Saturday, March 20, 2010

DEEP HOPELESSNESS BY DR. ART JANOV

In our research into serotonin we found that after a year of our therapy there are stable changes in serotonin output. Those who feel very deeply seem to normalize in predictable ways. What it shows is that early pains are involved in how much serotonin we produce. By experiencing preverbal feelings we can make serious hormonal alterations in our patients that endure. I do not think that these changes can occur solely by reliving later childhood events. We are obliged to return to the scene of the crime; the event that deregulated the hormones, in the first place. We do not normalize every dislocated hormone but we have enough success to indicate that the origins are far earlier than we thought. When we understand that very early feelings become compounded as we develop; this is an important notion because when we re-experience a later childhood pain we take some of the force off the feeling. But resolution only occurs when we feel the basic platform of the feeling, as for example, hopelessness. It is the primordial hopelessness that makes for suicidal thoughts. Then when we grow up and find ourselves in another hopeless situation the resonance factor kicks in, sets off the basic hopelessness at birth, for example, and the inevitable suicidal thoughts. It is not as though the thoughts have been hiding waiting to come out but that when the first-line is triggered and it sets off the feeling, (of hopelessness), which in turn sends signals to the cortex to produce terrible, despairing thoughts. Those thoughts are the result of feelings on the move; they cannot be changed by encouragement or exhortation, because the thoughts are not the problem, feelings are. And those feelings reflect specific experience. It is the experiences that we must address.

It is the first-line component of hopelessness that engenders self destructive behavior. This is because the trauma at birth, for example, when the newborn was heavily drugged was accompanied by the deep physiology of hopelessness. (of trying to get out; a matter of life-and death). So when all of the feelings of hopelessness throughout our lives are lined-up, we are in danger. One part may be feelable, but all together they are not. So we can feel hopeless at failing in school, but when that sits on top of hopelessness of ever being loved by a divorcing and departing parent, it becomes too much. Here we see the drive behind stalking, for example. Any more departing of a loved one cannot be tolerated. The current loss sets off the earlier one.

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