Bonnie Badenoch - The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

Note to Readers: Standards of clinical practice and protocol change over time, and no technique or recommendation is guaranteed to be safe or effective in all circumstances. This volume is intended as a general information resource for professionals practicing in the field of psychotherapy and mental health; it is not a substitute for appropriate training, peer review, and/or clinical supervision. Neither the publisher nor the author(s) can guarantee the complete accuracy, efficacy, or appropriateness of any particular recommendation in every respect.

Copyright 2018 by Bonnie Badenoch

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Badenoch, Bonnie, author.

Title: The heart of trauma : healing the embodied brain in the context of
relationships / Bonnie Badenoch ; foreword by Stephen W. Porges.

Description: First edition. | New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2018] |
Series: A Norton professional book | Includes bibliographical references
and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017015270 | ISBN 9780393710489 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Psychic traumaTreatment.

Classification: LCC RC552.T7 B33 2018 | DDC 616.85/21dc23 LC record

available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017015270

ISBN 978-0-393-71049-6 (e-book)

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For

Coease Scott

The main thing, as Chiviliu had said, was to not only shy away from judging the forms seeds and people took in order to survive strange conditions created by people whod lost their seeds, but as a spiritual human of a truly indigenous core to simply keep growing the seeds in every sense, so they could have a place to direct their ever-ready magical manifestation. The Holy in the Seeds had to direct.

We as people had to provide spiritual ground and physical fertile space and earth for the seeds to do what they already very well knew how to do.

The seeds had always been there.

The seeds had always been home.

It was up to us to be at home

keeping the seeds alive.

MARTIN PRECHTEL
The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic:
The Parallel Lives of People as Plants:
Keeping the Seeds Alive

Dr. Suzanne Simard (2016) of the University of British Columbia and her colleagues have illuminated the underground pathways that connect groves of trees. Threads of fungus interact with tree roots and direct carbon, water, and nutrients to plants most in need of support, often the younger ones. This fosters a purposeful sharing of resources that helps the entire ecosystem of trees and plants flourish, fostering the beautiful canopy of branches and leaves.

In much the same way, we humans join our inner worlds with one another through many pathways that are largely below conscious awareness. When we are truly present with one another, the silent resources of attention, responsiveness, and love flow in a way that nourishes healing. As we come face to face with one another, we may find shelter like this canopy of trees while the mysterious underground of deep connection works its magic and we may be supported in becoming therapeutic presences in our daily walk in the world.

Suzanne Simard, June 2016, on TED

https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other?language=en

Safety is Treatment

In The Heart of Trauma, Bonnie Badenoch artfully provides a narrative to explain the neurobiological mechanisms through which trauma disrupts the capacity to feel safe and underscores that safety is the treatment. As elaborated in The Heart of Trauma, successful therapy accesses the third adaptive system and leverages this system within the therapeutic setting to contain defense and enable co-regulation. The Heart of Trauma succinctly informs the therapist that the objective of trauma therapy is to enable the client to experience feelings of safety.

This beautifully written book describes the scaffolding of disparate neural systems with interactive pathways detecting, interpreting, choreographing, and archiving our experiences. The reader is engaged in a vivid narrative linking our neurobiology to mental processes and overt behaviors. As we read, we are informed that the capacity to feel safe in the arms of another, which is the sine qua non of our survival, is selectively damaged by trauma. We learn that effective therapy incorporates an understanding of the mechanisms through which an individual can feel safe as well as understands, witnesses, and respects the vulnerability of these mechanisms to trauma.

By emphasizing contemporary neuroscience, the volume sketches a narrative of how the nervous system is involved in supporting prosocial interactions and enabling defense. When neural pathways down-regulate defensive strategies, social distance is reduced and opportunities to connect and co-regulate are optimized. When contextual cues convey risk to the nervous system, defensive strategies are disinhibited and activated to reflexively protect the individual by increasing the physical and psychological distance from a potential predator. Although optimizing survival, chronic recruitment of defense strategies limits opportunities for prosocial interactions and functionally marginalizes the individual from social contact.

Evolution of the nervous system enabled humans to access and regulate two defense strategies: one is associated with the increased energy necessary for mobilization and fight/flight behaviors, and the other is associated with a conservation of energy and manifests in a massive reduction of behavior, enabling the mammalian ancestors of humans to appear to be inanimate. For humans, this system, when recruited, may result in a behavioral shutdown and a mental state of dissociation. Moreover, evolution provided humans and other mammals with a third adaptive system that down-regulates the sensitivity to trigger defense by detecting and responding to cues of safety.

The third system functions as a safety system and provides the neural basis for co-regulation and feelings of trust. It is through the lens of this hierarchical model, proposed in Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011), that The Heart of Trauma explains the neural mechanisms through which trauma disrupts the capacity to feel safe. This knowledge provides insights into re-engaging the safety system to effectively and efficiently contain defense reactions. Insights into the mechanisms that disrupt feeling safe inform therapists to develop trauma treatments designed to awaken the circuits that enable feelings of safety.

Underlying global survival-related behavioral strategies, the nervous system is involved in choreographing a complex scenario by shifting neurophysiological states that serve as neural platforms for more expansive emergent behaviors. In one case, the neural platform efficiently signals and receives cues of safety, and in the others the neural platform efficiently signals and receives cues of danger or life threat.

In response to cues of safety, the nervous system promotes a