i-brainmap meets abuse

April 7, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

I had a letter from someone I’ll refer to as V, who is reading my book, i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness. The question V asked went something like this:

“If a person has been abused and learns to understand the impact of the abuse on the brain (using i-brainmap for instance) would that person be able to deal with the abuser differently.”

Safety first

The first thing it’s important to say is that i-brainmap is not intended to be used if there is current abuse or danger. Safety always comes first and if you are unsafe you need your alarm system firing because it is telling you there is danger.

i-brainmap maps the common survival response

i-brainmap was developed to help people understand what happens when the brain is overwhelmed by events such as abuse, and why it gets stuck and keeps repeating those old reactions, which can make it difficult to deal with events in the present. I developed i-brainmap through observing people’s experience of traumatic and overwhelming events, so it is grounded in experience.

One of the most difficult things about lower brain activation or re-experiencing a map or pattern that was imprinted during abuse or overwhelming experiences is that typically when you drop into that re-experiencing you cant see that it is connected to the past. You experience it as current threat. i-brainmap helps you understand this glitch in the brain.

See i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness, page 30 for an explanation of this.

Here we’ll focus on the most relevant aspects of V’s question.

The most common response in interpersonal or childhood trauma or abuse is the freeze and appease response. Recognizing that this is a physiological response that was the most effective response during the trauma or abuse can help victim-survivors understand this reaction and why it can continue even many years after the abuse.

Many victim-survivors are blame themselves that they didn’t say or do anything during the abuse. But during the freeze response language is affected as the whole system freezes, literally. So you have no voice and no capacity to do anything when the system is trapped and overwhelmed, and freezes.

In evolutionary terms this makes sense because when a small, vulnerable animal is trapped and overwhelmed (abuse) the most protective thing they can do is become small and silent. They don’t have the power to fight back and are often unable to escape because the perpetrator is likely to be a family member or trusted friend and therefore the child has nowhere to escape to.

There are also the more complex interpersonal issue and confusion that goes with abuse or interpersonal trauma but that requires a much longer investigation and discussion than I can offer here.

Please and appease

One of the reasons I added the appease response to fight-flight-freeze reaction, when a small, vulnerable animal or child is threatened, is because it is an automatic, involuntary, biological response to overwhelming interpersonal experiences. The child whose father is abusive for instance needs to keep their head down and please and appease to survive or avoid a beating. It is usually the “safest” thing (in terms of survival – life and death) for a child to do in an abusive situation.

i-brainmap was developed to explain why these reactions such as freeze-appease continue after the threat has passed. It explains that when the system has been overwhelmed the survival brain creates a body-memory-map tagging an experience to remember it because it is dangerous. So when anything triggers that same body-memory-map of experience the system drops into the old map and you re-experience those old feelings as if they are happening right now, and they are automatic and involuntary.

This can mean that the victim-survivor drops into freeze-appease in every relationship and feels unable to speak up, say no, or set clear boundaries because the maps of experience that get expressed in relationship cause them to experience all interpersonal relationships using the original maps of abuse.

This repetition of earlier experience can be very frustrating because you know intellectually that you want to stand up to someone or leave a relationship but your body-memory-maps keep dragging you back into the old experience and you can find yourself silent and frozen.

Case study – Jane

Ok that all seems a bit vague so I’ll give you a case study to clarify these ideas. Meet Jane.

Jane is 29. She lives alone and has a history of difficult, sometimes abusive relationships. Jane was sexually assaulted by a “good friend of the family” over several months one summer when she was 9 years old. She has never told her parents because the perpetrator said they would be disgusted and blame her. (This is a common lie told by the perpetrator to frighten their victim to maintain silence, adding to the experience of fear, silence, self-blame, and isolation of the victim).

Now imagine that her parents have just told Jane that the perpetrator is spending a week with the family at the beach house this summer, a holiday Jane has been looking forward to for months.

If we zoom inside Jane’s brain-body-mind, we see that her system immediately starts operating from the old map of experience of the trauma of sexual assault. She freezes and appeases and wants to escape, perhaps with a good dose of rage (fight). But then her mind kicks in, trying to make meaning of the situation, and starts overthinking, “how dare he….. why don’t my parents ever think of me…. this isn’t fair… now I cant go….., not fair, poor me… no one cares about me…” and so on around and around. Jane feels sick, and her body loses all energy and she feels like lying down and never moving from her bed. These are all the reactions she probably felt during the original trauma but now she has an overlay of secondary activations, such as overthinking, trying to think her way out of the experience that she has developed over the years. In short her system is operating in survival mode, as if the abuse is still happening and there is a current threat.

We could keep investigating Jane’s experience, but some of the common reactions are described in detail in the book. (See chapters on Primary and Secondary Activation). What I’d like to do is get to the heart of V’s question.

Now imagine that Jane has a new map (i-brainmap) that helps her understand the experience differently. She can identify the experience of feeling sick and overwhelmed, wanting to hide under the doona, and feeling like a victim-“poor me-thinking” as all related to the original experience of abuse. But just knowing it intellectually isn’t going to change it.

The challenge that the i-brainmap, and applying the AIR sequence, invites Jane to do is to be mindful of the experience while giving her something to hold onto, a sequence, to keep her moving through it, rather than stuck in it.

i-brainmap isn’t some miracle cure but gives the brain a new map of experience to orient towards that tells the system (by bringing attention into the present through the senses) there is no current threat so the brain-body-mind can begin to put down the old map that is tagged with threat-survival. This changes the experience by telling the brain, using the language of survival brain – sensory experience – it is just a memory and “I’m here now, not back there in that frightening experience.”

In Jane’s case we’d get her to apply the AIR sequence as the feelings of distress about the situation arise, slowing and gently, yet firmly, moving through the experience and bringing her attention back to the present again and again. Changing her experience of the lower brain activation while orienting to a map that helps make sense of what is happening, allows the brain to begin to do it’s job of integration. Integration is at the heart of i-brainmap and brain change.

We might have Jane place a hand over her stomach or on her chest (sensory experience) where she feels the distress in her body when she drops into re-experiencing. At the same time reminding her to bring her attention to something in the environment that is safe and familiar, such as her new red shoes, that always make her feel fabulous when she wears them.

We assist Jane to integrate the brain so that she can decide how she wants to respond to the situation using her whole brain, instead of being driven in her reactions by survival brain, which overrides her big brain resources. Other people might tell Jane what she should do, such as confront the perpetrator or tell her parents but only Jane can make that decision. And that decision may change as integration continues. There is no right response, only Jane’s right response now. The main thing is that Jane is using all her resources and wisdom to make the right decision for her self, rather than being directed by old maps that are no longer relevant because she is an adult now and can speak up and can walk away.

In our case, let’s say Jane decides to tell her parents about the sexual assault and that she doesn’t want the perpetrator to come to the holiday house while she is there. Jane might decide to do this in a letter or over the phone if it feels too confronting to speak to her parents. Jane can take her time to write a letter and manage her internal reactions as she writes.

Hand writing a letter in a safe environment with access to support and moving at your own pace before confronting anyone can help you manage the internal distress and give form to words that have long lain silent, in other words finding your voice. You feel the feelings of overwhelm as you write, and as you feel them you give them words and keep writing through the feelings, while tending gently to the internal distress using the mindfulness strategies outlined in AIR(s). This is a very integrative process. (I offer techniques for this in my writing program writing the whale, but you can just do it yourself. The main thing to watch out for is that you’re not going around in circles and getting stuck in the emotions of survival brain).

It is important that Jane move slowly and gently through this process so she doesn’t overwhelm the system again but allows the experience to be integrative, so the brain-body-mind system can integrate the old experience and not continue to become activated every time there is some reminder. This isn’t just about one situation such as disclosing to her parents or confronting the perpetrator it is an ongoing process of brain-body-mind integration explained and encouraged by i-brianmap and the AIR(s) sequence.

What people say about how i-brainmap has helped them

• It helped me make sense of these reactions and feelings I keep having
• I don’t feel crazy now that I know it is just my brain doing it’s thing
• I know it’s not my fault
• I have something I can try. Before this I just felt powerless and didn’t know what to do. It was like swimming in an ocean and no land in sight. i-brainmap is like having something to hold onto in an ocean of fear.
• It gives me some direction, some hope.

These are a few of the comments people have made about using i-brainmap and applying AIR.

I hope this has been helpful V? Please let me know if you have other questions about i-brainmap.

In my blog I hope to explore what I have discovered, and continue to discover, in developing i-brainmap. My intention is to create a learning community around practical brain change especially for those who have suffered trauma.