Posted by Daisym on November 15, 2008, at 20:36:31
In reply to Re: Is this another way therapy rewires brains? » lucie lu, posted by antigua3 on November 15, 2008, at 14:39:40
Ahem...clears her throat. I spent today with Dr. Daniel Siegel who wrote "The Developing Mind" and "Parenting from the Inside Out." I will try to do some justice to what he lectured on. He is an incredible speaker - very accessible and I suspect, a very good psychiatrist. I also suspect you don't want to hear all about the peptides and gabba cells...
One of the key things he talked about was how attachment allows integration between the right brain and the left brain. Our auto-biographical narrative is found in the right brain (a surprise finding) and our ability to articulate our own story in a coherent fashion is on the left brain. When we think about attachment, it is an organizing principle - we make choices in life based on our underlying attachment experiences. This is true if you are securely attached, if you are avoidantly attached and even if you are ambivalently attached. But if you have a disorganized attachment, it gets in the way of your narrative recall.
Which is probably why early in therapy for you, Lucie, you could "see" things that you couldn't articulate - because the two sides of your brain weren't integrated and there was no attachment net to hold things together. And most of us know all the linguistical rules about answering questions and turn taking so instead of leaving space to see what the right brain comes up with, we ramble on from our left brain, trying to abide by the social rules. Eventually we get comfortable with the fact that therapy has its own rules.
As we earn an attachment with our therapist, each time we can name a feeling or sensory input, we actually feel calmer by accessing the words. There is an actual chemical response. And we don't have to use our left brain to guard against intrusion of another's internal experience - the non-verbal stuff that goes both ways. So we have easier access to what the right brain is feeling - not just anxiety and disorganization.
What is also very interesting is that people who have very sensitive nervous systems can have brains that react like people who have been traumatized. It makes sense in that they are assaulted just by being in the world - not on purpose - but their wiring tells them to self-protect and shut down and all the things that people with abuse in their histories do.
One of the things I loved that we did today was talk about mindfulness and meditation. And FINALLY someone helped me understand why I hate meditation. As much as I know it helps, and I've read the research, I struggle with how awful I feel when I try to do it. Dr. Siegel said that when you have unresolved trauma and grief (GRIEF is a huge brain issue, not just trauma) - beginning meditation stimulates the same areas of the brain that get stimulated when you have flashbacks. So for some of us, it is not useful until you work through things - it is very scary and causes more harm than good. He advocated teaching safety techniques, like the room in the brain idea, before trying meditation.
I'm sure there is a lot more, but it was really fascinating. And he emphasized over and over again that while there are two parts of the brain, they do usually integrate and we can't just assign one thing to one area without wondering what is happening in another area. The example he used was that when the left brain ampts up, the right brain ampts down - usually. So we can't say a technique ampts down our emotions, when it may in fact "only" amp up our organizing schemas. There aren't always direct correlations from activity to brain response.
And Dinah - don't tell Rod. But he talked about the "brain in the stomach" - essentially the nervous system network around the intestines and heart that inform us - intuition we call it.
poster:Daisym
thread:862771
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081104/msgs/863277.html