On trembling

Today I had the chance to tutor a friend of mine for his psychology class (in exchange for the immense help he’s been to me in calculus). He’s covering psychopathology now, or at least a brief introduction to psychopathology, and of course the subject of panic attacks came up. The physical symptoms of panic attacks include trembling, which piqued my interest as Levine discusses that very issue in Waking The Tiger – specifically, the kind of spastic trembling that occurs when animals successfully come out of the freeze response. Levine attributes the development of post-traumatic stress disorders to the body’s physical inability to fully recover from entering into the freeze response.

The freeze response is literally the chemical place where the hunted brain goes to die. It is a place without pain, helpful when one is being torn apart by a predator’s teeth and fangs. It is a place where the body cannot move, which could be helpful as playing dead is often a good way to keep predators from continuing to kill you. This is a place that the human animal as evolved, a last resort when no escape or fight is possible. I’ve been there. Your mind is perfectly clear, memories survive only as frozen, temporally disjointed moments and sensations. All you can hear is your heart pounding in your ears and every iota of data being fed from your eyes to your brain hits you like a bolt of lightning coursing with an indescribable, paralyzing energy.

When animals enter this state, and survive, they emerge from it only after being overwhelmed by violent convulsions. So essentially, Levine argues that until the traumatized human can find a way to tremble, literally or otherwise, until they escape the physiological aspects of this very physical state, they will continue to be trapped in what is literally a place of death.

On and on.

Take a drive where your mind will cease to feel,
Stay alive if you feel you can stand still.

White widow she don’t taste so sweet,
Her god is wrong, her time has run.
White widow she is the sun and sleet.
My god is wrong, my time has run,
’cause i know that my trial has gone,
yet i know that my trial goes on and on.

’cause i know that my trial has gone,
yet i know that my trial goes on again.

New resource: Walking the Tiger

If you bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will be your salvation. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, then that which is within you will destroy you. -gnostic gospel

Yesterday Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger (along with a book on dynamics of neuroscience) arrived at my doorstep. For now, I’m limited mathematically in my ability to read Dynamics in Neuroscience, though I purchased it to get a feel for the field and for the introduction. The introduction is entirely conceptual and discusses the overarching biological processes at work in excitability and bursting and the use of nonlinear dynamics to model those processes. I’m just trying to get a feel for the field.

In terms of serious reading, I have Levine. Walking The Tiger seeks to “reveal the mystery of human trauma” by delving into animal immunity to trauma. It seems like an evolutionary analysis of the symptoms of trauma that delves into the physiological aspects of the disorder (i.e., not just the psychological), which is something I greatly appreciate given my current situation. He identifies tingling in the arms and legs and menstrual-like cramping as somatic manifestations of trauma, which is interesting. I’ve had unexplained cramping for a long time, and currently have so such pain, spasming and tingling in my arms that sometimes they’re unusable. More to come.

The physical, vocation and funding.

Last night I had a very insightful conversation with a good friend of mine, Tyler. When I decided that I wanted to be a psychologist, I took it for granted that my future would be exclusive to clinical research. Lately, though, I’ve been questioning that desire. It seems that helping the people who I want to be able to help through the current system of social and clinical care would simply be futile. The current system of social work is overworked, underfunded and often incapable. Our pathetically inadequate but understandable need of the physical to prove child abuse (e.g. broken bones, bruises, etc) leaves giant holes in the child protective net into which many children, including myself, disappear. State-funded CPTSD ‘treatment’ is an underfunded, over-medicating sham often run by incompetent staff, and is generally more harmful that beneficial to those put in its charge. The potential of clinical research in trauma to effect real change is therefore extremely limited, and the more I see this the more I have become ambivalent toward a future in clinical psychology. Frankly, I don’t want to spend my life embroiled in that mess. I want to be able to do something that has undeniable value in correctingthe generally dismissive discourse surrounding CPTSD and child abuse, and I want the money that I need to do it.

Long story short, my friend suggested neuroscience. I’m leaning toward his suggestion, especially since I have recently uncovered – finally – physical proof of my own abuse and am appreciating anew the incredible power that the physical holds over perceptions of abuse.

My chiropractor recently took xrays of my neck because “something felt weird”, and the images showed severe, untreated whiplash (I’ve had it long enough that my C7 Th1 vertebrae are degenerating and arthritic), and uneven “excess bone growth” on the back of my skull – evidence of small, remodeled fracturing. Seeing that image was like being kicked in the chest. It was proof against the people in my life who rebuffed me, people close to me who have hurt me so much in dismissing my accounts of the abuse that I suffered. It was proof that I was right, that it had happened and had been as horrifying as I remembered. I was not wrong. I was not misinterpreting things. It was not my fault. Fractures. Whiplash. Real, tangible, comprehensible damage that fully vindicated me. My chiropractor had no idea why I was smiling at the news, but it was because, for the first time in my life, I knew on no uncertain terms that I was right.

The physical matters. Without it, everything is subjective. Without physical evidence of what was done to me, people close to my father could simply choose to believe that I, as the victim, am just hyperbolic, overly-sensitive, and ultimately wrong. Some people close to me have done and still choose to do this. Until a few days ago there was nothing that I could use to protect myself from the remarkable power of their suggestiveness toward  manipulating my own understanding of what has happened to me and even toward manipulating the content my very fragile traumatic memory and the strength of my self-confidence. The physical is the indisputable. It is the power of people knowing that you are right, you are accurate, and you are not weak or wrong for being affected by what you have experienced. In terms of child abuse, the physical can restore to the abused the integrity that their situation robs from them. No amount of evidence can convince the willfully blind, but it can give the abused a means by which to protect their own integrity from being comprised by that harmful blindness.

Developmental and cognitive neuroscience with a grounding in clinical knowledge could be a significant key to assigning more, indisputable power to the integrity of the abused, and that above anything is what I feel to be my vocation. Over a substantial amount of french wine and some Planningtorock, Tyler helped me see that last night, and I’m increasingly inclined to agree with him that I might be much better suited for neuroscience than clinical research.

“It’s a personal choice…

… What you have with your friend.”

This was something that a significantly older friend told me a few days ago while explaining his approach to LGBT relationships. My reaction was ambivalent, torn between a nod of appreciation for his will to be nonjudgmental, and a frustrated urge to correct his unenlightened vocabulary and understanding of sexuality. As it turned out, his was the least homophobic and ignorant reaction to my sexuality that I have experienced this weekend.

Without getting too much into details, I spent yesterday being dragged between two separate, degrading roles: The first, in which I was a closeted lesbian acting the “best friend” for my partner’s parents; the second, in which I was an amateur porn star whose relationship with another woman was considered valid only as it played into the fantasy  and ego of my partner’s straight male friends.

Needless to say, yesterday called for a hefty order of alcohol.

I am naturally a very sensitive person to antipathy, dehumanization, violence and injustice. These are all things that have informed almost every major experience of my life. Like everyone I know, every day I am in some way confronted with with sexism, racism, or poverty. I see the homeless crowding around campus. I see a withered man on the bus with a swastika and “white power” etched into his arm. I meet a man whose chivalric sense of gender relations convinces him that one word of flattery is all it should take to throw me in his bed. I am a survivor of patriarchal, violent child abuse. I have seen rape. I’ve been sexually assaulted and had AK-47s waved in my face in the literal interrogations that followed reporting it. I’ve lived in a war zone, woken up to machine gun fire, and seen the unspeakable human cost of imperial dehumanization and greed.

To me human society has rarely stepped outside of this general sisyphean ruthlessness. We have done so much, so mercilessly, to each other. We have turned this world into a white sepulchre, built on a foundation of exploitation and domination. In my experience, there are precisely two things that makes these things worth living through: Intellectual exploration and love. That is why homophobia infuriates me beyond most forms of ignorant, self-indulgent hatred. It infuriates me that after everything I have seen and experienced there are those who attack and degrade the loving relationship that has inspired me to healing. It amazes me that anyone could presume the right to judge and belittle one of the only things that makes our cruel humanity beautiful.

I realize, of course, that this observation is not founded on insight into the homophobic mind and will not change anything. It wont convince evangelical christian groups that love between two gay people is not evil. It wont convince parents to abandon their suffocating comfort zones for the sake of genuinely experiencing, loving and understanding their children. It certainly wont influence chauvinists who hatefully invest in the singular validity of  penile-vaginal penetration. It wont convince patriarchy that lesbian relationships exist for something other than porn and foreplay. In the face of all of this debasement I’ve finally made a difficult resolution regarding my own sexuality. Last night, nothing was resolved, no one was enlightened or humbled. But in my discomfort I felt the worth of my own sexuality. I realized that I can accept myself and forgive myself the inherent shame of being gay. I can enjoy and fully value my capacity to love a beautiful, intelligent, genuine and unique woman. Frankly, those who deny the veracity and legitimacy of that love can go straight to hell.