Пит сравнивает свой подход и подход Себерн Фишер
The videos of her presentations and mine in English (audio recording and slides) will be available after we recover from the conference.
I think the thing that was most interesting to me was how closely our views of neurofeedback and training issues mirrored one another. As she was speaking--or during some of our conversations--I kept thinking "she's been reading what I wrote about that" or even, "that's what I was going to say." I think that probably grows out of both of our commitment to practical training based on results.
She hasn't found assessment (using population-based Q's) to be very useful, and we're setting up an opportunity for her to try out the TQ7 and brain-trainer designs to see what she thinks.
What was most surprising to me was that, as I was preparing some of the new videos that will be part of the re-design of brain-trainer.com, I suddenly realized something I had not thought of before--in relation to ADHD. As I was preparing my presentation on NF for the conference, I made the same connection with early trauma victims. In our talks at dinner the night before the conference, she told me that she had reached the same conclusion in almost the same terms about developmental trauma survivors, and she agreed it was likely with ADHD clients as well.
Since very early in my work with clients, I've categorized so-called "ADHD" people in two groups: Processing or Filtering. I usually distinguished between them in terms of, when they lost focus, whether it was because they fell back into their own heads (processing) or were drawn out into the broader environment (filtering). People with filtering issues are distracted and impulsive, often have difficulty falling asleep, not risk-averse, etc.
It suddenly hit me, as I was working on the video, that I was looking at them as if their brains operated the same as mine. I assumed that the issue for filtering clients was that they were unable to manage the interface between the outside world and the inside world. I have long considered that people with processing issues are in essence prisoners in their inside world. They solve the problem of controlling the interface by simply closing the border much of the time. They aren't impulsive, because they are slow to act even when they know what they want to do. They aren't distracted because so little from the outside world gets in to distract them.
But what if filtering people HAVE no inside world. What if there's really no "them" inside them. They would not be "distracted" by outside stimuli--they would naturally surf on those stimuli--because there was nothing to compete with them. They wouldn't act impulsively--they would just do whatever their brains produced without screening, because there's nothing inside to choose among options or control which to act on. Essentially they lack a sense of self--or perhaps even lack a self. Their brains are often very fast and very slow, but they lack middle frequencies related to the still/present state. They don't have access to their sub-cortical, sub-conscious inside world, because they don't have the alpha bridge which connects conscious and subconscious. That would explain their difficult shifting out of conscious to sub-conscious/unconscious (going to sleep) and the ease with which they wake up. It would explain their attraction to risk (there's no me to be hurt.)
People have little or no stable foundation due to lack of nurturing or absence of mother at the very beginning of self-formation also tend to lack a self--at least one they recognize. Where ADHD folk are all perception, these trauma survivors are all reaction.
At one point I mentioned a recent discussion on the list about "depersonalization", which is not infrequently a symptom trauma survivors identify in their effort to avoid dealing with the fear that defines them. Sebern's presentation pointed out that this resistance made a good deal of sense, since fear was essentially the only "self" they had. Starting to feel a reduction therein often results in discomfort and even resistance. Depersonalization would be an ideal description of someone who had no clear sense of self. And it has the benefit of giving another symptom on which to focus instead of dealing with the true underlying issue. Even better, since there is no "cure" for depersonalization--or even a defined treatment for it--a person can obsess about it endlessly. Or, as has been suggested here by other listmates, forget it.
Our work with trauma and Sebern's are significantly different in one area we discussed--because what we see on the EEG is so different. Trauma (in my definition) results from a stress response to some experience which the client simply cannot accept. The best way to reduce stress is to release efforts to control what can't be controlled. Accept what is and move forward from there. But some events simply can't be "accepted"--either because of their nature or duration or because they occur at so early an age and are literally built into the foundation of the self--or destroy that foundation before the house can even start to be built. When such a situation occurs, the body shifts to fight-or-flight. When neither of those options are viable, the only response is to freeze, which is often related to the physiological elements of trauma.
Such a situation can happen at any age, but clearly the later it occurs, the greater the chance there will be some form of a self. The great majority of trauma victims that any of us see will show the patterns we include in the categories of hot temporal lobes, disconnect, alpha or beta reversals, etc. In her presentation after mine, Sebern mentioned that she very rarely sees high-beta in her clients. They are much more likely to be buried in very slow activity. I thought about that during her second presentation and we talked briefly about it while waiting to go to dinner that night. It makes sense that the population whose trauma literally decimates even the most basic formation of a self would be buried in the delta and low theta bands--essentially frequencies of dissociation. Where those whose trauma came later in life--after the first year or so--will have EEG's that are more activated and where the fast frequencies can be dominant. Since Sebern's practice is dominated by the first group, that's what she sees in the EEG. Since most of the rest of us see much more "later-onset" trauma, it makes sense we would see the faster speeds.
Where we are likely to see issues in the default-mode network--where our awareness of our self is centered--some clients are disconnected there; others are not. Sebern's are almost all lacking in that connectivity. How can there be a sense of self when there is no self to have a sense of?
Обсуждение
John
I can tell you that there is a very limited "self-referential" dialogue with depersonalization. No ruminating of thought, very different flavor of the no rumination of meditators and such.From my experience the similarly between a heavy meditator and a depersonalization is that they have a weakened sense of personality, sense of individuality.
The main difference between the two is that the meditator has a strong sense of consciousness, of being aware, alive, awake. The depersonalized individual has a weak sense of consciousness. Almost as if at any moment he will flicker out of existence. It's a very errie feeling.
Many people get confused about the Buddhist version of no self and depersonalization. There are many similarities on paper but existentially they could be more different.
Is there protocol to increase activity, sub-cortically in the medulla area(think is where the center of consciousness lie, per my experience and many meditative traditions.
Pete
John,
Good points.Here's what I believe (at present): In order to achieve the Buddhist/Taoist ideal of no-self, you have to move through HAVING a self. You have to become aware of the self as separate from "reality"--as the creator of your own reality. In other words, since the brain's patterns are self-reinforcing, we see the universe as we believe it to be. An insight I had in 1971 at 5am on a Sao Paulo morning: We do not see the world as it is; it is as we see it.
Once you have recognized your part in creating "reality"--why for some of us it is so positive and interesting, while for others it is so negative and hopeless--then by moving beyond self (into meditation's "observer" state where you see from your center, not from your self) you can contact the Taoist flow of experience.
For the person whose trauma has essentially kept him/her from ever developing that self outside of the experience of fear--or at least someone who has no awareness of the self (a disconnected default-mode network)--as you say, the experience is completely different. They don't go through the self to make contact with the flow and their experience of it through the universal spirit that resides in all of us. Instead, they use tools like meditation to further bury the fact of what is missing. That can lead to tumbling into the place where that non-self becomes clear and they recognize it as depersonalization.
They must first go through that early terrifying experience of an unpredictable and terribly dangerous universe that blocked their formation (or at least awareness) of a self separate from the fear. Using brain-training, "going through" doesn't mean re-experiencing it all (as it can with other trauma approaches). It actually means beginning to experience what is beneath and beyond the trauma so that a self can begin to develop. Once that's done, then finding the center--the part of the universal "soul" within each of us--becomes possible and true "no-self" can be experienced.
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