A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I will be doing a series of posts on Biggles/Worrals-related research I've done, in case it's of general interest and/or usefulness.

They will be linked at bigglesevents; if you have also done research to write Biggles or Worrals, or for your own work or just general interest but it's Biggles-relevant, please feel free to cross-post or link posts there. I'm hoping to get a convenient hub of useful and easily findable information there. They don't need to be essays like this! I will have more posts that are just collections of helpful links.

I completely failed to save my sources for this post, sorry; you should be able to find them by searching for key phrases.

Note: I am using the word PTSD for convenience; it's a much more modern word and was not used at the time periods I'm discussing. If you're interested in historical conceptions of PTSD, I have a lot of posts on it if you're willing to plow through my PTSD tag. Also, I'm using "pilots" as shorthand for any flying combatant.

The modern conception of PTSD and its treatment were founded by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers at the WWI hospital for shellshocked soldiers, Craiglockhart in Scotland. He pioneered talk therapy as a PTSD treatment. Dr. Rivers was considered an outlier at the time, including in Britain, where shellshocked soldiers were commonly seen as cowards and could be subjected to "treatments" that were essentially torture, such as electric shocks. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy is closely based on history and is excellent reading for more on Rivers and Craiglockhart.

Pilots were not treated at Craiglockhart so far as I'm aware. The article linked below has some information on how medical treatment for pilots was organized, and suggests that as airplanes were so new at the time, it was believed by medical personnel that flying itself posed special dangers (apart from the obvious) and so PTSD/combat stress suffered by pilots and other flyers may have been considered differently from that of infantrymen, as a medical condition rather than cowardice. It was not called shellshock, but rather nerves.

The Nervous Flyer: Nerves, Flying and the First World War

Note: I have yet to come across literally any source, nonfiction or semi-autobiographical fiction or heavily researched fiction, in which pilots' nerves are seen by pilots as medical rather than psychological.

The early Biggles books were directly based on Johns' own experience as a fighter pilot and on stories he heard from other WWI pilots. In them, nerves is treated as a normal and common occurrence. It's not seen as a form of cowardice or shirking, nor is it seen as a medical issue. It's consistently portrayed as a normal reaction to the extreme psychological stress of aerial combat and the extremely high casualty rates, which caused grief, the knowledge that you could die at any moment, and the belief you would die eventually.

Biggles suffers off and on from nerves throughout the WWI books. He's repeatedly sent away for leave to recover, though with the understanding that it's not a permanent cure, just a respite that will allow him to return and fight again until the next bout. By the time the war ends, he's drinking heavily and flying so recklessly that everyone around him recognizes it as a form of suicidality, and he's about to be posted home permanently to save his life when events intervene. Through all of this, he's shown (and shows to others in similar states) only understanding and sympathy.

The Worrals books I've read so far, which are set in WWII, don't feature anything we'd call PTSD, but they do show some brief combat stress reactions. Other pilots are sympathetic and explain that Worrals isn't showing any weakness, it's normal for anyone involved in combat, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman.

The general level of understanding and sympathy for pilots with nerves does seem to be higher than that for ground troops in nonfiction I've read about WWI. However, the general level of understanding and sympathy for ground troops with shellshock also seems much higher in the trenches than once they get sent away from them, unsurprisingly. So I think a big factor there is that pilots may have been more likely to be sent off for short breaks and less likely to be sent away for lengthy treatment where they risked falling into the hands of sadistic doctors. The extremely short lifespan of a pilot may have made it likely that they'd be killed before they had time to get sufficiently far gone that a short break wouldn't cut it.

Now let's go to Germany. There's some really interesting things going on there, primarily that Germany was conceptualizing civilian psychological trauma reactions as the same as ones caused by war. With a few exceptions that didn't catch on, this didn't happen in the US or England until much, much later. In pre-war Germany, PTSD was recognized as a phenomenon that could be caused by civilian trauma such as an industrial or train accident.

Pre-war, Hermann Oppenheim, a German Jewish neurologist, coined the term "traumatic neurosis." This was basically the idea that traumatic events caused physical effects; witness a horrific industrial accident, and you might have tremors, headaches, insomnia, etc afterward. He believed that it was essentially neurological (not psychological) in nature, and had a whole theory on it that is too complicated to summarize here but is NOT the current theory on the neurological aspects of PTSD.

If you were injured in an accident and had a medical diagnosis, you were eligible for a pension. Traumatic neurosis, as it was literally a neurological injury equivalent to a spinal injury, would have been a medical diagnosis. So the entire concept was fiercely opposed by the government as it would have triggered pension payoffs. The government was joined in its opposition by heads of industry, the German medical establishment, and anti-Semites.

So they needed a different term and theory to cover all the people who had PTSD from industrial accidents, one which would not be pension-worthy and would discredit and discourage anyone trying to get a pension. They came up with "hysteria virilis" (male hysteria), aka "pension neurosis." This was defined as post-traumatic symptoms caused by being a hysterical, unpatriotic, effeminate wimp greedily gunning for a pension.

Note that they did not have any alternative to this idea - if you had post-traumatic symptoms, the only possible explanation was pension malingering.

When WWI started, soldiers were eligible for medical pensions. So the cheap assholes in the government and medical establishment again trotted out hysteria virilis/pension neurosis as their equivalent of shellshock. They conceptualized male hysteria due to war as similar to industrial accident hysteria, and decided the best cure was...

... more work! Very convenient for the war effort, too. They funneled shellshocked soldiers into other kinds of work, which... was better than electrocuting them, at least.

If you tried to get a pension for your shellshock, you had "pension neurosis" and were by definition greedy, selfish, lazy, and unpatriotic. Also, "Male hysteria" was conceived of as being proof that there was already something wrong with you, and that whatever happened in the war triggered but didn't cause it. It was literally considered proof that you had a pre-existing mental condition, and therefore you didn't warrant a pension. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So if you were a German soldier and had PTSD, you would want to hide it if you wanted to stay in service, because revealing it would get you sent home in disgrace and very possibly also financial difficulties due to the lack of pension. After the war, it would still not be something you'd want to talk about because you'd be labeled a lazy coward gunning for an undeserved pension.

(Note: I don't want to make it sound like Germany and Britain were uniquely horrible to veterans with PTSD. France was, if anything, even worse.)

And now, back to Biggles. Erich von Stalhein was a spy in WWI, which at the time was not only a very secret profession but often considered a disgraceful one that a gentleman wouldn't engage in. It's a very lonely life where you can't talk to anyone about anything, and if you reveal the truth about yourself, people will dislike and despise you.

So when Biggles had issues with combat stress/PTSD, everyone around him was very supportive, made sure he was getting rest and leave without him even having to ask for it, and treated it as a completely normal reaction to unbearable stress. He clearly internalized that as how you deal with severe emotional stress in general - be supportive and matter-of-fact, don't treat it as anything weird, and reassure the person that it's normal and they'll be OK. This comes up again and again in the series - one example is in The Black Peril, when Ginger is upset over maybe killing someone and not even knowing if he had or not. Biggles is brisk but kind, and in a manner that suggests that he's had this conversation a lot before.

If von Stalhein had any issues with combat/espionage stress, he would have had to hide it, and probably would have internalized the general attitude about it to some degree as an example of how he's deeply flawed and doesn't deserve nice things. Which was literally the official position of his country's government and medical establishment: PTSD is proof that you don't deserve a pension and are also a bad person.

Another thing about von Stalhein vs Biggles is that Biggles' symptoms were very recognizably nerves/PTSD as it was conceptualized at the time: nervous tics, suicidal recklessness, impulsivity, obsession, rage, alcohol abuse, the belief that he will die. (Regarding the last: yes, reasonable to believe that he probably or likely wouldn't survive under the circumstances, but he was 100% sure of it.) So other people could very clearly see what was up with him and were sympathetic.

I'm not saying all of von Stalhein's issues are PTSD because he has a lot going on, but I do want to mention some lesser-known symptoms: depression, hopelessness, self-hatred, lack of trust, relationship difficulties/isolation, putting yourself in situations that you know are bad for you because you think you deserve it/think you don't have better options/are used to it. Even today, if you have that set of issues, people tend not to recognize it as PTSD and just think you're a fucked-up person. Which just perpetuates the problem.

What I'm saying is that this needs some fanfic.

An autobiographical novel/fictionalized memoir about growing up with OCD. Tara Sullivan was always an anxious child. When she was eleven, the phrase "Step on a crack, break your mother's back" popped into her head. It took on a weird force, circling around incessantly inside her mind and accumulating power. Even though she knew it was just a saying, she had to avoid stepping on cracks. Then she had to start counting the cracks.

Her anxiety, obsessive thoughts, and compulsive behaviors get worse and worse, causing huge disruptions in her life and family. This is all happening in the 80s, when OCD was less well-known to the general public, especially in children, so no one has any idea what's up with her. Her mother panics that this is destroying the family and gets physically abusive, thinking that Tara is doing it on purpose and needs more discipline. Tara is sent to a series of therapists and accrues a series of wrong diagnoses, most of which boil down to "anxious kid acting out."

FINALLY, a chance encounter with someone who's heard of OCD provides a diagnosis and helpful therapy from a specialist. Therapy is difficult but very helpful, and it's en enormous relief to Tara and her family that she has a condition with a name and treatment.

This book is more educational than something you'd read for fun, complete with an afterword by a psychiatrist. But it is quite readable. It's also an extremely vivid portrayal of a particular type of childhood OCD from the inside. If you want to know what OCD might feel like to a child - what it's actually like to have obsessive thoughts, what it feels like to have compulsions, why apparently inexplicable meltdowns happen - this is a good book to read.

Here is my life-coaching website.

Feel free to link it to anyone you think might benefit from my work. I can see anyone in any state or country.

I work with individuals, 13 years old and up. I do not require parental permission to work with teenagers. I do not work with families or couples. I don't accept insurance, but I do have reduced rates based on what people can afford. All sessions are over video.

From the site:

I believe that you are the expert on your own life. I'm here to help you find the life you want, not the life that your family or society or community says you ought to have.

I love working with problems that have been weighing you down for years. My specialty is helping you find hope and joy when you thought that was absolutely impossible.

I specialize in working with people in the LGBTIAQ communities, abuse and trauma survivors, people who don't fit into mainstream society, and anyone who just feels different.

I’m sure you all know that most therapists don’t usually do that much dream exploration any more, despite its prominence in Freud and hence pop culture depictions of therapy.

I do a lot of work with trauma-based nightmares, but those are quite different from non-trauma-related dreams. The dreams are not generally subtle, so the work is more to get rid of them than to explore what they mean; it’s obvious what they mean. In those cases, the client was traumatized and is re-experiencing it in nightmares which don't contain any deeper meaning, and from which no insight can be gleaned because the insight (client was traumatized in a specific event) is already known.

However, I do sometimes have clients tell me a dream that either isn’t obviously trauma-related, or might be but also seems to have some deeper meaning, and ask me what it means.

I might say something like, "I can't tell you what your dream means. Dreams are totally individual - you're the only one who can know what it means. What do you think it’s about? Were there any parts that felt especially meaningful, or that reminded you of anything in your life or your past?"

If they don’t have any ideas, I’ll try asking about cultural ideas about dreams. I’d phrase it as something like, “In your culture, do people have ways of interpreting dreams? Is there someone in your family or someone you know who knows a lot about dreams?”

Generally, if their culture does have ideas about dreams, they will know some specific person who could interpret their dream. In that case, if the client says that yes, there is someone they know who knows about dreams and they'd believe their interpretation, I'll ask how they'd feel about asking that person. If they go for it, I’ll check in next session about what Grandma or Auntie had to say, and how the client felt about it.

But if there wasn't anything like that, or the client didn’t believe in it, or if they asked Grandma but found her explanation unsatisfying or insufficient, and they’re still really curious about the meaning of the dream, I tell them that there’s another way of exploring dreams.

"It involves art,” I’ll say, “but it’s not literally drawing anything from your dream. Though you can do that too, if you want to."

If the client doesn't already do art, I’d say, "Anyone can do this. You don't have to be good at drawing, or even know how to draw or paint at all. It's not about making good art, it’s just a way of exploring your dream in a way that you can’t do by just talking about it. It won’t necessarily tell you what your dream means, but it might give you some ideas or insight. It's easier to do than to explain."

This method is based on something I learned in a class and I now am not sure what it's called or what the exact source is; it’s Jungian, though. Possibly Robert Johnson.

This is the sort of thing that a client will either really get into, or not want to do at all. It takes the entire session, so make sure they want to do it before you start. It’s usually something you’ll tell them about and ask if they want to try it in one session, and then actually do it in the next session. All else aside, you’ll need to collect a number of sheets of blank paper, and paints and/or color pens, pencils, or crayons.

To begin the session, even if they’ve told me the dream before, I ask, "Can you tell me the dream you want to work on?"

If there's multiple ones, I have them pick the one that feels most important, frightening, emotionally intense, etc.

The client tells me the dream. I listen to the whole thing. You can listen uninterrupted, or occasionally ask questions.

If there's a lack of vivid detail, in whole or in part, I ask questions. If you ask questions, they should be geared toward enlarging on the details of the dream, not on associations or possible meanings. You want to keep the focus on the narrative of the dream itself.

If it involved snakes, a good question to ask would be, "What did the snake look like? Was it a particular type of snake? How big was it? What color was it? Did it make a sound?" etc. (Not ALL those questions, but one or maybe more if the client doesn't elaborate on their own.)

When they're done, I ask, "Can you pick ONE moment in the dream that feels important to you? Like, the most intense, the most scary, the most mysterious, the one you're most curious about…?"

They say what that moment is. If it's too long or complex, narrow it down. For instance:

Client: "The moment when I opened the door to my home and saw my mother covered in snakes and then the snakes started chasing me."

Me: "Okay, but of that part, which was most intense or meaningful? Was it the door opening? Was it seeing your mother…?"

Client: "I think it was seeing my mother."

Me: "Okay, now paint that moment. It doesn't have to be literal at all. It could be just how you felt. Or if you want to try to represent it literally, feel free, but just remember that it doesn't have to be a good or accurate drawing at all."

Clients are often hugely self-conscious about not being good at art, so unless the client is already an artist, I’d emphasize the “doesn’t have to be good” a lot.

The client then creates a painting. We look at it and I ask if anything jumps out at them about it. If so, we talk about it. Then I ask (if I haven’t already) exactly what part of the moment of seeing her mother the painting represents.

They show me on the painting: “Those black lines are the snakes on her body.”

Me: “Okay, you know how on shows like CSI, they have the photo of the crime scene, and then blow it up, to show more detail? We’re going to blow up that part of your dream. Of the moment when you saw the snakes on her body, pick a detail that seems like the most important or emotional or scary, and just paint that. Maybe a detail of your mother, or of one of the snakes…?”

Client: “Yeah, this one snake had its mouth open and I could see its fangs. It was really scary!”

Me: “Okay. Paint that. Remember, it doesn’t have to be literal – just the feeling of the fangs.”

On a new sheet of paper, the client paints the fangs.

If we have time, I’ll have them blow up the dream several times, painting various details.

Also, have them do at least one association that may or may not be in the dream itself: “Did anything in that moment of the dream remind you of anything else in your life? Was any part of it a real thing from your past?”

Client: “Yeah, the light from the window reminded me of sunset in the town I used to live in.”

Me: “Can you paint the sunset, or the feeling of the sunset…?”

You should end up with at least three paintings: one original, one blow-up, and one associational. Ideally, you will also do a blow-up of the association: one detail of the sunset that seems most important.

Then you have the client go through them one by one and look at them as paintings, as if she walked into a room and saw them hanging on the walls. What feelings do they evoke if she looks at them as if someone else painted them? How are they related to each other? Is there some kind of progression from one to the next?

This is the part where clients should start noticing things they didn’t before. You’re having them step back and look at their paintings from a perspective they didn’t expect to take. Talk about what they see and how it makes them feel.

Then have the client look at the paintings again, this time relating them back to the dream. Do they say anything about the dream that she didn’t notice before? Do they remind her of anything, maybe something from her past? “Looking at the paintings, how do you feel about the dream now? Do they shed any light on it? What about the town where you used to live? Does the dream have anything to do with that?”

You can continue as long as you like, blowing up details or delving into associations, then alternately looking at the paintings as paintings and as they relate to the dream or associations from the dream.

This can be really interesting for a client who wants to explore their subconscious or see things in new ways. It’s not a source of answers, but it’s a source of inspiration, insight, or simply having a new experience in therapy. You can do it yourself, but I think it’s easier to do with someone else. It’s hard to describe, but powerful to experience: a dreamlike experience in waking reality. It produces a feeling of insight which is hard to put in words.

In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, by Peter Levine. This is the guy who invented somatic experiencing. I am sure it works when he does it. Lots of therapies work because they're done by charismatic, compassionate, insightful people who believe in what they're doing. (In fact, therapy in general works that way, even when using highly structured therapies like CBT for phobias.)

This book? USELESS. FACTUALLY INCORRECT. STUPID. He explains that he saw lions chase zebras on TV, and the zebras who escaped would shake and twitch, then recover and go about their lives without getting PTSD. HOW CAN YOU TELL? YOU WATCHED ANIMAL PLANET. YOU DID NOT FOLLOW UP WITH THE ZEBRAS. He concluded that animals don't get PTSD (FACTUALLY INCORRECT. Anyone who has ever seen an abused pet has seen PTSD in animals.) and that the reason is that they physically shake out the trauma. And so he created a treatment based on shaking out the trauma. I am being unfair and simplistic but only slightly. This dude was highly respected at my school, too. I'm sure someone will appreciate this book over there.

Help for the Helper: The Psychophysiology of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma (Norton Professional Books), by Babette Rothschild. Summary: vicarious traumatization is a thing. If you're a therapist, maintain boundaries, be aware if you're getting too affected by other people's pain, and practice self-care. There, now you don't have to read this book.

The Psychology of the Transference (Ark Paperbacks), by Carl Jung. From this we must conclude that the symbolism of the stories rests on a much more primitive mental structure than the alchemical quaternio and its psychological equivalent. I am not smart enough to read this book.

The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, by Irvin Yalom. This is a pretty great and classic work on a very specific type of group therapy that I HATE and never intend to do. ("I have difficulties relating to others, let's work these out experientially in a group focused exclusively on how the group interacts with each other." I'm sure this actually works very well when someone as skilled as Yalom is running it, but 1) it's not my thing, 2) it can very easily turn into a parody of itself in a very specific way, 3) I was permanently traumatized by a badly run group of this sort in college, which did become the parody, in which this exchange actually occurred:

Group Member A: "I notice that your foot is pointing in my direction. I wonder what you intend to convey by that."

Dude with Foot (hastily moves foot): "Er… No, my foot just happened to be there. I didn't even notice it was pointing at you."

Group Member A: "You sound defensive. Were you pointing it at me subconsciously, because you have some unexpressed anger at me?"

Dude with Foot (moves foot back): "No… but NOW I'm feeling angry!"

It's also a very expensive required text at Antioch. Someone else will benefit from this book, but I don't need it.

Fast Girls: Teenage Tribes And The Myth Of The Slut, by Emily White. This is actually a pretty good book on sexism, rape culture, how girls get labeled "sluts," how this is perpetuated by both girls and boys and society at large, and the effect this has on everyone. It's just that I get this, so I wouldn't need to re-read it, and it's not so brilliantly written that I'd keep it just for that.

Therapeutic Communication: Developing Professional Skills, by Herschel Knapp. If you don't find that therapeutic communication (validating, challenging, interpreting, etc) comes naturally to you or is something you learn by doing, this is an EXCELLENT book. I personally find that I learn it by doing or by listening to other therapists describe what they do in specific cases rather than in generalities.

Also, I find that responding instinctively/intuitively/spontaneously - even if it's something I technically shouldn't say - goes over better with clients than when I say the "correct" thing in a more artificial/non-spontaneous way. (There is a specific technique key to narrative therapy called "externalizing the problem" that for whatever reason feels really unnatural to me, and whenever I try it, my clients look at me like I have two heads. My own therapist does it with me, and it works great. I use a narrative philosophy and other narrative techniques, and just ignore externalization. You have to do what works for you.)

So for me, this was not a book I'd return to. It will help someone else, I'm sure.

Sixbeforelunch asked about this. (Yes, month meme answers will spill into next month.)

I won't go much into logistics because those are so localized. However, I will mention that therapists frequently have dreadful websites, so I take those with a grain of salt and just look for giant red flags (for me) such as phrases like "holistically incentivizing inner growth via process-oriented 'out of the box' thinking" or "we shall dance together in the inner sphere of oneness" or "Byron Katie."

Statistically speaking, the most important predictor of the success of therapy is the rapport between the therapist and the client. So the most important questions to ask yourself are, "Do I like this person? Do I think this is someone I could come to trust? Do I think I could talk to this person about the stuff I want to talk about?"

If you hate the therapist on the first session, don't go back. If you're not sure, maybe try one more session. You should feel at least reasonably/tentatively good with them by session three. It's not just about how competent they are; it's about chemistry and having a good match. You can do OK with someone you don't bond with (especially with some very skills-oriented therapy like CBT) but if it's not skills-oriented or you actively dislike them, you probably won't get much out of it.

That being said, rapport alone will do just fine for life problems. It will also often do just fine for life problems plus mental illness or trauma that has already been treated and that you already have a reasonable grip on. If you have a mental illness or trauma that you're addressing for the first time, or have never successfully addressed, there are a lot of very specific treatments that not all therapists will know about or use. This is where experts come in handy.

(Including but not limited to OCD, ADHD, specific anxiety like phobias or social anxiety, and PTSD. If you have serious specific anxiety and you've never tried CBT, an anxiety specialist who uses CBT can be life-changing.)

Think about what's important to you and what you're worried will be misunderstood. What are your dealbreakers?

I had a phone conversation with my current therapist before ever meeting him in which I interrogated him at length about his opinions about the internet. Only when I was satisfied that he would treat internet-based relationships as real relationships and not judge me for caring about online interactions did I go to see him. I also sounded him out about certain issues involving being a therapist that I'd previously clashed with other therapists I knew over. Only when I was satisfied that we were on the same page about that did I go to meet him.

Feel free to ask questions!

For my own benefit, I am looking for stories of two types of therapy moments:

1. Things a therapist did right.

2. Things a therapist did wrong.

In both cases, I'm looking for things that weren't obvious.

For "wrong things," I'm not thinking of clearly, extremely terrible things that I would never do in a million years, like having sex with a client, telling a client their abuse was their own fault, telling a client not to be gay, etc. I'm looking for mistakes that were more subtle than that - things a well-meaning but inexperienced therapist might do. For example, it was not beneficial to me (as a client) to let me sit there and recount lengthy abuse stories, and then have the therapist immediately start delving deeper into the abuse. But that's not an obvious mistake on the level of "It was all your fault it happened."

For right things, also, I'm looking for moments that went beyond the obvious "She was very empathetic," "He told me it wasn't my fault," or "She helped me see the connections between my childhood and my adult relationships." I am particularly interested in any times in which a therapist managed to do a good job with identity issues (gender, culture, etc), whether or not the therapist had the same identity as the client.

I realize that everyone is different, and what's right for one person may be wrong for another. I'm not looking for a rule book, but rather for inspiration and food for thought.

Anonymous comments are enabled but screened. If you comment anonymously, please let me know whether or not you'd like me to unscreen.

I just took the MMPI-2. Taking and scoring the thing took so much time that the in-class explanation of what our results meant, plus any non-scoring class discussion of the test, must wait till next week. But for the record, my scores are below. Please feel free to interpret if you happen to know how. I think everything is in the "normal" range (below 65, IIRC) so I don't know how meaningful they are.

( Read more... )

If I get through all this tonight, I will go eat dinner and watch some Flashpoint. Really dense material below - but interesting.

Summary:

- PTSD is largely a matter of conditioned physiological changes, which are very hard to change via insight and introspection alone.

- Many people face trauma, but not all develop PTSD. People are wired to respond to fear with action (fight/flight.) If they are immobilized and helpless, literally or metaphorically, during a trauma, they are likely to develop PTSD. This may have a biological basis. If they could take action - complete the fight/flight response - they may be able to decondition some of their PTSD reflexes.

- Traumatized people often freak out when meditating due to its internal focus's tendency to send them straight into traumatic memories. But meditation or mindfulness would probably be helpful if they could manage it. Wonder if movement-based meditative practices are less likely to cause freak-outs? If so, that would explain why so many survivors find movement practices helpful. Maybe the movement provides a balance between interior feelings (scary/bad) and external focus (move left arm to block), thus decreasing interior focus and making it more tolerable.

If the trauma is partly caused by the interruption of the fight/flight response and people being forced, physically or by circumstance, into helplessness or inaction, then maybe movement lets them work through the fight/flight (action) response they needed, thus rewiring conditioned responses.

Lots of detail below cut.

( Read more... )

Registration this go-round was much less painful than last time, when the computer enrolled me in classes at the same day and time (Help desk guy: "That's supposed to be impossible,") causing me to madly enroll last in whatever was still open.

This time I did do some mad rushing last night to formally declare a double specialization in Trauma (non-combat) and Spiritual/Depth Psychology before registration to get into classes held for people with specializations, but everyone was very helpful and it worked out. I am seeing the benefits of belonging to a small, private college, because if this was anywhere else I've ever attended, I would probably still be at the registrar's office now.

I still don't know if I can go to Japan. Registration for that was delayed for everyone due to some technicality. When it opens, we all put our names on a wait-list, and then they hold a lottery.

My classes for next quarter:

Monday 10:00 AM: PSY 548 Ethics and the Law
Sect 1: Joel Andres 3 units

Monday 1:00 PM PSY 501A Process/Psychotherapy I -
Sect 1: Zari Hedayat 2 units

Monday 4:00 PM: PSY 531A Personality I -
Sect 1: Doug Sadownick 3 units

Wednesday 7:00 PM: PSY531H Intercultural Transpersonal and -
Depth Psychology
Sect. 1: Thomas Mondragon 3 units

PSY522 Effects of Trauma on Human Development and -
Neurobiology; Social History and Current Issues.
Sect 1: Joel Andres 2 units
Dates: Jan. 15 and Jan. 29 , 9am - 5pm


MAYBE

PSY 525F Japanese Approaches to Mindfulness and Mental Health -
Sect 1: Matt Silverstein & Marli Kakishima 3 units
March 14-March 24, Shunkoin Temple, Kyoto, Japan


Three classes on Monday - yikes. But all three are core classes I need to take next quarter. I haven't had any of those professors before. The Wednesday class is taught by my favorite professor from this quarter, so I pounced on it. No idea what it will actually be like, but judging by the class I have with him now, it should be intense and amazing.