THANK YOU for the Baldwin references. These are the ones you pointed me too earlier,
@Pencil yes? (Did I bookmark them or add to a bibliography like a sensible person? No. I did not.) That passage falls right in line with Panksepp's theory of basic emotional activation systems. Haven't read the footnotes, but they must be using him. There are TWO separate defensive emotional activation systems FEAR and PANIC (Panksepp adopted the convention of all caps to make clear when he is talking about the physiological system not just the usual set of concepts associated with these words." FEAR is the emotional activation system that responds to a specific perceived threat - it is mediated by adrenaline and primes for ANGER (which is fight) FEAR create flight or freeze behavior, and focuses on the perceived threat (or locus of threat). PANIC by contrast is the emotional activation system that is designed to keep small helpless social animals in the nest or close to their mother/caretaker. I have found it VERY helpful to distinguish between the feelings generated by the FEAR system and the anxiety generated by the PANIC system. PANIC is mediated by opiods - so it is VERY different biochemically than FEAR. PANIC is the system that keeps us close to those we depend on, and feeling good and safe and comforted (even if injured) when they are there. It is what generates attachment in children.
freezing and are analgesic, that others are inclined to physically resist threat and experience anger, and that still others totally submit to threat while being severely anesthetic.
These are three modes of the FEAR pathway - Adreneline is analgesic. So freeze and lose feeling, or up the adrenaline and kick in the ANGER system and fight. These are different from PANIC, which causes scanning, crying, retreating to the familiar kinds of behavior. In my H because the PANIC system had been frustrated for so long what was apparent when he went into PANIC was the frustration - it looked like ANGER. Tragic. The expression says "get away! " when the emotional system needs "come save me!"
the ANP does not succeed in avoiding traumatic memories completely. Especially when dissociation and retraction of the field of consciousness are prominent, the ANP is relatively unaware of stimuli that reactivate the EP. Such reactivations will then be experienced as uncontrollable and unpredictable.
This, in a nutshell is what my H and I have been pecking away at for the least several years. The triggers. The closet full of triggers. This and that, everyday normal occurrences that would precipitate him freaking out - once settled down, he could identify the originating event or events (You can't imagine how many of these there were around driving... his mother was a terribly bad driver sober apparently and drove drunk quite often..) and we would talk about it and it would lose steam, aka get processed. Driving, dogs, cats, children, housework, illness, the list goes on and on.
On another tack, here is the interesting thing from the point of view of relationships (following my favored "you are attracted to people equally and oppositely screwed up as you" theory) HIS primary problem was with PANIC, as is mine (removed from full time babysitter at age 4, with no transition, contact, or sensitivity from my family) He externalizes the PANIC, I internalize/disappear it put up the wall and emotionally just run silent. His externalization looked like ANGER to me, so I respond out of FEAR and run away (from time to time move out) making his PANIC worse. Also making my PANIC worse as it recreates my initial "trauma" (technically not as no physical injury was present - but emotionally yes.) of being removed from my home an abandoned by my primary care taker. Alternatively I would insist he leave, recreating one of HIS initial traumas of being forced to leave his siblings and father when his parents divorced. We did this dance a lot of times. Once we figured out it was PANIC not ANGER.... we got a wedge we could use. So long as we were treating his episodes as ANGER we got no place.
n EP that remains attached, in a regressive way, to abusive and/or neglectful caretakers.
This is my H's first two marriages and my first marriage to a rather nice guy who is aspergers-y enough to be completely emotionally unavailable much like my parents.
Having a map doesn't get you out of the woods, but it sure helps.
