Transforming The Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists by Janina Fisher

Author:Janina Fisher [Fisher, Janina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PESI Publishing & Media
Published: 2021-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.2: Getting Help from the Mindful Brain

Worksheet 13: How Working Memory Interprets Our Experience will help you study the relationship between your negative thoughts and interpretations and your feelings and impulses. What types of interpretations and judgments do you usually make? And how does each affect your feeling and bodily state?

The noticing brain or medial prefrontal cortex, however, does connect directly to the amygdala, facilitating a calming effect when we are more mindful and when we notice rather than commenting on what we notice. For trauma survivors, free-floating meditation is not always the right approach to increasing activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Internal awareness can sometimes be very triggering, so it is usually more helpful to start using the noticing brain to notice very specific things. For example, when a feeling of anxiety comes up, noticing it as just anxiety or as just a body sensation (increased heartbeat or tightening in the chest or stomach) or as “just triggering” usually helps to regulate the anxiety. When feelings of shame get triggered, remembering to notice the physical sensations of the shame and the thoughts that go with it as separate components is usually calming or regulating. In mindful noticing, we do not get flooded with the feeling—we notice it at a very slight distance, even as something interesting or curious.

It requires practice to notice a feeling instead of reacting to it by drawing conclusions or assigning blame. Most of us interpret our feelings as quickly as we have them. We might feel embarrassed and then interpret that as a sign of having done something stupid. We feel sadness, and then we interpret it as either weakness or a sign of how much we have lost or how terribly we have been treated. These interpretations very rarely make us feel better!

Noticing the shame, sadness, anxiety, or anger without judgment or interpretation has a very different effect. Noticing sadness means bringing our attention to the choked-up feeling in the throat, the wetness or tears in the eyes, and the emotional pain in the chest. When we notice the sensations of pain rather than recall all the experiences that have caused the pain, it has a slightly calming effect. If we notice the tears instead of interpreting them as weakness, they will subside much more easily than if we try to choke them back. Whenever we notice a feeling as just a feeling or a thought as just a thought, it is generally less overwhelming.

In the mindfulness world, meditators are taught to observe with interest and “without attachment or aversion.” These words speak to the very human tendency we all have to agree with certain thoughts and feelings and to push other feelings away or reject them. We might agree with the thought “Your opinion doesn’t matter” and reject the thought “Whatever I think or feel does matter,” judging it as too grandiose or narcissistic. Mindful noticing disciplines us to be aware of each thought with equal curiosity: “I’m having the thought

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