[although I will say that it is becoming increasingly emotionally clear to me how traumatized many segments of the right have been by the relentless lying and bullying that has been the Left’s most successful method. I’m not putting up with it any more. Truth attacks: I am going to still call that acceptable.]
I wanted to say “dance of the curmudgeon”, but they don’t dance. We don’t have wings. We throw stones at low flying pigeons.
OK, I exaggerate a bit. A bit.
Here is what I wanted to write, a nice quote from Peter Levine’s “In an Unspoken Voice.”
In a situation of inescapable and mortal threat, the brain stem, or reptilian brain, sends intense signals to the viscera, causing some of them to go into hyperdrive (as with the gastrointestinal system) and others to constrict and close down, as with the bronchioles of the lungs or the beating of the heart. In the first instance (hyperdrive), we get symptoms like butterflies, knots in the gut or rumbling, uncontrollable diarrhea. With the lungs, we have feelings of tightness and suffocation, which, when chronic, can lead to symptoms of asthma. Likewise, the effect of the primitive vagus on the heart is to decrease the beat to a level so low that it can actually lead to (voodoo) death. Because these sensations feel so dreadful, they themselves become a source of threat [and you suppress them from consciousness]. So rather than coming from outside, the threat now emanates from deep within one’s bowels, lungs, heart, and other organs and can cause the exact same effect upon the viscera that the original threat evoked. This situation is the unfortunate setup for a positive feedback loop with disastrous negative consequences. In addition, because traumatized individuals are experiencing (intense) threat signals, the PROJECT this inner turmoil outward, and thus perceive the world as being responsible for their inner distress–and so remove themselves from both the real source of the problem and its potential solution [again, they dissociate and fail to recognize that they even have these feelings]. This dynamic also wreaks havoc not only on the body but also on relationships.
If I can paraphrase this, it seems to be literally the case that small sensations in your viscera, that remain unconscious to you, can cause you to view the world as a dangerous place, and to be constantly on your guard, which is one of the symptoms of PTSD.
Conversely, as I have tried to copy Levine in saying, when your viscera are not normally worked up, and you are allowing the free flow of feeling, the so-called “gut instinct” actually works quite well. That is what it is intended for: all our senses are antennas scanning for feedback.
Hopefully this makes some sense.
Oh, and I was thinking about being grumpy, because I am grumpy. If it was my birthday, I would take my piece of cake and go eat it in the bathroom. Bah humbug.
This too shall pass, but I am allowing it while it does. I need to get it out/get through it.