Trauma Beliefs and Habits Discussion
Dr. Clark Cameron explained that traumatic life experiences from the past are fundamental in forming our paradigms and mental conditioning. These experiences are reflective of the very perceptions and repeated patterns of behavior that define one’s life. These experiences, especially when we are young, have a profound influence on our attitudes and our habitual behaviors. These patterns of behavior generate a cycle of resulting responses that work to generate and reinforce those patterns (Cameron, 2015).
These past experiences rule our lives and remain as the baseline for our understanding and perceptions of the world. Without our discernment as a judgmental observer interpreting these experiences, they are just a random succession of events. Therefore, our life is just an interpretation and what we make of it. Traumatic experiences are not just something that happens to the observer, but they also impact the information processing of the body down to the deepest biochemical and bioenergetic levels. This includes our cells’ molecules, atoms, protons, and electrons (Cameron, 2015). Cameron stated that “[t]here is a virtual infinity of events happening in countless levels of reality at all times. And we are neither conscious nor aware of them nor do we classify them as belonging to our experience. And yet they surely do”
However, we tend to focus and make significant those experiences based on our needs being met. The emotions that we feel about a particular event determine what we are drawn to, and eventually these feelings and needs based on our interpretation of these influential events program in us habitual behaviors. As we grow and develop, our worlds become more complex, and we cling to those established ways of being to maintain predictability. These habits do not have to be something that benefits us; they only reflect the way that we can most easily survive (Cameron,2015).
These habits can end up as addictions to things like alcohol, smoking, overeating, drugs, and caffeine, and when we try to overcome these habits, we must deal with the perceptions that we established when the traumatic event occurred, the experience itself that we try to avoid through these repetitive self-defeating behaviors (Cameron PhD, 2015).
Cameron (2015) defined the key points of habits and the roles they play as follows:
- All habits are learned.
- All habits operate at the level of the inner mind.
- Our habits involve repeating similar behavior at regular intervals; in fact, if a behavior is not repeated it will get extinguished.
- Our habits perpetuate and they reinforce themselves. The fact that habits may be bad or have unfortunate outcomes. The fact that it may be a habit that is bad does not matter. We call this the diabolic circularity of a destructive habit.
- Our habits have been developed to fulfill and cope with our needs. Whether they actually fulfill the need is another question.
- Once we have established a habit, any attempt to disrupt or terminate it will meet with resistance. A part of the stress results from the fact that habits are developed to fulfill needs, and when the habit is broken the need remains unfulfilled.
- Our habits can be either positive and affirm life or they can be negative and deny or destroy life.
Our addictive behaviors boil down to two key elements: our beliefs and our habits. Both are essential to act out our addictive behaviors. Our beliefs provide the emotional fuel and go back to the thoughts (as described in the beginning) coming from our earliest but now unremembered interpretation and perception of a traumatic event. And the habit is the learned response that we adapted to cope with negative feelings associated with the event. The key to overcoming our addictions is to bring the event and the “maladaptive response”, that developed the addiction, to our awareness! Then we must acknowledge the self-defeating habit (Cameron 2015).
Trauma has a composite effect in that it is both an experience and an imprint. It gets registered in an instantaneous and profoundly impactful way. Painful events occurring in our childhood may or may not be remembered, and these traumatic experiences can produce many dysfunctional outcomes such as physical illness and other physiological outcomes such as addiction, loss of empowerment, slowed emotional maturity, and poor relationship responses.
But it also is these experiences that make up our reality and determine who we are and who we will become. Physicist Fred Wolf defined our “I am” this way: “There is something inside of you called “I.” I did this… I want this… I have that… I don’t have this… What can I do…? How can you help me…? The I is so much a part of it. But, actually, if you delve into your “I” and try to find out where it is, the answer is ‘I don’t know.’ Nobody knows what the I is. So, what is this I? Turns out that I is something that is created; created moment to moment, to describe an experience” (Wolf, 2016, September 22).
Trauma Behavioral Cycle
Our past stories get triggered when we are exposed to familiar kinesthetic activators. We experience a build-up of negative energy, anxieties, and negative visions. We plan our strategies to play our games again; we then act out our past dramas again and feel the same intense feelings we had when we originally experienced the trauma. We act impulsively and compulsively and then rationalize our behaviors. We minimize, blame, and justify. Then we suffer the consequences of feelings of hopelessness and despair as we try to apologize, clean up, and repair the damage to ourselves and others. We try to fake normalcy and then begin the routine again in a constant pattern of re-victimization.
Behavioral Cycle (“IDFeelings,” 2013; Reproduced with permission)
Correlation Between Trauma, Addiction, and Disease
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study was conducted by Kaiser Permanente and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under the supervision of Dr. Vincent Felitti. This study showed a correlation between childhood trauma and emotional and physical health. The study had 17,500 middle-class adult participants complete a survey (survey found in Appendix B) that identified 10 adverse childhood traumatic experience (“Adverse Childhood Experience Study,” n.d.)
Traumatic incidents include sexual abuse, witnessing physical abuse, humiliation, poverty, divorce, having an alcoholic or mentally ill parent, or a household member in prison. ACE participants who scored 6 or more of these traumas were 4600% more likely to become IV drug users compared to those who had experienced none of the traumas, and they were 3000% more likely to attempt suicide. The study found that “Of the 10 categories … studied any 6 of them produces a shortening of life expectancy of almost 20 years” (Felitti, n.d.).
As explained by Grinnell (2016), ACEs affect “mental and physical health in adulthood in three ways: the first is through coping mechanisms like smoking, overeating, alcoholism, or using drugs, all of which have immediate benefits but long-term risks. The second is the effect of chronic, major, unrelieved stress on certain areas of the brain that control our immune systems and inflammatory responses. The third involves changes to epigenetic mechanisms that control gene expression”
The ACE study showed a clear correlation between disease and childhood traumatic experiences. What is sad here is that childhood traumatic incidents are not even considered under the current medical paradigm as something to ask a patient about. Under a more holistic approach, patients should be asked about their addictions or whether they are repeating behavioral patterns from past traumatic experiences, which are keeping them stuck in a negative behavioral cycle
Medical professionals also do not tend to consider that chronic illnesses are related to the inability to cope with emotionally charged negative childhood experiences. Unresolved childhood traumatic experiences follow us into adulthood and can impact our behaviors, our quality of life, and our longevity. Childhood traumas are relived and repeated throughout our lives if they are not resolved
The Biology of Trauma
The Biochemical Response to Trauma
Dr. Bruce Lipton explained that the function of the mind is to bring coherence to the perception of our experiences, the beliefs that we have about them, and our reality. Therefore, if we experience a threat, real or imaginary, the body will prepare the cells to respond by sending internal brain-manufactured chemicals to the cells. So, if you think about it, our thoughts change our biology
Lipton (2017) went on to explain that the Buddha 25,000 years ago understood this when he said, “What we think, we become.” The science of epigenetics is saying the same thing today, that what you are thinking will be translated into biochemical responses that will determine who you will become (Lipton, 2017).
There are only two things that cause disease, and Dr. Lipton describes them using this formula: Protein + Signal = Disease. When the proteins of the DNA become flawed or mutated, then the cells become out of balance, a loss of coherence. However, only 1% of disease is produced by defective proteins. That means that over 90% of disease is determined by the signal
There are three things that can interrupt the signal: neurological trauma that limits the flow of information to the cells, toxins that distort the signal, and our thoughts. Our mind interprets what is happening in the world and then translates that through the nervous system to the cells of our body. Thus, if the mind perceives that a negative experience is occurring, then it will create a response that will disrupt the normal healthy biochemical balance of our cells (Lipton, 2017).