Trauma.
Trauma is the consequence of sustained stress.
The stages of stress unfold inexorably from
Jumpy - to - panic - into terror.
At terror, hopelessness competes with panic for control.
And after terror there is numb.
Thereafter there will be flash-backs and hyper-vigilance.
For years.
But numb can last forever
With shocking, meaningless intrusions from the lost moments
The missing time.
The official term, or acronym for the above stress to trauma response is GAS: The General Adaptation Syndrome model by Hans Selye, which presents a clear biological explanation of how the body responds and adapts to stress.
At stage 0.
Everything is fine, a bright sunny day, nothing is happening.
At stage 1. Alarm stage.
Something happens and it is a shock! The brain recognizes threat and instructs the adrenal glands to release hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.
At stage 2. Resistance Stage. RUN!!!!
After the body has responded to the threat and the threat has gone the body’s defenses become weaker, as it needs to allocate energy to the repair of damaged muscle tissues and lower the production of the stress hormones.
Although the body has shifted to this second phase of stress response, it remains on-guard for quite some time. This stage is a mixture of energy and exhaustion. Exhaustion is numbness and energy is panic.
At stage 3. Exhaustion Stage.
No hope. When the threat is overwhelming and there is no way out the body starts to lose its ability to combat the stressors and reduce their harmful impact because the adaptive energy is all drained out. The exhaustion stage can be referred to as the gate towards burnout or stress overload, which can lead to health problems if not resolved immediately.
In a trauma situation, the final stage is dissociation.
What is happening is elsewhere to the self.
There is a detachment from reality
It is as if there is no connection between me and what happened to me.
I did not recognise my feelings.
There was no me.
And yet I did not feel myself to be dissociated...
In latter years I re-entered this state as subspace, which is a full alive state of no-self. Subspace is the flip side of the empty, dead state of no-self, dissociation brings with it.
And my experience of no-self is primarily the empty and the dead.
The stages of stress unfold inexorably from
Jumpy - to - panic - into terror.
At terror, hopelessness competes with panic for control.
And after terror there is numb.
Thereafter there will be flash-backs and hyper-vigilance.
For years.
But numb can last forever
With shocking, meaningless intrusions from the lost moments
The missing time.
The official term, or acronym for the above stress to trauma response is GAS: The General Adaptation Syndrome model by Hans Selye, which presents a clear biological explanation of how the body responds and adapts to stress.
At stage 0.
Everything is fine, a bright sunny day, nothing is happening.
At stage 1. Alarm stage.
Something happens and it is a shock! The brain recognizes threat and instructs the adrenal glands to release hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol.
At stage 2. Resistance Stage. RUN!!!!
After the body has responded to the threat and the threat has gone the body’s defenses become weaker, as it needs to allocate energy to the repair of damaged muscle tissues and lower the production of the stress hormones.
Although the body has shifted to this second phase of stress response, it remains on-guard for quite some time. This stage is a mixture of energy and exhaustion. Exhaustion is numbness and energy is panic.
At stage 3. Exhaustion Stage.
No hope. When the threat is overwhelming and there is no way out the body starts to lose its ability to combat the stressors and reduce their harmful impact because the adaptive energy is all drained out. The exhaustion stage can be referred to as the gate towards burnout or stress overload, which can lead to health problems if not resolved immediately.
In a trauma situation, the final stage is dissociation.
What is happening is elsewhere to the self.
There is a detachment from reality
It is as if there is no connection between me and what happened to me.
I did not recognise my feelings.
There was no me.
And yet I did not feel myself to be dissociated...
In latter years I re-entered this state as subspace, which is a full alive state of no-self. Subspace is the flip side of the empty, dead state of no-self, dissociation brings with it.
And my experience of no-self is primarily the empty and the dead.
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