Topic: Medical Care
Taking Patients Down A Very Dark Garden Path- Part 1
Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Repressed and 'Recovered' Memories- Part 1
A person who receives undue criticism or abusive treatment as a child frequently converts those experiences into a feeling of low self-esteem. The experience of being mistreated by a parent is so painful that most people “forget” where this negative self-image comes from. They are left only with a deep sense of basic badness and with self-defeating behaviors they struggle in vain to understand. (p. 98, “Imaginary Crimes: Why We Punish Ourselves and How to Stop”, by Lewis B Engel, Tom Ferguson)
The Controversy Surrounding Repressed Memories
During the 1980s and 1990s, there were many high-profile child abuse cases that rested on little other than claims of recovered memories. In nearly all the cases, social workers, police, and detectives asked leading questions of children in their efforts to uncover the "truth." At times interviewers and therapists would badger the children until they said what they wanted or expected to hear.
Repressed memories are often elicited through suggestion and hypnosis, in which the subject is encouraged to relate stories which may or may not have actually happened.
While the public often thinks of hypnosis as a magical mental shortcut to the truth, in the fact the opposite is more often the case. As I wrote in a previous column, repressed memories even played a key role in creating America's first UFO abduction case when Betty and Barney Hill described their "repressed memories" of being abducted and experimented upon by aliens. Suggestion by careless therapists has also been implicated in creating Multiple Personality Disorder.
This is just another reminder of how fragile human memory can be. Most of us go through our lives assuming that our memories are pretty good, and that we accurately remember events we experience. A recent study has shown that many subjects who are shown fake videos of things they never experienced can come to adopt the fictional accounts as real personal experiences. This finding has real-world implications, and especially for anyone who might be accused of a crime based on only recovered memories.
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090915-repressed-memories.html
What is “Repressed Memory”?
Repressed memory is a theoretical concept used to describe a significant memory, usually of a traumatic nature, that has become unavailable for recall; also called motivated forgetting in which a subject blocks out painful or traumatic times in one's life. This is not the same as amnesia, which is a term for any instance in which memories are either not stored in the first place (such as with traumatic head injuries when short term memory does not transfer to long term memory) or forgotten.[1]
The term is used to describe memories that have been dissociated from awareness as well as those that have been repressed without dissociation. Repressed memory syndrome, the clinical term used to describe repressed memories, is often compared to psychogenic amnesia, and some sources compare the two as equivalent.[2]
According to the theory's proponents, repressed memories may sometimes be recovered years or decades after the event, most often spontaneously, triggered by a particular smell, taste, or other identifier related to the lost memory, or via suggestion during psychotherapy.[3]
The existence of repressed memories is a controversial topic in psychology; some studies have concluded that it can occur in victims of trauma, while others dispute it. According to the American Psychological Association, it is not currently possible to distinguish a true repressed memory from a false one without corroborating evidence...
Some research indicates that memories of child sexual abuse and other traumatic incidents may be forgotten.[5][6] Evidence of the spontaneous recovery of traumatic memories has been shown,[7][8][9] and recovered memories of traumatic childhood abuse have been corroborated.[6][10][11]
Van der Kolk and Fisler's research shows that traumatic memories are retrieved, at least at first, in the form of mental imprints that are dissociated. These imprints are of the affective and sensory elements of the traumatic experience. Clients have reported the slow emergence of a personal narrative that can be considered explicit (conscious) memory. The level of emotional significance of a memory correlates directly with the memory's veracity. Studies of subjective reports of memory show that memories of highly significant events are unusually accurate and stable over time. The imprints of traumatic experiences appear to be qualitatively different from those of nontraumatic events. Traumatic memories may be coded differently than ordinary event memories, possibly because of alterations in attentional focusing or the fact that extreme emotional arousal interferes with the memory functions of the hippocampus. [12]
Although research on repressed memory is limited, a few studies have suggested that memories of trauma that are forgotten and later recalled have a similar accuracy rate as trauma memories that had not been forgotten.[2]
There has also been significant questioning of the reality of repressed memories. There is considerable evidence that rather than being pushed out of consciousness, the difficulty with traumatic memories for most people are their intrusiveness and inability to forget. [13] One case that is held up as definitive proof of the reality of repressed memories, recorded by David Corwin[11] has been criticized by Elizabeth Loftus and Melvin Guyer for ignoring the context of the original complaint and falsely presenting the sexual abuse as unequivocal and true when in reality there was no definitive proof...
The existence of repressed memory recovery has not been completely accepted by mainstream psychology, [17][18][19][20] nor unequivocally proven to exist, and some experts in the field of human memory feel that no credible scientific support exists for the notions of repressed/recovered memories.[21] One research report states that a distinction should be made between spontaneously recovered memories and memories recovered during suggestions in therapy...
Some criminal cases have been based on a witness' testimony of recovered repressed memories, often of alleged childhood sexual abuse. In some jurisdictions, the statute of limitations for child abuse cases has been extended to accommodate the phenomena of repressed memories as well as other factors. The repressed memory concept came into wider public awareness in the 1980s and 1990s followed by a reduction of public attention after a series of scandals, lawsuits, and license revocations.[23]
In a 1996 ruling, a US District Court allowed repressed memories entered into evidence in court cases. [24] Jennifer Freyd writes that Ross Cheit's case of suddenly remembered sexual abuse is one of the most well-documented cases available for the public to see. Cheit prevailed in two lawsuits, located five additional victims and tape-recorded a confession.[9]
On 16 Deceember 2005 the Irish Court of Criminal Appeal issued a certificate confirming a Misscarriage of Justice to a former nun Nora Wall whose 1999 conviction for child rape was partly based on Repressed Memory evidence. The judgement stated that: "There was no scientific evidence of any sort adduced to explain the phenomenon of ‘flashbacks’ and/or ‘retrieved memory’, nor was the applicant in any position to meet such a case in the absence of prior notification thereof." [25]
Main article: Recovered memory therapy
Recovered memory therapy (RMT) is a term coined by affiliates of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation[26][27] referring to what they described as a range of psychotherapy methods based on recalling memories of abuse that had previously been forgotten by the patient.[28] The term is not listed in DSM-IV or used by mainstream formal psychotherapy modality.[26] Opponents of the therapy advance the hypothesis that therapy can create false memories through suggestion techniques; this hypothesis is controversial and has been neither proven nor disproven. Some research has shown evidence supporting the hypothesis,[29][30] and this evidence is questioned by some researchers.[26][31][32] Even when patients who decide their recovered memories are false retract their claims, they can suffer post-traumatic stress disorder due to the trauma of illusory memories.[33] The number of reported retractions is small when compared to the large number of actual child sexual abuse cases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repressed_memory
Repressed Memories in a Cultural Context
A Cultural Symptom?
Repressed Memory
by Ashley Pettus
Are some experiences so horrific that the human brain seals them away, only to recall them years later? The concept of “repressed memory,” known by the diagnostic term dissociative amnesia, has long fueled controversy in psychiatry. During the 1980s, claims of childhood sexual abuse based on recovered memories led to a spate of highly publicized court cases. A number of the supposed victims retracted their allegations in the early 1990s, admitting that they had been swayed by therapeutic techniques. Yet the scientific validity of dissociative amnesia has remained contested ground.
In a recent study, professor of psychiatry Harrison Pope, co-director of the Biological Psychiatry Lab at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, put “repressed memory” to the test of time. He reasoned that if dissociative amnesia were an innate capability of the brain—akin to depression, hallucinations, anxiety, and dementia—it would appear in written works throughout history. In collaboration with associate professor of psychiatry James Hudson, Michael Parker, a professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, Michael Poliakoff, director of education programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and research assistant Matthew Boynes, Pope set out to find the earliest recorded example of a “repressed memory.”
The survey yielded various nineteenth-century instances: best known were A Tale of Two Cities (1859), by Charles Dickens, in which Dr. Manette forgets that he is a physician after his incarceration in the Bastille, and Captains Courageous (1896), by Rudyard Kipling, in which “Penn,” a former minister, loses his memory after his family perishes in a flood and recalls that trauma only after being involved in a collision at sea. But the survey turned up no examples from pre-modern sources.
The researchers then offered a $1,000 reward—posted in three languages on more than 30 Internet websites and discussion groups—to the first person to identify a case of dissociative amnesia in any work of fiction or nonfiction prior to 1800. They received more than 100 responses, but none met the “repressed memory” criteria. Although many early texts describe ordinary forgetfulness caused by natural biological processes, as well as instances of individuals forgetting happy memories and even their own identities, there were no accounts of an inability to recall a traumatic experience at one point and the subsequent recovery of that memory.
In a report of their findings published in Psychological Medicine, Pope and his colleagues concluded that the absence of dissociative amnesia in works prior to 1800 indicates that the phenomenon is not a natural neurological function, but rather a “culture-bound” syndrome rooted in the nineteenth century. They argued that dissociative amnesia falls into the diagnostic category “pseudo-neurological symptom” (or “conversion disorder”)—a condition that “lacks a recognizable medical or neurological basis.”
The authors have also refuted a number of alternative hypotheses that might explain their survey results. For instance, they argued, the fact that pre-nineteenth- century societies may have conceptualized memory differently than we do cannot account for the lack of recorded descriptions of dissociative amnesia. “Our ancestors had little understanding about delusions and hallucinations,” Pope points out. “They didn’t know about dopamine in the brain or things we now know cause paranoia or auditory hallucinations, but descriptions of hallucinations [appear] in literature for hundreds of years and from all over the world.” Similarly, “If an otherwise lucid individual spontaneously develops complete amnesia for a serious traumatic event, such as being raped or witnessing the death of relations or friends,” the researchers explained, “a description of such a case would surely be recognizable, even through a dense veil of cultural interpretation” such as spirit possession or some other supernatural event.
What, then, accounts for “repressed memory’s” appearance in the nineteenth century and its endurance today? Pope and his colleagues hope to answer these questions in the future. “Clearly the rise of Romanticism, at the end of the Enlightenment, created fertile soil for the idea that the mind could expunge a trauma from consciousness,” Pope says. He notes that other pseudo-neurological symptoms (such as the female “swoon”) emerged during this era, but faded relatively quickly. He suspects that two major factors helped solidify “repressed memory” in the twentieth-century imagination: psychoanalysis (with its theories of the unconscious) and Hollywood. “Film is a perfect medium for the idea of repressed memory,” he says. “Think of the ‘flashback,’ in which a whole childhood trauma is suddenly recalled. It’s an ideal dramatic device.”
Shortly after publication of their paper, the investigators awarded the $1,000 prize to the nominator of Nina, an opera by Dalayrac and Marsollier performed in Paris in 1786. (Forgetting that she saw her lover apparently lying dead after a duel, the heroine waits for him daily at an appointed spot. When the young man reappears, Nina first seems to recognize him, then doubts his identity, and only slowly accepts him for who he is.) Pope says he and his colleagues were a few years off their threshold of 1800, but he believes their argument holds: “The challenge falls upon anyone who believes that repressed memory is real to explain its absence for thousands of years.”
http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/01/repressed-memory.html
One responder to Ashley Pettus' article asked: “Why are repressed memories always about sexual molest? I’ve never heard of anyone having a repressed memory of their holocaust experience.” Which of course is a rather interesting question. Why is it most repressed memories are about childhood sexual abuse, which often allegedly occurs at a very young age?
Memory Suppression
Psychologists offer proof of brain’s ability to suppress memories
BY LISA TREI
For the first time, researchers at Stanford University and the University of Oregon have shown that a biological mechanism exists in the human brain to block unwanted memories.
The findings, published Jan. 9 in the journal Science, reinforce Sigmund Freud's controversial century-old thesis about the existence of voluntary memory suppression.
"The big news is that we've shown how the human brain blocks an unwanted memory, that there is such a mechanism and it has a biological basis," said Stanford psychology Professor John Gabrieli, a co-author of the paper titled "Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories." "It gets you past the possibility that there's nothing in the brain that would suppress a memory -- that it was all a misunderstood fiction."
The experiment showed that people are capable of repeatedly blocking thoughts of experiences they don't want to remember until they can no longer retrieve the memory, even if they want to, Gabrieli explained.
Michael Anderson, a psychology associate professor at the University of Oregon and the paper's lead author, conducted the experiment with Gabrieli and other researchers during a sabbatical at Stanford last year.
"It's amazing to think that we've broken new ground on this ... that there is a clear neurobiological basis for motivated forgetting," Anderson said. "Repression has been a vague and controversial construct for over a century, in part because it has been unclear how such a mechanism could be implemented in the brain. The study provides a clear model for how this occurs by grounding it firmly in an essential human ability -- the ability to control behavior."
In recent years, the question of repressed memory has attracted considerable public attention concerning cases involving childhood sexual abuse. "That was very controversial because it went through two pendulum swings," Gabrieli said. "The first swing was that people thought, 'What a horrible thing.' The second was that people said, 'How many of these might be false memories?' Then people started asking does repressed memory even exist, and can you show that experimentally or scientifically?"
Anderson first revealed the existence of such a suppression mechanism in the brain in a 2001 paper published in Nature titled "Suppressing Unwanted Memories by Executive Control." He took the research a step further at Stanford by using brain imaging scans to identify the neural systems involved in actively suppressing memory. The core findings showed that controlling unwanted memories was associated with increased activation of the left and right frontal cortex (the part of the brain used to repress memory), which in turn led to reduced activation of the hippocampus (the part of the brain used to remember experiences). In addition, the researchers found that the more subjects activated their frontal cortex during the experiment, the better they were at suppressing unwanted memories.
"For the first time we see some mechanism that could play a role in active forgetting," Gabrieli said. "That's where the greatest interest is in terms of practical applications regarding emotionally disturbing and traumatic experiences, and the toxic effect of repressing memory." The Freudian idea is that even though someone is able to block an unpleasant memory, Gabrieli said, "it's lurking in them somewhere, and it has consequences even though they don't know why in terms of their attitudes and relationships."
The experiment
Twenty-four people, aged 19 to 31, volunteered for the experiment. Participants were given 36 pairs of unrelated nouns, such as "ordeal-roach," "steam-train" and "jaw-gum," and asked to remember them at 5-second intervals. The subjects were tested on memorizing the word pairs until they got about three-quarters of them right -- a process that took one or two tries, Anderson said.
The participants then were tested while having their brains scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at Stanford's Lucas Center for Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. The researchers randomly divided the 36 word pairs into three sets of 12. In the first set, volunteers were asked to look at the first word in the pair (presented by itself) and recall and think about the second word. In the second set, volunteers were asked to look at the first word of the pair and not recall or think of the second word. The third set of 12 word pairs served as a baseline and was not used during the brain scanning part of the experiment. The subjects were given four seconds to look at the first word of each pair 16 times during a 30-minute period.
After the scanning finished, the subjects were retested on all 36 word pairs. The researchers found that the participants remembered fewer of the word pairs they had actively tried to not think of than the baseline pairs, even though they had not been exposed to the baseline group for a half-hour.
"People's memory gets worse the more they try to avoid thinking about it," Anderson said. "If you consistently expose people to a reminder of a memory that they don't want to think about, and they try not to think about it, they actually don't remember it as well as memories where they were not presented with any reminders at all."
Implications of the study
Gabrieli said the findings contradict human intuition. "What's funny about that, from a psychological viewpoint, is that mostly people are quite the opposite in life -- a very unpleasant thing intrudes into their thinking," he said. "They ruminate, it bothers them, and it comes up when they don't want to think about it. Mostly, if you say, 'Don't think about a pink elephant or a white bear,' people flash onto it immediately."
Anderson likened the brain's ability to control memory to an individual's reflexive ability to halt an unwanted action. For example, Anderson recalled once standing at an open window and noticing a potted plant starting to fall. He quickly tried to catch the plant until he realized it was a cactus that could have injured him. "Our ability to stop action is so ubiquitous we don't know we're doing it," Anderson said. "This idea is that the neurobiological mechanism that we have evolved to control overt behavior might be recruited to control internal actions such as memory retrieval as well."
Anderson said the findings about the brain's ability to suppress memory could be used as a tool to better understand addiction and the ability of people to suppress unwanted thoughts related to craving. It might also help provide a model to assess individuals at risk from suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, he said.
In addition to Anderson and Gabrieli, the paper was written by Kevin N. Ochsner, a former Stanford postdoctoral fellow now at Columbia University; and other Stanford researchers including graduate student Brice Kuhl; social science research assistants Jeffrey Cooper and Elaine Robertson; science and engineering associate Susan W. Gabrieli; and radiology Professor Gary H. Glover. The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health.
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/january14/memory-114.html
Memory Repression, Suppression and the Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Diagnoses
Under the biospychosocial medical model, chronic illnesses and medical conditions which cause pain and fatigue are viewed as being 'emotion-based' in origin- i.e. psychosomatic. These conditions include fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic back pain, as well as various other illnesses. The belief is that the emotions behind traumatic experiences are suppressed, repressed and dissociated, essentially pushed out of the consciousness of the mind and are instead stored in the nerves, muscles and fascia, which then causes chronic body pain. Hence they believe the body is always reliving those traumatic moments, and the way to 'cure' illnesses which cause chronic pain and fatigue is through treatments that focus on treating the repressed/suppressed/dissociated emotional trauma and memories.
To make matters worse, it's not just external cues that activate an alarm response; muscular activity can trigger it as well. Memories, flashbacks, and nightmares can kick loose involuntary neuromuscular responses. Certain muscle groups tense and brace all over again, in the patterned ways they did during the traumatic event. And even when these muscle groups are later used for simple, normal, repetitive, daily activities, the muscle stimulation alone can trigger arousal in the patterned neuronal response, jogging memories, flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks and resulting in a new blast of norepinephrine, followed by a subsequent does of opioids. In this way, the kindled feedback loop can be activated through the muscles and skeletal system, too. A response can be triggered from any point in the closed system. (This is no doubt why massage therapy and pressure-point work can activate memories and flashbacks, sometimes from traumatic events that have occurred decades ago.)
CHRONIC PAIN CONDITIONS
This constant activation of the alarms state leads to an accumulation of metabolic waste products in the muscle fibers, and the release of kinins and other chemical pain-generators in the tissue, resulting in myofascial pain and the appearance of those seemingly intractable chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic headache, TMJ, and more.
And because these conditions are generated in the brain stem and the motor reflex centers in the spinal column, and routed through a perturbed automatic arousal circuitry, peripheral forms of treatment provide only temporary relief. Constantly activated by everyday sensory cues, normal muscle movements, and spontaneous memories, symptoms grow and become more and more entrenched over time, In other words, this nasty gift from the kindled feedback loop, if not interrupted, will just keep on giving.
Our epidemiology research has already shown us an astounding percentage of people with baffling chronic pain conditions and "functional" diseases that have no obvious causes, who have been found to have prior histories of severer trauma. Probably if we could tease out the subset of traumatized people who experience substantial dissociation during trauma, and a truncated freeze response in the midst of it, we might find closer to one hundred percent suffering from post-traumatic stress. Unfortunately for them, they are often assumed to be malingering or engaged in attention-seeking behavior for neurotic reasons, instead of suffering from a very serious, self-perpetuating condition with a potentially worsening trajectory.
Included in this group of maligned and misunderstood patients would be scores of people suffering from pelvic and low back pain; orofacial and myofascial pain; genitourinary and abdominal pain; interstitial cystitis; fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and reflex sympathetic dystrophy; irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disorder, multiple chemical sensitivity, and migraine. Interestingly, these are all conditions that have become dramatically prevalent over the past decade or two. We may hypothesize that the reason is that traumatic stressors have become ubiquitous in our world.
Of course, the better-understood somatic complications of post-traumatic stress, and any sort of chronic stress for that matter, have to do with the wearing down of the cardiovascular system by the constantly up-regulated stress hormones. Hypertension and coronary artery disease are the most common manifestations of chronic stress.
On the other hand, chronic late-stage post-traumatic stress leads to chronically lowered cortisol levels, which in turn result in a variety of autoimmune disorders. The connections between post-traumatic stress and rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and similar conditions are just beginning to be examined. (pp. 78- 80, “Invisible heroes: survivors of trauma and how they heal”, by Belleruth Naparstek, Robert C. Scaer )
This mindset of 'illness caused by repressed traumatic memories' regarding patients with chronic pain conditions, such as fibromyalgia and CFS exists within both the medical community and social support community.
From the Masters Thesis (Social Work) of Lisa Smith entitled "Fibromyalgia: A Legacy of Chronic Pain":
Body Memories
In tracing the history of chronic pain from a psychoanalytic perspective, a modern-day analyst Perlman (1996) highlights the individual meaning of the nature of the pain to the patient, noting that that the earlier the trauma in a patient’s life, the more likely that it will be dissociated and split off. Early relationships set a tone in the body in terms of stress and tension. Traumatic experiences which are encoded in the body, but dissociated, speak to the body through pain (Perlman, 1996). The localized memories can be specific or ongoing; Perlman (1990) calls the sensations which are felt but not remembered body memories. In clarifying his perspective and experience Perlman (1990) writes,
The process of memory storage in the body occurs because the images and the implications of trauma can be too overwhelming to allow them into consciousness (i.e., they are repressed). For many chronic-pain patients, there can be powerful traumatic unprocessed experiences encoded in very specific body areas, or very early procedural memories that are not linked to language or images; they are experienced as chronic pain. (262)
In his work, Perlman (1990) indicates that the most beneficial forms of treatment come out of the development of a positive transference; yet he still seems to understand the nature of the pain as one of conflict. The author (Perlman, 1990) concludes his article and case study by saying that when there is safety in the therapeutic alliance, past experiences, which are contained in the pain, can be addressed by working with present life issues and relationships... (p. 83,
Trauma as a Boundary Violation
Boundaries begin with our physical senses, which we use in infancy to define our sense of self and safety (Scaer, 2001). A necessary part of development is receiving positive and negative signals that help us feel safe. Positive signals encourage exploration and negative signals warn of danger. This reception of signals is an ongoing process in which, in some ways, the self can be seen as one that is shaped around safety and exploration. Scaer (2001) writes that a strong sense of self and boundaries creates resiliency in perceived threats to survival which “...allows us to understand why all the relatively disparate examples of trauma in the DSM-IV have in common the specific concept of threats to survival” (p.4). Boundaries both protect us from the impact of the world and allow us to experience the unique impact we each have on the world.
Scaer (2001) says that neuropsychological responses are central features of the boundary violation trauma and stress. Trauma is literally toxic because it creates a sense of fear and threat in the body (McFarlane and De Girolano, 1996). The most severe boundary violations begin at home and spiral outward. Scaer (2001) expounds,
The most devastating form of traumatic stress therefore clearly occurs when caregivers, the intrinsic safe haven, the providers of our basic sense of boundaries, become the existential threat. When the maternal caregiver at times is also the raging and alcoholic abuser, when the loving father is also the source of incest, molestation, or physical abuse, there is no safe haven and no safe boundary between the child and his or her outside world. The child’s perception of self is constricted and shrunken, with little residual buffer between what is perceived as safe, bounded space and the unknowable threats of the external environment. As a result, it takes a much smaller or less intense perceived threat to create traumatic stress for such a child when the source of that threat is the caregiver. (p.5)
Herman (1992) concurs. “Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless...Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life” (p. 33). Our ability to adapt seems to have something to do with our ability to tolerate stress. This capacity seems to be diminished in women who experience chronic pain. PTSD, particularly
intrusive thoughts and arousal, is more prevalent in women diagnosed with FMS (Ciccione, Elliot, Chandler, Nayak, & Raphael, 2005).
It might also be possible that somatization of FMS emerges as a result of a patient repressing a painful memory while seeking validation for her suffering (Rubin, 2005). Rubin (2005) writes, “The patient may be highly focused upon a few symptoms or a multitude of symptoms...Symptoms include a variety of musculoskeletal disorders such as fibromyalgia syndrome, tension headaches, chronic neck or back pain. Conversion disorder is considered to be a more extreme example” (P. 110). Why would this happen?
Abuse is often connected to secrecy. Yet, health and sanity would also demand acknowledgement of trauma. Thus, these two patterns of secrecy and a desire to be acknowledged coupled together over a lifetime could lead to the chronic pain of FMS. Therefore, if the presentation of chronic pain originates in abuse, that abuse causes changes in biology and the brain. Thus Rubin (2005) surmises, “It seems that a more accurate term for psychosomatic disease is psychophysiological disease. (pp. 123-125, Ibid.)
Treating Fibromyalgia and CFS by Recovering Repressed and Suppressed Memories and Emotions
There is definitely literature out there which supports the concept of treating fibromyalgia and CFS patients with both psychotherapy and physical therapy to uncover and 'recover' repressed memories, emotions, thoughts and feelings. This literature come from the medical and psychosocial support community and the FMS patient and child abuse victim survivor community.
Fibrositis is a condition now commonly termed fibromyalgia. This is one of a relatively new breed of psychosomatic pain syndromes which can completely dominate the lives of affected patients. Fibromyalgia is a rapidly growing condition which affects mostly young woman aged 25 to 40. The condition is very controversial, since there is no singular accepted cause and very few effective treatments.
Fibrositis
Fibromyalgia Condition
Fibromyalgia is a debilitating disorder which can make simply lying in bed an utter agony. Patients have a variety of symptoms, both physical and emotional, which create widespread pain, mood changes, emotional trauma, anxiety, physical and mental limitation and more than anything else, suffering. Fibromyalgia in certainly one of the most severe of the current “in vogue” pain syndromes and can lead to disability, emotional breakdown or even death.
Fibrositis Treatments
There are so many different theories on how to effectively treat fibromyalgia. It seems that the condition is simply too diverse to allow for a unified treatment approach. Individual patients experience different symptoms of varying severities. Many therapies seem to help some individuals, but actually make other patient’s symptoms worse. There are as many different reactions to any particular treatment as there are patients suffering from the condition. Medical science has been practically useless in treating this condition, despite growing numbers of doctors specializing in its diagnosis and management.
Fibrositis Hope
The most promising of all research has come from the realm of mind/body medicine. When treated exclusively as a psychosomatic condition, many patients experience complete resolution of all symptoms. This is a fantastic improvement over traditional medical modalities or even complementary therapy options. I have been singing the praises of knowledge therapy for some time, long before it was fashionable or even considered a legitimate treatment by many health care professionals.
Recommendation on Fibrositis
If you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or a similar pain syndrome, you WILL need help. This is a serious disorder which will not simply disappear all by itself one day. The condition is caused by deeply repressed memories, thoughts, feelings and emotions. You will not know what these emotions are, since they are well hidden and guarded by your subconscious mind. The guard used to protect the anonymity of these repressed issues is the actual fibromyalgia condition. The pain acts as a camouflage or distraction from these issues which will in turn, remain locked away in the subconscious mind. It is crucial to use a therapy approach which will find these issues and come to terms with how they affect your inner self. Once this can be accomplished, the pain syndrome will be useless and the fibromyalgia symptoms will be a thing of the past.
http://www.cure-back-pain.org/fibrositis.html
From “Overcoming the Physical Pain Associated with Recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse'”, by Joy Messer”:
Sexual Abuse Recovery
After having a conversation recently with several survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I was reminded, once again, about how much physical pain there is in this recovery process. Because it has been several years since I have had to deal with the body pain, the flashbacks, and the body memories, I had almost forgotten about this painful process. I hope the above comment alone will serve as an incentive for survivors to continue moving forward in their own healing process. It really does get better . . . much better!
The Process of Dealing With Repressed Memories
Over the years, I have worked alongside many survivors of sexual abuse and I also have my own experience from which to draw. Almost without fail, anyone who has repressed memories will develop pain in their body prior to beginning the recovery process. Most of us are diagnosed with such things as Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and we are put through a myriad of tests only to find nothing significant as the root cause for our pain. It is always a good idea to have a physical examination in order to rule out any causes for the pain, but once that is done, it is time to look at how repressing memories (holding them inside our bodies and minds) impacts our physical bodies.
My Personal Experience
Sexual Abuse Recovery
In my own personal experience, shortly after beginning the healing process, I began to have severe pain in my left upper back, near the shoulder blade. The pain intensified to the point that it hurt to breathe. I had already been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia several years earlier so I figured it was a flare-up of fibromyalgia pain. However, after having a discussion with the leaders of my support group, they prayed with me about the pain and asked God to reveal whatever He needed for me to know about my past abuse. Within a day or two, the repressed memory surfaced while I was at home. It was totally devastating to me at the time, but I soon realized that the horrible pain in my back was gone. It seems that we, as survivors, work so hard to contain our memories and not allow them out, that we physically hurt. It is also exhausting to constantly repress memories, even though we do not even realize we are doing this. I found that the key to pain relief was in allowing the memories to surface. This process of physical pain, memory recovery and being pain free, was repeated many, many times over a couple of years in my life. Today, I am pain free.
Most of us suffer from physical, emotional and spiritual distress as survivors of childhood sexual abuse and incest. The recovery process is long and difficult for sure, but I can tell you that it is worth it! Once those repressed memories are released from our minds and bodies, we are able to function in life on a new level that is far better than we could have ever imagined. Don't be afraid to do the hard work of recovery and remember that recovery is a process.
Recommended Reading
Today there are a number of really good books that help survivors with understanding how this recovery process works. There are two that I always highly recommend:
1) The Wounded Heart by Dan Allender, Ph.D.
2) On The Threshold of Hope by Diane Mandt Langberg
Overcoming the Physical Pain Associated with Recovery from Childhood Sexual Abuse
July 16, 2008 by Joy Messer
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/859187/overcoming_the_physical_pain_associated.html?cat=5
It's interesting, and frightening, how adult women who were victims of child abuse are taught to readily embrace the concept that all the medical problems they deal with in adulthood are emotion-based illnesses and none are caused by physical means.
Bacterial and viral infections, other environmental factors, genetic predisposition, poor lifestyle habits (i.e. smoking, excessive drinking, elicit drug use and abuse, poor diet and malnutrition), permanent body damage caused by old injuries, and the like are all ignored as potential causes. Various physical health problems, including body pain, food and environmental allergies, sinus problems, digestive problems, fatigue, weak immune systems that leave them prone to catching any bacterial or viral illness they come into contact with, etc., and even age related physical changes that normally occur when one reaches middle-age and beyond are all pigeonholed into the category of “fibromyalgia” and these women readily embrace this, and make this concept an active part of the Child Abuse Survivor Community. Yes, child abuse is a horrible thing and leaves lasting emotional (and physical) scars, but to blame any and all medical problems, diseases and conditions, including some health problems and body changes that come with transitioning from younger adulthood into middle age, as psychosomatic illness specifically caused by the emotional trauma of child abuse suffered decades ago is absurd. It's absurd to say that someone who was abused as a child does not and cannot develop muscle and joint problems, digestive problems, neurological problems, allergies, etc. etc. in adulthood for purely physical reasons.
Another absurdity is to claim that anyone who is diagnosed with certain medical conditions must have an underlying abuse-trauma history. If they say they don't, they must have simply repressed the memories of the traumatic event(s) and are basically living in denial. And people who deny the links between these illnesses and child abuse are simply out to deny the harm child abuse causes. This is another dangerous slippery slope.
From the “comments” page left by readers of Pamela Weintraub's blog article: “Chronic fatigue syndrome & child abuse: Disordered patients or disordered research?- Are chronic fatigue patients victims of child abuse or research abuse?” http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emerging-diseases/200901/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-child-abuse-disordered-patients-or-disordered/comments
Child abuse, chronic fatigue syndrome and AMYGDALA gland
Submitted by Anonymous on March 6, 2009 - 9:07pm.
The recent study does not make Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a "psychological all in your head malady." This study shows a BIOLOGICAL basis for CFS.
I hear a lot of outcries here about the recent research studies linkage of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome to Child abuse early in life, but it does make sense! Researchers reported decades ago (1960's) that children who suffered "BATTERED CHILD SYNDROME" had PERMENENT changes in the brain including shrinkage of the AMYGDALA gland in the brain. Persons with dissociative disorders and PTSD related to childhood trauma have also been found to have shrinkage of this gland. This gland is associated with how one handles fears and is a gateway to memory storeage. It is unknown how many other millions of processes are involved with this gland but it does communicate with the hypothalmus and other glands in the brain. It is hypothesized the hypervigilante states of fear in child abuse victims cause them to not route memories and feelings through the AMYGDALA Gland which helps hide the memories of the abuse somewhere else in the brain so these memories do not go into long term storeage.
I have been a counselor at a public Family Violence/Sexual Assault center for 17 years. My collegues and I have always found a very significant number of adults clients in therapy for childhood sexual trauma that have reported diagnoses of Chronic Fatigue syndrome. As many as one fourth of our clients at times, in a large metro area have this disease. Therefore, we believed long ago that there was a relationship between this disease and childhood sexual traumas.
It is also explains why there are more females with this disease: More females experience long term sexual molestion and repeated molestations in childhood.
Several studies have found that children who were raped and taken to hospitals for treatment do not remember the events later in life. Therefore, some people may have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome from childabuse incidents that they do not remember.
Our society has a large network of individuals who want to deny the severity of the repercussions of childabuse, so perhaps this is where the resistence to believing this study's validity orignates.
2009 IACFS/ME conference
Submitted by Erik Johnson on March 22, 2009 - 8:11am.
After a presentation of distinctive brain scan abnormalities in CFS, the panel was asked if any deformation of the amygdala had been observed.
The answer was "no".
Another Comment by Erik Johnson on the abuse issue:
Doesn't help those of us who weren't abused
Submitted by Erik Johnson on January 20, 2009 - 8:03pm.
Even if one COULD traumatize children into succumbing to CFS...
which strangely, didn't used to happen, although we know that children have certainly been beaten throughout the history of humankind...
That still wouldn't help all of us who weren't traumatized.
But perhaps, if it would pursuade researchers to do more research into CFS... we could all PRETEND that we had been, just to make them happy.
-Erik Johnson
There's another one of those interesting points: Child abuse has always existed within the history of humanity. Child abuse as a supposed cause of the distinctive illness entities “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (and “Fibromyalgia”) is a much more recent phenomenon. Child abuse occurs all over the world, yet CFS and FMS aren't found running rampant as illness diagnoses in every corner of the globe.
Hillary Johnson, author of “Osler's Web: ” wrote:
The scientific method
Submitted by Hillary Johnson on February 9, 2009 - 4:55pm.
Your familiarity with the scientific method may be deficient if you are unaware of the multitude of medical studies that use other disease groups as controls.
For instance, in 2002 Taylor and Jason investigated this same question using as controls people with other medical conditions. Among all groups, the incidence of early abuse was comparable. Among the “CFS” group in particular, these investigators reported, “most individuals with CFS do not report histories of interpersonal abuse.”
That the study in question appeared in a journal of psychiatry is, I think, irrelevant to the larger point. The Centers for Disease Control created a definition of the disease that erroneously includes people with psychiatric disorders, as independent studies have demonstrated. Add to that the fact that this agency has for more than two decades ignored the bountiful science that proves that the disease is not a psychiatric disorder. This latest study is a new low point in what has been, cumulatively, a flagrantly irresponsible response by the Department of Health and Human Services to a public health crisis.
Finally, shall we send the thousands of science writers over a cliff? Would you be comfortable if only military generals were allowed to “comment” on the workings of the Pentagon (in order to avoid misleading people with less education and experience)?
Hillary Johnson's comment “The Centers for Disease Control created a definition of the disease that erroneously includes people with psychiatric disorders, as independent studies have demonstrated.” gets to the crux of the problem, and this happens with both chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia patient studies: Patients with mental illness histories are thrown into the mix which in turn creates the concept that these illnesses have underlying psychiatric causes. The same is being intentionally done with throwing domestic violence and sexual violence abuse victims into the mix to turn these conditions into domestic violence/sexual violence-caused illnesses.
The Controversies Surrounding the Use of Physical Therapy to Recover Repressed Memories
Beyond emotion-based and medication-based treatments for these conditions, physical therapy is also a treatment component. One form of physical therapy, an offshoot of Myofascial Release (MFR) physical therapy which involves “rebounding” and “unwinding” (which was created by physical therapist John Barnes) merges the physical therapy side of medical care with the psychological side, involving 'repressed memory' recovery via physical therapy. So essentially the physical therapists, who have no psychological training, who utilize this MFR rebounding and unwinding method are conducting what is essentially combined physical therapy-psychotherapy.
From the blog entry “On Being Parented and Parenting: Overcoming Past Experiences Through Understanding Pain of Fibromyalgia” by Barbara Keddy, BSc.N., M.A., Ph.D., author of the book "Women and Fibromyalgia: Living with an Invisible Dis-ease”:
Since I am convinced that fibromyalgia is the result of a hyper-aroused nervous system, I wish I knew for certain if it is caused by early inadequate parenting by our parents and/or difficult childhood experiences in highly sensitive persons, or if we are born with highly sensitive nervous systems. I have my hunches, built upon numerous interviews and talks with many people (mostly women) over many years. In particular, my view is built upon my own experiences. Therefore, I will go out on a limb and suggest that we are not born with an easily aroused nervous system, but rather it slowly develops over many years as a result of our early socialization. Yet, even saying such a thing brings up the issue of children with fibromyalgia. Maybe, just maybe, they were born with the pre-disposition to this condition. What a dilemma! More questions than answers once again. Maybe it can be both nature and nurture. Parent blaming has become something of a modern day occupation. That is certainly not my intent. Who among us had perfect parents or are ourselves perfect parents?
What did our parents know about parenting? Like most of us they passed on the values and beliefs they had acquired from their own parents. Generally though those of my parents generation (they are currently 90 years old) believed in a patriarchal, strict household without much awareness of the psycho-social needs of their children. Life was difficult for the people raised in the Depression era and many had struggles that caused overwhelming challenges when they became parents. School and church were strict and frightening places for their off spring, as they were for them, and we 1950s kids received little sympathy as we accepted the status quo without question, as they did. I often still remember the horrors of Catholic school, fainting spells, hyperventilating at night, sleep walking and nightmares. There was very little to soothe my nervous system as my mother was herself a fearful woman and for many years I was an only child subject to her worries and anxieties, becoming her mother.
My parents were not cruel people. I was never physically or sexually abused by anyone as a child. School and church were different experiences though. There I was constantly on guard as a nun in a rage was not to be reckoned with at any cost. I would never have dreamed of rebelling; instead I became supervigilant. My parents would not have understood why I was having these fainting spells, nor would have many of that era. I can’t blame them. The information we have nowadays is so prolific that we can understand better what a healthy environment should be like for a child to grow to be strong and confident, without living in a state of situational generalized hypervigilance. But, even as I raised my own children I did not know what I know now watching my young grandchildren. I made my own kind of mistakes, like most parents. Like those of us with fibromyalgia I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders, I had an intense belief in obligation to my family of origin as well as to my own children with a sense of duty that was unrealistic. I was always second guessing someone’s needs and would self reproach myself for the smallest negligence of what I considered my duty. Many women and men are like that. Many children develop this hypervigilance early in life. The cost of such high expectations of self is an overaroused nervous system which is never in a state of rest. So what is to be done to help tame this self imposed overly empathetic, sad and tender heart of people with fibromyalgia? Undoing a personality that developed early in life is not an easy task. Other than psychotherapy I see little choice other than mindfulness meditation (or other peace inducing techniques) and physical touch which is meant to be soothing. But, what kind of touch?
I have recently been reading blogs on www.SomaSimple about various approches to manual therapies written almost exclusively by physical/physiotherapists and MFR practitioners. To be honest I understand very little except to realize that the language of these professionals is not easy to decipher. There appears to be a great on-going debate about the limited value of myofascial release, which does not allow the client to avoid dependence upon the therapy. Among the many issues discussed, one which is rather interesting, is whether or not it is possible with MFR to bring forth repressed memories. Why this is appealing to me is because I am trying to understand the relationship of pain and the brain in the hopes that I can grasp the concepts that can help me in my day to day struggles. It would seem that the controversy is between those therapists (not all, of course) who believe that with the release of the fascia the person begins to acknowledge painful experiences that have been stored in our memories. At least this is how I interpret some of the debate.
But, the issues are not all about repressed memories. Rather, there are theorists who argue that the model of MFR is one which does not help the client to avoid feelings of helplessness....
I realize that this is a very brief and simplistic overview of the arguments regarding pain but my point is: can MFR (or Cranial Sacral work) actually help my brain to heal from the past trauma of childhood if I don’t better understand the nature of pain? I have had many various kinds of ‘massages’ if indeed some MFR practitioners (many of whom are PTs) are willing to be called massage therapists. In my personal experience none of them have resulted in experiences that are akin to bringing up repressed memories. In my view massages could in fact, soothe the body and mind, but at best the effects cannot be long lasting. Yet, they do bring temporary relief and yet again, they are a great expense. It seems to me that if we are to deal with past experiences that have left ’scars’ in our psyche (brain), then trained counsellors are the professionals we should seek out, rather than massage therapists. Having said that I have also been reading that bringing up painfuI past trauma is not good for the nervous system since it reactivates it . Instead we are encouraged to remap the brain and not dwell on the wounds of the past. (For a very comprehensive understanding of the mind/brain that is much easier to understand than most of what is written by those whose research is focused on consciousness, please read The Biology of Mind-Origins and Structures of Mind, Brain and Consciousness by M.Deric Bownds.)
I have had MFR, Rolfing, Neuromuscular, and soothing types of massages such as reflexology, and jin shin. None of them have left me wanting to explore past psychological pain, although most have released tight muscle knots. Some of the types have been physically painful, others have been soothing, but none of the therapists have tried counselling at the same time as treatment and for that I am grateful. After many years of talk therapy I have begun to realize that the stories I tell myself need to be changed. Furthermore the ways in which I absorb the pain of others needs to be addressed. Susan Wendell (The Rejected Body Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disabilities) calls this “channelling other people’s pain”...
We can’t undo the life traumas that have affected our nervous system(brain/mind/consciousness), but we can try to understand how we are not completely helpless and doomed to a life of turmoil without a sense of hope. We do not have to care about other people’s happiness to the exclusion of our own healthy mind set. We are not personally responsible for everybody else’s happiness (or pain); being in that head space absolves others from caring for themselves. It is foolhardy to believe we can solve other people’s problems. This is our daily challenge, particularly since living with pain is a constant in our lives. In my book I discuss my own struggles in this regard, as well the women whom I interviewed talk about theirs.
http://womenandfibromyalgia.com/2008/11/01/fibromyalgia-on-being-parented-and-parenting/#more-37
Understanding Myofascial Release
What is Myofascial Release?
Myofascial Release is a highly specialized stretching technique used by physical therapists to treat patients with a variety of soft tissue problems.
To understand what Myofascial Release is and why it works, you have to understand a little about fascia. Fascia is a thin tissue that covers all the organs of the body. This tissue covers every muscle and every fiber within each muscle. All muscle stretching, then, is actually stretching of the fascia and the muscle, the myofascial unit. When muscle fibers are injured, the fibers and the fascia which surrounds it become short and tight. This uneven stress can be transmitted through the fascia to other parts of the body, causing pain and a variety of other symptoms in areas you often wouldn't expect. Myofascial Release treats these symptoms by releasing the uneven tightness in injured fascia.
In other words, Myofascial Release is stretching of the fascia. The stretch is guided by feedback the therapist feels from the patient's body. This feedback tells the therapist how much force to use, the direction of the stretch and how long to stretch. Small areas of muscle are stretched at a time. Sometimes the therapist uses only two fingers to stretch a small part of a muscle. The feedback the therapist feels determines which muscles are stretched and in what order.
http://www.myofascial-release.com/
Myofascial Release, Myofascial Unwinding, and Repressed Memories
Myofascial release therapy is based on the idea that poor posture, physical injury, illness and emotional stress can throw the body out of alignment and cause it’s intricate web of fascia to become taut and constricted. because fascia link every organ and tissue in the body with every other part, the skillful and dexterous use of the hands is said to free up, or “release,” disruptions in this fascial network. Pressure on the bones, muscles, joints, and nerves is relieved in the process, and balance is restored.
Like a “pull” in a sweater, the effects of tension and strain are thought to snowball over time. Abnormal pressures may tighten or bind the fascia to underlying tissues, causing “adhesions,” or dabs of scar tissue that cling to muscle fibers. Even though these adhesions do not show up on x-rays or other scans, they can stiffen joints or contribute to painful motions, such as rotator cuff injuries. If they occur near a nerve, they may cause numbness, pain, and tingling, as with sciatica or carpal tunnel syndrome.
The gentle and sustained stretching of myofascial release is believed to free these adhesions and soften and lengthen the fascia. By freeing up fascia that may be impeding blood vessels or nerves, myofascial release is also said to enhance the body’s innate restorative powers by improving circulation and nervous system transmission.
Some practitioners contend that the method also releases pen-up emotions that may be contributing to pain and stresses in the body. In a variation of the technique that therapist John Barnes calls “myofascial unwinding,” moving various body parts through a range of postural positions is said to unleash, or unwind, repressed “memories” that the tissues have unconsciously come to “store.” This leads to both physical and psychological healing.
Sessions typically last 30 minutes to an hour and may be given one to three times a week depending on your condition. A simple pulled muscle may respond completely after a session or two, whereas chronic myofascial pain may require three months of regular treatment, coupled with a home program of exercise and stretches.
http://www.cloud9massages.com/articles/myofascial_release.htm
John Barnes' Myofascial Release, Rebounding, and Unwinding
Excerpts from Part 2 of “The John F. Barnes Myofascial Release Approach” from Massage Magazine:
My experience has shown that when a trauma is too painful, too fearful, or so intense that we go into shock, our subconscious activates our survival mechanism and pulls our feeling intelligence out of our body. This survival mechanism numbs us so we can survive the ordeal. However, because science has ignored consciousness, most of you and your clients are trying to function or heal in this state of disassociation.
In other words, your subconscious perceives that the truck is still crashing into your car, you are still falling down the steps, the surgical knife is still cutting you or you are still being attacked.
The subconscious tightens against the unresolved trauma like a broken record that plays all day and all night. It does not matter how intelligent you are, how strong you are or how hard you are trying to get better. It is not on the conscious level. Ignoring the subconscious’ “bracing patterns” has thwarted health care’s ability to help people truly heal.
You cannot consciously control these subconscious “bracing patterns,” and this chronic tightness, throughout time, begins to solidify the ground substance of the fascial system, creating and perpetuating structural fascial restrictions that result in pain, headaches and restriction of movement. These holding patterns also create a state of mental and emotional hypervigilance and anxiety.
Throughout many years, I’ve seen that nature wants us to learn from our experiences. However, when we have to dissociate to endure pain or to survive, we are left with a fragmented experience. Myofascial release, unwinding and rebounding allow us to access the tissue memory that creates and stubbornly maintains these subconscious bracing patterns, so that resolution is possible.
Myofascial release, unwinding and rebounding are the safe, efficient and highly effective methods for releasing the structural fascial restrictions and subconscious holding patterns, hypervigilance and anxiety, allowing the individual’s self-correcting healing capacities to function properly.
Missing links
Myofascial unwinding can be initiated by the therapist who gently touches the painful or injured body part and lifts until gravity is eliminated and the client trusts enough to release control. The mind-body spontaneously begins to move into positions of past unresolved trauma. The two huge missing links in health care are the proper release of the structural myofascial restrictions and the positions in space where trauma occurred—and where, to survive, the client’s subconscious pulled his or her feeling intelligence out of the body.
Our mind-body remembers everything that ever happened to it, especially those events with a high emotional content. Therefore, as the therapist removes gravity from the body and the client lets go of control, the subconscious moves the body, with the therapist’s help, into positions of past trauma.
The mind-body stops when all of the information from the past trauma, which has been buried in the subconscious, billows forth in the form of sensations, pictures, emotions and memories. As this sensory information enters the conscious mind, the tightness from the bracing patterns softens and healing commences. Now that these repressed tissue memories have been retrieved, the subconscious releases its iron grip on the structures. Now structural work will be successful and lasting. The subconscious rules!...
Myofascial release safely, efficiently and highly effectively moves us naturally into the subconscious healing zone for authentic healing to occur. Another way of describing this healing zone is our intuitive, instinctive state. The hypnagogic state is the state of consciousness just before you go to sleep or wake up, when you feel as if you’re slightly floating, but aware. I teach therapists and clients how to achieve this healing zone to maximize effectiveness and enhance the quality of their lives.
This is why myofascial release, unwinding and rebounding will greatly enhance all you do. The techniques you are skilled at will move into an even more productive dimension.
In fact, there is nothing esoteric about myofascial unwinding. It is the dream state.
This is when your mind-body is processing information and experiences its self-correcting process. The problem is if you had a car accident or fell from a tree, you need the help of a trusted therapist to eliminate gravity to find the positions of past trauma and support you as you release tissue memory.
No one can force someone to unwind. The client always has control, so unwinding cannot be used for inappropriate purposes.
The key to unwinding is letting go of the control of the intellect. It is all about trust. As clients take off their brakes, the therapist follows their motion until they stop in a particular position. The therapist never leads or forces; therefore, there is never injury. The client’s mind-body complex will never allow injury during the unwinding process.
During unwinding, when patients experience the flashback phenomena, they may experience therapeutic pain or fear. This is a memory. Memories never injure. It is the lack of expression of tissue memory that perpetuates the holding patterns that inhibit our ability to heal.
....if you were injured in a car accident, every time you see a car coming too fast you tighten and brace against the possible impact. People replay these incidents—and the autonomic, habitual bracing patterns associated with them—subconsciously until these hidden memories and learned behaviors are brought to the surface. Myofascial unwinding brings this information to a conscious level, allowing clients to experience it safely for resolution of trauma.
Why do normal bodily movements or daily activities not reproduce these memories, emotions and outdated beliefs? I believe that in an attempt to protect itself from further injury, the subconscious does not allow the body to move into positions that re-enact past traumatic events. Instead, the body develops strategies or patterns to protect itself.
These subconscious holding patterns eventually form specific muscular tone or tension patterns, and the fascial component then tightens into these habitual positions of strain as a compensation to support the resulting misalignment. Therefore, the repeated postural and traumatic insults of a lifetime, combined with the tensions of emotional and psychological origin, result in tense, contracted and painful fibrous tissue.
A discrete area of the body may become so altered by its efforts to compensate and adapt to stress that structural and, eventually, pathological changes become apparent. Researchers have shown that the type of stress involved can be entirely physical (e.g., repetitive postural strain such as that adopted by a dentist or hairdresser) or purely psychic (e.g., chronic repressed anger).
Reversible amnesia
Working in reverse, myofascial release, rebounding and unwinding release the fascial-tissue restrictions, thereby altering the habitual muscular response and allowing the positional, reversible amnesia to surface, producing possible emotions and beliefs that can be the cause of the holding patterns.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. It is actually quite simple to learn or achieve.
It is important for the therapist to quiet his or her mind and feel the inherent motions. Quietly following the tissue or body part three-dimensionally along the direction of ease takes the client into the significant restrictions or positions.
With myofascial unwinding, the therapist eliminates gravity from the system. The felt sense of myofascial unwinding is a spiraling energy, a vortex. This unloading of the structure allows the body’s righting reflexes and protective responses to suspend their influences. The body then can move into positions that allow these state- or position-dependent physiologic flashback phenomena to reoccur. As this happens within the safe environment of a treatment session, the patient can facilitate the body’s inherent self-correcting mechanism to obtain improvement where all else had failed.
We cannot separate the mind from the body. Myofascial unwinding allows the individual’s consciousness to initiate the healing process.
Myofascial release creates a whole-body awareness, allowing the massage therapist, energy therapist or bodyworker to facilitate change, growth and the possibility for a total resolution of structural restrictions, emotions and belief systems that impede a client’s progress. This is authentic healing.
http://www.massagemag.com/Magazine/2007/issue133/Part2-John-Barnes-Myofasical-Release-Approach.php
Excerpts from the paper “Reichian-Myofascial Release Therapy For Deeper Emotional and Physical Healing”by Dr. Peter M. Bernstein:
Reichian-myofascial release therapy is a new and unique treatment – the combination of two of the most successful body-oriented therapies in use today. Each therapy in its own right is a very effective treatment, but combining the two creates results that are exponentially greater than either therapy when used by itself...
Wilhelm Reich, M.D. was a noted psychiatrist and protégé of Sigmund Freud. He was one of the first to employ the then new practice of psychoanalysis which used the theories and techniques of verbal exchange to understand and reveal the inner workings of a patient’s unconscious mind.
For the purpose of this paper, we will describe the human unconscious as the brain’s reservoir of thoughts, experiences, and impressions. Though generally hidden from our day-to-day awareness, e.g., we are not conscious of them, they exert significant control upon our actions, conscious thoughts, and resulting everyday behavior. Practitioners who came after Reich and incorporated his work into theirs called these thoughts, experiences, and impressions that make up our unconscious mind: imprints. Reich thought imprints were responsible for an individual’s destructive behavior – both to others and to themselves – and that the power of these imprinted experiences resulted directly from the pain that was repressed (unexpressed) in the past when the original incident or circumstance (which he called trauma) made the imprint. The imprint metaphor is useful in understanding this relationship between the past and present in that the greater the amount of repressed pain, the deeper the imprint. In other words, the greater the impact of the trauma, the greater the troubled behaviors and troubled lives...
In time, he learned that these behavioral manifestations of character are also clearly demonstrated in a person’s physical characteristics such as a person’s dulled eyes, clenched jaw, stiff neck, tight throat, shrugged shoulders, held breath, flexed pelvic area, or tight buttocks. He taught that these physical characteristics, or biophysical statements, are the way that the body manifests deep character distortions...
Reich reasoned that biophysical statements were caused by repressing a natural emotional reaction to a painful experience, and that the process of repressing this emotion altered what he called the “energy economy” of the total person. He termed this process armoring....
The key to understanding armoring is realizing that it is simultaneously manifested in both the mind and the body because it is directly connected to emotional repression...
Armoring can take two forms. When armoring is reflected in attitudinal behavior it is called “character armoring”. When it’s manifested in bodily tension, it’s called “muscular armoring”.
Armoring can be thought of as the juncture between body and mind which causes abnormal behavior. Both character armoring and muscular armoring are the demonstrated effects of the underlying character disorder. In other words, the symptom perceived by the person himself, and the behavior observed by others, is a reflection of the disease, but not the actual disease itself.
While the symptoms and the behavior caused by armoring may be manipulated or altered by various techniques – chemical, physical, psychological - the underlying disorder is not altered. It persists, limiting the patient’s ability to feel, think, act, and relate to others. It’s like a mental, physical and emotional straight jacket that compromises an individual’s reactions to life and reduces their ability to function in the world...
Thanks to Reich’s groundbreaking work, there is hope for those whose lives have become distorted by the armoring that results from physical or emotional trauma. The key lies in Reich’s discovery that treating the psychological issues begins by first treating the physiological symptoms.
In Reichian psychotherapy, the repressed memories which are at the root of the armoring can be retrieved and eventually released. This is possible because the memories of acute emotional or physical trauma are actually stored in the segmented musculature. By releasing or unwinding the constricted tissue, the Reichian process releases the traumatic memories and begins to relieve the symptomatic behavior associated with armoring....
Once you appreciate the many ways that Reichian psychotherapy understands and treats armoring, you will begin to appreciate how well it complements and is improved by the addition of a relatively new physical therapy called myofascial release. Myofascial release physical therapy is a powerful form of biophysical release that has moved far beyond the traditional medical model of physical therapy. When coupled with Reichian psychotherapy techniques for releasing a body’s armored segments, myofascial release enhances therapeutic results with finesse and elegance...
Because of its poor blood supply, damaged and constricted fascia heals very slowly. Ironically, although fascia has poor circulation, it has a rich supply of nerve endings so that any damage to it produces a high level of pain.
In addition to causing the fascia to shrink, repeated trauma creates adhesions where the fascia become stuck together even further constricting the enwrapped muscles and organs. Fascia is estimated to have a tensile strength of 2000 pounds per square inch. Therefore, when damaged fascial tissue constricts and loses its elasticity, the fascia's enormous tensile strength can literally twist the human body out of its natural state.
Not only is damage to fascia painful, the resulting constriction reduces blood circulation to the encased tissue, which often leads to serious physical complications. Releasing the pressure by stretching the fascia improves both blood flow and nervous system transmission to the constrained tissue while reducing pain and enhancing the body's ability to heal. Practitioners of myofascial release refer to the release of myofascial torsion as unwinding.
It is highly common for a myofascial release session to trigger an emotional as well as physical release during which patients often recall the traumas that damaged the fascia...
How does Reichian theory and practice intersect – or more precisely - overlap with myofascial release and its applications?
In his book, Myofascial Release, the Hidden Search for Excellence, John Barnes, PT, describes how myofascial release physical therapy techniques can access submerged, repressed, often totally blocked memories, including trauma and sexual abuse (my comments are in parentheses):
“The body remembers everything that has ever happened to it. When a person has experienced unpleasant situations or trauma that overload the ability to cope, the body in an attempt to protect (e.g., armor) itself from further harm, effects a dissociation or amnesia of the event. Time does not heal emotional wounds; it simply covers them up with an adaptive fascial layer, tightening over time. These buried (or, repressed unconscious) memories in the fascial system (which I will explain later in the paper) are uncovered during the “myofascial unwinding process,” reversing the amnesia or dissociation that was not available to the person’s consciousness. This is called state dependent learning, memory and behavior, a concept that can be expanded to include “position dependent learning,” memory and behavior. This theory states that when a particular state or position is attained, all physiological responses, memories, and beliefs at that event become conscious and can be re-experienced. This places the patient in a state of awareness, allowing for a change of beliefs, emotions, holding or bracing patterns that are responsible for perpetuating myofascial restrictions and their resultant symptoms.”...
An experienced Reichian psychotherapist will develop a clear impression of the patient as soon the person enters the room – even before any words are spoken. The way they walk, dress, hold their posture, as well as manifest their attitude reveals how this individual lives life and interacts with others.
In Reichian psychotherapy, the patient is observed from two perspectives: first the therapist defines the symptoms, the patient’s history, and the observed behavior. These give the therapist an indication of the psychological side of the patient’s character. Second, the psychotherapist observes how and where the patient manifests emotional repression in his physical structure to determine where the patient’s body is armored. This second part of the Reichian process is where the elegance and refinement of myofascial release applications become such an improvement to the Reichian treatment process...
As I start working with the patient, I look for changes in skin color, skin temperature, hair erection (“gooseflesh”), and the visual and palpable signs of muscular tension. Before proceeding with a specific treatment, I assess the patient in the following ways:
Their manner – Is the patient at ease, or uncomfortable? Are they upset, tightened, angry, or saddened?
Their body language – Do they lie on the table or “couch” with their legs crossed, spread open, separated with the toes turned in or outward?
Their body signs – Are they pale? Are their hands sweaty and cold? Are their pupils dilated?
Their features – Is their face masked, serious, sad, embarrassed, or expectant? Does he or she look like they will break into a smile or tears? Are there any sharp lines of demarcation (flushed face and neck, pale chest, or any sharp lines of temperature change (warm abdomen, cold legs, etc.).
Their level of tension – What body areas are relaxed?
Because the patient’s body is so revealing of their emotional state, this initial visual assessment shows me more about the patient and their condition than most individuals could tell me in hours of discussion.
As I continue to work with the patient, the signs that I listed above continue to provide me a stream of information that guides both the choice and application of specific techniques. In this way, Reichian psychotherapy is quite different from other therapies which rely mainly on verbal exchange to produce their results...
Earlier in this paper I quoted John Barnes, an innovative myofascial release physical therapist. Though he doesn’t come from a Reichian perspective, he has learned to distinguish the armored segments of the body and has developed skilled applications which are extremely effective in softening and diffusing muscular and physical armoring. In the process, he has developed an understanding which closely mirrors the Reichian principles discussed earlier (my comments in parentheses):
“…It’s like when we get injured a lot of times, it seems like an indelible imprint is made in our entities when there’s high emotional content and somehow that gets locked into the tissue memory system. I think what happens is that our need to survive and protect ourselves get shoved down and we tend to disassociate from (the emotional content), which is fine for a while as a coping mechanism, but the problem is that because we were taught to mask symptoms or run from our problems the fascial systems slowly tend to tighten around those (affected) areas and then create restrictions.”**
**Exclusive Interview with John Barnes: www.myofascialrelease.com
When Barnes’ numerous myofascial techniques and approaches are applied, not only do the muscles and fascia begin to release, but the unconscious repressed material that is behind the muscular and fascial tension is also released, much as it is in Reichian psychotherapy.
Of particular interest is that in myofascial release, the memories are actually relived “positionally”, that is to say that the patient will often repeat physical actions relating directly to the original trauma. For example, if the patient was abused as a child, they may assume the physical posture of that abused child, cringing, cowering or dodging the blows they received years earlier. This positional relief, along with the associated emotional catharsis, produces a result that is far more dramatic than that achieved with Reichian psychotherapy alone...
...when the two practices are combined, the results are even more extraordinary, and through continued application of the combined therapies patients improve dramatically! When the old emotional material is finally released the patient becomes “unstuck” and experiences a new openness and vulnerability, and the patient is transformed. At this point of transformation, the Reichian verbal and analytic psychotherapy takes on a major role in the healing process. The therapist through experience and insight helps the patient gain perspective, with the difference that – thanks to the myofascial release therapy – the depth of healing is much greater.
As the patient begins to unwind, they begin to understand how their armoring causes them to mix the past and the present, confusing their traumatic past with their current life. Releasing their armoring allows them to see that their distorted perspective created by early damage skews their present day behavior and attitudes.
www.bernsteininstitute.com/pdf/Reichian-Myofascial-Paper.pdf
