COMPASSION AND RITUAL (Part 4)

The Social Engagement System:  System that Expresses and Acknowledges Emotion

What Porges here calls the "Social Engagement System" relates closely to what I call the "Frame of Communication," which is the "portrait" of a person's head and face plus to some degree enough of the chest to be aware of breath and heartbeat.  This is what we include in paintings and photos that are meant to show the person and what is shown on television programs, called "talking heads."  Most of us, looking at this part of another person, can judge emotion and even deceit/honesty and related elements of judgement.  But what Porges means is something more like friends and neighbors, relationships and memberships.  The people who help you be who you are.

The first couple of paragraphs of this section, plus a graphic, are highly technical description of how the little parts of the ear/eye/nose/throat/face evolved incredibly from the now unnecessary bits of the gill arches left from before creatures grew lungs and how the nerves responded with the ability to control "eyelid opening (i.e., looking), facial muscles (e.g., emotional expression), middle ear muscles (e.g., extracting human voice from background noise), muscles of mastication (e.g., ingestion), laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles (e.g., prosody and intonation), and head-turning muscles (e.g., social gesture and orientation)."  

What struck me most was realizing that my trouble with hearing is not loudness, but distinguishing voice from noise.  I didn't know such a thing happened.  A clue cluster for people who aren't "receiving" is "poor eye gaze, difficulties with extracting the human voice from background sounds, blunted facial expression, minimal head gestures, limited vocal prosody and poor state regulation."  We see these things in classrooms when kids are in trouble.  Often we think they are signs of bad attitude and willfulness when they are actually physical dysfunction.

Contemplative Practices and the Social Engagement System

The "Social Engagement System" described above is involved with group contemplative practices like "listening, chanting, breathing, shifting posture during prayer and even facial expressivity".  It helps the necessary feeling of safety -- because of the original voice of the mother being higher -- if there are female singers, or boys, or even castrati.  We do not think of choirs of angels as singing bass!

Another important variable is the breath, the length of intake or exhale and the ratio between the two.  Chanting helps to control this.  More exhaling in comparison to inhaling is good.  As singers, musicians, and actors know, breathing from the abdomen is best, but they may not realize that it helps the vagal influence on the heart, usually slowing it.

When using chants or other words through the breathing, the pharynx participates by changing pitch and regulating resonance.  The little muscles of these areas help a person hear human voices even in the midst of noise.  This area makes small adjustments that help the brain sort, record, and respond -- which is part of calmness.

Posture shifts (like rocking) affect receptors called as "baroreceptors" which signal the brain about blood pressure and heart rate.  "Baroreceptors are mechanoreceptors located in the carotid sinus and in the aortic arch. Their function is to sense pressure changes by responding to change in the tension of the arterial wall. The baroreflex mechanism is a fast response to changes in blood pressure." (Wiki)  Sometimes kids rock to comfort themselves. Rocking is part of some Jewish prayer practices.

"As an individual becomes more proficient with the rituals, the autonomic nervous system becomes more resilient and exhibits a greater capacity to down-regulate defense and to support states that promote health, social behavior, and compassion."  People like to go near someone who is calm and to accept what they say.  Rituals or calming activities don't have to be in religious sanctuaries, since they are not necessarily sacred, but safety is essential.  The "passive" cues to safety that are carried by the overall state of the body, not necessarily conscious, are helpful in perceiving safe places.  They are a "feeling."

This discussion uses two newly coined words to describe processes we didn't think about because we didn't know they existed.  One is "dissolution" and the other is "neuroception".

"Dissolution" describes autonomic reactivity as a phylogenetically organized response hierarchy in which evolutionarily newer circuits inhibit older circuits.  . . . Thus, it is insufficient for an individual solely to abstain from defensive behaviors.  The individual must also be in an autonomic state that is incompatible with defensive behaviors."  Mellowed out.

"Neuroception is a complex neural process that evaluates risk in the environment independently of cognitive feeling."  Sometimes one just gets a "bad feeling."  Or a gut feeling.  But can't say why.  It's not rational but sensory, an unconscious perception of clues.

DISSOLUTION

Three circuits are defined by the polyvagal theory.  They respond in turn according to how new they are, more modern ones earlier.  If the newer ones are somehow disabled, the older neural circuits begin to operate.  This is true in the brain in the case of damage or illness.

"The human nervous system, like that of other mammals, evolved not solely to survive in safe environments, but also to promote survival in dangerous and life-threatening contexts."  So it keeps a fall-back function.  The calmer the person, the better the newer functions work.

NEUROCEPTION

So, to become able to use social engagement strategies (like those necessary in schools and governments) two adaptive tasks are necessary.

1.  Assess risk.

2.  If it seems safe, "inhibit the more primitive limbic structures involved in fight, flight, or immobilization (e.g. death-feigning) behaviors."  

Mega-churches and TV religion that depend upon shouting, threats, images of destruction, hatred, and vengeance do not provide either of these possibilities.  In fact, they can trigger ancient defences like going unconscious, dropping.  Such an environment doesn't need words to be real, but can through neuroception prevent the feeling of safety.  Porges suggests that a silent retreat is enabling.  In another place he mentions how noisy hospitals are, with machines buzzing and beeping or people's footsteps and voices continuing.  Busy people are unaware.  But it inhibits the feeling of safety that calms patients.

Traditional religion, like massive stone buildings with very high ceilings, promote quiet and a feeling of safety.  The harmonics of ritual chants might be reassuring. If it works, a person feels protected in this place as a context of safety.  But some might have an apprehensive feelings of being unwanted and vulnerable, maybe asked to leave.  It might be strange.

COMPASSION THROUGH RITUAL (Part Three)

Vagal Brake: A Mechanism to Contain Emotional Reactivity

The evolving mutation from reptiles to mammals included a shift in the control of the heart rate to a myelinated branch of the vagus nerve.  (Remember that some consider the lungs and heart to be one organ.)  The effect was something like replacing an on/off switch with a rheostat, capable of modulation on a spectrum and much more nimble.

"The myelinated vagus provided a mechanism to rapidly and efficiently regulate visceral organs to foster calm prosocial behaviors and psychological and physical health."

"The hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis is our central stress response system. The HPA axis is an eloquent and very-dynamic intertwining of the central nervous system and endocrine system. ... The HPA axis is responsible for the neuroendocrine adaptation component of the stress response."  Oversimplifying, the HPA axis is felt by a person as emotion and can "catch" emotion from others.  It is involved with what Porges kindly calls "defensive" behavior, but what I might call "bar fight berzerk."  That is, emotion out of control, sometimes a result of trauma.  When the proper vagus control works, the raging person can be talked down.  Possibly even calm down.

In less dramatic circumstances, using breathing and other ways to calm down, self control allows the person to keep relating to other people instead of smashing the bar mirrors.  Script writers have picked up on this and we often hear characters advise each other to "take deep breaths" in a crisis.  Schools have not provided instruction for this in a systematic way.

The HPA axis is an endocrine system, working by global molecules that circulate through the whole body.  The organs operate with unmyelinated nerves normally, but also can be reached by the vagal myelinated and brain-connected messages.  I don't know of studies, but suspect that poor mental and nutritional factors can suppress the action of the vagal system.  Not only does this suppress the survival value for individuals but also it means that evolution in those settings will favor violence as a means of survival.

The Face-Heart Connection: The Emergence of the Social Engagement System

Only recently have we admitted the importance and operations of emotion, much less felt it was the business of formal education, but plainly our society is in dire need of this knowledge in a divided and frustrated world.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-manage-your-coronavirus-anxiety-11583424434?mod=wsjtwittertest19

This is an attempt to engage the brain by describing steps that are being taken to address coronavirus.  Of course there is anxiety and it is justified, but it helps to know what is being done.  Keeping people in the dark makes them paranoid, separated from each other, and emotionally vulnerable.

The regulation by the rheostat-like myelinated vagal motor pathways acts like a cardiac pacemaker.  It's called the "sino-atrial node" and it can calm  and actually reduce stress by dampening the HPA axis, reducing cortisol, and reducing inflammation by modulating cytokines.

In addition to these effects, part of the myelinated vagus connects to the muscles of the face and head.  I read about Lucy Maude Montgomery's face being paralyzed on one side when she was overwhelmed by her duties.  When I was interning with the Hartford UU Church and preaching there for the first time, my face went out of control, jerking and grimacing.  The same thing happened once when I officiated at a particularly moving wedding.  It's called "Bell's Palsy."  I had a very weak version.  It can be recognized by others and calmed if they "keep their cool."  This is the evolved advantage.

The expression on one's face indicates to others whether it is safe to approach or whether it would be better to keep some distance until what is happening is more clear.  In the best of circumstances, the person who is not affected can be reassuring by talking or even singing as a mother sings to a child.  I once knew a high school counselor who had been arrested in the Detroit riots and when held in a jail full of raging people, but he restored some calm by promoting singing.  Since most of the people were Black with a tradition of group singing to stay calm and in control, it worked pretty well

"Social communication and the ability to co-regulate another, via reciprocal social engagement systems, leads to a sense of connectedness, which is a defining feature of the human experience".  As well as human compassion.  I would add that it also works on domestic and esp. companion mammals like dogs or horses, who can also calm and comfort humans.

The importance of the polyvagal theory is that it shows that physiological state IS mood and emotion and is bidirectionally integrated with brain along with viscera.  "As individuals change their facial expressions, the intonation of their voices, the pattern in which they are breathing, and the shifts of their posture, they are also changing their physiology."  This is what actors know and do, particularly those working with the "method" which uses memories to recapture physiological states that can subtly show in performance.  The roots of memory physiology go back to the original care giver, usually the mother, who works to prevent panic in an infant whose brain is not old enough to provide self-talk or control the HPA function.  The caregiver supplies the calming rituals: rocking, singing, babytalk, kissing, feeding, cleaning.  In adulthood these persist, often connected to sex, like showering or bathing together.  Maybe formally as in tantric sex.

When the castle or convent is under attack, one goes to the chapel to pray in order to stay calm.  I don't know what it means that so many young people are comforted by loud, rhythmic, defiant music.  Maybe that reflects the households that produced them, so it's familiar.  Or maybe the ritual of the young is dependent on extreme movement and sensory challenge like "raves".

COMPASSION THROUGH RITUAL (Part One)

This is notes and discussion of one of the essays by Stephen W. Porges that he considers key to his thought.  I had put it aside until later because it includes his experience of the practices in India -- which in my mind get entangled with charlatans like the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his cult in Antelope, Oregon. I admit this is unfair.  As well, he begins with a discussion of compassion and empathy, both of which are problematic terms in my opinion.

Here's a link to the actual article so you can see for yourself.  Then I'll outline and discuss.  https://www.embodiedphilosophy.com/ancient-rituals-contemplative-practices-and-vagal-pathways/

In the past I've read and high-lighted this article, but I think I need to make a very close reading that will stick tighter to my brain.

ABSTRACT

"Contemplative practices are conceptualized as methods that function as neural exercises enhancing vagal regulation of the autonomic nervous system.". . . "The model emphasizes that . . . contemplative practices must be performed in a context defined by physical features that are calming and soothing and promote feelings of safely."

I relate this to the material on how to create a liminal space, both the making of the "limen" or entry and the qualities of the entered "room" which may be either concrete or virtual.

MORE DISCUSSION:

"Compassion has been viewed as an action, a feeling, an emotion, a motivation, and a temperament."  This is confusing.

"Compassion is an emergent process dependent on one's neurophysiological state. . . physiological state functions as an intervening variable between the person who is suffering and the responses to the person, which are manifested as the subjective experiences and behavioral actions that form operational definitions of compassion."  This is Porges.

In other words, "compassion" is what you DO.  My cynical attitude toward the concept is that in my family I am not told major developments, even deaths, because it would "worry" me.  This shuts me out.  They are secretive to protect themselves from me.  When I find out, I'm hardly compassionate!

Porges distinguishes compassion, which is a "vagal-mediated physiological state, from empathy which some people confuse with compassion."  His distinction is based on neural pathways: empathy arises from "feeling someone else's pain or negative emotion", which is a feature of the sympathetic nervous system.  NOT the vagus nerve, a "third" nerve system, or fourth if one counts the enteric (guts).

[Review from the computer:  "The autonomic nervous system is divided into three parts: the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system and the enteric nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls smooth muscle of the viscera (internal organs) and glands."]

["Sympathetic nervous system stimulation causes vasoconstriction of most blood vessels, including many of those in the skin, the digestive tract, and the kidneys. This occurs as a result of activation of alpha-1 adrenergic receptors by norepinephrine released by post-ganglionic sympathetic neurons."]

"The autonomic response to pain is characterized by a withdrawal of vagal influences and an activation of the sympathetic nervous system"  The idea is that no matter how similar the two concepts may seem when based on introspection, the physiological difference has strong implications.

"The physiological state mediated by vagal pathways is not equivalent to compassion.  Rather, it is a state that promotes or facilitates feelings of safety, positive feelings towards others, connectedness, and the potential to respect both the suffering and joy of others."  This is a rather Asian valuing of calm that rejects the Western "ecstatic" state that invites transcendence.

The vagal inhibition of this aroused and sometimes violent state so as to achieve calm (sometimes described as "cool" or "chill") allows witnessing without judgement.  It helps to actually do something about suffering.  If the suffering person is not judged nor joined, they can express what they feel.  If one tries to help but the help is not successful, the result may be impatient anger on the part of the helper and increased suffering and resentment on the part of the helpee so that compassion dissolves.  This may be the dynamic in my family.

In short, how does one extend oneself to help others without losing one's self.  There is also an element in here about getting physiologically hooked on "helping" as a source of emotional arousal and reward.  This is probably what happened to Mother Theresa who had money that could have fed and medicated babies, but withheld it so that they continued suffering, which she seems to have thought of as virtuous though she herself did not suffer.  This could be defined in SM terms as torture, which is sometimes an element of institutional religion.

VAGAL STATES ARE INTERTWINED WITH THE HISTORY OF CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES

The practices in question include:  chants, prayers, meditation, dance, and posture which "have provided the behavioral platform for contemplative practices."  ". . . rituals are functional exercises of vagal pathways."  "This is not the same as the narratives of institutional religions which are "attempts to fulfill the human need to create meaning out of uncertainty and to understand the unknowable mysteries of the human experience in a dynamically changing and challenging world."  Contemplative practices are about individuals, an effective way to support health.  Religious narratives are about community identity and cohesion.  

But achieving compassion through meditation can lead to the feeling of universal connection among all beings that is often a part of transcendent moments.  Empathy and compassion can evidently co-occur under some circumstances, largely dependent (according to Porges) on one's personal safety so as to prevent the interference of having to save oneself because of being terrified.

In the recently publicized experiments in which a rat is trapped with no way to get out, but a rat nearby and free has access to a latch to open the trap and uses it to release the trapped rat, it's notable that it's the free rat who takes action.  It could just walk off, but it uses empathy to know the how the trapped rat feels and then compassion to motivate it to find the latch and use it.  One can apply this to our current politics in which releasing people from their traps ought to cause politicians to find the latch that will set them free.  They seem to prefer their constituents to be trapped.

MORE TOMORROW

A WAY TO FEEL SAFE

This linked hour-long interview with Dr. Stephen Porges explains what I've come to accept about his work as key to my focus.  This is the clearest version I've found so far and one of the most recent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=27&v=NPaj3QgcyAU&feature=emb_logo

The interview was conducted by Dr. David Perceli who sponsors an exercise technique system for bodies under stress.  He seems to have a clear head and not be too New Agey.  I am NOT a fan of exercise in an old house with cold floors. (Fourteen below Zero forecasted this weekend.)

Porges mentioned his own essay:  "Ancient Rituals, Contemplative Practices and Vagal Pathways" in Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science so I downloaded it from the Internet and am working my way through it.  Since I've been thinking along this line in the context of searching for the Sacred, I was startled that in this instance one context is the touchy issue of Compassion, which I often find a little, um, icky and an excuse for some to be patronizing.  Like, nurses, for instance, who address us with terms of affection as though we were children.  "I'm so loving that you must do what I say."

Beyond that, TRE appears to be a technique, actual physical exercises, meant to address trauma.  I have not thought of myself in terms of trauma.  I think of myself the way my mother (the farm girl raised to be as good as a boy) thought of herself:  tough, capable, resourceful, compensating for others who weren't much help . . . but then I began to think about the times she hit her limits.  And the times that I did, too.  I thought about all the times I did dangerous, life-threatening, difficult, semi-heroic things without ever admitting they were traumatic or getting any help recovering.  Suck it up, get it done, it's your job.  Why are you being such a co-dependent anyway?

Long before the Iron Maiden Manhattan CEO's in movies, there was the farm wife.  Kari Lynn Dell, who writes cowboy romances as well as a weekly column about being a ranch wife in a rodeo family.  She lives not far from here.  I forwarded one of her weekly columns about coping with major machinery breakdowns, extraordinarily severe weather, and big wayward animals to a friend in Calgary.  My Canadian friend had had her experiences with rural life, but she exclaimed,  "I have NEVER been faced challenges as major as hers!"  Yet Dell would probably not consider herself a victim of PTSD.  Around here we associate that with combat. It's sort of a proof of the essential deep vulnerability of men, little boys who must be protected by loving women.

So I had to google to find out about TRE.  https://traumaprevention.com/what-is-tre/   "Tension & Trauma Release Exercises (or TRE®) is a simple yet innovative series of exercises that assist the body in releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension and trauma. Created by Dr. David Berceli, PhD, TRE safely activates a natural reflex mechanism of shaking or vibrating that releases muscular tension, calming down the nervous system. When this muscular shaking/vibrating mechanism is activated in a safe and controlled environment, the body is encouraged to return back to a state of balance."  Indeed, the young man doing the demonstration exercise was shaking.

The idea is more about prevention and maintenance than about "healing," which has become a bit of a racket.  This is where Dr. Porges' theory comes in.  His explanation has a kind of dignity to it.  In a tough environment where roles are hard, being vulnerable is dangerous.  I see in this small town that certain people will bully anyone who lets down their guard or is having hard times.  Poverty is permission to punish.

I was pleased to hear Dr. Porges say that "helping" is often an excuse for aggression and forced compliance to some norm.  A woman from the city moved here and volunteered to be a court helper for delinquent kids, many of them tribal.  She had no understanding of rez norms, so tried to force them to stop smoking, fighting,  sleeping around, drinking, driving broken cars, etc.  The kids begged the court to let them escape her bullying.

The word that was thrown around a bit in this interview vid was "spirituality," which Dr. Porges admitted was not a satisfactory word. The subjects that are thrown into religion have not been thought about this way before.  We didn't even know that body parts were involved, much less which they were.  The central idea that TRE welcomed was how we can use our organic selves to find relief from danger, to feel safe in the face of threats, to re-write our narrative of the world and to extend our justified and supported belonging to it.

This fits with my idea of the shift away from Christianity's use of the human family as the system guide for the nature of the universe, proposing the big Papa in the sky, either protective or disciplining; the loving mother; and the hero son.  Today's science gives us a continuous, interconnected, all-inclusive web of existence -- both living and not -- that extends in every aspect beyond human perception but never excludes us.  We are always part of time and place, even in death.  We haven't really learned to feel this except in some Eastern religions.  "Star Wars" is still more about families than about interrelationship.

We are reinventing the narrative of our lives.  For the most part, participation is relief from danger in the sense that others will help.  But I see some problems.  Porthes said in the interview that the SEALS -- Special Forces -- at some point actually drown the newcomer and then revive him, to show him deeply that he can risk danger because the others will save him.  This example worries me, particularly given Gallagher, the SEAL recently pardoned by President Trump after murdering innocents, evidently interpreted this to mean NOT that he was included in a special group, but that anyone outside that group was valueless, could be eliminated.  

In that example, the team tried to prevent murder and formally accused the killer.  He was convicted.  In a way they WERE saving him.  From his worst self.  No one is preventing from their worst selves the political hard right so full of hatred and resentment.  They are killers.  Having found a group that will accept and defend them, they set up a boundary that justifies murder.  Trump agrees with this. 

It makes me tremble, but not because I feel safe.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, "LOVE"?

The first time I heard about oxytocin, it was from James Herriot telling about using it as an injection to help a pig who was trying to give birth.  It worked and he was very pleased.  Dunno how the pig felt about it.  But I "love" this relationship with oxytocin because it is so down to earth.  Er, mud.

Aside from the industry of "love", which like religion promotes the idea that it is some transcendent other-worldly uncontrollable emotional state that some call "limerence" and others call "falling in love," we begin to see that love is a neuropeptide called oxytocin and maybe vasopressin.  The evidence is a little rodent called a "vole" which looks like a fat tail-less mouse.  Ever so conveniently, one variation is a faithful family man and the other is a rover.  They separate according to habitat (homebodies on the prairie, chancers on the mountain) which means that there is something about each ,mutation that is an advantage where they live, but also means that they are ideal for studying this ineffable but often fuckable distinction.

"A social bond is a hypothetical construct of adaptive, relatively enduring processes characterized by proximity seeking between partners, a preference for the partner, stress upon separation from the partner, and the cessation of the stress response at reunion."  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5308882/

As the pig knows, there is a transition here between the first "love," which is inclusion, as quite literally inclusion in the mother, which becomes exclusion at birth.  But since infants need mothers even when they are outside mom, the new kind of love that had to be present for the sake of mammal survival is attachment.  Invisibly, piglets are attached to mom.  It's not just as a source of food and warmth, as we have seen with the monkey experiments, infants need cuddling.

"Although pair bonds are most evident in industrialized societies that primarily adopt monogamous life strategies, they occur across all human societies, as do parent-offspring attachments." Ibid.  In some ways the pair bond between the two parents (pair-ents) is more important than that between mother and babies, since the survival of the family is enhanced by a functioning dad.  If the offspring are lost somehow, the pair can make more.  To study monogamous family solidarity, it is necessary to study marmosets and tamarins, predecessors of primates.  This is evidently one of the species-linked evolutions about neuropeptides enabled something that improved the lives of the creatures.  Maybe there's a clue in that these animals live in trees and are active at night.  But once the scientists found the chemical molecules in voles, they were too fascinated to ask why being monogamous would make life better for a prairie vole, or the converse -- why is living in the mountains better for a male free agent?  This line of thought is highly relevant in a "post-industrial" age when a lot of dads fail to bond or even to pick up the check.  Evidently modern life is rocky.

Mutations that become evolutions are always additive and do not knock out the previous genome.  So the capacity to bond, even only temporarily for reproduction, is always on top of the reptilian impulse to compete, destroy, and eat even the previously created infants.  Tomcats and grizzly bears kill their offspring, unless the mother prevents them.  The same is sometimes true of humans, depending on the failure of a number of small but effective later mutations that prevent indiscriminate violence.  

Porges faces this, which makes him very valuable in modern societies where it seems either that the protective mutations weren't passed on, or cultural factors have erased or weakened them.  Opposed to oxytocin is not some fancy new drug, but just ordinary alcohol.  It lessens the resistance to sex on the one hand and makes it more overwhelmingly aggressive on the other.  (Both sexes.)  Not only is this problematic for the born child too small to defend itself, but also it distorts the "inclusion" during gestation.  These deformations persist into the attachments later, even in adults if they live that long.  One of the distortions is lust without love.  That is, reproduction without attachment.  Without the protective impulse of the proper nucleopeptides, lust can slide to murder.

Much of this behavior is controlled and communicated through smell, the earliest and possibly most powerful of the senses.  Also, day length is relevant, and territoriality is characteristic.  Once voles are bonded, they only tolerate family.  Consider these things in the life of a police officer attempting to keep order at night in territories that are not his.  Places that stink.

"Differences in parental behavior received by pups (i.e., high contact vs. low contact parenting styles) are associated with altered social and alloparental behaviors displayed by those pups during their adolescence.. Furthermore, offspring raised by single mothers demonstrate lower levels of spontaneous parental behavior, delayed partner preference formation, and altered anxiety-like behaviors in adulthood, compared to those reared by both parents, further demonstrating the importance of biparental environment for the normal development of the offspring." Ibid.

Inability to attach prevents even choosing a mate, much less sticking with one or remaining monogamous.  The ability to attach means that likely the ability to maintain stability in spite of anxiety or outright trauma.  This ability in humans is highly dependent on the relationship between baby and carer, which begins with providing milk while maintaining eye contact, progresses from sucking to babbling in response to babytalk and then mirroring.  This concentrated attention to each other opens between them a "virtual" space, that is, a shared concept space that isn't actual but is "real" to the two people.  Some call it play and others call it liminal.  It is a mental/emotional construct, the kernel of what some call spirituality, and the source of cultural sharing.  It is what makes us human.

Separation of pair-bonds, as in removing infants from mothers at the Mexican border, throws the individuals into insanity.  The growing liminal space is destroyed, possibly for life. It is a murder.  This is as true for the men who have attached to their children (the "prairie voles") as for the "mountain voles".  We are creating men who take risks and have nothing to lose.  Many of the guards are the same kind of men created in US circumstances.  Their bars are loud and contentious.  The safeguards against reptilian violence are being removed.  Nice suburban ladies objecting to kids in cages are simply not relevant.  Any industrialized sow could tell them.

A POCKET GUIDE TO FEELING SAFE

Working my way through "The Pocket Guide to The Polyvagal Theory: the Transformative Power of Feeling Safe" is becoming transformative. Cousins tell me they have never felt really safe and I accepted that and looked for some reason in their history.  Pretty easy to find in every background.  But I turned away fear with belligerence and obstinacy, as did my mother.  Then again, sometimes laughter or just being elsewhere, maybe a locked bedroom.

The third chapter is called "Self-Regulation and Social Engagement."  When I deal with these issues, I use writing for the first and withdrawal for the second.  Both work in the moment, but not long-term.  This is what disables me as a minister.  One more committee meeting that takes my blood pressure up, one more pot luck where I must praise things I don't much like, and I'm outta there.  But there is always someone trailing me and grasping my coat tail to make me stay and take care of them, which I don't want to do.  Mess.

The rules here, based on scientific inquiry, are as follows:

Safety must be achieved before there can be learning, healing or growth.

Safety comes from interaction with others through the neural pathways of social support.

The presenting locus of taking in safety from others is the social frame of the face, voice, and upper body (heart and breath). Understanding is returned the same way.

This process is key to being human and those who can't do it will be in distress, malfunctioning and afraid.

Because this is not understood by the medical profession, their work is often done in settings that prevent success: noisy, chilly, unexplained, rushed and yet imposing long waits, sometimes painful.  Dr. Porges explains by telling us his experience in a first MRI contact when he panicked though he understood what was happening and had human support.  Many people have a similar experience with the close quarters and pounding noise. In addition, reacting cognition in the body is sub-conscious and uncontrollable.  Finally he had to have medication to keep from running out of the room.  At parties many of us need to be a little drunk, because our very tissue senses potential danger, even among friends.

Another very bad consequence of not understanding this is the nature of vital clinics for things like HIV.  Events tend to be brisk, inconvenient, hostile, and dirty.  Mostly the fault is the shortage of money due to continuing social stigma trying to punish, but learning to provide safety through one's social engagement abilities doesn't cost anything.  If we are trying to convince people who are already terrified to come in for treatment, this is driving them away instead.  In a culture that considers compassion to be "pussy", the staff in such a place feels justified in their cold behavior.  In fact, they feel aggrieved at doing the work, taking on and reinforcing the stigma.

For a long time I've understood that eyes are focussed by tiny muscles pulling on the lens in order to change its shape which controls focus but gets more resistant in middle age, requiring bifocals and reading glasses.  I did not understand that the ear drum is also changed in its tenseness by tiny muscles.  The result is again a change in focus, increasing or reducing intelligibility.  Since so much of human relationship is delivered by voice, blurred hearing interferes with reassuring words and what Dr. Porgas calls "prosody," the melody and enunciation of words.  It's possible that hearing aid vendors are encouraging the idea of deafness without taking this aspect into consideration.  It may also be that this young generation's attachment to music is an unconscious self-management with instrumental or singing prosody.

As I write, a PBS story about countering school shootings came on.  It is plainly working on the older idea that the autonomic system focuses on fight or flight. There is no acknowledgement of near-unconscious paralysis.  Nor did they speak of team spirit, though that was in the background.  The story explodes the discussion about violence and fear far beyond a setting of deliberate attention to one-on-one work.  But the latter is still an entry point, for survivors if no one else and with those stuck in PTSD even after competence and effectiveness has made them safe.  Even those deadly shooters insane with emotion and countering fear with deadly aggression can possibly be led to safety.

These are cultural factors, but culture can respond to research.  I should make a note here that every time one of these blogs expresses distress of my own, people write to reassure/suppress me.  It hooks concern and makes it personal, thereby diminishing it.  I should make it clear that this post is about the SOLUTION, not the PROBLEM.  This line of thought works.

There are two common displacements that will ask for more work for people who are hurting.  One is the solution of techies and engineers who let objects with no emotions and no response take the place of real people who can interact.  The other is the bureaucratic response of slapping on a label, dumping the case in a bucket, and considering that the victims have been dealt with, though it's not even a beginning of a relationship.  My own blogging so much could be challenged, except for the many conversations in my head, memories of interaction.  Still, if I were helping someone, I'd encourage them otherwise.

Nearing eighty, print is more real to me than people.  Growing up, no one explained anything.  They just gave me a book to read.  So I knew how to use this book -- had to learn this polyvagal theory.  Porges says, "For these people, social behavior is disruptive and not supportive."  But he worries that when the two things are taken together, labeling combined with relating to objects instead of people, the result is damaging to children at a minimum, everyone to some degree.  

When people need and ask for help from others, the first step is achieving safety in the place and together with the helpers. A complication is that "help" implies to many people that they have failed, done something wrong, so that idea has to be dealt with and removed.  This is not easy.  Terror of other people interfering, guards put up to distract and block them, all of it unconscious and not where it can be reasoned away, is like Porges fearing the MRI -- it took drugs to get him in there.  Likewise, it takes drugs to get some people into relationship.  But it would be better without them.

Luckily, people generate internal drugs through experience. One of the most effective molecules is oxytocin, originally welcomed into the DNA because it kept women from rejecting their infant, a foreign object.  This is part of the evolution from reptiles, who lay eggs, to mammals, who grow babies in their guts.  I want to use another whole post to talk about Dr. Porges' wife's research on that molecule allowing human attachment, the key to trust and safety.  Sue Carter is brilliant.  Her understanding of what protects gestation, is also the key to humans around the campfire reassuring each other enough to work together.  Otherwise we might just kill and eat each other, as though we were all mass shooters.