Trauma and the Body

Question 1

“In ordinary consciousness, we tell the story. In mindful awareness…

Answer 1

… we watch the experience of the story unfold in the present moment”

Question 2

The two purposes of experiments

Answer 2

• Make discoveries about the organization of experience
• Bring awareness to the effects of trauma and ensuing action tendencies

Question 3

Four examples of types of experiments

Answer 3

Study what happens when…

1. The client senses or performs something physical
2. Client erbalizes a particular word, phrase or sentence.
3. Therapist performs a physical action
4. Therapist says a certain statment or repeats a phrase.

Question 4

What is linking and when is it used

Answer 4

Linking different core organizers. It is used to help the client gather more information and not used when or if it would take the client out of their window of tolerance. Also linked when client feels positve affect as a way or reinforcing and expanding.

Question 5

What is the “coal” that warms the heart of change?

Answer 5

Love

Question 6

The central idea of interpersonal neurobiology is..

Answer 6

that integration is at the heart of well-being. Integration is the linking of differentiated elements into a functional whole. With an integrated system, our lives become flexible, adaptive, coherent, energized and stable. Without this integration, the flow of our minds moves towards rigidity or chaos.

Question 7

What is the alternating pattern associated with trauma?

Answer 7

The propensity of traumatized individuals to alternate between 1) Emotional and bodily numbing and avoidance of cues reminiscent of the trauma and 2) Intrusive reliving of the trauma via flashbacks, dreams, thoughts and somatic symptoms

Question 8

Somatoform dissociative symptoms

Answer 8

Lack of body sensation, pain, movement disorders and reexperiencing the trauma in somatosensory fragments.

Question 9

Three different kinds of knowledge resulting from triune brain

Answer 9

Reptilian Brain: Innate behavioral knowledge- basic instinctual action tendencies and habits related to primitive survival issues. Exploration, feeding, aggressive dominance displays, sexuality.

Paleomamillian (limbic system): Affective knowledge: subjective feelings and emotional resposes to world events

Neocortex: Declarative knowledge. Higher cognitive functions, reasoning, and logical thought.

Each brain thus has its own “understanding” of the environment and responds accordingly.

Question 10

Sensorimotor definition and what part of the brain is it processed in

Answer 10

of or relating to motor activity caused by sensory stimuli. Repitilian brain loosely relates to the sensorimotor level of information processing. Includes the physical changes in response to sensory input; the fixed action patterns seen in defenses; changes in breathing and muscular tone; and autonomic nervous system activation.

Question 11

Higher level integrative functions evolved from and are dependent on the integrity of

Answer 11

lower-level structures and on sensorimotor experience. Lower levels develop and mature before higher level structures.

Question 12

Computer analogy to higher vs lower functions

Answer 12

Lower functions– like regulate breathing and heartrate and like the “operating system” and harder to change. Higher functions resemble software and are easier to change

Question 13

Definition of cognitive processing and how it can affect lower levels (or not)

Answer 13

Cognitive processing refers to the capacity for conceptualizing, reasoning, meaning making, problem solving and decision making.

As adults, we can ignore emotions and sensations in favor of maintaining cognitive processing tasks. Once trauma comes into the picture, it can hinder the ability of top-down processing to dominate subcortical activity.

Question 14

What are somatic markers and how do they influence emotional and cognitive processing?

Answer 14

They are bodily feelings and are always biasing decision making process – logic, speed, and content of thought. As well as influencing all self-experiences. How we think and what we feel are literally shaped by the body and vice versa.

There is no ability for our concepts to be a direct reflection of external, objective mind-free reality as our sensorimotor system (the embodiment of reason) plays a crucial role in shaping them.

Question 15

How the body impacts the capacity for insight and cognitive self-reflection and what alternatives means we have for exploration

Answer 15

It is limited by the body’s influence. Thus reflecting on, exploring and changing the posture and movement of the body may be as valuable as cognitive self-reflection

Question 16

“The emotional brain directs us towards…

Answer 16

…experiences we seek and the cognitive brain tries to help us get there as intelligently as possible,

Question 17

Two roles of emotional processing

Answer 17

1) Add motivational coloring to cognitive processing – either drive or deter most of our actions
2) Direct us to notice and attend to particular cues in our internal and external environment

Question 18

How trauma affects trust in emotions and ability for adaptive response

Answer 18

Trauma causes people to lose the capacity to draw upon emotions as guides for actions. Emotions may be lacking presence (E.g. lack of motivation) or overly present (constant urgency). Emotional arousal is often not an adaptive response to the present (nontraumatic) environment but was adaptive for the original trauma.

Question 19

How trauma affects normal emotions coming and going

Answer 19

Emotional responses to trauma can become fixed and a never-ending re-experiencing of trauma-related emotions.

Question 20

Difference between emotional processing and sensorimotor processing, why in therapy it is important to distinguish between the two and which one to start with if the client is escalated

Answer 20

Emotional processing pertains to experiencing, articulating and integrating emotions

Sensorimotor processing refers to experiencing, articulating and integrating physical/sensory perception, body sensation and physiological arousal and motor functioning.

Distinguishing between the two is important because clients often fail to discriminate because the two arise simultaneously and when left clumped together, tend to escalate each other. Start with sensorimotor and once arousal returns to within the window, you can look at the emotional contents.

Question 21

What is interoception and what are some different kinds of interoceptors

Answer 21

It is the inner-body sensations. Examples include proprioceptors which provide the kinesthetic sense of the movement of the body and its position in space. Enteroceptors tell us about the movements occurring within our internal organs and provide that “gut feeling” as a whole and i

Question 22

How our beliefs and emotional reactions condition our relationship with current stimuli

Answer 22

We fit incoming sensory information into categories based on past experience to avoid being overwhelmed by constantly novel experiences. We are constantly priming our perceptions to match the world to what we expect to sense and thus make it what we perceive it to be.

Question 23

How the five-sense priming function becomes maladaptive for traumatized individuals

Answer 23

Individuals give extra weight and attention to cues reminiscent to past trauma while giving less weight or not noticing cues which would be indicative of safety. Then these real-time trauma-related cues from both the environment and the body are compared to internal sensorimotor images, beliefs and emotions and ultimately fuel behavior that would be appropriate for threatening situations but not for current situations.

Question 24

How body posture and movement patterns are impacted by trauma and how they sustain trauma

Answer 24

Humans are constantly refining their movement based on feedback from environment. Movement patterns can become engrained and form repetitive movements and postures that contribute to the maintenance of cognitive and emotional tendencies by creating a position from which only select emotions and physical actions are possible.

Question 25

What is an action tendency?

Answer 25

A pre-programmed readiness to carry out a particular action in an automatic, unthinking way. They are formed on cognitive, emotional and sensorimotor levels and stem from procedural learning. The original events that formed the basis of this procedural learning have usually been forgotten, They are crucial organizers of thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Question 26

Optimal vs trauma-influenced handling of action tendencies

Answer 26

When working optimally people can shift between automatic thoughts/actions and manual (deliberate) thoughts/actions. People with trauma can find it difficult to shift out of automatic mode.

Question 27

Why acts of triumph are important and what they do for the client?

Answer 27

Clients experiencing a traumatic event can have mobilizing defenses that failed to complete and which result in problematic action tendences and distressing trauma-related symptoms. Invoking a sliver of memory can reactivate these mobilizing defenses and through awareness of body, the therapist and client can determine how best to complete the defense. The result is the traumatic memory is integrated and now becomes associated with empowering actions and corresponding emotions.

Question 28

What are procedural tendencies primed by and what effect does this priming do on cognitive processing?

Answer 28

Primed by the body’s sense of threat and they have a tendency to preclude cognitive processing

Question 29

What part of the brain is responsible for emotional regulation and what activity stimulates its growth in childhood?

Answer 29

The right orbital prefrontal cortex is responsible for emotional regulation and then it’s developed through attuned emotional caregiving and childhood

Question 30

Do people have just one attachment pattern?

Answer 30

No, it’s possible to have a secondary attachment patterns that come out in response to a stimulus from another person

Question 31

How important is attending to client non-verbal communications? Why?

Answer 31

Attending to client nonverbal is of top importance. It is key to maintaining and restoring raptures in social engagement system

Question 32

What role does attuned caregiving play in a baby developing a sense of it’s own body?

Answer 32

Vital role – the baby develops a sense of its own body through the way it is treated by a caregiver