What Do We Mean By, He's Damaged?

In the field of shrinks we usually mean his emotional makeup is askew; his views and perceptions are off,  and he can’t be counted on for stability and reliability.  He is damaged.

But do we also mean that he is physically damaged?  Do we take into account the physical aspects of the damage? Or does it find itself limited to the emotional?  In Shrinkdom never the twain shall meet; it is all rather ephemeral.  But we usually confine ourselves to the emotional.  But what about when the “emotional has physical effects?  And physical origins?  Usually it is a long leap from the emotional damage to the physical.  That  is why doctors spend their lives studying diabetes, high blood pressure, migraines and asthma, and it still eludes them.  It is as if the symptoms spring de novo apart from their roots and are taken as complete entities by themselves.  So we go on studying the minutia of the symptoms separated from their origins.  The result of all this study is to try to control the symptom not cure it.  Big Pharma is not so interested in cure when crushing symptoms is so powerful a choice; an incentive which can go in into infinity.  And sadly, patients who suffer so much are willing to accept the control of the symptom as the main goal of treatment.

There are many new studies on the physical and physiologic components of the emotional as to make them inseparable, which they are.  Oh wait  minute, are they twins?  Conjoined at the head with no chance of separation?  Not until we see them as a whole, can we see them as separate.  Oh  My.  Now we are getting complicated.  Not until we see the key feelings with both their physical and emotional components can we see them as two parts of the same damage.  Meanwhile we go on misplacing treatment onto the wrong damage.  That is, it is not that we are not treating the damage; it is that we are not treating the real damage and that is why the symptoms continue without cease.  We treat collateral damage and evade  the real target.  The target, well hidden, is the fount like a suppurating  wound that  constantly oozes its discharge, which we see as symptoms,  and call it THE  disease.  It is the result of the disease; terrible pain inflicted when we had no words to signal damage.  But there were physical effects on the immune system.  Thus, being drugged while in the womb has lifelong effects that trail us for a lifetime.

The real disease is so well sequestered that we cannot imagine that it even exists. Nor can we imagine the pain involved from imprints down deep in the brain.  It is ineffable in the true sense of the word.  Physical symptoms are more obvious; we can see an asthma attack or high blood pressure.  Tougher to see a carrying mother smoking or drinking.  She takes a cigarette and the damage begins. The baby/fetus begins his life of misery.  It is all so mysterious and worse, the damage may not show up for decades:  i.e, cancer or Alzheimers.  So, to make the link between two events forty or fifty years apart is asking a lot.  Meanwhile the grownup baby finds drugs that ease his pain and he is addicted.  It is tough to treat because we treat only the addiction to drugs.  We make it a criminal offense and we find ways to make it difficult to obtain.  And we think we have solved the problem.  We applaud those who stay off drugs and are “clean.”  They may pay for this kind of success with serious disease later on;  the pain below the addiction still remains and continues its damage.  That damage is both physical and emotional; they are one.  We go on to treat the obvious.

Research is closing in on early trauma and later disease.  A study at King’s College, London found long-term changes in the immune system as a result of: childhood trauma, sexual and emotional abuse, separation early from caregivers and general neglect.  All this proliferated in a myriad of illnesses.  Through  a study of biomarkers they found enhanced inflammation, far above the normal range.  (Valerie Mondelli.  Molecular Psychiatry, June, 2015).  Looking back at certain markers they could postdict trauma earlier on.  Here we note that early physical damage, a smoking, carrying mother, can turn into all kinds of symptoms both physical ,arthritis, or emotional, addiction.  These can be different effects from the same pain.  Some will search out strange ideas and beliefs, others will find drugs, some will find gambling and others overwork , still others overeat.  It is all ways to deal with the same early damage which no one sees.  We see the effects of the damage but not what cures:  the damage itself.  Too often the pain is so well hidden is that all we see is someone so shut down as to seem without feeling.  They are emotionally dead.

And what happens next?  We open Gambling and Alcohol Anonymous Clinics, Diet Programs, Self Esteem centers, ad nauseam.  And what do they treat?  Effluvia of surging internal volcano of pain.  We rush in to treat this or that; gambling or overeating with specialists in almost everything, who do what?  Suppress behavior and suppress the pain.  So they do the opposite of what is necessary: liberate the pain, once and for all.    Stop shutting down what cures:  feeling.    To do that we need to travel back in time slowly to reach the deepest reaches of the unconscious to open the gates of repression and begin to feel the real damage.  That is our target, the real damage.  Then the collateral effects seem to disappear.  How do we do that?  It is what I write about in many books and hundreds of blogs. It is not simple and took decades to figure out.  But now we understand the disease and what to do about it.  Why?  When we help patients relive traumas we see it in real time as the patient goes back to relive it exactly as it happened.  He is not discussing it; he is living and feeling it.  Elsewhere, I discussed a patient who moved out of town to avoid pollution until she finally felt the source of her pollution; her mother’s constant smoking while while pregnant.  There was nothing she could do about it as a baby.  Now she could keep on moving away from her perceived threats of pollution.  Her reactions were real enough but her behavior was anxiety driven from a time long ago.  She went to a cult to learn how to live in the present but she was still living in the past.  Her Primals began with “Help, I am suffocating."