Sublime

James Hillman

trauma. This chapter delineates the positive psychology framework of self-organizing systems of Organic Intelligence (OI)

The stress hormones of traumatized people, in contrast, take much longer to return to baseline and spike quickly and disproportionately in response to mildly stressful stimuli.

further pain and self-hatred. In fact, even reliving the trauma repeatedly in therapy may reinforce preoccupation and fixation.

Under stress, they may freeze, dissociate, or fragment, causing them to lose some functionality.

But the moment we feel trapped, enraged, or rejected, we are vulnerable to activating old maps and to follow their directions. Change begins when we learn to “own” our emotional brains. That means learning to observe and tolerate the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations that register misery and humiliation. Only after learning to bear what is

Our most surprising finding was a white spot in the left frontal lobe of the cortex, in a region called Broca’s area. In this case the change in color meant that there was a significant decrease in that part of the brain.

If for some reason the normal response is blocked—for example, when people are held down, trapped, or otherwise prevented from taking effective action, be it in a war zone, a car accident, domestic violence, or a rape—the brain keeps secreting stress chemicals, and the brain’s electrical circuits continue to fire in vain.

It is not the emotional distress that we feel, but those emotions we have repressed and are unaware of, that leads to hypertension. The process by which we unknowingly keep distressful and threatening emotions from awareness causes persisting stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS),