[Eleanor]

Exactly, it gets into a vicious cycle. And to the extent that one gets older and then expresses that.. it may well tend to drive people away - recreating and retraumatizing the EP. The way out is to gently, carefully, start to make contact with the EP, ideally another actual person could be there to mirror and physically model self regulation and provide soothing attachment. The EP needs new and positive experience. The EP needs to build connections with the other systems. In short the EP NEEDS new memories. When contact during such states has been associated with FEAR and RAGE making physical contact aversive it is better not to touch until a lot of the activation has been reduced.

EP's apparently typically have phobias (instinctive aversions) to each other (if there is more than one), and often the ANP is phobic/avoidance of the EP's. Not a happy family...

 

[Pencil]

Yes, but I think an abandoned EP should not be approached by the ANP. I think my phobia of the EP is quite pronounced and will lead to more abandonment. My point is really that another person is necessary.

 

[Eleanor]

I've had enough experience with non-obvious solutions to problems showing up... that I never say never on principle, but that doesn't mean I HAVE one, just that I stay open to the possibility. BUT that doesn't mean that when there IS an obvious solution one shouldn't avail oneself of it. And YES one has to be really really careful about not retraumatizing the EP's. Especially if the ANP has demonstrated... blind spots.

 

[Pencil]

Blind spots?

 

[Lucycat]

I don't wish to put words in @Eleanor's mouth, but I would interpret blind spots as areas of denial.

 

[Eleanor]

YES, @Lucycat Blind spots = denial. And if they are persistent it is probably a good idea to regard them as involuntary at least in the near term. They are conditioned responses - and as such can be unconditioned given the right circumstances/patterns of experience. Unfortunately a lot of people think that "confronting a person in denial" by which they mean talking to them in and angry and threatening way, is a useful way to "break through" it. But if this model is right that gets it exactly backwards. Like all desensitization to traumatic/fearful stimuli it is best done in a safe environment in baby steps.

"Blind spots" are specific stimuli or patterns of stimuli that the ANP (or EP) simply "filters out" of their perception so as to be able to cope with the situation at hand. FEAR and RAGE basically filter out everything but the threat being fought. Attention in human beings seems to me pretty much selective ALL the time (that is what attention means, right?) so it is a question of which filter (or filters) is active at any given time. And filters organize and select for different kinds of stimuli out of the "blooming' buzzing' confusion" that is our experiential field. What I might call "the mommy filter" is something that the physical experience of pregnancy automatically develops, creating a bunch of attachments with the CARE system.

Personal experience: I was not terribly aware of small children before I had my daughter - oh I liked them well enough, but I didn't... always see them. After my daughter was born I am unable to not be aware of them. I always have "the mommy glasses" on. I hear distress cries and am more motivated by them. I always keep an eye on groups of children, and individual children in my field. I am highly motivated to intervene when they are in distress or moving toward danger.

Before, there was a lack of attention. Now there is constant awareness.

Maybe I'm weird because I have ADD, but selective attention may be all the time for everyone and we just don't notice it when it is not inconvenient.