2023-11-12 07:41:05
Karin Kidder, a practitioner of holistic female medicine, has starred here many times on the blog (for example here). In our meeting last week I told her that I feel like I’m stuck in the anger stage and can’t get out of it. She said: “This is a very good sign.” I asked for an explanation and when she started incorporating professional terms, she agreed to send it to me in writing so I might share. If you too are stuck in a loop of never-ending anger, maybe you will be encouraged to understand that this is a phase that the body and mind must go through.
there it is:
“We are already a month in. The shock and market of Shabbat in October and the days that follow get used to us and we don’t get used to them. From a state of shock and shock that froze us, we slowly climb to movement and from there to approach: This is how our nervous system works.
According to the polyvagal theory developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, our autonomic nervous system consists of two parts, one of which is also divided into two. in short:
The autonomic nervous system
Autonomous, meaning: not under our control. This is our automatic response system to changes that occur in the external climate (what happened to us) and in our internal climate (how I interpreted what happened to me, what signs my body gives). It can be trained to work differently, to be flexible, to change response patterns. It is a long process that can greatly improve our resilience, but it is not under our control how it will react in a given situation.
Through our sensory systems (sight, hearing, smell, sense of taste and ‘gut feelings’) we constantly scan our environment looking for signs of danger or pleasure and we react to them.
The autonomic system is complex from an active response system, the sympathetic system, which reacts by reacting or avoiding a reaction, i.e. running away. What we know as fight or flight.
It’s just that in modern life, and certainly as women, we don’t tend to react with physical violence to those who annoy us, so we tend to react verbally, to shout. Debate. Fight. This is how we react in a fight.
If it seems to our system that the threat is such that it is better to run away from it, we go away, or ignore it.
The second part of the autonomic nervous systemthe parasympathetic component, is the one that communicates, approaches, calms, diverts, takes a nap (sleep is a bit like passing out for a few hours, our body needs to be safe to allow us this) and in exceptional cases it is the same part that makes us disconnect, freeze, check out Mental or literally pass out.
These two parts seem to wrap the sympathetic system in a hierarchical embrace. Imagine a ladder:
Above is the ventral part of the parasympathetic system:
Consent, connection, intimacy, reciprocity, togetherness, help and assistance, giving and receiving. In the middle of the scale is the system of response:
Reaction, resistance, negotiation, argument, struggle, quarrel, prevention, turning back.
And at the bottom of the scale is the dorsal part of the parasympathetic system:
Rest and digest, internalization, rest, sleep.
In exceptional situations (7th of October) when the nervous system signals to the body that it is bigger than us, that we have no chance, the system goes into shock, shock, and we freeze. Some of us, especially those who have trauma in their past, and many of us have, as girls from a country struck by collective and personal trauma, the system literally checks out, complete disconnection and disassociation.
Do you remember how you sat and stared at the wall for an hour or hours last month? Don’t you remember and time is gone? It.”
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Here’s what surprised me: These are not different choices that each of us chooses (even though the choice is unconscious), it is a hierarchical system that in order to get out of it, even if our first reaction was to freeze, we will have to climb the ladder and go through the active part – for example, getting angry:
Karin: “In order to get out of stagnation, you have to climb the ladder.
That is, to go through the sympathetic system to reach the communication system.
Have you moved from stagnation to nerves? This is normal.
Have you moved from a feeling of disconnection to anger and irritability? This is normal.
Out of sadness, did you fight over some nonsense with a friend, spouse or child? Did you fight with yourself? This is normal.
Do you find that you have to do sports because that’s the only way you can survive? It is excellent. This is normal. We should all move a lot now, it gets us out of stagnation.
From there you will go up the ladder to contact and closeness.
Rabbi? Instead of shutting down, be brave enough to ask for a hug. Give up your pride and ask for forgiveness.
Embrace yourself with compassion, right with your hands, cross your arms and hug. Give the nervous system a signal that allows relaxation, holding, connection and tenderness.
The opposite of disconnecting is connecting. On the way to connection, movement is required, and sometimes this movement is a struggle.’
Q: And how does all this relate to Kubler Ross’ five stages of grief?
Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, a brave child psychiatrist who dared to talk regarding death and the death of children, developed a model of observing grief. She described five stages that people go through following learning that they have a terminal illness. The model was later generalized for other catastrophic loss processes, and we are now in a catastrophic loss process.
The five stages are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance/agreement, and they are not necessarily experienced in a linear order.
One may not experience them exactly in the order described or in distinct or separated ways.
It is possible to experience only some of the stages, and it is also possible to experience stages that have not yet been identified.
I like the definition of Prof. Merav Roth, the Kleinian psychoanalyst (Melanie Klein) thatUses the word danger instead of consent.
“We can only do our best and mess with reality” (…) “I really like this word, ‘stab’, because it contains both the danger, the certain danger, and the mental agency. This agency opens up towards an authentic and creative existence More so if we let go of the attempt to eliminate every danger and every pain, recognize that it is true, there is danger, and it is true, there are dangers, there is pain and we have something to mourn – that life is not under our control, that there is sickness and death and that it is impossible to do everything.”
Personally, I do not find the theories of Stephen Forges and Kubler Ross related to each other. As a veteran mourner (my husband was killed 15 years ago in an unfortunate accident) I don’t feel that Kubler Ross’s model speaks to me, but there are those who it gives them a framework and allows them to feel that they can say I am here or I am here.
In my experience, we grieve in a way that is unique to us and at a time that only we understand. And yet it is not a matter that ends, perhaps it can be said that it is something that you learn to live with and not that it is the only one that determines.’
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Things that can be done to help the body pass the anger stage:
Do sports, cry, sing, go for a massage or acupuncture, meditate, scream in nature and – most simply: gargle water (Karin says these are all good tools for balancing the vagal nerve).
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And there is also a song that Karin chose:
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor
No one laughs at God when the doctor calls following some routine tests
No one’s laughing at God when it’s gotten real late
And their kid’s not back from that party yet
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#Pass #sympathetic #system #dress
