A novel treatment for PTSD?
Mark, you rock!
Thanks for the link - great article!
Salvia Divinorum: Could Hallucinogenic Drugs Have Healing Properties?
Hey soldier… how about some Salvia? Mushrooms? Ecstasy?
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What is PTSD?
Memory is state dependent. If you have ever stayed up all night on some stimulant studying for an exam, you may have learned that you need to go take the exam before you come down. Otherwise, you’ll lose the knowledge along with the high. You may have no idea who is the chairman of the PTA at your child’s school or what was discussed at the last meeting. When you go to the next meeting and you’re back in the school gymnasium, however, her name and all those details come back to you.
Highly emotional states result in a memory that lasts longer. Everybody from the boomer generation remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot. More recently, everybody remembers September 11th. Nobody says, “September eleventh of which year?” In a calmer mood, memories are less persistent. When you are doing math problems, you need to forget the details of the previous problem before you begin the next one. Otherwise, you become hopelessly confused. Calmer states are necessary for rational thinking and symbol manipulation.
A person who is brutally raped or exposed to the terrors of war is necessarily in a highly aroused emotional state when the memories of the trauma are formed. That is why the effects are so deep and lasting. You can tell her that her rapist is safely locked in prison or that the war is half a world away. They person may understand intellectually, but they’ll still have nightmares or panic and jump under the bed when there’s a sudden loud noise. In order to gain full access the traumatic memories and decisions that may have been made at the time, you have to recreate the same psychological state that existed at the time of the trauma. If you are are able to effectively do that, you have created the kind of emotionally charged state in which the person is incapable of rational thought. She is too terrified to understand your babbling about the rapist being in prison or the war “really” being far away.
The structure of the problem is actually quite simple. You have a set of powerful traumatic experiences that share nothing in common with the rest of the person’s normal life experiences. They have their own emotions and memories which are completely dissociated from the rest of the person’s world. It is difficult to gain access to these experiences, he probably doesn’t want to remember them and when he does, he is incapable of rational thought or critical examination of the traumatic events. This creates a sequential incongruity where the person is sequentially rational and then irrational.
How can PTSD be fixed?
There is an NLP technique that uses a visual-kinesthetic dissociation to simultaneously access the rational and irrational aspects and to then merge them into a coherent whole emotional being.
First the NLP practitioner anchors a positive state. This is basically just classical conditoning. He talks to the client about calm, comfortable, confident, safe experiences. As the client recollects these experiences the practitioner anchors them. Perhaps he puts his hand on the clients arm. When he is assured that all he has to do is put his hand on the client’s arm and the client will assume a state of calm, comfortable, confidence, he is ready to proceed.
Next the client is asked to return to the beginning of the traumatic event, just before the trauma is about to unfold. He is then asked to “step out of the picture” and see himself as though he is watching himself on a television or movie screen. The practitioner uses the positive anchor to ensure the client remains in a comfortable (panic free) state as he “pushes the play button” and the client, in his mind’s eye, watches himself re-live the trauma. This allows the client to access and re-evaluate his memories of the event while maintaining his normal rational thinking abilities.
Often “double dissociation” is used. When the client told to step out of the picture and watch himself on the screen, he is then told to step out of the picture again so he can watch himself watching himself. This double dissociation makes it more difficult for him to fall back into the picture, which will happen if he becomes paniced. We don’t want him to suddenly find himself re-living the event instead of watching himself re-living the event. The positive anchor and double dissociation are used to prevent this, so rational thought and traumatic memory may co-exist and finally become reintegrated.
He spends as much time as he wants watching himself in the trauma and learning. Of course he has fast-forward, backward, pause, zoom, change camera angle – anything he wants to use. When he is finished watching, the client is asked to step back into the picture, approach his younger self, explain that he is from the future and everything is going to be okay, to put his arms around his younger self and reassure him as only he can. He is then to pull the image of the younger self into his own body and feel the energy of reintegration tingle though his body. He is now reassociated and has access to knowledge of the past without being paniced.
I like to believe he has traded panic for wisdom. The kind of knowledge he has gained from having endured what was traumatic is indeed the kind of powerful experience of which wisdom is made. The kind of drugs which simply numb him to his panic deny the person the understanding that he was put on this earth to get. And they tend to numb him to the reality of his normal everyday experience as well. This is truly evil.
I discussed this process briefy on the Molecule K thread, as well. I believe that TAK creates a similar sort of dissociation as used to positive ends in this NLP pattern.
Warren, this is a bit offtopic, but if TAK may play any role in something as deeply rooted in emotional association, it definitely warrants a closer look. Care to articulate further on how TAK mght help in this scenario? (Maybe in the old TAK thread? I’m not done with it. 
)
I don’t know, there are definitely significantly different results stemming from differing dosages of TAK, but I’m starting to think the ‘deja vu’ and ‘melding’ characteristics are important ones to follow up on. but they seem to have different impacts, based on dosage.
Warren,
You’re so … smart! And helpful!
What do you eat on your toast?
Cat
Here’s a couple more very interesting articles from Popular Science on brain trauma:
Shock to the System | Popular Science
All right!
Great posts, Mark and Warren. Thanks for taking the time …