May 2018.
Suddenly I realize
I’ve practically forgotten the copy deadline for May’s article. It’s after
midnight and Friday. Yikes. I
haven’t missed an issue of The Nimbin
Good Times since writing for this paper in March 2009, and I can’t start
now. So, what to write about?
I’ve been thinking a
lot about intergenerational trauma in recent times as I see the effects
frequently among my clients. I have people coming to me with feelings of high
anxiety, sleep issues, and accompanying digestive problems that are not easily simply
understood from personal histories, per se, but suggest that something more is
going on. Some deep questioning
from me often reveals a pattern of anxiety and depression shared by the parents
and grandparents of my clients, and often shaped by war experiences and
alienation from family at critical times.
I remember working
some years ago, with a man with sleep problems and associated weight issues
(weight problems is identified in the literature as being associated with long
term insomnia) whose mother experienced bombs going off in London as a little
child. She couldn’t trust enough to sleep properly and was, and remains, always
on edge and anxious. Her cortisol levels must have been through the roof.
Cortisol is a hormone
that is released in response to stress and is known as the ‘flight or fight
hormone’. It is also
associated with maintaining blood pressure, and anti-inflammatory and immune
processes. Interestingly, cortisol also works in tandem with the hormone insulin
to manage constant blood-sugar levels, so it plays a part in digestion. High cortisol levels are associated with
diabetes, a condition my client also had.
At an epigenetic
level, my client was likely affected by the experiences of his mother a nearly
three decades before his birth, and not just from the stories that she may, or
may not have told her son. Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in
gene function that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence itself. Bodies
don’t forget, it seems, and they hand down the generations their imbalances
created by trauma. Trauma upsets nervous systems across the board that impact on
the whole health of the descendents.
It becomes critical that those who seek counselling receive it with
reference to trauma therapy and not merely symptom control. Good therapy is
thus, in my view, a depth psychotherapy that really helps shift those levels of
fright-flight-fight reactions to more than manageable levels. Really good therapy frees up the whole
self so that the energy previously captured in iterative anxious responses now
becomes available for creative output and innovative work and play
practices. Clinical hypnotherapy
is often useful alongside counselling in this process, but that is the client’s
choice.
I am always
interested in that coming to a place of playfulness from the tensions of
hardline panic because then the whole being of the self is softened, loosened,
and ready for new experiences. The client can then move on to what really
excites and motivates them, and, what’s more the memories of difficulties are
practically forgotten. It’s a
curious thing, this forgetting, because it is possible to see that there has
been fundamental change at a more than cellular level. The whole person is
lively, fitter, glowing, and sort of bouncy. What was once a stuck problem
story is now recounted with how things once were, with only a little bit of the
pain previously experienced.
Remembering the trauma experienced by an
antecedent family member or members helps the client recognize that their own
symptoms don’t necessarily reflect anything they themselves have done, or not
done, and this fact often contributes to a freeing up from some aspects of the
symptoms of anxiety they have felt. It shifts the experiences to a sense of
something that can be witnessed as opposed to drowned in. So a chance to speak
of such things to a therapist is really useful.
Another side effect
of doing therapy with a counsellor is that the changes experienced translate
into changed family dynamics and even family members realign to more healthy
choices. Interesting stuff. And now to bed.
