The Neuro-gravitational Force of Pain

 

When these systems are stimulated in humans, people always experience intense emotional feelings, and presumably when the systems are normally activated by life events, they generate abundant memories and thoughts for people about what is happening to them.

Jaak Panksepp, The Archeology of Mind

 

• 50 to 60% of adults in United States experience a trauma.

• If the 7% of US overall lifetime prevalence of PTSD was projected on the world population, it would be about 500 million people.

• We would need 200,000 trained psychologists to tackle the problem of PTSD.

Statistics by Rolf Carrier, Economist, Head of UNICEF’s health and nutrition program. Introduced EMDR in Bangladesh (1998) and Indonesia (2001)

Though these numbers are not current (pre-pandemic) and are likely much larger, I reference Rolf Carrier’s statistics because he raises an interesting question of just how many healers it would take to deal with the impact of so much misery and suffering in the world. A couple hundred thousand trained clinicians doesn’t seem nearly enough. There’s a lot of pain in all human life, and this can manifest internally as energies that trauma therapists might call the Emotional Part (EP), animated by distress. It potentially leaks out onto the stage with aspects of emotional memory: negative thoughts about the self in an overwhelming moment, sensations, sound, smells, body sensations, and/or visuals.

Generally, it can be easier to approach and recognize than the Abnormal, because it often shows as a young, abandoned child. And most of us have at least heard the concept of the wounded child and are prepared to think about it that way. But it is not always a child shocked into disbelief, followed by pointless struggle, and landing in a cry of hopelessness. It can be portrayed equally as a battered animal, mute. A nagging toothache that makes us poke obsessively until the tongue ulcerates. As a dangerous forest where we are lost.

Jaak Panksepp studied the roots of our animal emotional energy and presented his detailed research and theories in The Archeology of Mind. He is an important scientist who has helped many therapists think more clearly about emotional energies. In his lab, he identified circuits we share with other mammals. When we’re in Pain, we’re triggering the deepest parts of ourselves. The aversive circuits are at least three:

PANIC drives the mammal into fragmentation and chaos.

FEAR energizes wild flight or is a dissociative trailhead to nowhere.

RAGE is destruction when unleased.

When activated, these circuits can create havoc as they douse us with energy impacting our brain, mind, and nervous system. He capitalized these underlying emotion systems, to distinguish them from our conscious feelings. They do live in another realm, operating in the dark of our nervous system, in our physiology. Implicit. Unconscious. In the wiring behind the wall. We cannot even find a way to them. Not directly.

Because Pain’s momentum derives from somewhere deep in our bodies, unconscious, beyond our intentions, it’s a force that runs through us. A clout from below. Out of nowhere, it can knock us over or stop us in our tracks. And it can linger, disrupting our life. The promise of our Heart-drama is that Pain can be held in our arms until we find a way to settle.

Some painful experiences of childhood are listed below. Check off whatever you think may have been true:

Childhood Adversity

___ My parents (one or both) had problems resulting from drugs or alcohol addiction.

___ My parents (one or both) were physically violent to each other, doing things such as pushing, slapping, hitting, or choking.

___ My parents (one or both) argued in very nasty ways, saying mean or degrading things.

___ I felt rejected by my parents (one or both) and felt that I could never do anything right.

___ My parents (one or both) had a mental illness or another kind of illness, and I felt responsible for them.

___ My parents (one or both) beat me or hit me hard enough to hurt me.

___ My parents (one or both) threatened to abandon me or send me away if I didn’t behave.

___ My parents (one or both) were difficult to talk to and seemed unable to listen to me or understand me.

___ One of my siblings had serious problems that resulted in the family being overly focused on them, and I felt insignificant.

___ One or more of my siblings was abusive to me, and I could do nothing about it.

___ I was sexually abused as a child.

___ I was raped as a child.

___ I suffered another kind of significant trauma, such as from a disaster or car accident.

___ My family moved frequently, and I had to leave friends, neighborhoods, church, places where I felt like I had belonged.

___ I had a physical deformity or apparent problems that caused people to comment.

___ I was bullied, and I could do nothing about it.

Losses and Separations

___ One of my parents died while I was a child.

___ My brother or sister—to whom I was emotionally close—died.

___ A grandparent—to whom I was emotionally close—died.

___ My parents divorced or separated while I was a child.

___ I was sent to live in another home as a child, to a foster home or to a relative, and was separated from my parents.

___ I was sent away to a program or school as a child or teenager

___ My parents (one or both) were not available to me because of work, illness, or injury.

___ Some other persons or a favorite animal whom I depended upon for emotional support died or became unavailable to me while I was child.

Sometimes we might not have memories of adversity and losses; yet, we still may have some internalized pain in the form of thoughts of guilt and shame.

___ I don’t feel lovable.

___ I always have felt that something is missing.

___ I feel empty and unfulfilled.

___ I think I have to be perfect and am never good enough.

___ I put myself down.

___ I think that I’m ugly or stupid.

___ I really don’t know who I am.

___ I’m responsible for how others feel.

___ I want to please others even when it hurts me.

___ It does not feel okay to let others know what I think or feel.

___ I’m insecure around others and am afraid of what they are thinking about me.

___ I don’t feel safe and find it had to trust.

___ I don’t feel capable or adequate, like there’s something defective about me.