At a recent workshop in St. Louis, I was brought again to the transcultural nature of trauma and consciousness. A participant working with Bosnian refugees, many who experienced torture, was contemplating the application of The Core Integrity Model to that population. In our discussion, we explored how interventions could be adapted to those survivors. The most obvious difficulties were language, cultural differences in explaining the phenomenology, and means of working with translators who themselves were survivors. The therapist was quite excited to explore and adapt the interventions to facilitate therapy. Therapists like this individual are who Heartland Initiative exists to serve.
Each workshop introduces us to more dedicated therapists like you. Whatever your work context, we want you to know that we have the greatest regard for you and your clients. Consider Heartland Institute for your training in trauma treatment. You will find that modalities like hypnosis and EMDR can be incorporated Into the treatment process and even further when these approaches are contraindicated.
Those of you who are using "The Core Integrity Model, Interventions for Extreme Trauma" continue to report successes on behalf of survivors who are reclaiming their lives and thriving. If you are only learning of Heartland for the first time, we welcome you to our network of training and consultation. I am sure you will find it helpful for clients that have been through many modalities and remain stuck in their healing. The Core Integrity Model will also provide you a road map through the treatment process, while supporting the highest level of functioning for the client.
We would invite you to participate in any of the following ways: sign up for the quarterly newsletter; attend a workshop; visit the resource center; utilize our consultation services; and/or, support Heartland financially.
In the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, on March 7, 2003, a major diocean leader, Monsignor James Barta commented on the lawsuits against priests who were sexual predators. One Dubuque survivor became incensed at his remarks and wrote the following editorial response. She demonstrated great courage by the inclusion of her name to the article. The name is withheld from this web-based newsletter for her protection.
As a person who experienced clergy sexual abuse as a young child, I would like to respond to Monsignor James Barta, who was quoted in the Telegraph Herald on March 7, 2003 as saying, "What good does it do to talk about the sins of priests who are dead?"
A direct answer to his question: It puts a public name to the terrors I fight weekly in church settings. It demystifies those terrors and lets them be assigned to one man rather than a generic group of men "ordained by God." I no longer have to first struggle through a fog of negative emotions about myself, other people, and the world, but am able to see clearly the goodness in people who are not this man or those who knew and condoned his actions.
It tells me in the deepest parts of my being that he was wrong in what he did and society as a whole will not tolerate it. Rather than feeling cast out by a society that embraces this man, it welcomes me back.
It tells me I was not singled out because of some flaw in me. It tells me this man also injured others in the same way and that they also bear the scars and continue the same struggle. It tells me that my life matters as much as that of the person who did this.
Perhaps what I find most important, it allows me to release all of this. I need no longer carry the memories in solitary isolation inside myself. They are now a matter of public record and can be seen by anybody. The memories may now reside in the past.
This article is not to be copied or duplicated by any means, nor to be disseminated without the specific consent of the author! (March 16, 2003)
As the teacher supervised the kindergartners on the playground, Johnny socked Susie. Confronting Johnny with the incident brought the response, "I didn't hit Susie." "But I saw you hit her," replied the teacher. Johnny's answer was, "No I didn't; my hand did." Dissociation is behavior frequently manifest in young children as a means of dealing with intense circumstances.
Avoiding punishment or embarrassment is just one context in which children utilize this mechanism. In temporizing a highly stressful context like a chaotic home life, the mind protects the child by going inward mentally to a place far from the outside screaming and chaos. And yet another context is that of a child experiencing overwhelming physical pain; like the child who pulls the pan of boiling water off the stove and is burned.
This natural mental defense is used from childhood on to adulthood, the mind thereby protecting us through overwhelming events. The events of September 11, 2001 are often reported by survivors with a sense of detachment and a minimal amount of emotion indicating the survivor's mind still protecting to varying degrees. The same can be true for survivors of accidents or natural disasters.
What then is relevant for us to know about dissociation? The physical immune system, depleted by illness, can leave you run down and not able to function to your potential. Medical intervention allows us to return to a desired quality of life. Understanding the mind's immune system is crucial for us to know how to return to thriving after the mind has had to protect in highly stressful, traumatic events.
The mind's dissociative defense ultimately protects our Core self. (The Core self is defined as the person who was born into the body; who is the age of the body; whose life and identity it is; and who deals with present day life. In other words the real person who we are.) The mind's dissociative defense develops mechanisms of encapsulating, personifying, differentiating, transitioning, and organizing to protect the Core self. Which of these mechanisms evolve is determined by the age of onset, the intensity, and the frequency of traumatic stress.
Encapsulating is the mechanism by which the mind holds a traumatic experience prior to 32 months of age. Encapsulation at that developmental stage is sensorimotor in nature and is held as primitive feelings and experienced sensations. The encapsulation further assists the Core self at that age to "put away" the trauma so that he/she can continue to relate to the immediate external world. This mechanism is active until such time as it is safe enough to address the trauma.
Using the example of a burn trauma, the encapsulation of the pain sensations may be observed during medical intervention by the child's initial pain and fear reactions, then a spaced out look, and then the child whimpering at its conclusion. Soon the child will interact and be playful as if the trauma hadn't happened, until reminded by reexperiencing pain.
Personifying occurs after 32 months of age when the child has language and begins to concretize his/her world. Recent studies from the University of Chicago indicate that this is when normative (non-trauma) experience of memory and recall begins. Normative concretization allows the Core self to assign meaning to people, places, and things. As a social being, at this stage, the child's internal world is a reflection of the external social world. Internal consciousness involves the components of behavior, affect, sensation, knowledge, and volition that match the external.
In the occurrence of trauma, the mind protects with a "not me" persona that holds the encapsulation to keep the Core self dynamically separate from the trauma. The Core self creates and perceives internally this identity (persona, part, ego state, etc.) who holds the consciousness of the traumatic event as separate from the Core self. Thus, an immunity from the trauma experience is provided the Core self. Because the mind seeks order, encapsulations of trauma experiences prior to 32 months are personified at that time to be held until trauma resolution can take place.
It is important to keep in mind that in personification, parts that are created have specific jobs that are dictated by the social contexts. For example, Core self is protected from family trauma by parts who relate to perpetrators in the manner required by them. Dysfunctional families have expectations of the child in public settings. A part who holds the knowledge of the parents' public expectations will blend with the Core self to assure right behavior and avoid punishment.
Differentiating takes place normatively as the child recognizes the boundaries between the internal world of the mind and the external social world. The development of that awareness allows the child to access and hold information inside the mind and to be able to tell it apart from external experiences. This differentiation is unremarkable and taken for granted in normative development.
But, in the case of a trauma survivor, the mind concretizes a nexus at the point where the boundaries of internal process and external experience meet. The nexus is defined as where the internal mind and the external world interact, where past and present meet, and where mind and body connect. A nexus is necessary to differentiate which part(s) is(are) to help the Core self with the context of external events. When the child's internal personification system reaches a certain size, the nexus maintains order as a place of consciousness in the mind where communication occurs.
Survivors know this as a "blending place" where parts and the Core self interact with the external world. This "in-between place" is a major concept that is missing in the literature of trauma. This phenomenology that survivors report is a crucial dynamic in the understanding and treatment of trauma. As survivors report symptoms, they are describing what is happening in the nexus of consciousness. Interventions that address what is up in the nexus bring about stabilization or trauma resolution quickly.
The nexus phenomenology is observable in a non- traumatized person like the case of the daydreamer. He hears the teacher call his name even though he is staring out the window and is miles away in a mentally perceived place. The teacher's voice brings him consciously back to the present circumstances. The response to the external is a mental "about face" in the mind. Depending on how far away he had gone would mitigate the time taken in responding to the external stimuli.
Transitioning as a normative dynamic is not as observable as in the case of trauma. It is logical to assume its presence in a non-traumatized person. What leads to the need for a mechanism of transition is the size of the system of parts and the need for internal order and control. Parts do jobs for the Core self by blending with him/her in the nexus or "blending place".
When the system size becomes unwieldy, a third dynamic comes in to play to prevent chaos within the mind. A part is created to do the job of bringing the right parts to the nexus to blend with the Core self or to be present in her/his stead. This part "bridges" between the internal and external world. Hypnosis has long referred to the "observer" or "observing mind" which alludes to this specific part.
The Bridge part is present in the nexus to provide vigilance, continuity, and transition. The Bridge part is aware of both the Outside parts and Inside parts and where to find them in the mind. Upon finding them, they are brought forward to be available to do their job. Because the Bridge part remains in the nexus, it also provides continuity and awareness of time.
For example, the therapist working with trauma survivors has seen times when an Outside part is present who will answer a question about time with a response oriented to the past. The reported date differs from the session date. This is a rare occasion because the Bridge part will fill in parts to give the appropriate time-related information. This leads the therapist without knowledge of dissociation to believe that the client is correctly oriented in time. This is one of the accommodations made for survival's sake by the mind to pass as "normal".
Compartmentalizing is the final dynamic that the mind makes to immunize the Core self. This is a process that also has a normative base. As the child's life experiences and knowledge increase, the mind uses the external social reality to concretized and organize the internal self-system. This organization is represented by a natural introjection of a social landscape as an organized matrix of memory.
An example from a non-traumatized person is the individual who was trying to remember information about an incident in childhood to share with a friend. She reported dreaming that night of walking through an apartment building, a house, and a yard with a workshop in a city. While exploring one of the rooms, the memory came to mind. On recounting the dream, she realized that she had been exploring her grandparents' apartments that stood behind their home.
The dream represented her matrix and the memory she sought was found in the location on the property where the event happened. One could say the phenomenology of a normative recall came from a search of the matrix of the past. This was her systemic means to organize her mind. The observer role in the dream as she walked through the property was the Core self blending with her Bridge part.
In the case of trauma, the matrix is even more compartmentalized. Parts of self are seen in the structure as compartmentalized by job, context, and time. A closet, for example, in the childhood bedroom where the survivor was locked in darkness for days without food, represents the compartment where the part can be found. If as an adult, she were to visit a cave and the lights were turned out, the Bridge part would go into the matrix and find a part who had a parallel experience. That part would come into the nexus to blend with the Core self to get through the experience. The Core self would at the same time be experiencing the consciousness of the part that is blending. Her experience would be sensations of hunger, emotions of terror and loneliness, behavioral urge to curl up on the ground, and thoughts of not being cared about or wanted. All these phenomena are components of the memory brought forward with the blending part.
An exception to a social matrix needs to be mentioned. Some survivors report a matrix of memory that is not a concretized social structure. Rather they perceive the mind's matrix as a linear structure (like a Rubik's Cube). That non-human structure can be indicative of a trauma in which the self-system was to organize according to external directives as in the case of mind control. Such a dynamic takes executive control away from the Core self and her/his system. Conditioning to respond according to external expectations of certain authority figures becomes the purpose. This does not respect the freedom for one to have ownership of one's own mind. Treatment will address this and allow the mind to organize as desired.
Dissociation is an important dynamic to comprehend when treating survivors of trauma. The natural immunity that the dynamic provides the mind and self allows people to continue to function beyond the trauma. However, like the physical immune system, chronic demands can wear down the resilience of the mind. Recognizing the chronic use of dissociation from unresolved trauma, applying these concepts related to the survivor's experience, and utilizing the process as an intervention will facilitate the mind's ability to recover from the most extreme traumatic history.
We are beginning our fourth 2 year cycle of training in The Core Integrity Model, Interventions for Extreme Trauma.
This model is unique in that it addresses trauma phenomenology based on the recent research in consciousness within the recognized standard of care. The application of the dynamics of consciousness to trauma which was illustrated in the above article is a powerful component of healing. By maintaining an adult self, in the present, survivors are able to continue to function while healing from backgrounds of extreme trauma.
Qualified participants are any licensed mental health professional, clergy, educator, or law enforcement person who have training and experience in work with trauma survivors. Many of our participants are members of International Societies for the Study of Dissociation (ISSD) or Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS), American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH), or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing International Association (EMDRIA).
Participants receive training valued at $800 per each two day workshop. As a qualified and licensed professional, you can receive the training for $200 per weekend. The difference in costs are met by donors who wish to support the Heartland mission. You and your clients are the beneficiaries of their generosity and concern for survivors.
We invite you to participate in our introductory session.
Unit 1. Healing the Core Self: the relevance of 20th century consciousness research to 21st century trauma therapy. When: June 6 & 7, 2003 Where: Heartland Inn conference room, 3315 Southgate, Ct. SW, Cedar Rapids, Iowa Lodging: Call Heartland Inn and mention the Workshop to receive a discount. (800) 334-3277 Fees: $200 (meals on own) CEU's: 13 hours (Iowa Boards of Social Work and Mental Health Counseling) Currently, CEU's are accepted from these Licensure Boards in most states. Certification from national professsional boards are applied for and pending.
Note: Advanced training for prior attendees
When: June 14, 2003 Where: Heartland Institute, 20 East 13th, Dubuque, Iowa Fees: $100 (meals on own) CEU's: 6.5 hours
Heartland Initiative was incorporated in Iowa as a non-profit in March, 2002. Our IRS application for Heartland Initiative, Inc. to qualify for 501.c3 status was submitted on December 27, 2003. We were informed that the determination and number would be received by April 30. At that time donors will receive a tax-deductible receipt from Heartland Initiative, Inc. We do thank those who have donated to date without concern for the tax-deduction and are waiting in good faith for the IRS determination.
— Teaching others about CORE SELF: our authentic identity —