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Dr. Simeons HCG Protocol
> Dr. A.T.W. Simeons >
The Suppression of Flight
Instinct: a natural or innate impulse ...
natural intuitive power ... urged or animated by some inner force.
Emotion: an affective state of consciousness.
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Random House College Dictionary
Marie has come to my office holding her left cheek as if it were a small,
wounded bird. It is Fall 1992 and I last saw her like this in early 1984.
"After you treated me I was fine until January 1991 when all my facial pain
returned."
Marie went on to explain that two weeks before the return of her pain, her
husband had committed suicide, employing a shotgun in the den of their home as
she slept in another room. It was the dead of winter in Arkansas and an ice
storm prevented her leaving the scene or help arriving for over three hours.
"That," she says emphatically, "was stressful."
A remarkable article by Peter Levine details the instinctive physiologic
reactions of prey animals to attack and inevitable capture. The well-known
flight or fight response that ultimately mobilized the muscles for maximum
power and speed is perfectly reversed once the animal realizes it is trapped.
Prior to the killing blow of the predator, a mammal will grow limp, displaying
a paralytic freezing evidenced by lower body temperature and profoundly
diminished muscle tone. The trapped animal is not "feigning death" but rather
reacting instinctively in a way that often inhibits predatory aggression.
Animals do this naturally; humans must be taught that a bear in the wild may
only sniff you if you lie perfectly still.
Marie suffered the pain in her face for three months. Then she heard of a
surgeon who specialized in the management of trigeminal neuralgia and traveled
a thousand miles for an examination. Sure enough, surgery revealed that her
trigeminal nerve had been creased by a vein, apparently congenitally, and
meticulous surgery restored her anatomy and Marie was without pain for six
weeks. Then her pain returned.
Man's Presumptuous Brain by ATW Simeons, M.D., traces the evolution of
instinctive response to threat and clearly differentiates these from human
emotion:
"An instinct is a very old impulse which is generated in the diencephalon by a
combination of hormonal and sensory stimuli. In this process the cortex is
involved only to the extent that it censors the raw incoming messages from the
senses. An emotion is the conscious or subconscious elaboration of a
diencephalic instinct by the cortical processes of memory, association and
reasoning. Emotions are thus generated in the cortex out of crude instinct."
Simeons goes on to describe the cortex as a censor of instinctive movement or
expression. Beyond that, once the cortex transforms instinct into emotion, it
will commonly censor any expression of the emotion itself. He feels that since
our society is built on cortical control (as opposed to our basic instincts),
psychosomatic illnesses will commonly occur. Only by identifying this conflict
and accepting the complex working of our inner and outer lives might we avoid
the insidious onset of chronic illness.
Marie's surgeon wanted to explore her nerve again. She was hesitant. "Maybe I
just have a sinus problem. I'm going to the ENT clinic for another opinion." A
massive infection was discovered; she was relieved of her pain with
antibiotics and the surgeon dismissed her from his care.
Peter Levine has coined the term "fixated immobility reactions" to describe
the array of clinical findings common among various traumatic anxiety symptoms
and syndromes. These findings are neuromuscular, autonomic, and perceptual,
and predictably will accompany our instinctive response to intolerable or
threatening situations. It appears that the entire scope of physiologic
reactions to a simultaneous increase in parasympathetic and sympathetic tone
become evident as Levine's technique of "somatic experiencing" enhances his
client's awareness. Previously repressed sensations and bodily feelings are
then used to transport the client through the event(s) as they are remembered
in active imagination. During this process movement is encouraged. Levine
states, "The central axis in the resolution of post traumatic and various
anxiety responses was in completing previously thwarted motor acts...While
catharsis (emotive response) may sometimes occur, it is the emergence of
defensive activation that is the critical catalyst for therapeutic response.
After three months of pain relief with antibiotics, Marie underwent laser
surgery for her sinus malformation. Her facial pain returned full force and
the ENT clinic could not help her.
Simeons discusses the tendency for fearful flight (as opposed to rage) to
predominate in humans. He points out that instinctive flight from threat is
directly correlated to an animal's ability to bodily defend itself or
counterattack. Humans have evolved in such a fashion as to nearly eliminate
our ability to defend ourselves, and the desire to flee with its attendant
increase in sympathetic tone dominates the messages from our diencephalon.
Cortical elaboration of these messages may result in a wide variety of
emotions. These may be modified through cultural and sociological pathways so
complex and embedded as to censure any overt expression of what we feel. We
may suppress the feeling itself. The urge to flee lies buried beneath all of
this.
It was suggested to Marie that she return once again to the dentist who has
seen her in 1984. He adjusted her occlusion and she began to sleep normally
and the pain receded. After three months the pain returned and the dentist
sent her to me.
Levine has identified the need for movement to accompany effective care for
anxiety reactions and the physical pain that is commonly concurrent. He refers
to these movements as a "genetically endowed defensive capability."
Appropriately expressed, these movements augment the emotion that may or may
not accompany them. It has been Levine's experience (and mine) that a
predominately emotive response to gentle handling tends not to be as
productive as we would hope. It appears that care that reinforces dramatic
expression of emotion rather than instinctive movement tends to recycle
particular events without resolving the underlying conflict between the
diencephalon and the cortex.
Marie is cold. She tells me she's been cold for many months. She realizes that
her facial pain and her husband's death are no coincidence. Both of us know
that during the two week interim between being trapped in a place she
desperately wished to leave and the onset of her pain she did not change
anatomically, and that treatment designed to alter her in that way has its
limitations. It is time to move instinctively, and it's time to warm up.
I have nothing against the authentic expression of emotion. But I understand
that by the time people are experiencing pain related to trauma and/or anxiety
that the emotion they express during bodywork may be an elaboration of
instinctive fear. What they need is movement that represents their effective
defensive resources that were suppressed during the initiating event. Levine
calls this "active-adaptive behavior." I call it spontaneous movement and find
that it will emerge in response to "simple contact."
I ask Marie to move as she instinctively wishes, and she grows warm. Aside
from an immediate decrease in her pain, she begins to sense a deep depression
and drops the facade of characteristic cheerfulness she has maintained. She
has work to do.
If I chose to do a body-based psychotherapy, I might seek more emotion and
catharsis. But I chose somatics, a philosophy of care that emphasizes
instinctive activity and the innate power of the human body to do the right
thing with a minimum of cortical interference. When discomfort and dysfunction
crosses that ill- defined border from acute to chronic, we need to look beyond
joint mechanics and facial restriction. If we take the time to examine the
conflict each of us faces as both instinctive and emotive beings, we can begin
to see more clearly what treatment should include. And we can keep the
profession of physical therapy where it belongs.
References
Hanna T. What is somatics? Somatics, 1986;5(4)
Levine P. The body as healer: a revisioning of trauma and anxiety. Somatics.
1990;8(1)
Simeons ATW -
Man's Presumptuous Brain. New York, NY: Dutton;1961
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