ADHD, FIGHT & FLIGHT, TRAUMA SYNCHRONICITY 11:11

ADHD

FIGHT AND FLIGHT - TRAUMA - SYNCHRONICITY

11:11 (222,333,444 Angel numbers) NUMERIC OR OTHER COINCIDENCES

These are the words of one of the most brilliant minds in psychological analysis.
Carl Gustav Jung ( AFI : [arlkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ] ; Kesswil , 26 July 1875 - Küsnacht , 6 June 1961 ) was a Swiss psychiatrist , psychoanalyst , anthropologist , philosopher and academic , one of the leading intellectual figures of psychological and psychoanalytic thought.
Trauma and the development of complexes

Complexes will develop as a result of chronic trauma in childhood. When a child is growing up, they are completely dependent upon the adults around for their survival: if the parents or care-givers are not able to give the child adequate emotional, physical and intellectual stimulation, then the child is in a potentially life-threatening situation, and so the child may constantly live with the fight and flight mechanism up and running. It will develop different strategies to cope with this situation. It may dissociate from its environment (through the parasympathetic nervous system); or it may develop its own violent behaviours (through the sympathetic system) which are then acted out in the environment.

As the care-givers are thus perceived as potentially dangerous, it may internalize values such as ‘It must be my fault – I must be bad’ in order to appear to make the care-givers appear safe, thus reducing of the fight and flight. ‘It must be my fault’ would manifest as a martyr complex, and someone with this would constantly take responsibility for other people’s damaging behaviours. These archetypal emotions of fear and rage with their own autonomy and narratives, which become suppressed or acted out, since they have not been processed by the conscious ego.

This may erupt later as neurosis, or even psychosis as the physiologically-based emotions become overwhelming. The complex has become part of the lower layers of the psyche, deeply buried in the unconscious. When an archetype does constellate, the person experiencing it may undergo a numinous or alternatively terrifying experience – which has both physical and psychological components. The body may

tremble or shake, and at the same time, the psyche may fall into an ‘altered state’ from the normal pathways through which the present is experienced.

Since the archetypal emergence is processed through the reptilian and limbic system, the release of chemicals that affect the nervous system and brain means that the event is accompanied by a strong emotion. We have seen how when an archetype is constellated, the frontal cortex ( the new mammalian brain) which is responsible for critical reflection and judgement, is bypassed so that the experience then appears to take place outside of time and often cannot be verbalized. It is also out of a consensual reality.

That person has entered a different state of consciousness wherein the body and its emotions have taken over the normal processing of experience within a generally agreed moment in time and space. Generally, the person has developed a series of defensive strategies to try and avoid these overwhelming states: these may appear as compulsive behaviour, addictions, dependent behaviour, or the person may be locked into a very controlled life in order not to meet the chaos of the triggered emotions. It may also lead to split personalities, when the complex begins to take over, and ultimately, at best restricted personal and professional relationships and at worst serious mental illness or violence.

Conscious cultivation of altered states of consciousness: mastering the fight and flight mechanism We could say then, that a complex lies below the surface of the new mammalian brain, and develops through lack of adequate emotional, physical or intellectual support in childhood, and at its extreme can lead to mental illness. One of the characteristics is that it has an overwhelming physiological counterpart that takes over the normal cognitive functioning – this bypasses the new mammalian part of the brain. Healing takes place through a parallel constellation of an archetype strong enough to create a new channel of connections that will bring the new mammalian brain (front cortex) into action, and connect up all three layers of the brain.

This requires the constellation of an archetype which is a constant possibility and evolutionary constant. The archetype-as-potential exists in the earliest evolutionary part of the brain. When this is constellated, then the effect can be said to be an altered state of consciousness which by their nature are out of consensual time and space (synchronistic).

If the strong energy of this interaction is contained and held by a witness, then transformation takes place.

Most evolutionary psychologists would agree that altered states of consciousness are ‘incomprehensible unless they also confer advantageous survival benefits’ ( Hayden, 2003, p. 21 Haule, p. 1671) Altered states of consciousness are an integral part of human experience and may well be a necessary part of human health and community.
The oldest form we know of are shamans who appear cross-culturally, from the jungles of South America, through to the aborigines of Australia, and those of Siberian. They will cultivate ‘trance’ states to evoke energetic responses in the body.

Through shamanising, an individual repeatedly activates deep neurocognitive structures at a level below theoretical and operational thinking. It would seem that this works through a conscious manipulation of the different levels of the psyche to create archetypal experiences.

Physiologically, they can be said to be ‘tuning’ the autonomic nervous system – that is they are consciously provoking the fight and flight response through physical ritual such as drumming, movement which firstly harnesses the sympathetic nervous system. This means that they maintain a degree of ‘ego’ consciousness as they traverse the different regions of the unconscious. Finally, the parasympathetic system will begin to work, such that both the sympathetic and parasympathetic are working in parallel, which would produce a collective euphoria.

A shamanic ceremony evokes endorphin release which alters autonomic nervous system balance and generates an emotional charge. These same endorphins are those of the mother-infant, and lover-lover interaction, to be found in the earlier instinctual and mammalian parts of the brain. These energies, as we have seen, bypass the frontal cortex which gives space for critical reflection, and emerge from the more ancient part of the brain to create these archetypal experiences.

This realigns neural networks in individuals so that each member of the group’s patterning aligns so the group learns habitually to act collectively for the survival of the group. This fosters social interaction, play and the safety of having a place in society: the archetypal image becomes aligned with a physiological response which hardwires the group neural pathways.

For a shaman to do this work, he or she will have had to face a life-threatening situation that has accustomed him to the strong energies of the fight and flight mechanism. Thus ‘training’ for a shaman will almost always consist of a period of life-threatening illness, out of which they emerge with the ability to visit different realms (or areas of consciousness) and bring back wisdom and healing.

To do so, he first has to navigate dangerous phases of consciousness – and in this risks permanent disassociations in their personality, but this process takes place within a social context that is understood. Other traditions also learn consciously how to control these strong states.

In later Tibetan Buddhism, in contrast, there are many practices which may also stir up the sympathetic nervous system. For example, the Chod practice in which the practitioner imagines himself slaying various part of his ego.

Or the meditation in charnel grounds where a practitioner learns to face up to her fear of death. One of the key channels in the Tibetan system are the ‘nadis’ – or subtle channels which cannot be seen but through which the practitioner will trace energetic movement – the centres of the nadis are the ‘chakras’, and these typically control various emotional states of being. 

The aim of the practitioner will be to be able to sense when these chakras have become open or closed and to work with this in meditation. There would seem to be a parallel between the nadis and the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. In both these areas, the nervous system is being tuned in order that the trained ego can seek out the unconscious patternings that emprison the ego to habituated behaviour, and thus limit action. The consciousness that searches for these hidden networks, is not the ego –for this it must be the ego of the active imagination, that has relinquished the idea of being in charge.

By withdrawing from everyday consciousness and redirecting attention to the meditative field of active imagination this permits images to emerge from our ‘mood’. Husserl was to call this the ‘transcendental ego’, as would Steiner call this the ‘Ego’. This is a sense of being that transcends the desires, ambitions, drives, fears of the small ‘ego’ and keeps it in conformity with the collective. It is also that which blocks the flow of energy around the body.

Common to all these approaches is a sense of ‘timeless’ space. It is in such practices and situations that synchronistic experiences are far more likely to arise, as both are opening to a ‘field’ that contains both psychical and physical phenomena, that provide ‘meaning’ and hence potential for transformation – in the sense that the neural pathways have been permanently changed.

The energies of the fight and flight mechanism, which arise in the earliest part of the brain, are drawn into alignment with the emotional and cognitive areas, thus bringing the three areas of the brain into a sense of wholeness – and producing a sense of unitive ‘bliss’ and from which the person may make ‘meaning’ and open up to a whole new perspective on life.

As Jung notes in his book on synchronicity: ‘Chuang-tzu ( a contemporary of Plato’s) says of the psychological premises on which Taoism based: “The state in which ego and nonego are no longeropposed is called the pivot of Tao” (Jung, 1955,p. 99). It is an expression of the implicate and explicate world. Meaning has arisen in a sense of wholeness It is an expression and experience of belonging.


The implications of synchronicity for modern life and therapy.


What I have been pointing to so far has been the status attributed to synchronicity as a universal principle. If we accept this as a background to our reality, then that has great implications for how this is worked with in therapy.

Jung came to the study of synchronicity partially as a result of his own experiences, and a desire to find a place for them within the scientific tradition. The notion of synchronicity as illuminated by Jung was pointing not just to a phenomenon, but to a phenomenon that had been deeply enshadowed by the assumptions of science and human progress in the West.

He was pointing to a reality that had been suppressed by the advance of science and technology, which would not allow into culture any phenomena that was not explicable within the measurable limits of time and space, and which ostensibly lay outside the human organism.

His search for a place for this within the modern pantheon of science was symbolic of bringing into light aspects of human experience that could not be explained by mechanistic systems that have now come to dominate our world. The ‘splitting off’ of God from culture and structure meant that the human species in the West was cut off from meaning – and it is meaning that gives the human energy to live.

The epidemic of mental health issues may well be attributed to the ‘cutting’ out of so much experience – as may the violence that is acted out in different parts of the world. Lack of meaning has become the collective complex of a globalized humanity. Jung was pointing to, and illuminating pathways to greater consciousness which was not simply about dealing with neuroses, but also with the seed of collective pathologies that are just now emerging.

Even though so-called para psychological events are considered the realm of the sick, the mad or the feeble, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, physics are having to grapple with findings that run counter to the very bedrock of science’s assumptions.

Simply because science pushes out of consciousness these phenomena does not mean that they do not exist. The lack of any metaphysics has led the lack of a collective value set, and this has passed through conditioned collective pathways into a subtle but very real psychological and emotional collective sickness.

Most therapists today will have encountered, uninvited or not, synchronistic experiences within their therapy rooms. 

This short essay has seen that archetypes and complexes contain the depths of our potential as human beings. They are what helps us make meaning of our lives: and without meaning we can only just survive.

When witnessed and worked with, they can illuminate our lives. They are not just theoretical images or symbols: they are both the image and the physiological counterpart, which have a very real place in our everyday life. They are layered within our evolutionary heritage, and shape the course of our lives, consciously or unconsciously. The constellation of any archetype is above all a typical emotional body state, which includes cortical and limbic changes in the brain, the alternation of the autonomic nervous system balance, the dispatch of hormones and neuromodulators, bodily posture, facial expression and physical movement. It takes place out of time.

Symbols are the brain’s interpretation of the bodily state – and if paid attention to, then healing becomes possible. We can learn to work with these individually, in the joint practice of our therapy room, and within our group settings. This means consciously creating the conditions in which the archetypes can emerge – and a critical part of that is for the therapist to know this territory.

They will not know the particular instances of the archetypes as they present for the clients, but will be familiar with the strength of the archetypal patterns to be able to support the client in containing them. Part of the role is thus training themselves in developing and mastering altered states of consciousness so that they can ultimately, transmit the techniques of the training to the client or group – so that they themselves can work with this dynamic within themselves and their everyday lives.

The value of these is already being seen in the adoption of various mindfulness methods – but to date they have not necessarily been aligned with a consensual metaphysical position which has created much confusion in this area. Whilst I have attempted to explore synchronicity within the findings of physics and neuroscience, I am not using this as mechanism for reducing or constraining the experience of the archetype.

For that experience goes beyond any work of language, and that includes the parameters of the scientist. We are as a species constantly evolving, working within mysterious and unknown territory – the movement into the unknown is the movement towards growth – and growth implies a loss of the ego and identification with that ego.

Jung had the courage, supported by his own experience, to move beyond the conventional and take his exploration out into unchartered territory. This support for his views from physical and biological sciences places science in its rightful context (that is alongside the paranormal) and can help shift the theoretical perspectives of psychotherapy.