Thinking about this some more, and relating it to what I've been reading in van der Kolk's book.
Those of us with early traumas are often adept at ignoring the bodily sensations and the urges and emotions which come from the very old and very primitive parts of our brains - until we get knocked over by them.
Like fear responses, which we all know about in PTSD, sex urges are from very old, very low down in the brain, unconscious structures. Let's face it, slugs, snails and earthworms have sufficeint processing capacity to manage sex (and those lucky little bastards are actually made to be bi).
v d Kolk, points out (consistently with the idea of having "parts") that the rational part of the frontal cortex does not have a direct connection with the limbic brain and the even older "lizard" brain. "Top down" rationalizing isn't going to do anything. like a semi competant rider on a flighty horse, when the animal part of the brain decides to go for it, the rational part is going to get thrown off.
If the lower parts of the brain have been trained or conditioned into a response, then they're going to follow it (like a horse forgetting whatever it was doing, so that it can come running to get fed a mint - or like us getting stuck feeling like a child when a flashback is triggered).
The bit of the conscious brain (or rather the conscious bit of the brain) which does have a connection to the lower parts of the brain, is the bit connected to sensing our body, movement and breathing; the bit that we use in breathing exercises, yoga, dance and martial arts (perhaps even cold showers...).
I'm not sure about females - but in males, sex urges get routed through the Amygdala, as does fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Plenty of scope in there for getting wires crossed - and is it any wonder that there is such a thing as sexual violence.
Getting back to TMI
Have you met "Roger's Profanisaurus" ? it's like a thesaurus, but filled with teenage humour and gutter filth.
an entry in one of the editions describes the cognitive deficits and distortions which occour in males (and presumably also females who go for girls), when they are confronted by the site of a pair of provocatively parted labia minora as a "full c#ntal lobotomy"
Those of us with early traumas are often adept at ignoring the bodily sensations and the urges and emotions which come from the very old and very primitive parts of our brains - until we get knocked over by them.
Like fear responses, which we all know about in PTSD, sex urges are from very old, very low down in the brain, unconscious structures. Let's face it, slugs, snails and earthworms have sufficeint processing capacity to manage sex (and those lucky little bastards are actually made to be bi).
v d Kolk, points out (consistently with the idea of having "parts") that the rational part of the frontal cortex does not have a direct connection with the limbic brain and the even older "lizard" brain. "Top down" rationalizing isn't going to do anything. like a semi competant rider on a flighty horse, when the animal part of the brain decides to go for it, the rational part is going to get thrown off.
If the lower parts of the brain have been trained or conditioned into a response, then they're going to follow it (like a horse forgetting whatever it was doing, so that it can come running to get fed a mint - or like us getting stuck feeling like a child when a flashback is triggered).
The bit of the conscious brain (or rather the conscious bit of the brain) which does have a connection to the lower parts of the brain, is the bit connected to sensing our body, movement and breathing; the bit that we use in breathing exercises, yoga, dance and martial arts (perhaps even cold showers...).
I'm not sure about females - but in males, sex urges get routed through the Amygdala, as does fight, flight, freeze and fawn. Plenty of scope in there for getting wires crossed - and is it any wonder that there is such a thing as sexual violence.
Getting back to TMI
Have you met "Roger's Profanisaurus" ? it's like a thesaurus, but filled with teenage humour and gutter filth.
an entry in one of the editions describes the cognitive deficits and distortions which occour in males (and presumably also females who go for girls), when they are confronted by the site of a pair of provocatively parted labia minora as a "full c#ntal lobotomy"
