A lot.
I spent three days in company with two wonderful teachers, Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell. The workshop was experiential and didactic.
Something that stuck to my ribs is WHY my avoidant behavior comes to the fore when given the opportunity to heal the deepest layers of my own disorganized system. Why would I try to stay out of that briar patch?
Turns out that when we are gestating or newly born into the world in all its wild, wacky, wierd wonderfulness - when we are at our smallest and most vulnerable, if something goes awry, our physiology develops coping strategies to be with what feels like imminent death. It's not a cognitive choice, but rather a direct brainstem command.
For premature babies, or those young ones who require surgery or separation from mom, coping with these major stressors at the core level of our little beings is a physiological event. We don't yet have the tools to cope. It's like asking us to drain a lake with a spoon full of holes.
While an adult who sees someone at a party, across the room, say, someone with whom she’d rather not interact can step outside for a while in order to avoid that person, a baby so young that she requires intrusive and extremely painful medical interventions to keep her breathing and alive doesn’t yet HAVE the executive function of the neo cortex on line. (Even if she could choose to run away or fight-off the intrusion - she's too little to do so.) She is in survival mode. She cannot concoct an evasive tactic in her thinking brain. All blood is shunted to the brain stem (where Fight, Flight and Freeze are housed). This is pro-survival; it provides the best chance of living through the threatening situation.
The only coping strategy available in that precarious state, and before the neocortex and right brain are on line, is a physiological strategy. That means: If someone comes near the isolette (that’s what those clear plastic ‘incubator boxes’ are called these days) with yet another poking/proding device for the wee babe inside the box, all she may be able to do is to shut down one or more of her body systems to send her nervous system into a dorsal dive (deeply parasympathetic or Freeze) state where she will feel less pain.
Simply approaching the baby in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) may cause her alarm because, within 12 hours out of the womb, she’s already become conditioned to expect that human contact hurts. When there’s that much alarm in her little nervous system and she cannot move away from a painful stimulus, all she can do to trigger the dorsal dive (merciful disociation) is to shut down another system that tips her into the dive response - an all system shut-down. Circulatory, digestive, endocrine and respiratory are all systems up for grabs to shut down and so, drop her into the sea of non-feeling numbness. Eventually this habit of shutting down - let’s say digestion - takes its toll and ends up costing the tissue a great deal.
Fast forward this movie called life, and now the grown-up baby has compensated and adapted and adopted ways of being in the world that produced the best outcome of which she was capable. She navigates pretty well until there’s something that feels the least bit threatening and suddenly she’s got another bout of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), or her Crohn’s Disease acts up, or a migraine comes on or an asthma attack or an inflammatory episode... or... or... or.
These are the physiological coping mechanisms and they’re tricky to un-wire or de-detonate. As Kathy Kain says, it takes the delicacy of a veteran bomb-squad pro to do this work. It's not a casual shoulder rub at a dinner party, but rather precise, attuned work - done after perhaps years of building resilience in the nervous system.
The trickier part is that, because the survival states are so terribly uncomfortable, that grown-up human baby with so much pain at her core will do anything and everything to keep herself from feeling that existential angst ever again!
On the healing cot in my office, the way those evasive tactics show up is so subtle, I have to keep dropping down to different levels of awareness to find the survival physiology and hold it gently but firmly and say to it: “Brilliant! Right impulse; wrong experssion and out-come." And say to the client, "In order for you to heal from this syndrome (Crohn’s, Colitis, IBS, Migraine, Asthma, Depression, ADHD, etc.) we have to stabilize your nervous system so you can stand to be with these powerfully uncomfortable states - near death states - and ride through them to the other side. Your amazing life-force already got you through. That early threat didn't kill you. You survived! Let's celebrate tenacity and put into place some cognitive strategies for navigating life that won’t cost your physiology its tissue.”
Hugh Milne, in his book, The Heart of Listening a Visionary Approach to Cranio Sacral Work talks of Peewit Behavior.
"Peewit is the Scottish name for a lapwing or plover, a dramatically colored bird that makes its nest in open fields and moor land. When a predator approaches, the peewit runs away from its nest and its defenseless eggs, dragging a "broken" wing and crying out plaintively. The predator naturally takes off in pursuit of this "injured" prize, which, once it is far enough away from the nest to have completed its diversion, promptly takes off and flies away."
This wild and colorful dance of diversion is what shows up in my healing space - in a very muted and subtle way - even in clients who are truly dedicated to healing their archaic wounds. Who would want to revisit those near death states? Who, in her right mind, would be OK with that awful whole-body experience of terror and pain washing over her? I am not. My defensive responses to accessing my own core material are strong and tenacious. I'm grateful for the diligent practitioners with whom I got to exchange practice sessions this weekend.
Mercifully, the path to freedom lies just at the border of the pain. We don’t need to feel it all over again; we simply have to come to the edge and skate along it to the end of the pathway back to wholeness. Slowly we build capacity for holding these big survival states, hang on and ride the waves. Beyond the breakers is where freedom from the syndrome(s) lies.
One of Kathy's stories that stuck to my ribs had to do with a small plane in a big storm. Twenty minutes into a puddle-jumper flight from Vancouver into Calgary, the pilot came on the loud-speaker saying, "We're in for some major turbulence." Seasoned travelers knew that was bad. Before one of the stewardesses could get back to her seat the first bump hit. Every passenger, many of them children, screamed. This stewardess wedged herself in between a seat and a wall and in standing position threw her arms up and said, "Wheeeee! THAT was a BIG one!" Everyone laughed and for the next twenty minutes, the passengers did what she modeled. With every bump and dip, they threw their arms up and squealed like they were on a roller coaster. When the plane landed, these passengers were jovial and boisterous and bantering amongst themselves. Passengers disembarking from other planes, which had also gone through the storm, were ashen and rigid with fear. This singular stewardess helped all the passengers on her flight find self-regulation.
So, my job is: 1) to find a colleague with whom I can explore my own earliest traumas and dismantle the peewit strategies for avoiding them; and 2) to continue to hold these huge survival energies in others who are ready to do this work - normalizing that they are HUGE energies and that it's OK not to like doing this work... but it WORKS! With titration and regulation of the nervous system... Somatic Experiencing helps heal our attachment wounds; helps clear the disorganization from our system - making us more effective and efficient in what we came into life to DO.
Writing about what I'm learning is helping me integrate it.
Thanks for reading. Let me know if anything sticks to your ribs or if it feels too dense to digest.
Resources: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Maté
Scared Sick by Robin Karrs
Trauma Spectrum by Robert Scaer
