On Reliving Again

There seems to be a dispute about whether we can relive events in the womb while we were being carried.  So let me clarify.  When a patient with leaky gates starts to relive something in infancy, there is sometimes a breakthrough of birth events; the trauma, say, of diminished oxygen where the mother was given heavy anesthetics. So in the midst of an infancy primal, there is suddenly a suffocation, sometimes the person turns red and seems to be suffocating.  When this ends the patient begins rapid breathing,  I call it locomotive breathing, raspy and hoarse, rapid as though the patient is making up  for the event by gasping for air.  Heavy breathing can go on for minutes, and then relaxation as the event becomes integrated.   The vital signs fall below starting values as a sign that this integration is happening.  Here we establish with little doubt that earlier pain can break through higher level trauma, as though the beginning feeling has dredged up deeper pain.  This happens when that earlier first-line pain is massive and will not stay in its cave.   The gates are already damaged from all the early trauma and they become “leaky.”

   Through the process of resonance the early pain is dredged up because it is in some way related to the current feeling; either anxiety or panic.  It can also take the form of hopelessness  or helplessness when the current situation leaves the person feeling helpless.  When the clerk at the DMV keeps blocking your attempt to explain something and she says, “sorry, there is nothing I can do.” Sometimes rage sets in at the DMV. In a Primal,  it may be that helplessness sets in and this evokes the very early helplessness felt when trying to get born, being suffocated with drugs.   Of course it is not articulated as helplessness; it is a sensation and very uncomfortable.  It may not even be a feeling; only a non-differentiated sensation that has no words nor feelings, as yet.  But we can act on that later on even when we don’t know what it is.

   In short, leaky gates allows that early sensation to rise, triggered off by something in the present that produces the same sensation/feeling.   So if we understand that while we relive something in the present an old feeling from childhood can break through, it is also possible that while we relive early infancy and childhood it is possible that womb-life trauma can break through.  It can be denied only if we deny the possibility of womb-life trauma.  This is no longer a hypothesis since hundreds of studies over the last few years have pointed to womb-life trauma and its later effects on our health and personality.   The earlier that trauma the more widespread and deleterious the effects.

  But the way we relive womb-life can only be within the possibilities of what the first line can do; that is, relive the physiologic effects with no feelings possible, as yet.   So when we have inordinate anxiety while we relive something much later in our childhood, that signifies first line breaking through.   The first line, in brief, can only provide simply biologic reactions of heart, blood pressure, body temperature, as well as changes in hormone output.  We cannot pinpoint these reactions because they are incorporated in the primal of childhood that someone is reliving.   But it makes the Primal much more forceful, more than we can expect when the patient relives something when she was eight years old.   Terrible suffering and panic may be there that does not seem to related to the event itself.  We see this a lot in pre-psychotics where there is nearly always a first-line breakthrough during a primal.  And for this they often need painkillers or tranquilizers to push back the first line for a time. Otherwise we get disintegration, which is not what we want.  So is the patient after this Primal aware of the first line and that she was reliving life in the womb?  Not often, except that she knows that feeling of panic; and we know where it comes from.  So in this sense she is aware of first line but not the circumstances, any more than during womb-life she is aware that she is in the womb when mother takes a couple of cocktails.      But she can experience the sensation of dizziness and vertigo.  And that may last years, or she can hold her breath when later on there is trauma and fear; a holdover from womb-life and suffocation where she is again conserving oxygen when stressed.   It is again the primal/primordial reaction to suffocation.

A propos of this, there is an article in Scientific American Mind. I must repeat this to be believable—SCIENTIFC AMERICAN MIND, with the headline, “A daily glass of wine is OK during pregnancy.”   (Nov/Dec 2012).  Can you imagine? I can, when it comes from those who have no idea what womb-life does to us.  The story goes on to say that moderate drinking  shows no effects on childhood learning. And of course they studied hundreds of subjects and found they were just as smart as other children.  So it must be true?  Oh no it’s not.  That is because in the cognitive arena they are exclusively focused on learning and not on emotional effects.  So they find what they are looking for.  Maybe they are looking at the wrong thing.  These results also appeared in the journal of obstetrics.   And they reassure:  expectant moms can now relax.  Ayayay.

    A mother who has a drink every day of her pregnancy is doing immeasurable damage to the offspring.  And it is not temporary.  If she also smokes there is the groundwork for later psychosis.   How do we know?  During Primal relivings we see inordinate reactions to the childhood reliving she is undergoing.   Thus, it indicates massive deep pain underneath the surface.   When there is now pain of neglect, of being ignored, neglected and punished during childhood all of the time we have the soil for later serious mental illness; and we know that the illness is not just mental but totally physiologic.  No, mothers who drink cannot relax; they are harming the baby and later adult.  If they smoke and drink during the first days and weeks of womb-life where the nervous system is just getting organized the damage begins.    Can we relive?  Only the sensations and even that it is very difficult but in theory it can be done.  Let us not confuse awareness and consciousness.   We can be aware of malaise but not be conscious of the early circumstances; but we can relive the malaise.

   So what does a recent study, also in Scientific American Mind,  mean when they say that PTSD (stress disorder)  happens with more severity when there is a traumatic childhood in the past of the individual?  Here again we see that there is an acknowledgement of the critical window even when they are not aware of it.  That is, it is not only the war experience that damages but the harmful childhood behind it.  That is, trauma during the critical period,  early on in our infancy and before, occurs during the epoch of the critical window when lack of love can leave a disastrous imprint that lingers.  A mother who drinks and smokes during pregnancy is indifferent to her child, with the same indifference she may treat him later on.  That is how the fetus experiences lack of love and trauma before he has words for it.

    The critical window has a short shelf-life,  and when there is trauma during that time the damage is engraved and stays.   The most critical shelf-life is during the time we are being carried. That imprint harms the most and lingers much longer, perhaps for a lifetime.  It is also the most recondite and difficult to retrieve and relive but it can be done.  We have to trust the theory and our clinical experience, which by now has lasted 45 years