This is part two of three of an article. You find the first part here: Part one
Now it gets a bit theoretical:
The second fundamental thought: As information hit our body, we start to perceive, which is already changing the information. Based on the experiences that I already made, I will see the information, the world differently. As the information meets the structure of the body, through the eyes, nose, skin etc, I create thoughts and these thoughts create emotions.
I have following picture: the body is like a glass. In this glass are all experiences stored, how I open, how I close, love, where I feel free where not. All these experiences make how thin or thick the glass is or which colour it has. The body is our implicit memory, that stores the reaction to a memory and this alters our perception of the world. When Information (I will define Information later) from outside hits the body, thoughts (unconscious and conscious) are generated. Thoughts then creates emotions (e – motions → energy and motion). The emotions fuel the body and brings it to movement. That means Thoughts are the link between Body and Emotions.
Few things are to add: You have to imagine this as a complex network, that learns through reinforcement. So that means it is not one information that I get from the outside, but thousands. Which in the combination trigger several memories/ old experiences, which creates many different unconscious and conscious thoughts which are interacting and also the emotions are interacting a lot. So it is getting quite complex. In such networks, learning works like this: some memories/thoughts/emotions are used more often, so this pathway gets stronger.
How I define Information: Information is not only, I see tree, a road, some people and so on, but also what other people feel. For example, we can feel if somebody is angry, so also we perceive this “information” when we come into range. If the outside is different, we are in a different country or we are with different people, we will be different, we will behave differently. In this model you could describe it as: if you change the light that comes from the outside, the light inside the glass will be different. Different areas will be lightened or darkened. You will see different colours or shapes.
If you now add the knowledge how we learn through reinforcement, it makes sense to change the outside, so you behave differently, make different experiences and so you become someone different (Systems theory).
When working with people, another view can be helpful: Thoughts can be seen as reflections of the embodied emotional state.
The third fundamental thought: We have an specific capacity of how much we feel the experience that we have every moment.
Our capacity to allow an certain emotion/ to feel an certain experience is depending on our reaction to it. For example, when I have the thought, men don’t cry, I will repress the sadness. In general if I learned an emotion is overwhelming, there is no space to allow it, etc., I will repress it.
Our capacity to feel all emotions is depending on how much I can allow every single emotion. So if I repress sadness, I also will be less able to feel joy.
All experiences are on a spectrum. Even freeze, disconnecting is on the spectrum and can be experienced consciously if the capacity is high enough.
The body tries always to learn and so it tries to grow it’s capacity. Emotions are waves of intensity. So there is always an rising of intensity and then a falling of intensity. To grow the capacity it is needed to reach an specific threshold and then to let the intensity fall again fully. With the falling integration happens. There is always an ideal learning threshold, which doesn’t have to be on the edge of the capacity.
Working with clients, I feel like listening to that a lot, where is something closed, what is difficult to feel and express. What wants to change in the body and when it changes in the body, what quality does it bring. It’s also important to say, that closing is also fine, blocking an experience as well. I would say that the body has it’s own wisdom, it’s know what is needed now and what wants to happen. You just have to learn the language and to listen.
Here is another image to clarify why the capacity is so important:
When we start to feel old feelings/pain, it’s important that it isn’t an overwhelming experience again. So it has to be in our range of capacity. Trauma can lower our capacity. Our capacity is filled up with stuff, like stress, old feelings and so on. Think of it as a sink with years of unwashed dishes. It’s so full that we not even can start to wash the dishes. So we have to leave the house consciously, not to never come back, because this is not possible, but to focus on good things. In this way we learn how to stay in capacity. After that we can come home, put most of the dishes away (which grows the free capacity) and start with one piece, look at it, wash it and discover the treasure under the dirt (which grows the absolute capacity). Afterwards we go out again and do something nice, not to be overwhelmed by all the work that is still to do. In this way we go to a learning threshold, to a challenging intensity (memory/emotion) and then to let go, to integrate.
The image shows the different forms of capacity. The whole rectangle is the (absolute) capacity, the red space is the bound capacity and the green space is the free capacity.
To grow the free capacity there are the two ways: to free some of the bound capacity or to grow the absolute capacity. Trauma in this model is an experience that was over threshold. The body needs to cope with this hole in the experience, which cannot be integrated because it is over threshold. So the person needs to build things around it on all levels – body, thoughts and emotions. By growing threshold we can integrate these holes. In this way trauma means also unintegrated resource (more about trauma in part 3).
I also want to add, that some people say, that our nervous system capacity is huge and we should not worry about to reach the end of capacity. But we learned to go to a specific capacity and then go into helplessness, shut down, because we learned we cannot hold more. You would then need to learn to experience it and not go into helplessness. Both approaches to the nervous system capacity are useful.
So how do we become who we are and how do we develop capacity?
I am no expert in the field of development, learning or developmental trauma, still I have some knowledge and ideas. I want to share these a bit, so that you have a clearer image of how learning works and how it applies in the model that I suggested before.
We start to “learn” already in pregnancy, we share every experience with our mother in the sense of that we feel her reactions to what is happening outside and inside. When the nervous system develops, the baby feels every emotion and the regulation of the mothers nervous system. This is the first input for the developing nervous system of the baby that already start to form the baby and it’s personality. After birth the baby is still depending on the regulation from outside. It is not able yet to self-regulate. We learn self regulation through co-regulation. We are also on this level totally dependent. Also the baby don’t have a self, so every emotion that is in the room the baby takes in and even if it is not meant, it reacts as if it is meant.
Because the baby cannot self-regulate it doesn’t make sense to let a baby cry alone till it stops. It stops because it gets exhausted. If that happens again and again, the baby has to alter, which leads to attachment difficulties.
Also later we learn how to deal with emotions, through seeing/feeling how our caregivers are dealing with it. If they learned to not show emotions we are lost in a way, we also learn to not show the emotions and somehow to deal with it alone, but in the end we will make assumptions about our emotional world. If we hear again and again as a small child, the pain will go over, it’s not that bad, the child will learn to belittle it’s own emotions. How should it later then make the step to say, now my emotions matter? The same with anger and frustration. When the caregivers don’t held space for these emotions, we rise adults who have no connection to their emotions. The same with needs, if we don’t take the needs of the childrens for important, how should they learn that they as person matter? We rise kids who don’t know what they want or who have difficulties to express their needs. When this is the case and the becoming adults don’t learn later to hold their emotions, to know their needs and to express them; it creates a lot of tension, coping mechanisms, a lack of knowing who they are and what they really want to give to the world.
I also want to add something about violence, emotional and physical. Nearly everybody experienced something like that. With emotional violence I mean, not to be heard when in pain, that emotions are belittled. For a child, if it shows a strong emotion, it is a strong emotion for the child, even if as adult the situation is not a big deal. The child needs then to be held and to be listened to, because it doesn’t has the tools for that, not the tools of nervous system regulation and not the tools how to deal with a emotion on a mental level. It’s learning this in exactly these moments. As I said, if we belittle the emotions of the child in these moments, it will tell later also that the emotions are not that big, it is not a big deal, till it learns to ignore the emotions. Another big one is going in the same direction, often children learn in one way or another that they only belong and are loved when they are happy. In the end this creates a lot of loneliness. I call these things violence, not because to make somebody wrong, but because you can see the effect on the child, when these things happen.
Physical violence is another thing: I grew up in a generation where it was still normal in some degree to give small hits as punishment. Even if the impact is not big, it does a lot. It creates a strong hierarchy and also it creates a real impact in the body. The child has to alter, to combine in their reality, the person who loves them and they love the most and the person who beats them. It can create areas in the body that are not felt and reactions in the body to the parents, like closing, shrinking etc. that don’t go away even after years that the beating stops. There are for sure more detailed work on what physical violence is creating for the child. For me I wanted to name that.
Back to the baby: First we learn through touch. It’s the first language we learn. Babys who lack touch, don’t survive. That shows how important it is. Touch creates a feeling of safety. When a small child and we learned to feel safe enough, we can explore the world. First only some steps away from the mother. Feeling the excitement of the new and then back to the mothers safety again. The child feels then safe when being in contact and also feels safe when it explores the world. It’s again the waves of intensity that grow our capacity of the nervous system. But also learning to trust and to feel safe. For us these waves of intensity, but also of being in close contact and to explore are natural. The circles that are created becoming bigger and bigger, still coming back again and again to the still, known space; at least till getting old, where we feel again the need to come to stay at a safe, known space.
As a child we learn through mirroring, we see and feel how our caregivers walk, how they deal with emotions, where in the body they close, where they are open, how they show love and so on. Remember that I wrote, the body is the unconscious. The child learns through mirroring everything of it. Plus that the child adds another layer of how it copes with all of this.
The good news is that the child, how we are build is quite robust. It needs a constant lack of a need that is not met, to develop a developmental trauma.
As you can see I want to use this article also to show some of the things that are not working in our society. As you maybe can see it is probably so that the people with lower income, who have less stability and a lot of fear about money, will give that to the next generation. It is a survival stress, that even if the parents try not to show, the children will feel. There is also more trauma in these social layers, that lead them to be in this situation and will lead to that the kids will probably stay in these circumstances. It’s hard to change that, when in your body, in your unconscious is hardwired survival stress, closure, needing to be strong, trauma and so on. If we want to create a change there, we have to address trauma on a social level.
Now to the image from before, about the glass, that is storing the reactions and memories of a person. All what I described about learning, is how the glass is forming itself. It creates different colours and also dark places, where not much light shines through, but also lenses that focus our attention on specific experiences, that we create again and again through this. Other areas that are not the focus of the lens we don’t see sharp.
Self-development doesn’t mean to become pure glass. Some of the lenses we maybe want to become less of a lens so that we can see the things around equally sharp. Other lenses maybe don’t need to change, because it is good to focus there. Also with colours, maybe we just need to become aware of where our view is coloured.
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