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Healing CPTSD and Asperger's Through the Body: A Self-Help Path

Preface

The Feasibility of Self-Help

First, let’s imagine an ideal situation: everyone can use functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and other technologies to monitor their corresponding brain activity in real-time while engaged in a specific psychological activity. By comparing this to the brain activity of an average person in a similar situation, we could assess our own psychological health and guide our own adjustments.

Although the above scenario is not realistic, subjectively, different brain activities correspond to different phenomenological experiences and cognitive schemas. Due to various factors, even in similar situations, the experiences produced by the same individual at different times can vary in quality. Therefore, differences in brain activity patterns can be self-assessed through differences in the quality of phenomenological experience. Although individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome and Complex PTSD survivors (hereafter “survivors,” provided it causes no ambiguity) have their own limitations, they still possess a considerable degree of social functioning. They have the ability to make relatively objective self-assessments through observation and learning, especially through learning in social activities.

Compared to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), although Complex PTSD (CPTSD) is more complex pathologically, the associated traumatic events are often relatively milder. It is easier for the individual to bear the various painful emotions aroused during the process of dealing with the trauma.

These conditions make self-help healing possible.

The Necessity of Self-Help

Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) and Complex PTSD (CPTSD) share a significant degree of commonality. This article focuses on helping the individual achieve transformation and does not intend to make a clear distinction between the two. In practice, the distinction between the two is highly subjective: if a treatment method for a survivor works for an individual with Asperger’s, people will assume the previous diagnosis was incorrect; if all treatment methods fail for a survivor, people will suspect that the survivor is an individual with Asperger’s. The richness of their connotations and the diversity and complexity of their manifestations make modern medical interventions feel like “scratching an itch from outside the boot,” finding it difficult to be effective. Meanwhile, related psychological counseling methods generally involve long cycles, high costs, and poor results. Even if they are effective, the transfer of therapeutic effects gained from the counseling relationship to life situations is a problem, given that the mental development level of survivors is generally lagging. For adults with Asperger’s Syndrome and survivors, self-help is almost the only reliable means.

The resolution of psychological disorders relies on good social relationships, but survivors and individuals with AS often severely lack the ability to develop meaningful relationships with others. If they are forcibly pushed into various complex social environments (similar to the approach of exposure therapy), it will not only be unhelpful for growth but may also cause secondary harm. In reality, the early stages of self-healing can be carried out in relatively simple social situations or even in peaceful solitude. Only after some stubborn, foundational problems have been addressed can social-level support fully play its role. This article focuses on methods for handling these foundational problems.

The Basic Approach

For young survivors, treatment must begin with rebuilding attachment. This requires the joint participation of the person concerned, caregivers, and professionals, which is beyond the scope of this article. This article primarily serves survivors who have already stumbled into adulthood.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) holds an absolutely dominant position in the field of PTSD treatment. Among its methods, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET) are the most widely used. However, when CBT is applied to CPTSD, the results are less than satisfactory.

Trauma treatment techniques that focus on somatic experience emerged from Gestalt Therapy. Among these, Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE) approach is the most well-known. CBT starts with cognitive schemas and behavioral habits to drive a shift in mind-body states. But CPTSD requires more complex and subtle processing, necessitating the use of many special conceptual tools and practical techniques. Somatic Experiencing, which enters through somatic experience, perfectly compensates for the shortcomings of CBT. From a CBT perspective, SE operates much like a specially packaged version of CPT and PET. It is centered on the specific case, fully attentive to subtle, hard-to-express details, and requires extreme patience and focus. This article is concerned precisely with this supplementary role that SE plays for CBT.

In China, CBT and psychodynamics are relatively popular, while the mass foundation for Somatic Experiencing is relatively weak. Therefore, this article will use more space to introduce concepts and ideas related to SE and will not dwell on CBT and psychodynamics; relevant materials can be obtained from the recommended book list at the end of the text.

Similar to fever and coughing, ADHD and Asperger’s Syndrome are crude collections of symptoms rather than standardized pathological labels. This article, based on the positive psychology view of difference (see Section 1.4) and the SE view of the mind-body (see Section 1.5), understands the essence of ADHD and Asperger’s as a “vulnerability.” Due to severe disturbances in the early developmental process, the individual is in a “vulnerable state” from the very beginning of life. This state makes them extremely susceptible to various injuries during their early life explorations; their body itself may even be a source of trauma (see Section 3.10). The traumatization process for individuals with Asperger’s begins in early childhood, or even earlier life stages. After long-term progression and compensation, it forms a complex and chaotic tangle of manifestations. Self-help for Asperger’s should be based on self-help for CPTSD. Compared to the “neurodiversity paradigm” and the “pathology paradigm,” this article’s understanding of Asperger’s can be summarized as the “social relations paradigm.”

Provided it does not cause ambiguity, this article will refer to psychological trauma simply as trauma. But we will soon see that psychological trauma and physical trauma share a great deal of homology. A vulnerable psyche and a vulnerable body are twin brothers.

This article is neither a nanny-style tutorial nor a dictionary-style manual. It is merely a sharing of the author’s own knowledge reserve and personal experience. It is hoped that it can bring some help to those in need, and also that it can offer ordinary people a glimpse into the phenomenological world (sometimes called “subjective reality”) of trauma survivors, thereby fostering a bit more understanding and tolerance.

A Note to the Listener

The main text is approximately 140,000 Chinese characters, divided into seven chapters. To keep the writing concise, this article will not elaborate on concepts (such as the definitions of stress disorders, CPTSD, etc.) or cases that are already explained in detail in the required reading list at the end of the text. This may create reading difficulty for readers lacking a foundation in psychology or those with attention deficits due to severe traumatization. This difficulty is, in a sense, necessary and can be understood as an intentional challenge set by the author. These required readings (see Sections 7.1-7.6) are by no means optional embellishments for this article. If you cannot get through this material, it is likely that this article will also not suit your taste. Among them, the two books marked with a ★ are the direct source of this article’s ideas; without them, this article would not exist.

CPTSD is different from PTSD. For PTSD survivors, the content of this article may be overly tedious and of limited significance.

Self-rescue from CPTSD is a serious, lengthy, and extremely challenging task. Knowledge reserves, life experience, learning ability, patience, determination, and perceptiveness are all indispensable. Only those who firmly believe they possess these abilities can save themselves. The journey beyond trauma is like a rebirth; many people will gain a higher state of mind as a result. As the saying goes, no effort is ever in vain. This article is not suitable for those seeking a quick fix or for those who are merely troubled by daily trifles.

The content of the article contains hypothetical components; chapters with a larger hypothetical component will be specially noted. The ultimate standard for testing truth is practice, not authority. A diagnosis that cannot offer a solution is of little meaning to the person concerned. Regarding the scientific nature of psychotherapy theories, the person concerned and the researcher have an equal right to speak; the relationship between them is one of equal cooperation.

Except for quoted passages, this article is an original work. Please observe relevant norms when reprinting or citing.

Chapter 1: The Foundation: Understanding the Self and Trauma

The View of Human Nature

This article does not discuss antisocial personality.

Prosociality is a human instinct. The reason ordinary people prefer socializing is not that their prosocial instincts are stronger, but that they have accumulated abundant positive interactive experiences in life. If a person has never established a meaningful emotional connection with others, they cannot know what loneliness is, much less actively resist it. This does not mean, however, that they will not suffer its effects. For example, children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (or other pervasive developmental disorders) commonly exhibit autonomic nervous system dysfunction, low immunity, abnormal arousal levels, and difficulty regulating attention. To a large extent, these problems are caused by long-term loneliness.

The goal of psychotherapy is to fully unfurl the individual’s own nature, not to pursue some “ideal personality.” If an individual’s ability to express love is limited, it is only because they have been deeply hurt.

The View of Responsibility (Self-Responsibility, Struggle, Protracted Struggle)

The Spirit of Self-Responsibility

Trauma and deficits are not one’s own fault, but one must take ultimate responsibility for one’s own rescue. Only by seeing one’s own responsibility clearly can one see the agency and influence one possesses. “Taking responsibility for oneself” is absolutely not “blaming the victim.” Responsibility absolutely does not mean “taking the blame” or being humiliated.

Although many survivors’ misfortunes are related to physiological defects, family of origin, or their developmental environment, these factors all belong to life’s “initial settings.” The first step in walking out of trauma’s shadow is to reconcile with one’s “initial settings.” Reconciliation is not forgiveness, and it is certainly not an indictment; it is truly seeing the complete picture of growth. Only those who can grasp this point can possibly achieve self-rescue.

Cultivating a spirit of self-responsibility first requires completing the identity shift from “victim” to “survivor.” One must shift the core focus from “what injuries have I suffered?” to “how have I managed to endure until today?” and “what more can I do?”

The healing process will evoke a large amount of anger. Survivors must firmly remember the principle: “Hate the act, not the person.” Both forgiveness and indictment are irrelevant to healing; they are matters to be re-evaluated by the individual, using their complete cognitive abilities, after healing is complete. We feel anger in order to reclaim the inner strength we abandoned, not to attribute the cause of our lost strength to others’ deprivation. Attributing the cause to others is tantamount to admitting that others can control our healing process, which is undoubtedly a self-defeating act.

The Spirit of Total Struggle

If trauma is like a wound on a tree, CPTSD is the scattered dead branches and fallen leaves after the tree, covered in wounds, has fallen. The treatment process for CPTSD is neither a simple process of treating wounds nor a simple process of cleaning up trash; it is the process of growing a new, great tree upon the remains of the old trunk. Survivors must shed the illusion of “patching things up for another three years” and prepare for a total metamorphosis (shedding one’s skin and changing one’s bones). Only when survivors realize they have no path of retreat left, that all means of escape have thoroughly failed, can they move toward awakening. Otherwise, they can easily fall into self-pity during the self-rescue process.

The Spirit of Protracted Struggle

Extreme reactions are always closely linked to the isolation of an event. When facing trouble, if a person believes they will never encounter it a second time, they will likely either stake everything on one throw, overdrafting themselves, or do nothing at all, merely closing their eyes and praying it passes quickly. But if they believe this trouble will become a frequent visitor, and that ignoring it will subject them to more and more limitations, they will adopt a completely different attitude. Those who can walk out of the shadow of trauma understand the weight of the word “maneuver” (to deal with something tactfully, to circle around it) far better than ordinary people.

The self-rescue from CPTSD is a spiral upward; it cannot be accomplished overnight. Each new cycle in the process requires enduring greater pressure than the last, while simultaneously having more resources to utilize. After the cycle ends, the individual reaps more vitality and a more profound peace. During this cyclical process, the individual’s mind and body, starting from scattered debris, gradually form larger fragments, and finally merge into a unified whole.

Each cycle is a process of “enlightenment,” “awakening,” or “ascending a dimension.” It is completed naturally after the individual’s truest life force is released. Psychotherapy exists to help us unfurl our natural disposition and rediscover confidence from the “sense of flow” in life, not to make us meticulously cautious.

The Social Relations Paradigm (Nature vs. Nurture)

The Nature vs. Nurture View

The human as a biological organism and the human as a social individual are not on the same level. This concept can be understood through the relationship between “software systems” and “hardware systems” in computer science. Early computer systems did not deliberately distinguish “software” and “hardware.” As systems grew more complex, people began describing them from these two dimensions. Although the software system is based on the hardware system, their conceptual systems and terminologies are independent. The software system cannot be simply reduced to the hardware system. A computer’s operation process can be described from both the hardware perspective and the software perspective; both descriptions are self-consistent. The two cannot be simply mapped structurally, and we cannot logically force a causal relationship between them. The relationship between them is complex, not linear. Similarly, the concepts used to describe human capabilities (especially social capabilities) cannot be simply mapped to the anatomical structures or material components of the human body (including the brain).

For example, people once thought the brain’s occipital lobe was responsible for visual function. But as technology advanced, it was discovered that the occipital lobes of blind individuals are also highly active, leading to the understanding that the occipital lobe is responsible for spatial recognition function. Later, it was found that the occipital lobe alone cannot form a complete spatial perception, nor does it only function during spatial recognition. Today, scientists’ understanding of the brain has developed to a very abstract level, and a series of unique conceptual systems, detached from everyday language, is forming.

But we do not need to feel pressured by this. Just as a software engineer does not need to know the infinite details of the hardware’s working processes, nor will they rashly demand hardware changes just because their own ability is insufficient, we do not need to learn endless neurobiology or neurochemistry to understand and process our trauma. This is of little significance to self-help, and pharmaceutical or physical interventions often carry risk. Researchers rigidly distinguish between “innate factors” and “postnatal factors,” “endogenous factors” and “external factors,” mainly to delineate responsibility—to clearly define the boundaries between “non-intervenable” and “intervenable,” “physiochemical intervention” and “cognitive intervention,” in order to answer the question: “Can it be intervened, and who intervenes?” The answer to this question concerns the vested interests of the researcher (the observer), but it holds almost no value for the person concerned.

If we compare the physiological basis of a psychological disorder to a hen, and the abnormal cognitive schemas and behavioral habits to an egg (this analogy is used considering it is easier for a hen to lay an egg than an egg to hatch a hen), then the formation of the disorder is the process of the hen laying the egg and the egg hatching the hen until the chicken coop is bursting. The primary goal of intervention is to break this cycle, not to worry about whether there were initially more eggs or more hens. From the individual’s own perspective, the formation of any psychological disorder is the result of both innate and postnatal factors working together. Emotional intelligence, like muscle, is both innate and trained; it is developed subconsciously through various activities, and it can also be developed through conscious exercise. The discussion of nature versus nurture has limited significance in self-help healing.

The Social Relations Model and Neurophysiological Model

The essence of psychological problems is various forms of “alienation.” Psychological problems can only be most comprehensively understood and accurately intervened with within a social relations framework. The observation, understanding, and intervention of psychological problems depend on the most subtle details within specific interactions. Psychological problems are the internalization of social relationship problems. Differences at the neurophysiological level do not directly determine differences in an individual’s adaptive capacity. Over-focusing on neurophysiological factors risks mistaking the branch for the root. Discussing the abstract nature of psychological problems detached from the specific individual is of limited significance. Survivors should not use “innate traits cannot be changed” as an excuse to evade responsibility.

This passage concentrates the core thinking of the “social relations paradigm.” Psychological intervention models developed based on this paradigm all belong to the social relations model. In contrast, intervention models that primarily attribute the cause and intervention methods of psychological problems to neurophysiological factors belong to the neurophysiological model. CBT is based on the social relations model. Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy pursue a unification of the social relations model and the neurophysiological model. Given the current developmental level of psychological intervention techniques, all effective interventions are inseparable from the social relations model. This article primarily uses the social relations paradigm to understand various psychological problems and will not involve much neurophysiological knowledge.

The Positive Psychology and Spectrum View (Moving Beyond Labels)

This article views the differences between individuals with psychological disorders and ordinary people through the lens of Positive Psychology’s view of difference. This view can be summarized as the “View of Great Similarity, Minor Difference” and the “Spectrum View,” with the former being the foundation for the latter.

The View of Great Similarity, Minor Difference

Humanity possesses both uniformity and diversity, with uniformity being the dominant factor. This is why humankind can possess rich possibilities yet still exist as a whole. Significant uniformity often contains subtle differences, and significant differences also contain widespread uniformity. No matter how much we focus on the differences between those with psychological disorders and ordinary people, these differences and divisions are secondary and subtle. The commonalities and connections between people are universal and primary; it is just that people, driven by a desire for novelty, are more willing to focus on that small point of difference.

The Spectrum View

The spectrum view opposes labeling.

So-called normal and abnormal are merely opposing labels that people forcibly apply to the same manifestation at different degrees, simply out of laziness. For instance, Social Darwinists simplistically divide humanity into the strong and the weak, defining social relations as “competition,” and from then on, never need to concern themselves with human diversity or the complexity of social activities. A valuable description ought to be able to cover all phenomena within the same spectrum—from typical to atypical, or from general to specific—rather than describing them separately first and then adding extra explanations about their correlations, which only creates artificial divisions.

For example, this article interprets the survivor’s abnormal mind-body state as the individual’s “habitual state” significantly deviating from the recognized “optimal state.” Ordinary people also have various deviations, but these deviations are not significant and can be adjusted or compensated for unconsciously without consuming extra cognitive resources, nor do they produce obvious discomfort. As another example, many CPTSD survivors are accustomed to dividing conscious objects into internal objects and external objects, which reveals a certain sense of fragmentation. But even so, their primary experience of the world is the same as that of ordinary people. Even ordinary people sometimes identify with this division, because they, too, experience these states of consciousness, it just doesn’t cause them significant maladaptation. For convenience of expression, this article will sometimes use “internal” and “external” to distinguish things, but they must be viewed from the stance of the spectrum view.

Compulsive behaviors and reflexive behaviors can also be seen as existing on the same spectrum; the only difference is that the activation conditions underpinning the former are relatively strict and thus more easily perceived and regulated. Conditioned reflexes, unconditioned reflexes, and operant conditioning can also be seen as existing on the same spectrum. A conditioned reflex is a sequential behavior formed with an unconditioned reflex as its core component, combined with matching elements. A conditioned reflex that includes significant operational behavior is operant conditioning. Operant conditioning that has developed into a hard-wired connection over long-term evolution is an unconditioned reflex.

Diagnostic Labels from a Spectrum View

An appropriate label can turn indescribable suffering into a shareable meaning. The individual can use this as a starting point to seek relevant resources and strive to change their situation. This is the true meaning of a label. Labels should be understood as an “index,” not an “identity.”

The reality, however, is that labels often lead to people being “labeled.” Some are marginalized because of a label, subjected to all kinds of “special treatment.” Many parents completely lose faith in their children simply because they were labeled “Asperger’s.” Some people, because of a label, obsessively seek out so-called “kindred spirits” to find psychological comfort. The person becomes alienated, an appendage to the label, and thus loses the possibility of change.

If a person’s traits in one area are too prominent, it is easy for them to see others with similar traits as being of the same kind, completely ignoring other, more fundamental and important qualities. Children are often keen on seeking identity confirmation. Once they are labeled “Asperger’s,” they are more likely to flock together with other people bearing special labels, which undoubtedly introduces new risks to their development.

Self-Help from a Spectrum View

Psychological self-help is not acting as one’s own counselor; that is completely unrealistic.

The social environment is full of potential trauma sources. Our immunity and self-healing power determine the impact they have on us. From this perspective, it seems survivors should learn from those with strong immunity and self-healing abilities. Unfortunately, however, the phenomenological world of these “strong ones” is too different from that of survivors, so much so that it is difficult to express them appropriately within the same linguistic system. Ordinary people cannot understand why survivors are so fragile, and survivors cannot understand how ordinary people can use trauma to achieve growth.

The value of a self-help theory lies in constructing a scientific linguistic system that can encompass the phenomenological worlds of both survivors and ordinary people. On one hand, it allows survivors to experience the phenomenological world of ordinary people and understand their immunity and self-healing power, thereby clarifying the direction and methods for their own efforts. On the other hand, it allows ordinary people to experience the phenomenological world of survivors, understand their vulnerability, and thus find it easier to get along with them.

Self-rescue is not about developing a series of special skills to compensate for one’s deficits; it is about helping the survivor exercise the “psychological muscles” that have atrophied due to trauma. Take “mindfulness” as an example. People with high emotional intelligence generally possess the ability to integrate their various feelings without being swept away by a single, intense emotion, but they never emphasize this ability of theirs. In the eyes of a survivor, they seem to possess a sort of “divine power.” By introducing the concept of “mindfulness,” fully explaining its meaning, and demonstrating its various applications, we can help survivors cultivate this ability, thereby helping them achieve post-traumatic growth.

Compared to physiological defects, psychological disorders have strong heterogeneity. Rather than saying it is difficult to find a common physiological basis for psychological disorders, it is better to say they have no common physiological basis at all. Each person’s “pathology” may be unique. This is one reason the “pathology paradigm” is so controversial. Psychological disorders require individualized intervention plans. Devising individualized intervention plans requires a linguistic system capable of bridging different phenomenological worlds. It is like learning to drive a car: we must first recognize the brake, the accelerator, and so on. If we hit the road without knowing these basic configurations, we will only cause a traffic accident.

Life is full of dark humor. Sometimes a single, simple problem can trap a person for a lifetime. Many psychological dilemmas seem unsolvable only because they are difficult to articulate properly within existing linguistic systems. Since they cannot be clearly explained, the person concerned can only resign themselves to fate, attributing the problem to some “innate defect.” An appropriate linguistic system—one that can bridge the phenomenological worlds of ordinary people and those with psychological disorders—can help us locate our coordinates on a sufficiently vast and detailed map, thereby finding the way home. As a valuable self-help theory, its language must function as a “signpost,” a “bridge,” and an “interpreter.” A theory that cannot point the way for those who are trapped is just a decorative vase, no matter how exquisite.

The best candidates for this work are those who have lived in two (or more) completely different phenomenological worlds and who possess a certain degree of academic literacy and expressive ability. In human history, the “border people” who traveled between different communities often became the earliest “translators”; they made important contributions to the spread and development of civilization.

The author of this text has had the fortune of traveling back and forth between the phenomenological worlds of CPTSD survivors and ordinary people. May this article serve as a catalyst, awakening more people to the importance of the survivor’s phenomenological world.

The Integrated Mind-Body View (The Core Somatic Model)

The Integrated Body-Brain View

Somatic Experiencing does not intentionally distinguish between brain activity and body activity. Any specific activity simultaneously involves the activity of all parts of the body, including the brain. The brain’s activity can be indirectly observed through the body’s micro-activities. The “body (flesh)” mentioned in this article always includes the brain.

Even a protozoan like a paramecium clearly displays certain qualities unique to living organisms in its daily activities. When we observe the life of a paramecium, we unconsciously experience emotions similar to those we feel when observing higher animals. This emotion cannot be explained by “projection,” because we rarely have this feeling no matter how complex the mechanical motion we observe. This article does not intend to explore the essence of life, but only to use this as an entry point into the hierarchical model of the mind commonly used in modern psychotherapy.

From the limbs to the brain, and from the brain’s lower cortex to its higher cortex, it is not a case of the former being subordinate to the latter, or the lower serving the higher. On the contrary, the former is the premise, foundation, source, and destination of the latter. The latter is the enhancement, expansion, and integration of the former. The latter comes from the former and returns to the former; its reason for existence is to make the energy flow of the former more efficient and smooth, thereby unleashing higher creativity. This body-brain relationship view can be called the “Integrated Body-Brain View.” It unifies the evolutionary history of the species with the developmental process of the individual, and unifies lower-level instinctive activities with higher-level cognitive activities. It allows us to understand the underlying logic of higher animal life activities by observing the life activities of lower animals; to understand the internal dynamics of adult activities by observing the activities of children; and to know what is happening in the brain through the explicit information displayed by bodily activity.

“Instinct,” “emotion,” and “cognition” are all products of body-brain integration, with the degree of integration increasing in that order. In daily context, people often use “body” to refer to instinct. “Integration” is a slightly awkward term; emotion and cognition cannot be simply reduced to physiological activity, so terms like “integration” and “emergence” must be used to vaguely express the mind-body relationship. Although integration is abstract, “plucking up courage” is familiar to everyone. The process of plucking up courage is a kind of spontaneous integration. All self-help strategies are ultimately aimed at helping the individual “pluck up courage” in the most natural way.

The Integrated Body-Mind View

Behavior is the integrated result of instinct, emotion, and cognition.

The relationship between instinct (“Body” or “Reptilian Brain”), emotion (“Mind” or “Lower Mammalian Brain”), and cognition (“Intellect” or “Neocortex”) can be analogized to the body-brain relationship described above. This view of the psyche can be called the “Integrated Body-Mind View.” It unifies the evolutionary history of the species, the developmental process of the individual, and the process of specific behaviors, giving it extremely strong explanatory and guiding significance. It allows us to use the language of the body and life (the explicit information displayed by the body and life) to tell the story of the psyche (the phenomenological world). The “Body” is both the physical body and the so-called “subconscious”; it is directly unified with the external environment. Body and Mind constitute the “Child Self”; Body, Mind, and Intellect together constitute the “Adult Self.”

This model can be analogized to the neural reflexes involved in defecation. Body, Mind, and Intellect can be sequentially analogized to lower-level and higher-level central command centers.

Two Kinds of Growth

The Child Self is the foundation of the Adult Self; therefore, we can also use children’s activities to understand the underlying logic of adult activities. Our various manifestations during childhood do not simply disappear or change with age; on the contrary, they become the foundation for more complex behaviors and cognitive processes. When we encounter extreme situations and all these complex behaviors and cognitive processes fail, we are forced to start processing problems again from a very basic level. At this time, our childhood behavioral style will clearly manifest, and even images from childhood may flash through our minds. This phenomenon is known in psychodynamics as “regression.”

Growth is both a process of constantly reshaping basic sequential behaviors and cognitive schemas, and a process of developing more complex habits and cognitive schemas. The former is the First Kind of Growth, and the latter is the Second Kind of Growth. The First Kind of Growth usually occurs in a state where the individual’s practical ability far exceeds their cognitive ability, characterized significantly by “action before knowing.” The growth discussed by adults is mainly the Second Kind of Growth; “the unity of knowing and acting” is the basic requirement of the Second Kind of Growth. An ordinary person’s First Kind of Growth is basically complete by late adolescence. Its adaptive significance is to enable the individual to face the various impacts of social reality from a relatively independent stance, allowing the Second Kind of Growth to reach a very high level. The survivor’s First Kind of Growth was never completed. This both allows their personality to exhibit good plasticity even in adulthood and also makes their Second Kind of Growth extremely unstable. The vast majority of a survivor’s abnormal manifestations can be seen as the product of severe deficiency in the First Kind of Growth and excessive compensation by the Second Kind of Growth.

The transformation of impulse into action usually follows two paths: The former belongs to the First Kind of Growth, the latter to the Second Kind of Growth. The former is the prerequisite and foundation for the latter; the latter is the supplement and expansion of the former. The former can be analogized to a child learning their mother tongue; the latter can be analogized to an ordinary person learning a foreign language. (This analogy is somewhat crude, as learning clearly does not equal growth. Growth implies an evolution from simple to complex, from potential to reality, from mutable to stable.) The more sufficient the First Kind of Growth, the greater the space for the Second Kind of Growth, and the greater the individual's "potential." If survivors wish to develop their capacity for action, they must, through diligent practice, make up for the First Kind of Growth that was left behind.

The Coordination of Body, Mind, and Intellect

A vibrant body cannot nurture a depressed heart. The coordination of Body, Mind, and Intellect was expressed by Peter Levine as “Three Brains, One Mind.” When this coordination is intensely disturbed beyond the capacity for self-regulation, psychological problems appear.

Coordination can be divided into two opposing aspects, synergy and complementarity, and also into two opposing directions, top-down and bottom-up. On a long-term level, the activity levels of Body, Mind, and Intellect remain consistent. However, specific to any given moment, a situation of waxing and waning will repeatedly occur. The moment we capture an unusual breath in the environment, our limbs may freeze, but our brain becomes highly activated (manifesting as the sudden disappearance of large movements and the sudden intensification of micro-activities, activating detailed and comprehensive observation). Then, the limbs become active again, and the brain calms down slightly. This repeats multiple times until returning to a normal state. The degree of instantaneous brain activation reflects the individual’s mental resources. If the brain activation is insufficient, the body will struggle to recover vitality from the freeze. Unless appropriate external force intervenes, the individual will continue to appear stunned. This is much like two people playing ping-pong: as long as one side fails to return the ball, the interaction stagnates, and both parties will be stunned in place until someone picks up the ball. In the course of repeated matches, the skill level of both sides will tend to converge.

Somatic Experiencing focuses on mind-body coordination; rebuilding the connection between the body and the intellect is a crucial component of SE. Cognitive therapy focuses on mental coordination; helping the individual establish a life narrative that fully reflects their own subjective reality is a crucial component of cognitive therapy.

The Two Dimensions of Traumatization

In the context of this article, “integration” and “differentiation” are two sides of the same coin. “Insufficient integration” and “insufficient differentiation” have essentially the same connotation. The difference is that insufficient integration emphasizes the “fragmented state” caused by trauma, while insufficient differentiation emphasizes the “chaotic state” caused by developmental stagnation. Integration is closely connected differentiation; differentiation is clarified integration. The antonyms for integration and differentiation are splitting and disintegration. The extreme form of splitting and disintegration is dissociative disorder.

The trauma healing process is akin to a team overcoming internal schisms and reforming its cohesion. Integration can be divided into two dimensions: “integration between levels” and “integration within the same level.”

Insufficient integration between levels manifests as “having no backbone (lack of subjectivity).” The individual can only experience simple, intense emotions and make simple, crude stress responses; they cannot form delicate, complex feelings and thoughts. They easily interpret socializing as “acting” and “scheming.”

Insufficient integration within the same level manifests as “self-conflict,” or being “screwed up/twisted” (拧巴). The individual easily interprets socializing as “gossiping.”

The higher the degree of integration within a level (or between levels), the more easily problems of insufficient integration between levels (or within a level) are exposed, and thus the more easily they are corrected in time. On a long-term basis, the degree of integration within levels and the degree of integration between levels remain consistent.

Integration or disintegration between levels can be perceived through changes in the mind-body state. Integration or disintegration within a level can be identified through self-coordination or self-conflict. Social situations (or other high-pressure situations) drive the individual to maintain a higher degree of integration between levels; at this time, problems of insufficient integration within the same level are easily exposed, while problems of insufficient integration between levels are easily concealed. Solitary situations are the opposite. For example, many CPTSD survivors feel completely normal when alone, but the moment they enter a social situation, they fall into sensory overload and feel at a complete loss. Many depressed individuals fall into endless cognitive rumination and exhibit difficulty initiating tasks when alone, yet they feel much better when they are with friends, at which point they will make many positive commitments to themselves. But once they return to solitude, they again fall back into a state of depression from which they cannot extract themselves.

Self-Help from the Integration View

From the perspective of inter-subject relations, the process of a survivor’s self-rescue is the process of the adult individual using their “Adult Self” to take on the responsibility of the previously absent parent. Under scientific guidance and within social life, they educate the neglected “Child Self,” cultivating its capacity for action and self-restraint. From the perspective of the subject-environment relationship, the process of self-rescue is the process of the subject resetting their own primitive impulses. The resetting of impulses is usually accompanied by intense, involuntary trembling.

The Core of Interaction: Understanding Interaction Loops

Interaction forms “loops.” One party initiates an invitation, the other responds, and the response in turn drives the initiator to change their state. Both parties’ states rapidly change, mutually causing and affecting one another. Within the constant cycling of the interaction loop, impulses (in this article, “impulse” specifically refers to behavioral impulses), emotions, and concepts continuously emerge, develop, differentiate, and dissolve. The individual’s adaptation to and transformation of the stimulus proceeds in sync.

In Raun K. Kaufman’s autism home therapy technique (Son-Rise Program), the interaction loop is an important foundational concept. This article uses this concept as its logical starting point. All content in this article should be understood within the context of interaction loops.

Just as “symptom” (discomfort perceived by the subject) and “sign” (abnormalities found by an observer’s examination) are different concepts, interaction loops can also be described from two different perspectives.

The Subject-Environment Interaction Loop

From the individual’s (subject’s) own perspective, all activity occurs within the subject-environment interaction loop. All other interaction loops are special cases of this loop. The process of the individual’s own development is the process of the interaction between the subject and the environment becoming increasingly rich, and their intermingling becoming increasingly profound. In terms of subjective experience, the interaction loop is the infinite cycle of sensation and behavior. The subject-environment interaction loop can also be understood with the help of the concept of “reafference.” The subject-environment interaction loop determines the individual’s phenomenological world.

The Inter-Subject Interaction Loop

From the perspective of inter-subject relations, all activity occurs within the inter-subject interaction loop. The so-called subject-environment interaction loop is merely an instantaneous snapshot of the inter-subject loop, or perhaps the subject’s “self-interaction.” Self-interaction, however, is merely the internalization of inter-subject interaction. Internalization implies the accumulation of experience and the formation of habits.

This article does not accept a “God’s-eye (omnipotent participant or omniscient observer) view.” Even when discussing inter-subject relations, one subject must be chosen as the center of the discussion; otherwise, the narrator becomes the subject within a subject-environment loop. What they are narrating is no longer the story of the observed object, but their own story.

Observer and Participant

In the subject-environment interaction loop, the observer and the participant (or “doer”) are directly unified. The narrative unfolding around the subject-environment loop is the “self-centric narrative.” In the inter-subject interaction loop, the observer and participant are highly differentiated. The subject must possess considerable flexibility, maintain a balance between the two identities, and maintain relatively objective observation while actively participating in the activity.

Because survivors lack interpersonal interaction, their differentiation between these two roles is very low. They only perform well in situations where the two roles are not clearly differentiated (such as solving a math problem). When a life scenario involves the differentiation of the two, they either become pure observers, unable to integrate into the situation, or they degenerate into pure participants, constrained by others at every turn.

Psychological problems can only be fully exposed and resolved within the inter-subject interaction loop. When a subject wants to evade psychological problems, or even glamorize them as a kind of talent, they will often immerse themselves in the self-centric narrative and avoid the inter-subject interaction loop narrative.

The lack of interpersonal interaction means that survivors can only tell stories that satisfy them within the subject-environment narrative framework. They believe they are just objectively stating the story of the object they observed, unaware that this is precisely their own story. They are telling their own story, yet their self is absent from the story. They lack self-awareness regarding their own responsibility and influence.

The concept of observer and participant can be understood with the help of the concepts of “first-order chaos” and “second-order chaos” in Cybernetics.

Synchronicity

The subject-environment interaction loop is formed along with the differentiation of behavior and perception; it reflects the synchronicity between motor commands and perceptual feedback. In a newborn infant, the behavioral process, sensory process, and perceptual process are identical. They gradually differentiate, becoming concepts that, to an observer, are interconnected yet distinct. Identity thus becomes synchronicity. Synchronicity means mutual confirmation, mutual adaptation, and mutual blending. This synchronicity makes “me” into “the world’s me,” and the “world” into “my world.” The process of the subject coming to know the world thus becomes the process of coming to know the self; the process of integrating different parts of the self becomes the process of integrating different aspects of the world.

Similarly, the inter-subject interaction loop is formed along with the differentiation of self and other (or “mine” and “not-mine”); it reflects the synchronicity of the two interacting parties. This synchronicity makes “me” into “the me within the relationship,” and the “relationship” into “my relationship.” The process of the subject establishing their own subjectivity becomes the process of recognizing the subjectivity of the other.

At any moment that the subject is alive, all their activities are proceeding within interaction loops. This is true whether these activities are attended to (conscious) or unattended to (unconscious), whether they are episodic (recallable) or non-episodic (unrecallable). All, and also infinite, interaction loops converge to form a person’s stream of experience.

Cooperation and Confrontation

In the inter-subject interaction loop, the process of establishing and maintaining interaction is cooperation. Regardless of whether the attitude the subject conveys to the other party is supportive or opposing, as long as the goal is to maintain the interaction, one is affirming the other’s sense of existence and influence. We receive the information conveyed by the other party, organize its main points, and then give our opinion. We acknowledge that both parties share the same discursive space (context), grant the other party the qualification of equal dialogue with us, and allow them to influence us. This is cooperation. Conflict is not frightening; conflict is what creates engagement. Only when two parties engage back and forth can they cooperate to produce a perfect drama. In the process of cooperation, both parties are profoundly influenced by each other, gradually taking on the imprint of the other.

In the subject-environment interaction loop, the concepts corresponding to cooperation are “exploration” and “blending.”

Activities that hinder or destroy interaction are confrontation. Cooperation has continuity; confrontation has non-sustainability. Just as any achievement cannot be accomplished overnight but can be destroyed in an instant, confrontation will ultimately lead to new cooperation; otherwise, the subject will fall into crisis. The most famous example of confrontation is the non-violent non-cooperation movement organized and led by the Indian revolutionary Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Special life experiences make it very difficult for survivors to share the same discursive space with others. The requests they make or the responses they give often deviate from social norms, causing confusion. This involuntary confrontation severely limits their interactive ability. To compensate for the damage they cause to the interaction, they often tend to over-cooperate, which results in them being easily influenced by things they do not like. This causes them great pain. Severe feelings of frustration cause them to increasingly escape reality. Escaping (avoidance) and running away (fleeing) are completely different concepts. Running away is a form of confrontation. Avoidance is neither cooperation nor confrontation; it is the stripping away of one’s own social nature. Whether an act is avoidance or fleeing is sometimes not intuitive. It depends, to an extent, on the subject’s sense of participation. Fleeing is often accompanied by excitement; avoidance is often accompanied by intense fear or even despair. A person who flees can conduct an effective review (post-mortem) after the fact. A person who avoids often struggles to justify their actions; their cognition exhibits fragmentation or even dissociative characteristics.

Chapter 2: The Energy of Trauma: Arousal, Activity, and The Physical Self

Concepts: Arousal Level and Vitality

The Concept of Arousal

In the context of Somatic Experiencing, there is no need to intentionally differentiate physiological arousal from psychological arousal. Arousal refers to the different states or degrees of the body’s total physiological activation. It is a preparatory state for physiological and psychological activity, determined by the level of sensory excitability, glandular and hormonal levels, and muscular readiness. From the perspective of somatic experience, borrowing from the definition of emotion, arousal level is the subject’s overall assessment of their own muscle tone level. The identification of emotion is based on the assessment of arousal level; in some psychological theories, emotions are classified according to different levels of arousal. When we say “feeling empowered,” we mean feeling excitement, feeling a rise in our arousal level.

High arousal may make a person excited or anxious; low arousal may make them feel relaxed and pleasant or bored and indifferent. A high level of arousal can promote coarse or simple activities but will interfere with fine or complex activities. A lower level of arousal is conducive to completing fine or complex tasks but will hinder better performance in coarse or simple activities. Skills that require few decisions, have a narrow range of options, and demand high speed are suited to higher arousal levels. Skills involving a high number of stimuli, short durations, and low intensity achieve the best performance under relatively low arousal levels. The more muscles involved in an activity, and the higher the demand for muscular coordination, precision, and stability, the more likely the skill is to achieve ideal performance at a relatively lower arousal level. When an individual is relatively confident, they maintain a higher arousal level, prioritizing executive efficiency. When an individual lacks confidence, their arousal level drops to ensure that details are correct and considerations are thorough.

The stronger an individual’s coping ability and the more sufficient their psychological preparation, the easier it is to maintain a relatively stable arousal level under pressure. Conversely, their arousal level is more prone to extreme fluctuations. If extreme fluctuations in arousal level occur frequently, they will inevitably cause psychological trauma, and this type of trauma is often difficult to trace back.

Some complex activities often impose seemingly contradictory yet subtle demands on arousal levels. For example, the sport of basketball requires both a sufficiently high level of excitement and sufficient precision and coordination (which can be understood from the perspectives of mind-body coordination and inter-subject coordination). It even demands that the arousal level be dynamically adjusted. These subtle demands are completely different from the self-contradictory demands proposed by malicious individuals intent on “suppressing” others. These demands—requiring the subject to maintain good activity levels while experiencing intense fluctuations in arousal—can be met in a process that is sufficiently informed, free, and provides timely feedback, without containing personal judgment or hidden motives. Such sports are generally very helpful for developing Emotional Intelligence.

The relative highs and lows mentioned here are relative to ordinary people; the survivor’s situation is far more extreme. On the one hand, the survivor’s daily arousal level is far lower than that required to maintain the optimal activation state of mind and body, to the extent that the vitality seen in others almost always makes them feel fear, rarely inspiring them to become active themselves. On the other hand, pressures that are trivial in the eyes of ordinary people often cause extreme arousal in survivors, making them terrified. Survivors appear dull and introverted while simultaneously expressing a strong desire for social connection. This contradiction gives them an impression of being “screwed-up” or “twisted” (拧巴).

An excessively low arousal level inevitably leads to insufficient muscle tone. Survivors often need to compensatorily tense their bodies during exercise. They find it very difficult to learn to complete movements easily and naturally like ordinary people—with large joints driving small joints, large muscles driving small muscles, in a relatively relaxed state. The survivor’s body, just like their mind, always gives the impression of being both clumsy and fragile.

In ordinary people, arousal level and stress level are consistent. But in survivors, the mismatch between the two has become the norm.

Arousal Level and Activity Level

Arousal level is closely related to muscle tone. The relationship between activity level and muscle tone described earlier can thus be understood as the relationship between activity level and arousal level.

Activity level represents the freedom of activity; arousal level represents the intensity of activity. Under the same arousal level, the weaker the activity level, the simpler and cruder the behavioral expression; the stronger the activity level, the more complex and gentle the behavioral expression. Under the same activity level, the higher the arousal level, the stronger the subject’s resilience (or “autonomy”); the lower the arousal level, the more docile the subject appears.

Arousal level and activity level are relatively independent within a certain range; when this range is exceeded, the two will constrain each other. In Janina Fisher’s theory, this range is called the “window of tolerance.” If a subject must be at a lower arousal level to maintain a good activity level, they will exhibit a relatively quiet and introverted personality. If a subject must be at a higher arousal level to maintain a good activity level, they will exhibit a relatively active and assertive personality. If a subject can maintain a good activity level across a wide range of arousal levels (possessing a large window of tolerance), they will exhibit an extremely resilient personality. Such an individual is “trauma-immune.”

A trauma-immune person can maintain good activity levels even when experiencing dramatic fluctuations in arousal. A trauma-susceptible person only has good activity levels near their optimal arousal level.

When an individual simultaneously maintains a very high arousal level and a very high activity level, they can integrate all current activities into one, achieving the state of “multitasking.” In other words, those who can multitask are all people who are full of energy and possess extremely strong concentration. This ability accompanied many people through their childhood, only gradually disappearing with declining energy and the accumulation of trauma.

Knowledge or skills are most easily recalled in the same mind-body state in which they were learned. Survivors are accustomed to learning knowledge, analyzing problems, and training skills at a very low arousal level. This knowledge and these abilities are difficult to access naturally under high-arousal stress states, which severely limits their adaptive capacity.

Vitality

The term “vitality” (活力) in common speech is a comprehensive assessment of both arousal level and activity level.

Vitality directly impacts the individual’s experience of stress. A person with strong vitality always feels a “jolt to the heart” (a thrill) when facing stress; they often consciously seek stress to keep themselves in a relatively invigorated state. These people are “stress-preferrers.” A person with weak vitality always feels a “tightening in the chest” when facing stress. They require extra physiological mobilization and psychological preparation to adjust their arousal level to a suitable place. These people are “stress-avoiders.”

The best method and greatest challenge for filling oneself with vitality is to create a rich and colorful life full of positive emotional memories. Survivors must cherish every moment that awakens vitality in their lives, just as they would cherish a winter fire or the last candle flickering in the wind. They always complain that there is no sunshine in their lives, but in reality, it is their cognitive habits that cause them to selectively ignore these precious moments.

Concepts: Activity, Activity Level, and Muscle Tone

Activity and Activity Level

At every moment we are alive, our bodies are engaged in abundant activity.

The “activity” (活动) mentioned in this article is by no means mechanical motion. All real-world activities, especially human social activities, possess both rhythm and a rich randomness and chaos. Imagine two people wrestling: through the qualities of their pushing, pulling, twisting, and tripping—firmness, reluctance, hesitation, volatility—they each feel that the other is a living person just like themselves, not a machine. Both are similar, yet each possesses a unique and appreciable personality.

Activity gains meaning through human participation. The process by which a subject makes sense of complex activities on a mental level is the same process by which the subject integrates into the activity on a mind-body level, attuning to the world; it is also the process of the subject fully exercising their own agency. If an individual cannot participate in an activity, they can only ever perceive chaos and randomness. The matching or resonance of activity is the prerequisite for forming a sense of affinity. Activity level (or “activeness,” 活动性) is reflected in the subject’s ability to constructively maintain and change the quality of their movements and the state of their activity, saving themselves from being “fixed” or “trapped.” Activity level can be seen as the universal ability of natural things to protect themselves from “being defined.”

Activity level enables the subject to respond purposefully to external stimuli. A healthy subject not only can respond to stimuli but also possesses the full freedom to choose how to respond; such a body feels nimble and agile. A boxer (especially one who is not yet seasoned) often must maintain a state of constant bouncing during a match. The purpose is to ensure the body reaches the level of activity required by the competitive situation. An active body provides sufficient response tendencies, ready to be triggered into various reactions at any time. It is like an inverted cone, in a state of unstable equilibrium, requiring only a tiny bit of force to tip it in any direction.

Rigidity, sluggishness (clumsiness), and flexibility (nimbleness) constitute a continuous spectrum describing the capacity for activity. Activity level, stress reactivity, flexibility, and mobility have similar connotations but different emphases.

Activity level, like body temperature and pulse, is difficult to consciously regulate. In the context of self-help, activity level is the most reliable and intuitive indicator of psychological health. The moment activity level drops sharply, the individual feels as if their “body is filled with lead.” When activity level rises rapidly, the individual feels sharp-eared, clear-eyed, and light-bodied.

Activity and Perception

Activity produces perception; stillness causes paralysis. The “stillness” mentioned here refers specifically to phenomenological stillness; what is called “stillness” in daily speech is referred to as “calm” or “serenity” below. “Calm” is a cognitive judgment made by an observer based on sensory information; it is a state of activity that is subtle yet rich in content. The so-called sensations produced during calm are the sensations produced by these subtle activities. They enter perception as indescribable conscious objects, becoming the “background noise” or “baseline tone” of cognitive activity, referred to by some theories as the “subconscious.” In the context of this article, the body is the subconscious.

Organisms’ senses can only perceive activity; they cannot perceive stillness. This law clearly applies to organisms with much cruder sensory abilities than humans. For example, the famous “frog catching a mosquito” experiment proved that a frog can only perceive a mosquito in flight; it cannot perceive a stationary mosquito. If a person can realize, without any assistance, that this law also applies to humans, it usually means they possess a higher sensory processing sensitivity than ordinary people and can perceive finer, more subtle activities. For example, ordinary people can only clearly perceive the smell of the air in the brief moment they first enter a space. But a sensitive person can use the slight disturbances in the airflow to continuously savor these smells, thereby identifying them more accurately. The senses can only perceive activity and change. Its adaptive significance is to help us focus on more meaningful environmental information, but this also often leads to our lack of self-awareness.

Activity is relative; the subject’s own activity also affects their perception of the environment. For example, we must constantly move our eyeballs to maintain vision, although this movement is usually subtle and requires no deliberate control. If we were to find a way to make the eyeballs stationary (which requires medication or extremely special mind-body states), we would quickly lose our vision. From another angle, we could say the senses have a tendency to “neutralize” (or “adapt” to) stimuli. For example, after staring at an object for a period, shifting our gaze allows us to see an afterimage, like a film negative, which is optically complementary to the real image. We must constantly move to prevent stimuli from being completely neutralized and thus imperceptible. Survivors’ eye movements are far less active than those of ordinary people (often mocked as “dead fish eyes”); the visual information they perceive is far less vivid than that of ordinary people.

If we use projection or other methods to magnify our bodies, we will discover that even in a state of calm, our entire body is active, like the tips of branches in a gentle breeze. If we slightly move one part of our body, other parts of the body immediately change their state; it is impossible to move one part of the body in isolation without affecting the others. Our senses allow us to be aware of any subtle changes occurring in the body, but only significant changes can be expressed in language and receive meaningful cognitive processing in the public discursive space.

In states of extreme fatigue or severe depression, the body’s activity level may drop abnormally. For example, sometimes when we wake up in the middle of the night, we may feel as if a part of our body has disappeared, but as soon as we move that part slightly, the sensation immediately returns. Or, in the groggy state just after opening our eyes in the morning, if we stare blankly at a corner for a long time, we may have the chance to see the objects in our field of vision gradually melt and lose their boundaries. Then, the visual field begins to show gaps. The gaps rapidly expand, as if a flood is about to engulf the entire visual field. At this moment, we will rapidly rotate our eyeballs due to the stress response, thereby restoring vision. (This experiment carries some risk; if the stress response cannot be evoked for some reason, it could lead to disastrous consequences. Therefore, this is only for reference; do not attempt it intentionally.) In both these situations, we have experienced phenomenological stillness.

Each individual has unique activity preferences. These preferences make the individual more sensitive in some aspects but also duller or even completely numb in others. Different activity preferences make everyone’s experience of the world unique. Survivors’ micro-activities are generally weak and monotonous, making it difficult to resonate with external activities. This lack of participation leads to their emotional indifference.

Micro-activity and Significant Activity

An activity can be observed on two levels: micro-activity and significant activity. The micro-activity level reflects the delicacy and subtlety of the activity; the significant activity level reflects the concreteness and episodic nature of the activity. The more concrete, significant, and intense the behavior, the more concrete, significant, and intense the activity. The state when an individual has the least significant activity but the most abundant micro-activity is their state of calm (also called the “neutral state” or “daily state”).

Generally, physical activities that can be perceived as activity by the subject themselves or by their interaction partner are called significant activities. Activities that cannot be directly perceived as activity, but can be indirectly perceived through changes in perceptual quality, attention quality, emotional fluctuations, or changes in “aura,” are called micro-activities. The “micro” in micro-activity emphasizes the subtlety of the degree, not the smallness of the scope (micro). The more subtle the activity, the more indivisible it is. On the extremely subtle level, all activities are one, forming the background of perception and setting its fundamental tone. Micro-activity reflects the overall pattern of brain activity. People perceive a person’s mental state through their micro-activities.

Impulse (冲动) arises from micro-activity. That it cannot be perceived as activity by the senses means the generation of impulse is not controlled by willpower. Only when the impulse develops into action and specific behaviors begin to emerge can the subject become aware of them and consciously guide or inhibit them. Therefore, it can be said that “impulse precedes thought.” Before people form a definite thought, the body has already produced an impulse. The thought is the confirmation of the impulse, allowing it to develop into a complete behavior. Through the accumulation of life experience, we establish a vast number of specific and subtle conditioned reflexes, the so-called “muscle memory.” Muscle memory is a habitual impulse; it can guide behavior, evoke memories, and suggest thoughts.

The degree to which an impulse has developed at the moment it begins to be perceived by the subject as action (or recorded as behavior in episodic memory) is the threshold level between impulse and action (or micro-activity and significant activity). Due to their low activity levels, the threshold level that CPTSD survivors can perceive is usually much lower than that of ordinary people. They are, on the one hand, abnormally dull to activities outside their attentional focus, and on the other hand, they exhibit astonishing insight into activities within their attentional focus. When their activity level improves, this insight often degrades or even disappears.

Impulse precedes thought, so it is very difficult for a subject to “catch in the act” an impulse that is developing into action. Only under extremely rare circumstances (such as when the body is extremely fatigued but the brain is relatively clear, or when the subject is in the “half-awake state”) do we have the opportunity to directly observe them. In most cases, the subject’s awareness of their own impulses and unconscious behaviors is realized indirectly, through the responses of interaction partners in the interaction loop. The lives of CPTSD survivors are based on loneliness, lacking trustworthy partners. Their self-insight ability can be seen as a compensation for this loneliness. Unfortunately, few survivors can use this ability well. Under the effect of shame, this insight is often directed toward harsh self-inhibition and micro-management.

If impulse is the sprout of behavior, then micro-activity is the seed. The continuous conflict (confrontation) and compromise (blending) between infinite micro-activities constitute the basic content of micro-activity. (Generally speaking, behavior constitutes activity, but at the micro-activity level, distinguishing behavior and activity is meaningless.) All behaviors are developed through the mutual coordination of micro-activities. The nervous system is the structure specialized for coordinating bodily activities, and the brain is the core responsible for this coordination. The rising and falling of behavior will, in turn, “stir” micro-activity; therefore, abundant significant activity also makes micro-activity richer and more delicate. The relationship between micro-activity and significant activity is somewhat analogous to the relationship between lower-level structures and higher-level structures in the “Integrated Body-Mind View.” From the perspective of micro-activity, micro-activity is equivalent to the stage and the entire performance troupe, while significant activity is just the program the actors perform on stage; any behavior in a significant activity is contained within micro-activity. From the perspective of significant activity, significant activity is like the actor’s “one minute on stage,” while micro-activity is the actor’s “ten years of practice off stage.” Any behavior requires the support of micro-activity; any significant activity contains countless micro-activities. The value of micro-activity must ultimately be realized through significant activity.

When an impulse forms and behavior begins to emerge, the micro-activity level will briefly decrease. This is equivalent to the body “tensing” in one or several specific directions, which somewhat affects all other directions. When the behavior is complete and the impulse subsides, the micro-activity level recovers, and the body returns to calm. In one complete activity, the body undergoes countless such “tense-relax” cycles. When we seriously attempt an unfamiliar activity, the body may “tense” in multiple directions simultaneously. We will feel the body become stiff and clumsy. This state is “freezing.”

Different societies or different eras often have different ways of dividing conscious objects, different points of focus, and different tools of observation. Therefore, the ability to recognize significant activity not only varies individually but also varies between eras and societies. If a language lacks concepts or expressions related to a certain activity, then an individual’s observation of it will be difficult to process meaningfully in the public discursive space. In such cases, it is often more economical for the individual to view it as a micro-activity subordinate to a larger significant activity. For example, regarding the “fake smile” expression, ancient Chinese people often used the phrase “skin smiles but the flesh doesn’t smile (surface smiles but the inside doesn’t).” Today, we already know that a fake smile means “the mouth smiles but the eyes don’t,” but if you wanted to communicate with an ancient person, the metaphysical expression “skin smiles but the flesh doesn’t” would often be more efficient.

At the micro-activity level, activity level represents both the ability “to react arbitrarily” and the state of “being in constant flux.” From the perspective of mechanical motion, a concept that confuses “ability” and “state” is absurd. But this very characteristic is the essential feature of a living organism, as the saying goes, “running water never goes stale, and a door-hinge never gets worm-eaten.” Like the constant slight bouncing of a novice boxer, it keeps the subject sufficiently agile, while simultaneously being an unstable state. Thus, when discussing activity level, one must also consider the arousal level.

The qualities of significant activity and micro-activity are unified in the long term. Fluid movements can only come from a nimble posture. The subject’s micro-activity capability and significant activity capability remain consistent in the long term.

People often use action sequences to describe significant activity and use mind-body states to summarize micro-activity.

Behavioral Activity and Psychological Activity

Behavioral activity and psychological activity are two sides of the same activity. Within the framework of Somatic Experiencing, it is meaningless to deliberately distinguish the two. Readers should consciously understand the word “activity” in this article from both the behavioral and psychological aspects. Self-helpers generally have keen observational skills; in their view, any psychological activity is always accompanied by certain behavioral activity. The nature and intensity of the psychological activity are directly defined by the behavioral activity.

Micro-activity and Perceptual Quality

Micro-activity determines perceptual quality. So-called perceptual quality is the background and keynote of perception. A good level of activity allows the brain to constantly receive sufficiently rich sensory stimuli, thereby maintaining arousal and providing abundant material for the formation of perception. The stronger the activity level, the better the quality of perception, just like a fully calibrated violin that can express the most perfect timbre.

Anxiety and depression can both destroy the body’s micro-activities, causing sensory input to become deprived, monotonous, and lacking in various details. Even if the subject finds a seemingly meaningful conscious object, they will not dare to be certain because it fails to evoke the corresponding sensation. The subject will feel as if the world is no longer so vivid. Severely traumatized CPTSD survivors and individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome severely lack various perceptual details; they and ordinary people seem to live in different worlds.

Activity Level and Reality Testing

People maintain their sense of reality through continuous interaction. Trauma-susceptible individuals have lower activity levels, and their reality testing ability is consequently weaker than that of ordinary people. They often experience various illusory, “sort-of-real-sort-of-not” sensations. They feel as if they are going crazy, but others just think they are being “melodramatic” or “oversensitive.” This may push them to develop mystical tendencies.

Suppose we live for a long time in a harsh environment where we are easily criticized. A critical voice will then sound in our mind before our body acts. The adaptive meaning of this phenomenon is to remind us to adjust our behavior in time to avoid real criticism. Our body will tell us this is just an imagination, so it doesn’t affect our adaptive capacity. Once we leave that environment, our imaginary perception will be updated through our exploration of the new environment, and the critical voice in our head will naturally disappear. But for a trauma-susceptible person, the feedback their body provides is too weak. Although the vividness of this voice is insufficient to form a hallucination, it is enough to exert a continuous influence on the subject. The sense of oppression brought by this voice has already merged into their “emotional backdrop.” Their imaginary perception is difficult to update, trapping them, on a phenomenological level, in that harsh environment that severely restricts their activities. Their adaptive capacity thus struggles to develop.

Activity Level and Muscle Tone

At every moment a person is alive, their muscular system is engaged in an involuntary, subtle stretch reflex, causing the body, even in a calm state, to move like the tips of branches in a gentle breeze. These stretch reflexes are an important component of micro-activity. They maintain the stability, continuity, and smoothness of the human body’s various postures and behaviors, continuously creating somatic sensation (proprioception) and forming the body’s muscle tone.

People with long-term low activity levels often have abnormal muscle tone. Their limbs exhibit characteristics of overall excessive laxity and localized excessive tension (compensation), giving an impression of weakness and clumsiness. People with long-term high activity levels generally possess a more balanced level of muscle tone. In a state of calm, they possess good muscle excitability. It is precisely this excitability that gives the impression of “having spirit.”

Muscle tone is different from muscle strength, but the regulation of muscle tone also requires various physical exercises. Long-term abnormal muscle tone (increased or decreased) will also lead to the degradation of muscle strength. Muscle weakness forces the subject to compensate by increasing muscle tone when engaging in many activities. However, a holistic change in muscle tone is always accompanied by emotional fluctuations, and emotional fluctuations interfere with cognitive processes. This makes them appear to have a bad temper and a slow brain.

The muscle tone level of survivors is, most of the time, lower than that of typically developing peers (hereafter “ordinary people”). In their infancy, they often already exhibit characteristics such as muscle weakness, unsteady walking, difficulty eating, excessive joint range of motion, an overly quiet personality, and being easily startled. They show strong inertia in daily activities; any slight activity (especially confrontational activities) seems exceptionally strenuous for them. They have never experienced a healthy state of excitement, making it difficult for them to realize that this feeling of weakness does not come from a lack of muscle strength, but from their own lack of “vigor.” When they occasionally brace themselves and complete a challenge, they often have a feeling of “awakening,” but due to a lack of self-awareness, this accidental state of awakening is often difficult to sustain.

People who are depressed and listless year-round often show various phenomena of premature joint degradation. When muscles provide insufficient support to the body, joint wear inevitably accelerates.

Note: When discussing physical signs, psychotherapy’s methods and standards for determining abnormality are very different from clinical medicine. Clinical medical judgments must have universal applicability and will not consider too many individual factors. In psychotherapy, the identification of abnormal physical signs serves to identify the individual’s mind-body state and therefore must fully consider differences between individuals and differences between an individual’s various states. For psychotherapy, the clinical grading standards for muscle tone are too crude to be used. The “low muscle tone” or “high muscle tone” described in this article would almost never fall outside the range of normal muscle tone according to clinical grading standards.

Activity Level and Attention Quality

The shifting of attention involves abundant activities such as adjusting the line of sight and changing posture. For people with poor activity levels, regulating attention is also more strenuous. Compared to ordinary people, they are more likely to show obsession and fixation on specific things.

Based on the Integrated Body-Mind View, the activity levels of the body and the intellect remain consistent in the long term. Under normal circumstances, we can judge the intellect’s activity level by observing the body’s activity level, but the two can occasionally become misaligned. When the body’s activity level significantly exceeds the intellect’s activity level, the subject experiences a sense of being out of control; they feel they need to “slow down.” When the intellect’s activity level significantly exceeds the body’s activity level, the subject experiences a sense of oppression; they feel they need a “distraction.” (Because survivors generally suffer from alexithymia, they may only be able to experience a generalized sense of fear at these moments.) These brief moments of activity misalignment are often key nodes for healing and severely test the ability of the person concerned (including the helper, the helped, and the self-helper). It can be both a breakthrough point for transcending trauma and a source of secondary trauma.

Compulsivity

Compulsivity is the opposite of activity level. The subject feels the optional range of their behavior narrowing and experiences a strong sensation of acting against their will. Compulsivity is always accompanied by an abnormal decrease in activity level; the subject usually experiences a sense of rigidity or clumsiness. The formation of compulsivity requires two conditions to be met simultaneously: one is limited activity level, and the other is a positive feedback loop that opposes activity. For example, the “mental interaction” (hypochondriacal preoccupation) in Morita therapy: because attention is active, the more a subject pays attention to a certain thought or feeling, the stronger that thought or feeling becomes. This, in turn, causes the attention to become more fixated on that thought or feeling, thus forming compulsivity. Another example: a decline in activity level causes a variation in perceptual quality. The same action no longer produces the same feeling of completion. The subject feels as if they haven’t done it right, that it’s “just not quite there,” and so they can only keep repeating it. The result of constant repetition might be finally finding that sense of completion, or it might be that the body becomes increasingly rigid and the sensory quality worsens, thus forming compulsivity.

Concepts: Understanding Stress (Physiological and Psychological)

The Chinese word “应激” (yìng jī) originally meant to respond to a stimulus. “Stress” in English corresponds to Chinese terms that can mean responding to a stimulus, the “tense state” produced by the subject due to pressure (colloquially, “being stimulated”), or the “pressure” that causes this tense state. Their connotations overlap highly but are not identical. This section primarily discusses pressure (stress).

Physiological Stress and Psychological Stress

The common ground between physical, physiological, and psychological concepts makes people willing to use the language of dynamics to describe psychological processes. This is one reason why psychodynamics has long held a place in psychotherapy.

Imagine we are in an environment with soft lighting and a harmonious atmosphere. A flashbulb suddenly goes off in front of us. The intense light hurts our eyes, causing us a stinging pain. At the same time, we feel a jolt in our hearts (startle). Our trust in the environment has been negated by an unexpected event. Our impulse to confront the environment intensifies. This strong impulse will rapidly develop into actions like squinting, turning the head, shielding, retreating, and trembling. If this psychological conflict is too intense, we might even freeze completely.

In this process, the stimulus event—the “unexplained flashbulb”—is the stressor, and our reaction is the stress response. Although the stress response is objectively directed at the stressor, it is, to a large extent, the product of psychological conflict. Physiological pressure arises between the stressor (which can now be called the pressure source) and the sensory organs, but psychological pressure does not arise directly between the stressor and the subject. Compared to physiological pressure, the “subject” involved in the interaction of psychological pressure is much more subtle and complex.

Physiological stress reflects humanity’s natural attributes, whereas psychological stress is closely related to the individual’s socialization process. Unless otherwise specified, the stress mentioned below refers to psychological stress. Psychologically, stress manifests somatically as a sensation of the internal organs being pulled (primarily transmitted by the vagus nerve), and cognitively as an experience of one’s conscious space being compressed. True personality and intelligence quotient are only seen under psychological pressure. Many so-called high IQs are actually achieved at the cost of dissociation or even the sacrifice of parts of one’s humanity.

Psychological Conflict and Psychological Stress

An absolutely chaotic world cannot attract our attention. A world can attract us to explore it only because it mixes a certain ineffable familiarity within its chaos, like a night sky scattered with stars. Place a young child in a novel situation, and they will immediately produce a contradictory feeling of unfamiliarity and familiarity. There are patterns in the situation that they recognize, but they are operating in an unfamiliar yet powerful way. The child feels both blending and hostility. They have both an impulse to merge into the situation and an impulse to resist it. These contradictory impulses confront each other, putting the child into a stress state. The body shows a slight freeze, while the cerebral cortex activity level surges. This feeling is vigilance, and this state is “curiosity.” The interaction between one’s own different impulses or tendencies is psychological conflict.

Psychological conflict can be likened to “tug-of-war.” The difference is that in a tug-of-war, both sides always pull at the same time on the referee’s command, whereas psychological conflict is often sudden. There is often an extremely subtle time lag between the conflicting parties (or multiple parties). This suddenness has a similar physiological significance to the impact in a knee-jerk reflex: it triggers the startle reflex. A subtle startle reflex is experienced as “surprise”; a significant startle reflex is being “startled” or “jump-scared.” The startle reflex belongs to the category of unconditioned reflexes and is the starting point of the stress process.

Psychological conflict produces psychological pressure; psychological pressure creates a feeling of tension. A person with learned helplessness always yields easily and thus feels no pressure.

Psychological pressure affects the arousal level; the rise in arousal level creates a sense of vigilance. In other words, before we feel tense and vigilant, our body has already reacted. We can only comply with these reactions, guiding them to be constructive; we cannot completely control them. Our consciousness controls the body’s “steering wheel” and “clutch” but does not hold the switch to the “engine.” Although the stress response is largely subconscious, it reflects the subject’s long-term accumulation more than it does a real-time strategy. The most natural parts of life are precisely the parts we have trained the most; we just often lack awareness of this training. So-called intuition is the product of accumulated experience. Socially experienced people can understand a person’s character and history by observing their stress responses. A reliable trauma self-help strategy can guide us in responding to our body’s stress reactions, gradually adjusting our stress patterns through the long-term accumulation of life experience. Being honest with one’s own stress responses is the prerequisite for developing coping abilities. If we intervene in our stress responses directly at the neurophysiological level (such as using medication), although it might temporarily change the stress patterns we don’t want, it will also produce terrifying chain reactions.

If a map has large blank areas, it leaves room for imagination. For an outstanding explorer, these blank spaces are like an invitation from a friend; he will excitedly set off on the path of exploration. But for an ordinary person, these blank spaces are like the devil’s temptation, hiding terrible risks of life and death, which they avoid from a distance. When the subject faces a chaotic world awaiting exploration, the impulse to blend with it and the impulse to confront it conflict and compromise with each other, ultimately deciding the emergence of different actions, emotions, and viewpoints.

Returning to the child example. The conflicting impulses cause the child to fall into a slight freeze. They will turn to their social support system for help. If the caregiver shows an attitude supportive of exploration, the impulse to approach the space-to-be-explored will receive more support. The child will begin exploration under pressure, the chaotic world will gradually become clear, and the child’s psychological reality (phenomenological world) will expand during the exploration. Otherwise, the child will continue to observe until they receive more information supporting approach or escape. “Supporting exploration” is not determined by what the caregiver says; rather, it means the child sees in the caregiver the attitude and aura associated with successful exploration, which activates the behavioral patterns associated with successful exploration within the child. If the caregiver has an encouraging look in their eyes but constantly creates obstacles for the child’s exploration, then that look will no longer serve an encouraging function and may even exacerbate the child’s freeze. This contradictory pattern is visible in many failed caregivers. They appear very supportive of exploration, but the moment the child begins to explore, they become even more nervous than the child. These caregivers suffer from their own severe psychological trauma; the child’s exploratory behavior easily triggers their emotional flashbacks. Not only are they unable to provide spiritual support for the child, they actually intensify the child’s fear, yet they are completely unaware of this. Over time, any encouragement will struggle to function as support. The child’s curiosity and exploratory abilities will be severely damaged, and their personality development severely limited.

Only when our understanding of psychological pressure reaches this level of specificity can we systematically analogize it to force in the physical sense. Otherwise, psychodynamics can only be seen as a crude metaphor of very limited significance.

The Devil’s Balloon

Likening a psychological system to a physical system is, of course, unreliable. However, on a basic epistemological level, we have never far surpassed the analogical imagination of the ancients, such as “rotting grass transforms into fireflies.” Analogy is the basic human method for understanding the world and sharing experience. When we first encounter an unfamiliar concept, we always subconsciously analogize it to concepts we are familiar with. The appropriateness of the chosen analogy directly determines the speed at which we accept the new concept.

To help understand concepts like pressure in psychodynamics, I have previously used the analogy of a suspended balloon.

Now, you see a balloon of no thickness, full of air, suspended in mid-air. Inside and outside of it, all air molecules are moving rapidly and randomly, colliding. This ceaseless collision allows the balloon to maintain a certain shape and volume. This balloon is equivalent to a person. This state of stable suspension is equivalent to a person’s state of calm. It appears quiet, but inside, it is not peaceful at all. The restless molecules inside the balloon are equivalent to the constantly churning impulses in a person’s heart. The collisions of all air molecules inside the balloon form the balloon’s internal pressure; this is equivalent to a person’s psychological pressure. The air molecules collide on both sides of the balloon wall, reaching a dynamic equilibrium. The interaction between the inner and outer sides of the balloon wall constitutes the pressure between the balloon and the outside world; this is equivalent to the pressure between a person and the environment. Unlike the balloon, a person only acknowledges the pressure the environment exerts on them; they do not acknowledge the pressure they exert on the environment.

Now, the devil stretches out his hands and begins to squeeze the balloon from both sides. The balloon’s volume begins to shrink. Simultaneously, the collisions of the molecules inside become more intense. The collisions opposing or perpendicular to the direction of the squeeze are especially intense; this is equivalent to impulses developing into specific confrontational behaviors. The balloon’s surface area increases due to the squeezing. The balloon wall, in the direction perpendicular to the squeeze, becomes thinner and more “tense,” as if some molecules are about to burst through the wall; this is equivalent to the individual experiencing an intense feeling of tension and a tendency toward dissociation under immense pressure. The pressure inside the balloon and the pressure between the balloon and the outside world rise simultaneously. Finally, the balloon either explodes (dissociation and breakdown), slips out of the devil’s hands (escape and recovery), or reaches a new equilibrium (acceptance and adaptation). This entire process is stress.

The balloon did not appear from thin air; the devil brought it from somewhere else. Before you saw it, it was already trying to adapt to the air here. In other words, it was already in a state of stress. But we don’t have time right now to care about its previous stress process. We can only use the state we first saw as our baseline reference. This baseline state is the “no-pressure” state. The pressure added onto this no-pressure state is the pressure we currently care about.

Now, the devil casts a spell on the balloon, causing all the air molecules inside it to stop moving instantly. The internal temperature of the balloon immediately drops to absolute zero. Because the balloon has lost the tension generated by the collision of internal air molecules, and ignoring the volume of the air molecules and intermolecular repulsion, the balloon’s volume rapidly shrinks to zero under the compression of the outside air. The pressure between it and the environment disappears, and the pressure inside it also ceases to exist. This state is phenomenological stillness. It is the true no-pressure state. It signifies the disappearance of a person’s social existence; they are, in a sociological sense, dead.

The Heart of a Child

Take learning to use a smartphone as an example.

For a child, a smartphone is like a night sky scattered with stars; within the chaos, there is an ineffable familiarity. Although the child is familiar with the actions of “poking” and “tapping,” the various effects brought about by different combinations of poking and tapping bring them vibrant experiences. When a child gets a phone, they are immediately attracted by the strange combinations of buttons and color blocks. Through constant probing, the child gradually discovers certain patterns and then slowly masters how to use the phone.

For an adult who has never touched a smartphone, these pokable, tappable buttons are unlikely to arouse their interest. What buttons have they not seen before (even though they indeed have not seen these)? These combinations of buttons and color blocks are, to them, familiar to the point of boredom. Poking and tapping is, to them, childish to the point of absurdity. But the world inside the phone is, to them, absolute chaos. They cannot connect these dull combinations to a vibrant new world. The two are too disconnected; they do not bring the feeling of “familiar yet strange,” and thus do not arouse their curiosity. When they need to use a smartphone, it is inevitably because they have encountered some important task. The phone is just a vehicle for this task. They will not start learning the phone’s operation from scratch just to complete these tasks, just as an ordinary person wouldn’t make dumplings just for a dish of vinegar. They have neither the patience nor the time. The seriousness of these tasks also does not permit them to familiarize themselves with the operation by poking and tapping with intense focus but without regard for consequences, as a child does.

These factors prevent many adults from ever being able to rapidly accept new things and develop adaptive capacity as teenagers do. However, there are always exceptions around us. They seem to retain the heart of a child forever—full of passion like a child, indomitable, and curious about everything. These people are the role models for survivors. Survivors must find such role models for themselves. Otherwise, even if they walk out of the shadow of trauma, they will struggle to adapt to society, having fallen behind on so much developmental homework.

Pathology: The Stress Response (Fight, Flight, and Freeze)

Stress and Coping

Stress and coping are two sides of the same process. Stress emphasizes the reflexive aspect; coping emphasizes agency. The process of CPTSD self-rescue is the process of using agency to regulate reflexivity, and then using reflexivity to develop agency. In the context of self-help, deliberately distinguishing between stress and coping is meaningless. The two can be jointly defined as a series of non-specific processes the subject undergoes after their state of equilibrium is broken (or the interaction loop is disturbed), utilizing the energy provided by the sharply increased arousal level to complete coping and restore equilibrium. All complete stress (coping) processes must end with the restoration of calm and the development of adaptation.

A complete stress process requires not only mind-body integration but also inter-subject coordination. The more deficient the subject’s cognitive resources and external support, the higher the demand the stress process places on the subject’s own physiological regulatory abilities. If the subject lacks cognitive resources and external support, and their body is too weak, the physical energy used to maintain the stress state is easily depleted quickly, causing the stress process to end in a stalemate. If we apply Hans Selye’s three-stage General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) model to describe this, the body’s resistance to pressure has already entered the exhaustion phase before the complete stress process is finished. The subject’s mind-body state thus cannot return to equilibrium. This will, at the micro-activity level, destroy the subject’s ability to withstand and cope with pressure, causing the subject to feel increasingly “twisted” or “stuck” during normal stress processes. Their own activity level becomes more and more restricted. The originally neutral stress response begins to be mixed with more and more negative emotions. Over time, the subject will inevitably develop CPTSD. CPTSD signifies various intertwined, unresolved stress processes.

A person is coping with various pressures at every moment they are alive. Even in a state of calm, stress is constantly occurring at the level of micro-activity. Similar to the division of drives, stress can also be divided into stress that maintains baseline arousal and stress that copes with significant imbalance. A traumatic event may initially appear as a challenge (acute) or torture (chronic), but what it ultimately affects is the stress that maintains baseline arousal. Stress disorders can only be fully exposed under a state of intense stress, and only then receive meaningful cognitive processing in the public discursive space. Somatic Experiencing focuses on how to allow the subject to safely approach (i.e., “titrate”) and maintain (i.e., “mindfulness”) this intense state of stress without losing control; to then identify and complete the long-unresolved stress processes; and finally, on a cognitive level, to integrate the story of the trauma into the subject’s own life journey. As we can see, Somatic Experiencing focuses on coping with significant imbalance stress. Unless otherwise specified, the stress mentioned hereafter refers to this kind of stress. To fully integrate the trauma story into the subject’s life history, the process of completing the coping cannot be simplistic and crude. Effective psychotherapy actually cultivates our ability to “maneuver” and “circle around” (周旋) stress.

A complete stress process can be summarized as: Impact -> Surprise (accompanied by experiences of staggering, shock) -> Composure (pulling oneself together) -> Exploration -> Differentiation (slicing and dicing the problem) -> Developing blending or releasing confrontation -> Impact is resolved. An ordinary person will quickly stabilize after a brief stagger and summon energy to prepare a counter-attack. But a survivor, accustomed to self-focus, spends too much energy experiencing the feeling of dissociation, and may even derive a drunk-like comfort from the dissociation. Because the processes of composing oneself and releasing aggression cannot be completed, the survivor’s stress process may remain stuck in an unfinished state long-term, thus forming psychological trauma. For an ordinary person, staggering and shock immediately put the subject into a stress state, after which they concentrate on exploration and responding. Therefore, the fluctuation in arousal level is felt more as excitement or vigilance rather than fear.

Freeze

The freeze discussed in this article does not solely refer to the state of being completely stiff and unable to move due to extremely increased muscle tone. Rather, it includes the continuous spectrum from a slight decrease in flexibility (tension) to an extreme freeze (being frozen). The greater the intensity and the longer the duration of the pressure, the more significant the freeze. Freeze is a state of being unable to utilize one’s strength; it signifies that exploration is deadlocked. Freeze is experienced as clumsiness, vulnerability, and fear, accompanied by an overall increase in muscle tone level. Although freeze makes exploration difficult, it makes simple, crude confrontation easier. In an ideal stress process, the subject’s various behaviors converge at the exact moment the freeze reaches its extreme, resulting in the simplest, most powerful, and most accurate response.

Freeze is also a compensatory reaction. It turns our muscles into “armor” for the body, to some extent, giving the body resistance to impact when the nature of the pressure cannot be clearly determined. An individual with a very low level of coping ability development might even sloppily use freeze to cope with all impacts. This phenomenon can be called “habitual freeze.” Habitual freeze means the subject has lost their “courage”; their stress response will be dominated by fear. Persistent freeze and habitual freeze inevitably lead to the degradation of activity capacity, which is “rigidity.”

When an object impacts you from all directions, and you can neither release aggression to complete the confrontation nor calm down enough to explore carefully, you will fall into a freeze and experience fear. For example, you are standing on an unfamiliar, suspended steel plate. You dare not release confrontational impulses, as this might make the situation more dangerous. You also cannot completely calm down, because you do not know how reliable the plate is; it could break or detach at any moment. The clumsy state is a focused but strenuous state of exploration. The subject is extremely vulnerable at this time, with poor ability to resist harm. A person who provides support in this “vulnerable state” will be identified by the subject as a friend; one who makes the vulnerable state even more vulnerable will be identified as an enemy.

Imagine you are a child. You have seen things similar to a basketball, but you have never played basketball. You are exploring the environment without the protection of a significant trustworthy object (like your mother). Suddenly, you notice a basketball flying toward your face. You feel its visual impact. At this moment, your body, based on past general impressions of similar objects, produces a subtle, probing blend with it. It is as if the ball hasn’t arrived, but you have already been hit to some degree; this is an “imaginary perception.” You can use this perception to assess the relationship between the ball’s force and speed and your own ability to bear it and react. You feel (rather than analyze) the potential harm it may bring and prepare to react. At the same time you feel this imaginary impact, the body’s stretch reflexes also make you feel the potential power within your own body to resist the impact, just like the resistance you feel when pushing a tumbler toy off its balance point. Therefore, this visual impact can also be seen as an invitation, inviting you to feel and release your own strength. This imaginary feeling of being hit, just like a real impact, evokes your stress response, making you feel “surprised.” At this moment, you are in the composure phase (pulling yourself together).

The faster composure is completed, the stronger the subject’s adaptive capacity. If composure cannot be completed, the arousal level will continuously rise in an attempt to evoke more mind-body resources. If the body consistently fails to produce any optional behavioral impulses (or prepare the action sequence that matches this impact), the subject may freeze and experience fear. At this moment, the role of a trustworthy object is crucial. It can guide the subject to make deeper differentiations (cuts) that match their own reaction capabilities and make an effective response that matches the object-to-be-explored, barely completing the exploration under high arousal. This is crucial for developing the subject’s coping ability. After composure is complete, you will complete the exploration (learning to effectively catch the ball) or initiate a fight (frantically, even angrily blocking or batting it away) or flight (escaping) response. The stress response is complete. If the subject cannot confirm the relationship between the explorable object and the trustworthy object (a trustworthy object is part of one’s own resources, an extension of the subject), they cannot complete the exploration and cannot differentiate a conscious object that matches their own reaction capabilities. If the differentiation of the conscious object is negated by a trustworthy object or by one’s own cognitive schema (for example, the trusted person is the perpetrator), the subject may fall into a daze (trance).

A daze is a signal of difficulty in differentiation. If you remain unable to compose yourself, you can only fall (collapse), or even surrender to the imaginary perception of being hit (the impulse to fall) and proactively fall. In other words, you have already surrendered before the ball actually hits you. Surrendering prematurely prevents your sense of fear from developing to an earth-shattering degree, but the price is that your coping ability fails to develop at all. Over time, you will develop a habitual fear. All similar acute stress events will evoke your fear and withdrawal, and your exploratory ability will gradually collapse. Habitual fear is not the end point. As surrender becomes more proficient and more “timely,” you will no longer be able to experience a sense of crisis or fear, which means your coping ability has failed. You are no longer capable of distinguishing between an “invitation” and an “intrusion.” You are unable to independently confront a crisis and unable to respond to others’ support. Habitual fear finally develops into learned helplessness.

Anger and fear are antagonistic. After differentiation is complete, fear may transform into anger or other more complex emotions. The stronger the fear, the stronger the anger it transforms into. The energy within the emotion is dissipated along with the release of aggression.

Development of Coping Ability

Under the demonstration of the trustworthy object, you personally pat the ball, feeling its weight and texture. You first try tossing and catching at close range a few times, then try intense, rapid tossing and catching. The advantages and shortcomings of your actions receive timely feedback from the trustworthy object. You realize that as long as you remain calm, you are fully capable of catching it well. Furthermore, you are absolutely not just the character who catches the ball; you can also throw the ball to others, and others will respond readily. With these experiences, you will not easily see a flying ball as an attack on you. Your attention will also focus more on the ball’s movement, rather than excessively focusing on your own emotions and reactions. This is a typical positive process for developing coping ability.

Survivors are only adept at exploration under low arousal levels. High arousal levels require trusting one’s senses and instincts and appropriately relying on aid; there is no time for full cognitive processing. Survivors do not understand how to trust others, and thus they easily feel fear and feel shame for their lack of composure and their clumsiness.

Exploring while maintaining a high arousal level can be likened to a person who has fallen into water desperately grabbing onto anything they can to maintain their balance, not just flailing wildly. In this situation, the subject lets go of all self-inhibition, fully trusting their senses and instincts. If the subject can let go of toxic, extreme shame, they will have the chance to gradually become aware of the friendly signals that others are constantly emitting. They may even discover that they are slowly able to sense other people’s personalities, no longer confined to endless, patternless behavioral details.

Exploration under high arousal can be seen as a compression of exploration under low arousal. If a subject always exhibits a very slow and delicate style under low arousal and lacks efficient performance, then exploration under high arousal is more likely to result in fear and freeze.

If the quality of every fight-or-flight response is poor, and the subject is always in a state of lingering fear after the acute stress event ends, this likewise means the stress process was not completed. After repeating such experiences many times, the subject will also learn abnormal emotional reflexes.

Survivors spend much of their lives in a “vulnerable state.” The environment has too little trustworthiness for them, which limits their exploration of explorable objects. When they exhibit an exploratory ability that looks normal to ordinary people, their level of reliance on trustworthy objects is actually far greater than that of ordinary people. This is observable to an attentive person. This makes it possible for them to establish deeper psychological bonds, but also makes them more susceptible to exploitation and harm.

Psychological Resilience

The quality of the stress process manifests as psychological resilience. Good psychological resilience manifests during the stress process as being tense but not showing fear (not “showing the white feather”), much like Jack’s performance at the dinner party in the movie Titanic. Tension means the full activation of mind-body energy; not showing fear means having the ability to carry this immense energy. Psychological resilience is also a manifestation of emotional intelligence.

If we liken an individual’s psychological resilience to the elasticity of a spring leaf, and stress to the physical pressure exerted on that spring leaf, then the complete process of stress can be analogized to the process of the spring leaf deforming and then returning to its original shape. If the pressure exceeds the spring leaf’s elastic limit, the spring will undergo inelastic deformation; even when the pressure is removed, it cannot return to its original shape. At this point, if we try to bend it back to its original shape, we will feel a force resisting restoration. In other words, the spring has “internalized” the pressure it previously received and entered a “new normal.” If the subject forces themself to return to the original calm state, they will feel a kind of tension stored in their body that can neither be accurately located nor discharged. This is “parasitic tension.” Parasitic tension internalizes the confrontation between the subject and the stressor into the subject’s “self-conflict.” When they face a situation that requires the original state to overcome, they will feel an inexplicable pressure.

Pathology: Trauma from the Perspective of Activity

Trauma and Activity Degradation

Good activity level is the prerequisite for developing adaptability and psychological resilience. Trauma is always accompanied by the degradation of activity level and abnormal daily arousal levels. The degradation of activity level limits the ability to resist pressure. The subject’s resistance to stress is always rapidly depleted, making them more susceptible to forming new traumas, thus creating a vicious cycle. Therefore, a trauma-susceptible person is not only “fragile” but will become increasingly fragile, until they either make up their mind to change or completely lose faith in life.

Self-conflict, excessive fatigue, environmental and resource limitations, and hidden “domestication” (taming) can all cause activity to become sluggish. The subject’s activity level progressively declines, and vitality constantly decays. Activities that were originally effortless, requiring no attention, almost instinctive, begin to occupy more and more attention. The curiosity response evoked by external stimuli becomes weaker and weaker. These changes all indicate the existence of trauma. To guarantee the efficiency of activity, the subject has no choice but to lower their arousal level, making the body slack, and then use willpower to drive the cumbersome body. Doing so brings an enormous sense of depletion. Survivors may look lazy, but their mental exhaustion during activities is by no means small. This is like a marionette puppet whose joints have lost their flexibility. The operator doesn’t know how to repair the joints, so they can only soften the puppet’s limbs and directly twist the puppet by hand to barely complete the original actions. This causes the survivor’s behavior generally to give the impression of being “screwed-up” or “twisted,” as if they are perpetually caught in a dilemma, unable to advance or retreat.

Survivors whose traumatization process began excessively early may not even recognize what “drive” is. They believe all activities must be driven by willpower and are therefore always terrified by the powerful energy that spontaneously emerges in ordinary people during activities.

The progressively declining arousal level coordinates with the “economizing effect” of parasitic tension, allowing the survivor to remain self-consistent. Therefore, they rarely take the initiative to change their state. Only when they enter society and begin to live independently, and the experience of hitting walls everywhere makes them doubt their life, will they generate the motivation and willingness to change themselves.

An abnormal decline in activity level means the subject has entered a sub-health state. CPTSD survivors commonly suffer from autonomic nervous system dysfunction and low immunity.

Wear-and-Tear Trauma

If pressure lasts too long and is inescapable, the body’s micro-activities may degrade. The subject may appear rigid and stiff, exhibiting certain compulsive or neurotic traits. Wear-and-tear trauma is also called “subtle trauma.” Long-term, continuous “wear” can cause extremely severe consequences. Wear-and-tear trauma is also one of the sources of CPTSD. The pressure that causes subtle trauma is a terrifying force that is long-term, continuous, and inescapable. It is a test of the subject’s own physiological functions, experiential reserves, and social support system. In the context of this article, the prefix “subtle” (微) always means “subtle,” not “micro” (minor).

Chronic physical illness is also a source of wear-and-tear trauma, especially when the cause cannot be determined and the subject’s various unique sensations are dismissed by irresponsible doctors as “hallucinations.”

If the subject has not developed good self-soothing abilities through their attachment relationship with caregivers, the subtle rigidity accumulated under daily stress will become parasitic tension, as it cannot be released. They will become increasingly clumsy, and their trauma immunity (stress resistance) will weaken, to the point that very ordinary stress events are enough to cause psychological trauma.

“Putting oneself in another’s shoes” is the basic method people use to understand others. When survivors substitute their own low activity level into their understanding of others, they only feel that others are incredibly powerful yet completely unreliable. This only increases their vigilance and prevents them from developing an interest in others’ worlds. Without interaction, there is no matching or resonance, and thus no sense of affinity is produced. In the survivor’s eyes, other people are often just a chaotic pile of patternless activities. It is very difficult for the survivor to feel what “personality” is. The immense sense of depletion brought by interpersonal interaction will cause them to become increasingly resistant to social contact.

Experiencing violence, physical injury, and emotional abuse can profoundly change a person’s life. But what most people don’t know is that many events that appear mild and harmless can also cause psychological trauma in a person. The consequences of trauma are sometimes widespread and hidden. From the perspective of subtle trauma, all embarrassing and tense experiences deserve sympathy, all tense experiences that yielded no reward deserve to be mourned, and all tense experiences where one strove and achieved a result deserve to be commemorated and met with gratitude.

Fragmented Self-Cognition

Humanity’s various intuitions and fleeting thoughts may seem to lack logical connection, but in reality, they all emerge upon the common foundation of micro-activity. The reality-based nature of micro-activity determines the reality-based nature of these intuitive thoughts. Severe CPTSD destroys the micro-activity that serves as the common substrate for all activities. Only then can we see what chaotic intuition and thoughts really mean. The reality-based nature of micro-activity provides rich cues for memory retrieval. People with abnormal activity levels always exhibit a certain characteristic of unexpected forgetfulness.

Imagine a mountaineering enthusiast who loses the ability to climb due to an accident. Generally speaking, although the thought of climbing will still surface from time to time, this thought will quickly turn into deep mourning. However, suppose they suffer from severe CPTSD. They might, after the thought emerges, unthinkingly begin preparations. Only when they realize the wish can no longer be fulfilled do they begin to fall into mourning. But not long after, the same thought may emerge again, and they restart preparations… this cycle repeats many times, until their attention is occupied by other activities. If a survivor frequently exhibits this kind of behavior, we say their self-cognition has lost its integration. Fragmented self-cognition makes the survivor’s intuition frequently interfere with normal life, rendering it unreliable. Survivors with fragmented self-cognition often have very low arousal levels and exist daily in a half-awake, dissociated state.

Tools: Biological Rhythms and Deep Breathing

Deep Breathing

The inhale-exhale cycle is the simplest and most natural tense-relax cycle. Awareness Through Movement generally requires the subject to adjust and experience changes in body state while engaged in slow, deep breathing. Breathing can influence arousal levels. The Valsalva maneuver can help safely and rapidly increase arousal levels (those with cardiovascular issues should not attempt this casually), while steady, deep breathing helps maintain arousal stability.

Breathing is an inherent biological rhythm of the organism. All biological rhythms that are simultaneously regulated by higher central centers, lower central centers, and the autonomic nervous system—including but not limited to “breathing,” “sleep,” “swallowing,” and “excretion”—are important tools for self-regulation. Severe psychological problems generally begin affecting the subject’s quality of life by disrupting these biological rhythms. If a person’s bowel movements are regular while working away from home, but they frequently experience diarrhea or chronic constipation during periods at home, this variation in biological rhythm likely indicates the presence of family trauma; the reverse may indicate social trauma.

Emotional Rhythms

Many people have experienced the feeling of waking in the middle of the night, overwhelmed by frustration and fear. Dragging their exhausted body, various negative and pessimistic thoughts surface in their mind: Does the parents’ argument signal the breakup of the family? Does the cold response from a crush mean I’ve been found out? etc. By noon the next day, when the body has the most vitality, they become ambitious again. Recalling their thoughts from the middle of the night, they find them simply absurd.

In this process, our mind-body state undergoes a swing from low to high. Even if we sit quietly for a day without experiencing any major stimulation, our mood will cycle from listless to elevated. This is our “emotional rhythm.” A person’s mental state, just like their physical state, has diurnal cycles, seasonal cycles, life cycles, and even generational cycles. Cycles at different levels nest within each other, causing our psychological state, even when calm, to constantly change like the weather.

Corresponding to emotional fluctuations, our body simultaneously exhibits a rhythm of contraction and expansion. In Somatic Experiencing, this rhythm is called “pendulation.” Pendulation represents the body’s innate restorative rhythm and is the core of the capacity for self-regulation.

The process of pendulation is the process of the body’s internal resistance (stability), resilience, and organizational power (self-organization) taking effect. Pendulation is like the ocean waves, constantly washing over the imprints left on our hearts by past experiences. Most of the time, pendulation is completed in the unnoticed corners of our consciousness, allowing our attention to remain focused on the work at hand. If the surging emotional memories are too strong, or if the subject falls into a state of idleness for various reasons, these emotional materials will occupy the center of consciousness, and the subject may consequently fall into cognitive rumination.

Survivors’ emotional rhythms tend to be disordered or even exhausted. Not only is their mind-body state poor, but their ability to regulate their mind-body state is also poor. It is, as the saying goes, “a leaking roof on a rainy night” (one disaster after another). Repairing the pendulation rhythm and strengthening its stability is one of the cores of CPTSD treatment.

Improving the function of the autonomic nervous system through physical exercise is beneficial for improving the body’s biological rhythms. Severe autonomic dysfunction requires medication; please follow a doctor’s advice for specific medication.

Tools: Somatic Experiencing and The Feldenkrais Method (Gaining Flow)

In a counseling context, Somatic Experiencing (SE) is generally used to treat PTSD, because the self-conflict in PTSD survivors is often simple and intense. Its typical process can be summarized as: creating a relatively safe environment (the client and therapist form a trusting relationship) -> supporting the client in exploring and accepting somatic experiences -> establishing a space for pendulation and containment of arousal -> using the “titration” technique to promote the functioning of the “pendulation” instinct -> exploring and experiencing the internal resources present before and during the traumatic event, replacing the collapse and helpless negative response with an active, powerful confrontational response -> connecting internal resources with the traumatic experience, consciously exploring everything in the body and mind that causes discomfort -> continuing to use titration techniques, utilizing the pendulation instinct, separating conflicting impulses (e.g., the impulse to communicate externally and the impulse to dodge out of aversion) -> completing the suspended orienting response and stress process -> the response inhibition is lifted, the blocked survival energy is released and redistributed -> the neutral state is restored -> reconnecting with the environment and restoring the interactive-equilibrium attention quality.

In a self-help context, SE can be used to process CPTSD, because the survivor’s self-conflict is often complex and subtle. In this situation, the process by which SE functions is one where the subject uses felt sense (experience/体会) as a tool, making a series of fine and subtle adjustments at the micro-activity level, to return the “trauma vortex” and the “healing vortex” to harmony. A common process can be summarized as: acquiring an “awakening” experience -> paying attention to one’s own drive -> maintaining the dialogue between body and intellect -> breaking through self-inhibition. This process is always accompanied by fluctuations in arousal level. Any effective step within it is accompanied by the formation of a felt sense (experience), and the formation of this experience often promotes the renewal and expansion of cognitive schemas. This series of steps holds no special mystery; they are things that survivors need to learn and can learn, but for people with high emotional intelligence, they are simply customary. Therefore, these steps do not introduce additional compensation or self-inhibition; they are both the steps of self-rescue and the steps of mental training. The manner in which these steps are described fully conforms to the requirements of the spectrum view.

Acquiring Flow

When the subject’s Body, Mind, and Intellect enter an active and synchronous state, the subject experiences a “sense of flow.” CBT starts from cognition, whereas the Feldenkrais Method and SE start from somatic sensation (proprioception) to help the subject obtain this sense of flow.

Positive life experiences (especially those related to overcoming challenges) are an important resource library for awakening experiences. Survivors who lack positive life experiences or are too severely traumatized can use the “Awareness Through Movement” (ATM) of the Feldenkrais Method to achieve Body-Mind-Intellect synchronicity at a relatively low arousal level, and then use “Focusing” to anchor and expand this new experience. The anchoring and expansion of experience means carrying this newly acquired felt sense and, without destroying that felt sense, proceeding with activities that were originally restricted, thereby expanding one’s capacity for activity. This has a bit of a Zen practice flavor, but it is completely different from the Zen practice of isolating oneself from society.

The Feldenkrais Method is widely used in posture correction, sports rehabilitation, and psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, it is an important auxiliary tool for SE. It helps the subject expand their somatic awareness and explore entirely new mind-body positions (states) in a relatively calm state. Only by making survivors aware that their mind-body state can have other possibilities, and letting them experience what these new states feel like, can they possibly know the direction of their efforts.

The Feldenkrais Method includes Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration; this article only focuses on ATM. ATM requires the subject to concentrate their attention on the changes in somatic sensation as movement occurs (“somatic sensation” and “change in somatic sensation” are synonyms; somatic sensation itself implies change). This includes the somatic sensations directly generated by the significant activity that is the focus of attention, the somatic sensations generated by micro-activity, and also the somatic sensations generated by the change of the body’s overall state relative to external space. Therefore, the specific movement is just a “handle”; through this light, small, and slow way of moving, the subject can quickly grasp the feeling of mindfulness. This mindful state of consciousness will run through the entire process of self-rescue.

At a lower arousal level, self-conflict is hidden, just as an extremely relaxed posture cannot expose problems with muscle coordination. Therefore, extremely gentle ATM is only a starting point. Once the subject can experience a sense of flow from the activity, they should continuously increase the activity intensity, enabling the subject to maintain the same awareness at a higher activity intensity. As the activity intensity increases, the arousal level will gradually rise. Maintaining that same awareness prevents the subject from falling into a freeze or dissociation when the arousal level rises. Only at a higher arousal level and higher activity level can the subject identify and break through self-inhibition. This is actually similar to the basketball example, only it requires neither complex social situations nor any professional skill.

SE carries certain risks for severely traumatized individuals, so the “titration” technique must be used. Titration refers to carefully and slowly approaching the painful feelings that emerged during the survival process, to prevent suffering secondary trauma during the process of healing the trauma. Titration embodies the idea of “slow motion,” which is the core of “Awareness Through Movement.” Titration is similar to the approach of Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, only it is gentler and places more emphasis on evoking the subject’s flexibility, letting the subject realize that when facing pressure, they have more natural and powerful choices besides freezing.

Attending to One’s Own Drive

The awakening experience is not unfamiliar to anyone; it is just that these experiences are often fleeting and rarely utilized. A subject in an “awakening moment” is like a piece of iron heated red-hot. Unfortunately, long-term paralysis means the subject’s drives are severely depleted; they seldom realize the need to “strike while the iron is hot.” Every time they try to follow their drive and break through self-inhibition, emotions like shame and fear occupy their thoughts until the awakening experience fades.

Helping the subject find their internal resources within the acute stress event, especially internal resources that reflect the subject’s social connections, can promote the subject’s awareness of their own drives. Social connection is the most powerful connection. Important internal resources are often related to intimate relationships and experiences of blending. Only by fully connecting to internal resources can the subject possibly withstand the intense negative emotions during the process of breaking through self-inhibition.

For severely traumatized individuals, the “sense of flow” brought by the awakening is itself attractive enough to make the subject strive to remain active. The subject feels that activities which are usually strenuous become efficient and fluid. They find they can both maintain sufficient attention on their interaction partner and maintain a complete perception of the environment. The subject will, on the one hand, strive to maintain this state of consciousness, and on the other hand, feel an inexplicable fear. This “twisted/screwed-up” feeling fully exposes the self-inhibition.

For an ordinary person, the process of attending to one’s own drive is the process of initially confirming the relationship between the stress event and oneself.

Dialogue between Body and Mind

After self-inhibition is exposed, the subject must leave enough space and time for the dialogue between the body and the intellect, to ensure that they can form a felt sense (experience) while breaking through the self-inhibition.

Think about you diligently exploring in a predicament, only to be suddenly “backstabbed” by a trusted object. The new orienting response creates a strong impulse to explore backward, but the current exploration process is extremely urgent and cannot be interrupted. The intense conflict between different impulses traps you in a state where you can neither advance nor retreat. If you possess sufficient activity level and timely notice the abnormality in the trusted object, you will feel a strong and clear sense of crisis at this moment. You will take appropriate action to restrain the impulse to explore backward, allowing the forward exploration to advance stably, and at an appropriate time, you will turn back to resolve the backward exploration problem. In this scenario, you have sufficient awareness of this restraint. If your activity level is very poor, or if you fall into a clumsy “vulnerable state” because the exploration is too difficult, you will struggle to notice this “adding insult to injury” event. You only vaguely feel that you have suddenly become more vulnerable. At this time, you experience intense and chaotic fear, anger, or shame. Under the impact of this huge energy, your exploratory impulse is subconsciously blocked. You feel you have suddenly lost the motivation to continue exploring. In this scenario, you have no control whatsoever over this self-inhibition. Thus, conflicting impulses do not directly cause trauma; passive self-inhibition is the key to causing trauma.

SE believes that the degradation of activity level comes from unconscious self-inhibition. Just as CBT believes that cognition determines emotion, mainstream psychotherapy techniques all emphasize the responsibility the subject bears for their current predicament.

Under the attention quality of mindfulness, ideas/thoughts/whims are not independent entities; rather, they are the naming and interpretation of emotions and somatic perceptions. Thoughts are always accompanied by all sorts of somatic experiences. The more vivid the experience, the more concrete the thought. In anthropomorphic terms, there is an innate dialogue capability (i.e., “self-organizational power”) between a person’s intellect and body. Human willpower does not exist to fight against the body’s inopportune impulses; it exists to provide a sufficiently vast space and sufficient energy for the various impulses within the body, enabling the body to produce appropriate behaviors. A person who is adept at experiencing (felt sense) can maintain a balance between their thoughts and their somatic experiences, and a balance between self-awareness and environmental awareness. Simply put, they fully respect their own “internal dialogue” capability. They will maintain the rhythm of various interactions at a level that both ensures the interaction proceeds stably and allows their own experience to be relatively complete. For them, conflicts in life always promote the renewal of cognitive schemas rather than causing passive self-inhibition. Such people always give the impression of being calm and steady; they are always able to lead the rhythm of the interaction.

For an ordinary person, the dialogue between body and mind is the process of inspiration continuously emerging and differentiation (slicing the problem) being continuously completed during exploration.

Breaking Through Self-Inhibition

Experience (felt sense) is the product of mutual communication and conflict resolution between Body, Mind, and Intellect. In self-conflict, the stronger the emotions like fear and shame, the longer the time needed to form an experience. During the formation of the experience, the subject must strive to maintain the stability of their arousal, enabling themselves to fully contain these emotions. If the subject ultimately overcomes the fear and, at the somatic experience level, separates the mutually conflicting impulses, the experience is formed. This mental confrontation, just like physical confrontation, may cause your body to tremble involuntarily. Trembling signifies the breakthrough of self-inhibition; it signifies that the suspended stress process has been completed.

At the cognitive level, the process of separating mutually conflicting impulses is the process of narrative restoration and narrative reconstruction. All maladaptive response patterns and mind-body states were originally adaptive. Finding the situation that matches these response patterns or states is also a means of narrative restoration.

When the subject finds it difficult to maintain what is, in an ordinary person’s eyes, a relaxed and expanded posture (assuming it’s not due to excessive fatigue), they can try to adjust themselves to the most comfortable posture possible at that moment. (In other words, the subject must respect their own comfortable but improper postures.) Then, carefully observe this posture (one can videotape it first) and search in the mind for a situation that matches it. For example, a posture of hunched chest, rounded back, and forward head is seen as a sign of a subordinate. But, if you are an unarmed civilian under the fire of war, and you must risk your life to go out and retrieve something, you would naturally be in this posture. The difference is that in this scenario, the posture is full of energy, not limp. If you have not experienced war, you can imagine another situation that is vivid enough for you. The purpose of the imagination is to promote arousal and inject energy into this posture. When you feel your body is full of energy, you can then act like the other people in that situation—looking around, observing sharply, probing carefully. When you are able to confirm from the sensory information you acquire that the danger no longer exists, the body will naturally return to a more expanded posture. This kind of expansion is a natural, energized expansion, not a rigidly forced “straightening.” At this point, you have gained another “awakening” experience.

People spend most of their time in study and work repeating similar and highly restricted activity patterns, which prevents the body’s activity level from being fully released. The reason some alternative medicines occasionally demonstrate bizarre efficacy is often that the implementation of these therapies breaks the subject’s daily behavioral patterns. Take acupuncture as an example: the patient must cooperate with the practitioner, constantly adjusting their posture, consciously tightening or relaxing specific body parts. These are often postures the patient does not frequently use in daily life. This can often cause the subject to stumble back into their neutral state, activating the body’s activity level and indirectly improving the function of the immune system. In reality, as long as we conduct conscious, rhythmic, and systematic physical activation and muscle stretching—for example, persisting in a moderate-intensity night run (or morning run), followed by slow, meticulous muscle stretching with the dynamic quality of ATM—we can achieve a similar effect. It is worth noting that when survivors first learn to stretch, they often tend to reflexively tense the relevant muscles, resisting true relaxation, making the stretch ineffective. For them, relaxation means letting down their guard, and letting down their guard always means being harmed. Therefore, a seemingly simple stretch is actually a major challenge for them. The participant must maintain sufficient patience with themselves, use deep breathing to alleviate tension, carefully perceive their body state, and little by little, let go of this parasitic tension and feel the peace brought by relaxation. The subject should cherish the emotional flashbacks that occur during the practice; this is an excellent opportunity to identify self-inhibition.

The author John Elder Robison in Switched On (a recommended book at the end of the text) had an experience of being accidentally awakened after participating in a Transcranial Magnetic Simulation (TMS) experiment. This was likely related to his accidental return to a neutral state during the experiment. He keenly “focused” on the changes occurring in his phenomenological world. Because he had not suffered excessive harm from traumatized caregivers, his traumatization at the cognitive schema level was not severe. This made him one of the rare few who entered a self-sustaining state of awakening after only a single “enlightenment.”

After self-inhibition is broken through, fear is transformed into inspiration. For an ordinary person, the process of breaking through self-inhibition is the process of releasing confrontation and returning to the neutral state. When the subject breaks through self-inhibition, they also lift the limitations that the residue of the stress event imposed on their perceptual abilities. Complete and flexible perception and the orienting capability are restored. The quality of this process directly displays a person’s psychological fortitude.

Tools: Physical Confrontation Training and Muscle Release

The Meaning of Confrontation

The value of physical confrontation ability training for survivors cannot be ignored. Trauma causes the intellect to lose its connection with somatic sensation. Physical confrontation training (boxing, wrestling, etc.) requires the subject to pay accurate, real-time attention to the physical states of both parties, maintaining a constant dialogue with their own body. There is absolutely no time for micro-management. This is conducive to rebuilding the synchronicity of intellect and body. Boxing and wrestling teach people, in a safe manner, how to release aggression while maintaining control.

This type of training needs to be conducted under the guidance of professionals.

Muscle Strengthening and Release

A fragile body makes survivors very susceptible to injury during physical confrontation. Therefore, before cultivating physical confrontation ability, it is necessary to complete basic strength training, bringing one’s strength at least to the level of an ordinary person. Survivors commonly have physical deficits; in the initial stages of training, they must pay attention to transitions and avoid easily exceeding their limits. One must ensure that they are in a state where excitement outweighs pain upon completing each training session. If unexpected pain occurs, the exact cause must be found; seek professional help if necessary. One must absolutely avoid a situation of training for one month only to be forced to rest for two.

Many survivors discover during training that certain strengths they possess are exceptionally powerful. For example, some people cannot do a single push-up yet can easily hold a 10-minute horse stance. A long-term posture of being hunched and unexpanded causes the muscles on the front of their thighs to become excessively tight; this is precisely the physical manifestation of vulnerability. These excessively tight muscles all need to be sufficiently released. The safest and most effective methods for releasing muscles are stretching and massage.

Muscle strengthening and muscle release must receive equal attention and must not be biased. Otherwise, it may lead to adverse consequences.

Tools: Nutritional Adjustments

Long-term stress disorders can cause dysfunction in the digestive and immune systems, leading to imbalances in brain chemistry. Nutritional factors cannot be ignored for CPTSD.

Chapter 3: The Fragmented Mind: Attention, Consciousness, and Dissociation

Concepts: Consciousness and the Dividing of Objects

The Concept of Conscious Objects

Consciousness is always directed toward a series of conscious objects; conscious activity is defined by its conscious objects. For the purposes of this article, only objects that can be perceived by consciousness in some way are meaningful. Therefore, it can be said: there is no consciousness without an object, and no object without consciousness.

Consciousness is formed within the subject’s activity. The process of the subject forming cognitive abilities is the process of conscious objects differentiating. Consciousness is both activity and the accumulation of activity. The subject’s capacity for conscious activity and capacity for behavioral activity remain consistent in the long term.

The Dividing of Conscious Objects

“Dividing” (or cutting) is close in meaning to “differentiation,” but “dividing” emphasizes the process of differentiation and the subject’s own agency. The human cognitive process (or “thinking process”) unfolds around the dividing of conscious objects. An individual’s dividing of conscious objects is not delineated by physical boundaries or conceptual boundaries in the general sense; rather, it is related to the relationship between the subject and the object. For a newborn infant, the entire world, along with the self, constitutes their single conscious object. However, since everything is one at this point, we could also say that there is no consciousness and no conscious object. Only as the child’s capacity for activity expands and experience accumulates do the divisions between various conscious objects gradually form. With differentiation comes “boundaries,” and with boundaries come “conditions.”

Things that are synchronous are easily seen as a whole; things that are asynchronous are easily seen as independent units. When a subject first enters an unfamiliar environment and has not yet initiated significant interaction, the entire environment is a single, complete conscious object for them. If they are harmed by one part of that environment at this time, they will interpret it as the entire environment harming them. If they have the opportunity to fully explore, they may come to recognize the heterogeneity within the environment. Their dividing of conscious objects will then become increasingly fine-grained, and their own agency will grow stronger.

Consider the dogs in Seligman’s electric shock experiments. Facing inescapable shocks, their struggle (confrontation) was initially directed only at the specific experimental situation. When their struggles grew more intense yet received no feedback (experiencing a terrifying synchronicity in the environment), the confrontation gradually escalated into a confrontation with the entire world. When they discovered that no amount of struggle produced any result (sensing they had lost the most basic synchronicity with the outside world), they felt negated by the entire world (“they are all in on it” or “it’s all a setup”). Their emotions turned from fear to despair. They shifted from being participants in the situation to being the ones isolated.

As another example, a mother looking for her child: her physiological reaction (including micro-activity changes) when seeing her own child is different from when seeing a strange child. A part of her own micro-activity matches certain unique activities in her child; the child’s activity drives the corresponding activity in her, and through these physiological processes, she feels a kind of affinity, thereby confirming this is really her child. Therefore, this part of her own physiological attributes can, together with the child, constitute a complete conscious object. If certain factors (like a stroke or a severe accident) damage the neural pathways from the amygdala to the limbic system, causing the mother to be unable to produce that feeling of affinity when seeing her child, she will insist that this child, who looks identical to her own, is an impostor.

Conscious objects can be simply divided according to their degree of acceptance of exploration: trustworthy (no exploration needed), awaiting exploration, and hostile (resisting exploration). Correspondingly, impulses can also be divided into blending, exploring, and confronting. Any real behavior contains certain components of blending and confrontation. “Exploration” can also be seen as a hybrid composed of a large number of tentative blends (micro-blends) and confrontations (micro-confrontations).

When a trustworthy object achieves a blend with the subject, the subject is expanded, and their experience of the world changes accordingly. It’s just like how the feeling of touching an object while wearing gloves differs from touching it directly. Blending implies trust. The subject will share a degree of control with the blended object commensurate with the degree of blending, as if they have become one to a certain extent. Blending holds extremely important significance for the subject’s development. Higher mammals even evolved specialized neurons to regulate blending: mirror neurons.

The dividing of conscious objects is also an activity and, like all other activities, possesses an activity level. For example, some people with extremely low emotional maturity can be classified as trustworthy objects when they are emotionally stable, but the moment they fall into emotional reactivity, they must be classified as hostile objects to maintain the subject’s own safety.

Remnants of Conscious Objects and the Retention of Mind-Body States

All past events leave remnants of different natures and degrees in our mind-body state.

Imagine a street vendor. Facing the local gangster walking toward him, he stands up, bows and scrapes, greets him with a smile, while simultaneously carefully observing the other party, trying to figure out his intentions, and then responding skillfully according to a preconceived plan. After the gangster leaves, he quickly stands firm, retracts his smile, lets go of his tense emotions, and returns to his previous state. In this process, the vendor has demonstrated good psychological resilience.

Now look at another vendor. He has no support system and naively started his business, never understanding the local situation. Facing the gangster, he panics. After finally sending him away, he is still gripped by lingering fear. He does not return to his previous state; instead, he becomes timid and hunched. The painful experience of dealing with the gangster has left a significant remnant (or residue) in his mind-body state. He appears to have recovered his calm, but his mind and body, on an unobservable level, remain partially stuck in that state of panic and helplessness. This constricted state makes everything he does feel uncomfortable, yet he himself quickly forgets the reason. Thus, this state becomes part of his own temperament, even his disposition. He can only constantly try to find various seemingly rational explanations within his current environment for his lingering feeling of “wrongness.”

At first, he thinks he is angry because his child is disobedient, so he beats the child until the child is psychologically scarred and never dares to disobey again. But he discovers his anxiety hasn’t disappeared, so he turns his attention elsewhere. Everything around him becomes more and more displeasing. This habit of “emotional reasoning” turns the people around him into his punching bags. His interpersonal relationships gradually deteriorate, while he himself begins to suffer over his own inexplicable bad temper. His already weak regulatory system (healthy social support systems are the most important regulators of mind-body states) has been destroyed by his own hands. In endless rumination, he gradually builds up a set of overly meticulous and unrealistic cognitive schemas, creating an enormous mental burden for himself.

The Formation of Psychological Trauma

Events like this, which cause a person to be trapped in a “constricted state,” are “traumatic events.” The energy stuck in these traumatic events may re-enter consciousness when “self-inhibition” weakens. At such times, the subject may exhibit behaviors that surprise or even shame them. For example, he might be earnestly interacting with a new friend. A small problem that coincidentally occurs during the interaction might reactivate this pent-up energy, causing him to suddenly behave as if the other person is that gangster from the past. This might cause him to panic and easily place himself in the “subordinate” position, or it might cause him to fall into mania. These reactions will destroy their chances of developing a healthy relationship. If the subject, due to loneliness or other reasons, cannot find a way to process the traumatic event long-term and cannot complete the cognitive processing of it, he may make one or more of the following three choices:

  1. Overdevelop behavioral inhibition, completely resisting relaxing the mind and body. This keeps his mind and body in a constantly taut state. His cognitive schemas become increasingly complex and unrealistic. Over time, various mind-body disorders will inevitably develop.
  2. Overdevelop response inhibition, falling into mind-wandering (dissociation) and helplessness to avoid the uncomfortable physical experiences. This will lead to dissociation, flashbacks, and excessively frequent nightmares.
  3. Fall into endless cognitive rumination, repeatedly dwelling on various details but, limited by his mind-body state and cognitive resources, never reaching a conclusion.

In Moshe Feldenkrais’s theory of Somatics, remnants are described as “parasitic forces” or “parasitic strain.” Feldenkrais borrowed the term “parasitic” to indicate that some unnecessary forces will, like parasites, attach to the subject, consuming them and interfering with their activities. The existence of parasitic tension means that, in an observer’s eyes, the subject is clearly in a state of high tension, but when they suggest the subject relax, the subject is completely unaware of what there is to relax. In Peter Levine’s theory of somatics, remnants are described as “stuck impulses” or “unconscious self-conflict.” In psychodynamic theory, remnants are described as “energy that cannot flow.” Cognitive and behavioral theories focus more on the progressive damage that remnants inflict on cognitive schemas during the individual’s development, rather than on the remnants themselves.

These remnants get the subject stuck, just as a severe wound forces us to maintain a specific posture; moving even slightly causes excruciating pain. Therefore, these remnants are vividly called psychological traumas or psychological shadows. If psychological trauma cannot be effectively processed, it will gradually develop into a stress disorder. Unlike PTSD, in discussions of CPTSD, the meaning of trauma is usually closer to a shadow rather than a catastrophe.

People used to use the idiom “marking the boat to find the sword” (刻舟求剑) to describe a person as foolish and stubborn. In fact, trauma is that carving on the boat, and every survivor trapped in trauma is the person marking the boat.

Concepts: Understanding Attention (Active, Focused, and Mindfulness)

The Concept of Attention

The behavior of the subject maintaining synchronicity between their own state and the conscious object, in order to sustain a specific interaction loop, is “attention.” Suppose we fix an old-fashioned camera to the handlebars of a bicycle and record a ride. We will find the footage is chaotic, the frame shaking violently, making it impossible to notice any meaningful content. But we ourselves, as the riders, are clearly aware of everything on the road. Our body efficiently maintains synchronicity with the environment during the activity, allowing us to see the things in the environment clearly. Survivors, due to low activity levels, often have a weaker ability to maintain synchronicity with the environment than ordinary people, which is why they are more prone to motion sickness when riding in vehicles. When they become the driver and are forced to allocate more attention to the environment, the feeling of dizziness disappears.

The Agency of Attention

Attention is not just the passive reception of stimulation from conscious objects. It is an interaction between the subject and the conscious object and affects the relationship between them. When a significant independent reference is lacking (which is the normal situation in reality), the subject can only confirm the state of the conscious object through their own relationship with it. Therefore, attention inevitably affects the state of the conscious object. Attention is an agential micro-behavior; it is a special form of “leaning on,” “illuminating,” or “tapping.”

In the subject-environment interaction loop, attention has direct agency. In the inter-subject interaction loop, the agency of attention is expressed through the inter-subject relationship.

When we focus our attention on a certain sensation in our body, the body becomes rigid to some extent, and this sensation may become stronger. This powerful agency is the “mental interaction” (hypochondriacal preoccupation) described in Morita therapy.

Imagine we stare at a speck on the wall. If we do not intend to take action toward it, the speck seems unchanged. But simply “staring” doesn’t count as attention; otherwise, a statue would have the best attention. For an ordinary speck to attract our attention, something must be happening within us. Staring at this speck might help us maintain a specific mind-body state, thereby stimulating or calming certain experiences. It seems the subject is staring at the speck, but their attention is actually on these psychological activities. If we are staring at this speck while visiting someone else’s home, the surrounding environment is an extension of the host’s self. The host and the environment (including this speck) constitute a complete conscious object. Us staring at the speck is akin to staring at a part of the host’s body. This will compel the host to react, although their reaction may not be directly aimed at the speck.

That attention possesses agency is the prerequisite for “Focusing” to work, and it is the foundation of the capacity for self-regulation.

The Quality of Attention

The quality of attention directly defines the state of consciousness. The attention quality of an ordinary person is centered on the attention quality of “interactive equilibrium,” fluctuating mildly according to the situation.

A person with low activity level often has various problems in regulating attention. Shifting and focusing their gaze and adjusting their body posture are all more strenuous than for an ordinary person. This strenuousness at the micro-activity level is generally not directly perceived; instead, it manifests as the personality trait of “being prone to obsessions.”

Interactive Equilibrium

The attention quality of interactive equilibrium means that attention can switch freely between conscious objects as stimuli change. In the infinite cycling of interaction loops, this allows the interaction to proceed most effectively. The subject can both maintain a certain attentional focus and effectively respond to “invitations” from stimuli outside that focus. The subject’s level of alertness is coordinated with the environmental pressure. While concentrating their attention, the subject is able to feel their own strength from the pressure. A subject in this state can face reality directly, able to experience and think simultaneously. They can perceive others’ emotions in real time and easily express themselves.

Interactive equilibrium is a human instinct. It embodies the natural, tacit understanding between the individual and the external world; it is the most natural quality of attention. It allows the subject, at any waking moment, to form a focus of attention while simultaneously maintaining a complete perception of the environment. For example, we can talk on the phone while making sufficiently flexible responses to people around us. But when survivors talk on the phone, their bodies often freeze to a certain extent, and their reaction ability becomes very poor. Even if the phone content and the external information are both very simple, they struggle to manage both. Afterward, they might even deny having received the external information. If they are questioned about deliberately resisting the information, they will retort that they needed to maintain focus. But what is the meaning of this compulsive focus? Can it really make their performance better? They dare not answer, or even think about, such questions. They have already rationalized their traumatized behavior and find it very difficult to change. What they call focus is, in fact, only a kind of “self-preoccupation.”

Concentration

If an actor cannot feel the stability of the stage, they cannot possibly perform freely.

Trust means sharing control. A real situation is, at all times, filled with various objects and various ongoing activities. These activities are both interconnected and relatively independent; they are mutually supportive yet also have a certain mutual exclusivity. The “dense concurrency” and “mutual compatibility/exclusivity” of these activities form the situation’s activity level. When the subject concentrates on one of these activities, they are choosing to trust the other activities in the environment, letting them serve as the stage and background for the activity they are focused on. The subject will face them directly with their instincts, no longer allocating cognitive resources to them. This is also a trust in their own instincts. Carrying the energy endowed by this trust relationship, the subject engages in intense interaction with the object-to-be-explored within the fluid cycling of the interaction loop, becoming a part of the activity they are participating in. The subject is both paying attention to the interaction partner and paying attention to their own experience. Their own experience gradually matches the performance of the interaction partner, and the two achieve unity. A new blend is produced, and the dividing of conscious objects begins to develop toward a deeper level. In this state, the subject will imprint all current activities with the mark of the activity they are focused on. For instance, the whistling of the wind beside them might be accepted by the subject as a form of encouragement; the light, patterns, and designs on the wall may become prompts for a certain line of thought, even if these things are almost impossible to record in episodic memory. If the trust relationship continues to develop, and the significant level of the dividing of conscious objects gradually drops below the range of daily expressive ability, the subject will enter a state of “flow.”

True concentration is only produced in a state of interactive equilibrium; it is a “co-dance” between the two interacting parties. Survivors have rarely experienced a state of concentration based on interactive equilibrium. What they understand as concentration is closer to what ordinary people understand as “absorption” or “addiction” (沉迷). Addiction is a dissociative concentration. The subject, due to some intense resonance, gives up their subjectivity and enters a hypnotic state. They do not become alert and flexible; instead, they enter a self-centered imaginary space, detaching from reality. This experience is akin to being “tricked” or “abducted.” Once they leave this state of addiction, it is very difficult to use the same stimulus to guide them again, because they have become more vigilant. In most situations (especially interpersonal interaction), it is very difficult for them to establish an appropriate trust relationship, and thus they dare not rashly concentrate on anything. This results in them exhibiting characteristics similar to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

In interpersonal interaction, this trust relationship manifests as “emotional connection.” Only after establishing a basic emotional connection with others can an individual engage in efficient exploration during social activities. The ability to establish emotional connections is a human instinct. If people encounter someone with whom they cannot establish an emotional connection, they will instinctively feel fear and keep their distance. Severe trauma limits the individual’s activity level, paralyzing them mentally. Survivors cannot establish real-time emotional connections with others; they always instinctively feel fear during interpersonal interactions and are fundamentally unable to concentrate their attention. They do not know that their state makes others feel the same fear. This fear easily triggers the fight-or-flight response, which causes survivors to often feel inexplicable hostility in their lives.

Note: Being unable to establish a real-time emotional connection does not mean being unable to establish an emotional connection at all; otherwise, the individual could not live independently. Survivors have the ability to feel various emotional stirrings in life, but alexithymia causes them to only be able to attribute their various stirrings to anger and fear. By the time they truly experience the stirring, “the daylilies are already cold” (it’s too late).

Mindfulness

Mindfulness (正念) is conscious yet restrained attention; it is a special state of concentration. Restraining attention means restraining the agency of attention, avoiding the interruption of the stream of experience due to excessive awareness. Only in this way do we have the opportunity to trace the stream back to its source or to see its entire landscape from a high vantage point. The life concept closest to mindfulness is “witnessing.”

Some theories divide mindfulness into focused mindfulness (concentrative awareness) and unfocused mindfulness (open awareness). This division obscures the psychological dynamics behind mindfulness. Their difference is actually determined by the subject’s own state. Unfocused mindfulness is mindfulness in calmness, dominated by the first category of drives; focused mindfulness is mindfulness in action, dominated by the second category of drives. Just as fitness requires bearing weight, mindfulness can only fully display its meaning under pressure. Mindfulness in calmness (such as mindfulness meditation) can only be used as a means of psychological massage and lacks therapeutic meaning. Unless otherwise specified, the mindfulness mentioned in this article refers to mindfulness in action (under pressure). This coincides perfectly with the idea of “awareness through movement.”

“Attention” itself is also a process of establishing an interaction loop and affects the existential state of the object. The subject cannot recognize the existence of the object without any interaction. Mindfulness emphasizes paying attention to and being aware of everything in the present moment, while making no judgment, analysis, or reaction to anything in the present moment, as if no interaction is occurring. This self-contradictory description actually reflects a subtle balance required by mindfulness, which can be analogized to the character of being tolerant, patient, and meticulous, or to a mother guarding her toddler who is exploring the world. Everyone has experienced mindfulness, they just rarely use it consciously.

The difficulty for survivors in mastering mindfulness lies not in self-observation, but in their habitual impulses for behavioral inhibition, response inhibition, and micro-management. In other words, they are overly critical of the subtle details of their own speech and behavior. Maladaptive impulses and behaviors are only the manifestation of the problem, absolutely not the cause. Direct intervention against impulses (analogous to a “forced shutdown”) can easily damage the mind-body relationship, making the problem even harder to handle. For example, excessive awareness of the swallowing sequence causes the “aerophagia” (air-swallowing) that chronically plagues some anxiety sufferers.

Healthy and positive interaction loops will give more support to well-adapted behavioral impulses, thereby promoting the transformation of response patterns.

Concepts: Sensation, Perception, and Reality Testing

The Relationship Between Sensation and Perception

Sensation is the basis of perception; perception is the integration of sensation and the unification of experience, and it proceeds simultaneously with sensation. Because it involves experience, perception inevitably contains certain imaginary components. In fact, the information the sensory nervous system provides to the subject is extremely limited. Experience and imagination play an astonishing role in the formation of perception. Sometimes, a corresponding perception can be formed even in the complete absence of sensory stimulation (such as the “phantom limb” phenomenon). This creates the division between “imaginary perception” and “real perception.”

The Sense of Reality

To some extent, we all live in our imagination. Correctly understanding the relationship between imagination and reality on a phenomenological level can bring inspiration for handling certain psychological problems.

If sensory limitations affect our sense of reality, doesn’t that mean a congenitally blind person cannot know reality? If opening all senses allows one to fully perceive reality, then compared to creatures with special senses or people with “super senses” (like tetrachromats, who can distinguish colors ordinary people cannot), aren’t ordinary people just living in their imagination? In fact, the information the human nervous system can transmit is very limited. If we had no imagination, we could not form complete perception at all. Imagination and reality are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.

In some regions, social workers providing support to the blind are required to experience one week of a blind person’s life early in their employment. Participants must live as normally as possible while deprived of vision, rather than doing nothing. This activity is designed to allow them to grasp the life experience of a blind person on a phenomenological level. This knowledge cannot be conveyed by language, but it is essential for their future work. Participants lose visual information and must strive to use other sensory channels to feel reality. Their visual cortex will gradually be utilized by these other sensory channels. Although they will experience various hallucinations at first, as they gradually “get into the state,” they can use auditory, tactile, and other sensory information to construct spatial perception, and the hallucinations disappear accordingly. In this situation, although the subject has lost their vision, they are undoubtedly still living in “reality.”

A blind person cannot see objects. To perceive reality as ordinary people do, they must engage in more touching behaviors. In other words, compared to ordinary people, they must maintain more, and more significant, interaction with the environment. At the same time, they must keep their bodies relaxed to a greater degree, so they can use limited information to fully discriminate the subtle differences between various sensory stimuli. This means they cede more control to the environment and to others, and are therefore more vulnerable to trauma. Therefore, when we discuss the relationship between imagination and reality, we are also discussing the quality of interaction. A person who can maintain positive interaction with the outside world is a person with a strong sense of reality. Those who are self-centered and pay excessive attention to the self are the ones living in imagination. They are addicted to analysis and thinking, but this thinking, no matter how complex or ingenious, cannot lead to meaningful action. For them, thinking not only fails to serve reality testing, it becomes a tool to find excuses for their own “inaction.”

Imaginary Perception and Real Perception

“Imaginary perception” is the perception formed when the subject spontaneously completes (or expands) a perception based on experience. This can be supplementing one sensory channel based on another (e.g., imagining the tactile difference between rocks based on their visual differences); or completing perception elsewhere based on perception here (e.g., completing the unseen extended part of a train track based on the segment in front of you); or anticipating a subsequent perception based on a preceding perception, or vice versa (e.g., anticipating the feeling of “pain” from the action of “hitting,” or the reverse). When imaginary perception is confirmed, it is real perception. When it is falsified, it is an illusion or hallucination. When means of reality testing are lacking (or when there is a lack of antagonistic perception), imaginary perception possesses the same subjective sense of truth as real perception.

The adaptive significance of this mechanism is that it allows the subject to form a complete and continuous stream of experience without needing to focus on the infinite details of sensory stimuli (for example, humans have a circular visual blind spot about 15 degrees lateral to the visual center due to an evolutionary defect, but we rarely notice its existence in life; we use imagination to fill in the missing information). However, it can sometimes become the root of maladaptation.

Imaginary perception and real perception together constitute the phenomenologically significant perception, participating in the construction and updating of subjective reality. In self-help healing, perception is measured by the scale of phenomenological experience and behavioral response. The more vivid the phenomenological experience evoked by a perception, and the more significant the behavior it inspires, the stronger the perception. When different perceptions conflict with each other, we say the interaction loop has been disturbed (perturbed).

Reality Testing

For a healthy subject, a disturbance in the interaction loop triggers the “orienting response.” In the orienting response, the subject consciously initiates interaction loops, constantly confirming the reality of the imaginary perception, integrating and updating perceptions. The process of eliminating hallucinations is reality testing. This process is relatively easy to observe in a blind person. When a blind person realizes their perception has deviated, they will feel intense surprise, and then immediately act, constantly touching and carefully experiencing. Then, as the perception is integrated and updated, they gradually calm down and accept reality once again.

If the reality testing process cannot be completed due to some restriction, the subject will experience lingering hallucinations. For example, after an arm that was in chronic pain for years is amputated, the arm’s motor nerves, sensory nerves, and visual image are simultaneously missing. The arm’s motor-sensory interaction loop did not get disturbed; it disappeared directly. The state of the arm cannot be confirmed by the subject. The subject’s body image cannot be updated, and thus “phantom limb pain” is formed. This phenomenon can be analogized to the developmental stagnation seen in prisoners due to long-term incarceration. The prisoner’s cognition of society remains at the level it was before they were detained. Just a few photos of the outside world cannot make them feel the world’s changes. For understanding phantom limb pain, refer to Vilayanur Ramachandran’s mirror box experiment. This experiment used a dramatic method to evoke the subject’s strong curiosity to pay attention to the real feelings of the residual limb, helping real perception triumph over imaginary perception and eliminating the phantom limb pain.

Certain subjects, even without significant disabilities, may experience lingering hallucinations due to some subtle abnormality in their reality testing process. If the observer is not attentive enough, it is easy to confuse this with the manifestations of schizophrenia.

Trauma limits the survivor’s ability to initiate or respond to interactions, which in turn limits their reality testing ability. Their self-image struggles to update, trapping them long-term in the response pattern of a “frightened bird.”

Concepts: Dissociation (Mind-Body and Mind-Mind)

The Concept of Dissociation

Dissociation is a concept rich in connotation. It can refer to the subject’s alienation from reality, or the subject’s internal fragmentation. Mind-wandering, emotional numbness, and dissociative disorders can all be seen as manifestations of dissociation.

If a person drinks a lot of water and then holds their urge to urinate, the urge will disappear after reaching an extreme point. After a while, the urge to urinate returns, becoming stronger, and then disappears again. This can cycle many times until incontinence occurs. (This experiment can be life-threatening; do not try it.) The experience of the urge disappearing during this time is a dissociative experience. As another example, a person who experiences a major loss may suddenly lose all emotion after their psychological pain reaches an extreme; this is also a dissociative experience. These dissociative experiences are transient, normal physiological responses and are not pathological.

A subject’s self-report of a dissociative experience is often unreliable. For rare experiences, people will engage in excessive cognitive processing due to a lack of expressive methods, even describing it as an out-of-body experience. At this point, the “experience” is no longer an experience but an interpretation, or even an imagination. In the observer’s eyes, a subject in a dissociative state is often silent, cold, rigid, and lacking vitality. In an attachment relationship, the caregiver’s dissociation is often extremely traumatic, causing the child to feel fear and confusion. Intense fear and confusion can also induce dissociation in the child.

Mind-Body Dissociation and Alexithymia

In extreme suffering, the subject can sever the connection between sensation and emotional response by concentrating intensely on a specific sensation (or a randomly chosen anchor point). Take fear, for example. Some people, in desperate helplessness, avoid looking directly at their inner fear by concentrating on the feeling of powerlessness in their bodies. When the crisis is lifted, the subject no longer needs to work hard to let go of the fear, because the fear was already severed long ago. However, that feeling of powerlessness in the body may never go away. Their body exists in fear and helplessness, but their mind feels no fear or despair. To a certain extent, they have become a person who has sensations but no feelings. This is mind-body dissociation. From then on, despair becomes their emotional backdrop. They feel their body growing weaker and weaker, as if everything is tiring, but they cannot say why. Their relationships with colleagues are clearly fine, yet they are late every day and work inefficiently, as if intentionally opposing everyone. Their activity capacity is limited at a very fundamental level. Mind-body dissociation is an important source of alexithymia (difficulty identifying and describing emotions).

This mind-body dissociation can occur at any moment in life. Mind-body dissociation in adults is easier to trace, but tracing it in children is not so simple. In extreme cases, severe mind-body dissociation may occur shortly after a child is born, or even before birth. These children’s traumatic experiences were witnessed by no one; they only know they seem to have been innately in this state.

Children who are “floppy” at birth, whose activity levels are significantly lower than their peers, are trauma-susceptible. They very likely experienced mild mind-body dissociation before birth. Such children fall into helplessness far more easily than ordinary children; a trivial stressor in life can be enough to trigger them. Their caregivers naturally shoulder a heavier responsibility. If these children encounter difficulties in the process of establishing attachment with their caregivers, or if these caregivers suffer from severe trauma themselves, these children can easily develop severe psychological problems.

Children are in the critical stage of developing basic adaptive capacities. If a child frequently endures stress that exceeds their coping abilities, they are very likely to discover the instrumental value of dissociation, and may even completely replace the normal fight-or-flight response with dissociation. They will utilize frequently occurring dissociation to find a “knack” for rapidly withdrawing from reality, using dissociation as a way of adapting to the environment, guiding themselves to no longer pay attention to anything. Their body stops resonating with the environment. They thereby learn the simplest and crudest survival strategy. All threats seem to become less frightening, but the world also seems less vivid, less worthy of attention or cherishing. Their sense of reality is destroyed.

Mind-body dissociation prevents the stressor from causing psychological pressure to the subject, but it also causes the subject to lose the opportunity to use stress to develop their own adaptive capacity. Having lost the continuous stimulation of environmental pressure, the survivor’s arousal level will continue to drop. They may develop various habits of self-stimulation or even self-harm to maintain arousal.

Mental Dissociation and Depersonalization

In the Asch Conformity Experiments, if the test subject figures out the situation and realizes they are being set up, the statements of the other participants completely become ordinary background noise to them, no longer able to sway their emotions. The other participants are, in a sense, “depersonalized.” Their statements no longer possess personhood and can no longer evoke the subject’s response to general human speech. At this point, the subject has learned an adaptive dissociation. This autonomous dissociation can be called mental dissociation (or cognitive dissociation). Its difference from mind-body dissociation is that it is directly regulated by cognition. Mind-body dissociation tends to give an impression of numbness and dullness; mental dissociation tends to give an impression of cold indifference or mechanical rigidity.

The conscious degree of mental dissociation is related to the social atmosphere. Collective mental dissociation is often unconscious and easily confused with mind-body dissociation.

The opposite of depersonalization is personalization. When facing pressure that is difficult to handle but unnecessary to escape, ordinary people often try to find the human factors involved, or even endow it with human factors it doesn’t have, and then “maneuver” around it, until the whole is broken into parts and defeated piece by piece. One reason survivors easily feel fear is that they often fail to notice the human factors within the pressure; any pressure is experienced by them as pressure from the entire world.

Mind-body dissociation and mental dissociation are the types of dissociation this article is most concerned with. To distinguish them from dissociation in the general sense, this article refers to mind-body and mental dissociation collectively as “response inhibition.”

Dissociation and Mindfulness

Some theories use the “Observing Ego” or “Witnessing Self” to define mindfulness. This was originally a very refined summary, but it unexpectedly caused some people to confuse mindfulness and dissociation. This is because for many survivors, the experience closest in literal meaning to phrases like “self-witnessing” or “self-observation” is the experience of mind-body separation or even an out-of-body feeling during a dissociative state.

Mindfulness absolutely not maintaining distance from the activity at hand; on the contrary, it means total blending. Mindfulness is not focusing attention on one corner of the conscious space; it is embracing the entire conscious space with the whole body and mind. Behavior that is addicted to desire, forgetting to eat or sleep, is a form of dissociation, yet it is precisely such people who most like to misinterpret qualities like “concentration” to beautify their behavior. In a mindful state, all activities—whether subtle or significant, whether completely within the line of sight or not—become a whole on a higher dimension. The subject calmly and alertly pays attention to everything in the conscious space, like a responsible mother gently paying attention to everything in the environment while her child is immersed in play, guarding the child’s safety; or like a competent administrator monitoring the surveillance wall in front of them. They do not need to keep their nerves taut, because most of the time everything is normal, but they must have the ability to capture suspicious information at the first moment, ready to enter a tense state at any time. Thus, people most easily grasp the dharma-door of mindfulness in social activities. This is precisely why spiritual practitioners universally emphasize diligent labor.

Pathology: Trauma from the Perspective of Attention (ADHD, Self-Absorption, Rumination)

Nothing to Attend To

If the subject struggles desperately in a state of freeze, thinking furiously but gaining nothing, their differentiation of conscious objects may fall into a predicament. At this time, the subject will feel intense fear. The subject’s cognitive abilities not only failed to help the body escape the predicament but also fell into a “freeze.” If the subject gives up hope, they will fall into a恍惚 (dissociated/trance-like) state of “nothing to attend to.” At this point, their attention is completely unable to focus. They can neither differentiate meaningful conscious objects nor clearly state what they are feeling in their body. Added to this, the depletion of micro-activity causes sensory input to become deprived and monotonous. Even if they notice a seemingly meaningful conscious object, they dare not be certain due to the lack of “feeling.” They feel as if the world is no longer so vivid. This state is also a “hypnotic susceptibility state.” At this point, the impression they give observers changes from “clumsy” to “sluggish” or “dull.”

This is equivalent to a portion of the stream of experience being blocked. For CPTSD survivors, “nothing to attend to” replaces “interactive equilibrium” as the central position among various conscious states. When they attempt to enter a state of concentration starting from “nothing to attend to,” they very easily fall into “self-absorption” or “external absorption.”

The conscious state of “nothing to attend to” is very important in hypnosis techniques. In daily life, a subject in this state often gives the impression of being numb, indifferent, unable to distinguish priorities, or docile and lacking their own opinions.

Self-Absorption

Self-absorption (or self-preoccupation/self-involved) is also called “self-focus,” or in psychodynamics, “narcissism.” Self-absorption means giving up attention on the external world and starting to “find the feeling” within oneself. For an ordinary person, “finding the feeling” usually means carefully experiencing while trying various behaviors, until finding the behavior or state that feels correct. They are looking for the “feeling,” but they are also looking for the action, the state, the interaction. But for a CPTSD survivor, they will really stop all significant activity and quietly search for the “feeling” inside their own body. Their sensations have only decreased in quality; they are still very easy to find once they actually start searching. Furthermore, sensations can continuously evoke emotions, memories, and even imaginations. Although these things seem very monotonous to an ordinary person—just as we do not feel we are dreaming when we are in a dream—their state of consciousness allows these memories or imaginations to be as vivid as a dream state. They thereby enter a state of “mind-wandering” (daydreaming). They use this to maintain their nearly depleted stream of experience, allowing themselves to maintain a certain level of arousal.

Although mind-wandering is comfortable, they still need to face life. They brandish their clumsy limbs but still don’t feel vivid or certain. Thus, they can only increase the attention paid to their every move, or use some passionately emotional daydreams to cheer themselves on. Their energy is thus consumed by trivial matters. Slowly, they discover that their perception and control over their movements can become more and more specific. The threshold level between micro-activity and significant activity drops significantly. They can even consciously perceive and inhibit many unconsciously learned sequential behaviors. They thereby acquire an excessive capacity for awareness and an excessive capacity for behavioral inhibition. They have not yet realized the severity of the problem and are even secretly pleased with this little “special ability.” This ability, to a certain extent, compensates for the disappearance of vividness and certainty, but the price is the squandering of a great deal of energy, while the limbs become even clumsier.

Self-absorption signifies that the subject has transformed from a person who healthily feels sensations into a person who compulsively searches for sensations. Such a person often gives observers the impression of being “narcissistic.”

External Absorption

The dissociated (trance) state caused by “nothing to attend to” makes it very difficult for their line of sight to maintain synchronicity with moving objects. When tracking objects with high activity levels (like a “fugitive” in a crowd, or a flying housefly), they almost always lose them. Their gaze is stable and empty, like the eyes of a statue, more easily led by their own body than by the conscious object.

External absorption is the addiction to finding conscious objects in the external world that match their degraded activity level and perceptual quality, such as a sliver of light on the wall. They can stably stare at a narrow, fixed object, thereby fully experiencing its details. Even a sliver of light on the wall can be savored by them with movie-level quality. Even if they can’t savor anything, the subject at least feels a “sense of certainty” and thus can obtain peace. This method is equivalent to self-hypnosis. Slowly, they find it becomes easier and easier to obtain this sense of peace. They can even “tune out” (distract themselves) through very hidden means during extreme conflicts, thereby avoiding emotional arousal. They acquire a simple and crude ability for “response inhibition.” They rarely experience interpersonal conflict anymore; to be precise, their interpersonal relationships have already been destroyed by their numbness. Their development thus stagnates.

Although staring is comfortable, they still need to face life. They use their “hyper-stable” gaze to scan a new environment, which is equivalent to trying to take in all information at once, without prioritizing. They experience sensory overload. This is too painful, so they try their best to operate only within familiar spaces. Their living space is thus restricted. Sensory overload often triggers intense anxiety experiences, causing the subject to exhibit characteristics similar to ADHD.

Attention Deficit and Hyperactive Manifestations

Survivors commonly exhibit attention deficit and hyperactive manifestations. Although these manifestations are not as severe as typical ADHD (endogenous ADHD), they are extremely easy to confuse with it and difficult to distinguish, and can be called reactive ADHD. Unless otherwise specified, ADHD mentioned below refers to reactive ADHD.

ADHD individuals can derive a sense of accomplishment from these subtle activities. They are, on the one hand, abnormally dull to information outside their attentional focus, and on the other hand, extremely sensitive to information within their focus. This extreme attention quality significantly magnifies the impact of acute stress events; even many stimuli that are commonplace in the eyes of ordinary people can be traumatic for them. Repeated acute trauma may cause them to realize they have no ability to maintain a balance between concentration and vigilance. They are forced to maintain a restless (agitated) state to compensate for their missing activity level. Although restlessness can supplement sensory stimulation, enhance certainty, and alleviate the “sensory deprivation-like” experience caused by the state of absorption, it also introduces a large amount of monotonous and intense “noise” into perception, making the dividing of conscious objects even more difficult, and the adjustment of mind-body states thus impossible. The subject’s attention quality loses its adaptability, unconsciously swinging back and forth between the two extremes of the “nothing to attend to” state and the “absorbed” state.

Please remember our “spectrum view.” The “nothing to attend to” state and the “absorbed” state are by no means exclusive to those with psychological disorders; they are merely more typical in them. When ordinary people cannot integrate into a situation and also cannot easily escape, they are in the “nothing to attend to” state. When ordinary people fall into an “either/or” or “all-or-nothing” thinking pattern, they are in an “absorbed” state. When an ADHD individual is placed in a cluttered or noisy situation (like a park on a holiday), their mind will fall into chaos, not knowing what to pay attention to, only feeling the noise. If, at this time, there is a person who is good at empathy, keenly observant, and trusted by them (i.e., a “Noble Person” from section 4.12) to lead them, letting them know what is worth paying attention to and what is worth getting excited about, their ADHD manifestations will immediately alleviate.

Instant Location Ability

Many CPTSD survivors possess an “instant location ability.” They can, on an incredibly complex and detailed picture, rapidly locate an extremely subtle target, just as they demonstrate in the game “Where’s Wally?”

This ability is the result of their long-term adaptation to “nothing to attend to.” The strong sensory stimulation brought by the huge, complex picture can rapidly raise the subject’s arousal level. Under high arousal, “nothing to attend to” means that all details in the picture equally become the focus of attention. They only need to briefly endure the sensory overload to quickly locate the key features that need tobe identified from the jumble of trivial information pouring in all at once.

The Normalization of Abnormal Attention Quality

The long-term variation in attention quality causes CPTSD survivors to exhibit characteristics similar to ADHD.

The sluggishness of CPTSD survivors often causes them to be unable to pinpoint the reason when they generate a feeling, making them easily susceptible to being led into “mystical experiences.” Therefore, some CPTSD survivors give the impression of being “spacy” or mystical (神神叨叨).

Over time, the subject can develop from searching for sensations to searching for experiences (felt sense), searching for thoughts, and exploring the relationships between various objects in their inner world. Combined with the detailed knowledge they observe, they become a deep thinker.

Rich and subtle somatic sensation (proprioception) is the background against which ordinary people conduct conscious activity. The deprivation of somatic sensation forces survivors to use all kinds of daydreams and ruminative thinking activities to fill the emptiness in their conscious background, just to maintain arousal. They have already adapted to this life, which maintains a certain distance from reality. Even when they accidentally enter a state of interactive equilibrium, the rich sensory stimuli of an intense environment will cause them to experience sensory overload because they “can’t think fast enough.” In a quiet environment, the sudden sense of flow will give them a falling sensation, as if they missed a step. The stress response triggered by this will cause them to actively exit the equilibrium state. Having developed to this point, the subject has already, to a considerable extent, accepted the trauma. It is very difficult for them to walk out on their own. If a subject who has long lost interactive equilibrium is asked to classify conscious objects, they will likely divide them into internal objects and external objects, corresponding to these two traumatized states of consciousness.

In terms of the variation in attention quality, trauma can be called “learned sluggishness.” Learned sluggishness is based on the degradation of micro-activity, but degraded micro-activity does not necessarily cause learned sluggishness. Those whose micro-activity has degraded but who have not fallen into sluggishness are the strong ones. They still maintain a not-too-bad social adaptability after being traumatized. The price is a greater probability of developing various functional somatic syndromes or even psychosomatic diseases. Although their limbs do not appear clumsy, they remain, to a certain extent, chronically stuck in the restraint phase of the stress process. Degraded micro-activity limits the emergence of “inspiration,” and such subjects often give the impression of being “not too bright.” If the subject’s social support system and cognitive abilities are consistently insufficient to enable them to complete the processing of the traumatic event and release the stuck energy, the subject will, due to excessive reflection, form a set of overly meticulous but unreliable cognitive schemas, maintaining a level of consciousness that appears balanced but is actually precarious. This makes them appear repressed and harsh, easily developing anxiety disorders and other psychological problems. Restraint cannot be stably maintained over the long term. The stuck energy is easily released in a trusted situation when behavioral inhibition weakens. If they become caregivers, their children will very likely develop “learned sluggishness.” Dissolving unreasonable cognitive schemas and completing the cognitive processing is the core of Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

In the long term, the subject’s activity level and conscious level remain consistent. Therefore, learned sluggishness causes the subject’s micro-activities to move from degradation toward total depletion, while the subject sinks deeper and deeper into mind-wandering and helplessness.

Pseudo-Highly Sensitive Personality

Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS) refers to an individual’s deeper processing of information, higher emotional reactivity, greater empathy, stronger awareness of environmental subtleties, and greater susceptibility to overstimulation.

Being more easily overstimulated also implies a higher risk of trauma. Many CPTSD survivors and ADHD individuals self-report as having a highly sensitive personality (HSP), but unfortunately, such self-cognition is not necessarily reliable.

If an ordinary person is overly sensitive in some situations, they are bound to be overly numb in others. It is like a person trapped in a small room; all they can see are the things in the room. Any rustle of wind or movement of grass in the room cannot escape their eyes, but they know nothing of the world outside the room. Many people who consider themselves highly sensitive have almost never walked out of their “small room,” to the point that they mistake the small room for the entire world. The process of walking out of the “small room” is tantamount to an awakening for them. A person with rich life experience can understand another’s life status and core concerns by observing their manifestations of sensitivity and numbness.

Physiological defects, psychological trauma, insufficient physical exercise, lack of secure attachment, lack of life experience, etc., will all cause a person to lack a sense of control over their body and their surrounding environment (manifesting at the neurophysiological level as excessively low prefrontal cortex activity). They very easily overreact to stimuli. Their emotional reactivity is too strong, but their capacity for action is very poor. They often feel that their strength falls short of their ambitions in life. It is like a person who knows nothing about soccer standing on a fiercely competitive soccer field; they will inevitably fall into a state of confusion, unable to react flexibly, and thus more easily injured.

Mild, natural adaptive responses are replaced by contradictory and unpredictable extreme responses (over-reacting and under-reacting). This is a commonality of almost all psychological problems. People are generally ashamed to admit their own deficits; they will selectively ignore the side of themselves that under-reacts, describing the over-reacting side as a kind of talent. Adaptable people don’t much care about being called sensitive or not, because they have the ability to use their sensitive traits to fully develop their adaptive capacity. Their world is very broad; they do not need labels like “highly sensitive personality” to seek validation. Therefore, the self-cognition of “highly sensitive personality” reflects, to some extent, the subject’s perception of their own adaptive capacity. They feel they are more acute than ordinary people in some aspects, but their overall adaptive capacity fails to satisfy them.

The imbalance of CPTSD survivors manifests as an over-reaction to local details and an under-reaction to the overall picture; an over-reaction to information within their focus and an under-reaction to information outside their focus. Either because their own energy level is too low, or because they are too lonely and lack the experience of integrating sensory information in specific situations, they find it very difficult to integrate various sensory stimuli into a complete perception. These sensory stimuli that cannot be integrated pour into the brain as patternless fragments, causing the subject to suffer from sensory overload. Survivors can try to find when their contradictory manifestations—overly sensitive and overly numb—occur, and then try to find the commonality behind these contradictory manifestations. They might make an unexpected discovery. If one cannot find this at all, yet insists they are “highly sensitive,” one risks self-deception.

To some extent, concepts like “highly sensitive personality” and “multipotentialite” (or divergent thinker) are just concretizations of “smart”; they can be colloquially understood as an “unbalanced intelligence.” The individual is susceptible to injury because they are smart; and because of the trauma, they appear foolish, clumsy, numb, and dull. This is life’s dark humor. The trait of high sensitivity is a double-edged sword. It both exposes the subject to higher trauma risk and also gives the subject the opportunity to establish deeper emotional connections with people, developing a higher cognitive level. This psychological bond and cognitive ability, in turn, provide the tools to transcend the trauma. Although the statement “I was traumatized because I am smart” is meaningless, those who can walk out of the shadow of trauma are undoubtedly both smart and powerful people.

Daydreaming / Mind-Wandering

If a survivor is unable to initiate exploration and interaction after an impulse emerges, the impulse can only be dissipated through self-regulation. The ability to self-regulate is an internalized interaction loop; it reflects the interactive experience accumulated by the subject. A child’s self-regulation ability is limited. If they can neither establish an interaction loop nor complete self-regulation, they will exhibit restlessness, inability to concentrate, and difficulty focusing their gaze—characteristics similar to ADHD. In other words, they are unable to “compose themselves.” If this state of being unable to compose oneself persists long-term, the subject may gradually learn the ability to use “mind-wandering” (daydreaming) to escape pressure and obtain a sense of pleasure.

The sensations created by restlessness can trigger many trivial and somewhat compulsive conscious activities. When the subject concentrates on these trivial conscious activities, they enter the state of mind-wandering, which appears very quiet. “Mind-wandering” (神游) replaces behavioral restlessness with cognitive restlessness, and subtle restlessness with significant restlessness. Survivors can even learn to spontaneously enter a state of mind-wandering whenever an emotional fluctuation or behavioral impulse appears, thereby achieving behavioral inhibition and avoiding anxiety. Their activity capacity gradually atrophies into isolated extreme points rather than a complete behavioral spectrum. They gradually lose connection with their body, are no longer able to feel complete and rich somatic sensations (proprioception), and find it difficult to trust their primitive impulses (i.e., “instinct”). However, the majority of people’s daily activities are composed of subconscious behaviors that occur too quickly for cognitive processing. People generate feelings of familiarity and develop intimate relationships through these subconscious behaviors. Therefore, the survivor can only live in constant fear. They desperately suppress themselves, enduring anxiety and fear, yet if someone points out their suppression, they easily feel shame or even offense.

Attention deficit individuals commonly have a habit of mind-wandering. Mind-wandering is an extreme form of being “checked out” (走神); it can also be called “daydreaming.” If being checked out is like “yawning” or “stretching,” mind-wandering is “falling asleep.” Compared to reflection, the attention in mind-wandering is extremely scattered. Being checked out is shifting the focus away from reality (in this text, “reality” specifically means the current reality), whereas mind-wandering is completely dispersing attention, preventing the survivor from being crushed by anxiety and fear.

Mind-wandering originates from childhood imagination. The reason children’s imaginations are rich is not that they cannot distinguish reality from imagination, but that their minds and bodies are extremely active, and their experiences are extremely rich and intense. Imagination is one way they integrate and express these experiences. For example, two children looking at a blank screen can tell each other a series of stories; they are actually just sharing a part of their own stream of experience. This imagination not only doesn’t detach them from reality, but it actually helps them learn to get along with their own experiences, promoting the development of emotional intelligence. The reason mind-wandering is maladaptive is that survivors have long lost the vitality of children. They can only obtain a tiny bit of experience—which they believe is vivid but is actually very monotonous—from mind-wandering, at the cost of sealing themselves off. Extreme mind-wandering is very likely to be misdiagnosed as schizophrenia.

Mind-wandering does not dissipate impulses; it merely plays the role of distracting attention. A subject lost in mind-wandering relies completely on their own biological rhythms to dissipate the influence of stress on their mind-body state. The human body’s rhythmic regulatory capacity is limited. When psychological stress accumulates to a certain point, various mind-body disorders appear. Survivors use mind-wandering to avoid experiencing their own somatic sensations. If they are forced to let go of mind-wandering, the exposed parasitic tension will cause them to experience an overwhelming sense of fear.

Mind-wandering is significant for the survivor in distracting attention, self-hypnosis, enduring pain, dispelling loneliness, and maintaining arousal. For severely traumatized survivors, mind-wandering may completely replace the function of self-soothing. Their minds are occupied by boundless mind-wandering and a cold, harsh inner voice. They lose the ability to self-dialogue, self-commiserate, and self-motivate. Their spiritual world gradually becomes paralyzed.

Cognitive Rumination

The process of using newly acquired cognitive resources to examine and correct one’s cognition, allowing a suspended orienting response to be completed, is reflection. When a flashback occurs, the subject is, in a misplaced time-space where the crisis has already passed, returning to the unfinished stress process. This provides an opportunity to use reflection to complete the suspended stress process. A subject who is good at reflection possesses good trauma self-healing abilities. In them, trauma not only doesn’t develop into PTSD, but it actually becomes a turning point for them to improve their coping abilities. Reflection is absolutely not about finding abstract concepts to describe one’s own deficits, such as lacking “empathy” or not being “calm” enough in situations. Such abstract descriptions are meaningless. If we wished, we could find countless such descriptions, only to discover in the end that we are completely worthless. Reflection must be carried out in interactive equilibrium.

For a general PTSD survivor, if the subject’s cognitive resources are not updated or their psychological preparation is insufficient, the intense negative emotions brought by a flashback will immediately trigger avoidance behavior. Although avoidance prevents reflection from proceeding, it at least suppresses the flashback in the present moment. For a CPTSD survivor, because they have already fallen into learned helplessness, the flight response is not easily triggered. Their paralysis/rigidity makes broad and positive association difficult, making the reprocessing of the traumatic experience like “making bricks without straw.” They will yield to these evoked negative emotions, allowing themselves to become emotionalized. At this time, various past negative experiences will mutually evoke one another, and the subject will be drowned in negative emotions such as anxiety, shame, anger, and grief. They endlessly savor these painful life fragments but cannot integrate them into a meaningful narrative, much less make any response. This phenomenon—where cognitive ability is limited by intense negative emotion, and the subject is addicted to ruminating on negative life events, unable to break free—is cognitive rumination. These negative emotions cause the subject to fall into cognitive rumination, and cognitive rumination causes the subject to sink deeper into these negative emotions. The low activity level and the positive feedback loop between the two make cognitive rumination compulsive.

Negative emotion is better than no emotion. It can bring energy to a vitality-deprived body, maintaining arousal. The subject can obtain a sense of excitement from this monotonous but intense stream of experience, using it to escape loneliness and fear without having to bear any actual responsibility. Therefore, the true protagonist in cognitive rumination is these emotions, not the various unrealistic thoughts masquerading as reflection.

When people face a truly urgent situation and are forced to become active, cognitive rumination automatically disappears. What survivors need is not ruminative, exhaustive thinking, but the activation of their paralyzed mind and body. Recognizing the emotion at the first moment one falls into rumination and finding the flashback’s trigger (which, after long-term generalization, may have become very hidden) is often the starting point for many people to walk out of trauma.

Pathology: Mysticism and Emotional Reasoning

The lack of benign interpersonal interaction and the monotony of life experience further restrict the survivor’s activity level. Their mind-body state updates extremely slowly. They often excessively retain remnants of past experiences in their real-time activities and therefore always seem very tired. Remnants mean that although the conscious object of an activity has disappeared, the corresponding somatic sensation (proprioception) has not yet had time to disappear. These somatic sensations, lacking a real-world object, interfere with current activities, inducing various mystical experiences. The survivor’s habit of self-focus makes them particularly adept at capturing these abnormal experiences, causing them to often sink deep into them, unable to pull free. Survivors find it difficult to realize that many of the somatic sensations they cannot understand are caused by loneliness. In other words, loneliness is the sociological explanation for these abnormal somatic sensations and the orienting response disorder. Good social contact can promote the rapid updating of the mind-body state, thereby dissolving these remnants. Survivors are confused by their abnormal somatic sensations. Since they cannot be traced to the past, they can only be attributed to the present. This leads to their mystical tendencies and emotional reasoning habits.

Mysticism

When our experiential feeling is misaligned with the conscious object, we produce a mystical experience. For example, when a survivor who has been emotionally indifferent for a long time briefly recovers their emotional connection to the world due to some coincidence, they will inexplicably experience a feeling of happiness, like a baby in a mother’s arms. This experience transcends the scope of daily experience, causing the subject to feel shock, ecstasy, confusion, or even fear.

A mystical experience is a special kind of dissonant experience. A mystical experience means the subject has fallen into a psychological dilemma: the orienting response cannot be completed, yet they must accept the dissonant reality. Once the orienting response is completed and the dissonance is clarified under familiar cognitive schemas, the mystical experience disappears. Mystical experiences can activate broad associations. Some people can use mystical experiences to stimulate strong creativity; others fall into mysticism because of them. Survivors have extremely rich mystical experiences because they are in a “lost” state much of the time.

A mystical tendency may drive survivors to seek spiritual comfort from various religions. Indulging in mystical experiences can likewise produce the “mental interaction effect,” further interfering with the brain and increasing the risk of developing schizophrenia.

Emotional Reasoning

People are moved by reality, which produces emotions. Emotions, in turn, regulate the cognitive process and also serve as material for cognitive processing. Emotional reasoning refers to the phenomenon where a subject, due to limited reality-testing ability, rashly equates subjective emotional experience with objective fact, making judgments or decisions based on emotion rather than real evidence. Simply put: “I feel it is so, therefore it must be true.” For example: “I feel very awkward, so others must be mocking me.” “I don’t feel like I did anything, but I experienced a happiness like being in my mother’s arms; this must be some ultimate power revealing itself.” In reality, besides objective facts, the occasional strengthening or weakening of the emotional backdrop (the more extreme the emotional backdrop, the more unstable it is) or the triggering of an emotional flashback can both cause strong emotional fluctuations. Emotional experiences that cannot withstand reality testing are unreliable. What psychodynamics calls “projection” is the result of emotional reasoning occurring in interpersonal interaction. The emotional reasoning of trauma survivors can reach an exaggerated degree. Lingering anxiety makes them feel that nothing they look at is right, as if everyone else is an idiot. Lingering shame makes them feel as if countless eyes are monitoring them at every moment.

Emotional reasoning reinforces the original negative emotion, forming a vicious cycle of: “Emotion -> False Conclusion -> Stronger Emotion.” This causes emotional reasoning to become compulsive.

Compared to survivors, ordinary people are extremely alert to limitations on their reality-testing ability. They will first direct those lingering, intense emotions toward the factors that are limiting their reality testing, challenge them, and break them, ensuring they can easily maintain a balance between emotion and reality. Some trauma treatment theories view “maintaining a balance between the flashback image and the present-moment reality situation” as an ability requiring deliberate training, calling it “dual awareness.” This is actually completely unnecessary; it is just the natural result of the garbage being cleaned up.

Tools: Special Thought Tools (Paired Consciousness, Image Thinking)

Chain-Network Interpretation and Mutual Interpretation

Chain-network interpretation is not simple circular definition; it is an important intellectual tool for self-help, assisting the subject in profoundly understanding concepts and completing self-conceptualization. The concepts in a chain-network interpretation are like all the pearls on a necklace or all the nodes in a net; picking up one brings all the other nodes with it. By cutting off a portion according to actual needs, a complete conceptual chain conforming to linear logic can be formed. Chain-network interpretation can play an important role in self-conceptualization. Mutual interpretation is a special case of chain-network interpretation, referring to the fact that in the absence of a higher-level concept (superordinate concept), we can understand concepts through the mutual interpretation of opposing concepts. For example: Objective is collective subjective; subjective is individual objective. Anxiety is chronic fear; fear is acute anxiety. Knowledge is public experience; experience is private knowledge. Impulse is burgeoning behavior; behavior is completed impulse. Impulse is a rapid tendency; tendency is a gentle impulse. Mind-wandering is mental restlessness; restlessness is physical mind-wandering.

In self-help treatment, chain-network interpretation works because the world (the phenomenological world) only has connections, not logic. Even if the world truly possessed logic as humans define “rationality,” this logic would have no reason to accommodate human interests or cognition. Logic is merely a kind of “sequential phenomenon” that humans discover in specific contexts; the starting point of a logical chain is the trigger point for this “sequential phenomenon.” Humans believe that “objective laws” reflect the essence of the world, but in reality, they reflect the mode of interaction between humans and the world. In other words, the so-called story of nature is actually humanity’s own story.

Mutual interpretation works because these opposing concepts were originally one body. Their division is caused by the limitations of human research tools, research methods, and expressive abilities. This artificial severing will inevitably fall into self-contradictory dilemmas when introspection deepens; this is the origin of the “unity of opposites” philosophy. Defining these concepts on a phenomenological level has limited significance; facing these contradictions directly and using them as a starting point, conversely, aids in the profound experience of the concepts.

Paired Consciousness

When facing stress, survivors often swing back and forth between two opposing, extreme reactions, unable to maintain calm and balance, much like a flimsy boat rocking left and right in the slightest wind and waves. For example: extreme shame (self-blame) vs. extreme humiliation (blaming others); extreme self-criticism vs. extreme self-indulgence; extreme freeze vs. extreme paralysis; extreme submission (self-negation) vs. extreme confrontation (unable to accept any new information); extreme credulity vs. suspecting everything; extreme attention deficit vs. extreme absorption; compulsively pursuing control and familiarity (self-enclosure) vs. compulsively seeking randomness and chaos (self-stimulation); extreme external focus (consciousness fixated on a detail in the environment that causes a subtle emotional change, like the rhythm of music, changes in light and shadow, etc.) vs. extreme self-focus; extreme self-inflation vs. extreme self-absence; raging over being unintentionally harmed by others vs. feeling shame for unintentionally harming others; “daddy-ism” (being condescending/preachy) and childishness, etc.

These reactions seem contradictory but actually share a common foundation. They are like the two poles of a magnet and cannot exist independently of each other. The resources needed to dissolve one pole are often hidden in the other pole. A specific activity often only exposes one of the poles, so survivors rarely have the opportunity to consider them as a whole. Survivors must learn to consciously excavate their own various contradictory reactions, like a detective, and strive to find the commonality behind them, until they see the complete problem. This ability to link one’s own polar opposite manifestations is an important intellectual tool for the survivor’s self-reflection and self-help.

Image-style Thinking

CPTSD survivors find it very difficult to learn to use their inner voice or internal dialogue to analyze the pros and cons of various opinions and problem-solving methods. Their internal dialogues either get lost deeper and deeper in various details, quickly losing direction, or they are dominated by emotional criticism and accusations. Therefore, “image-style thinking,” which originates in early childhood, becomes an intellectual tool they rely on long-term. Interacting with reality provides perceptual feedback caused by real-world changes; thinking with images receives feedback from the changes in the image itself. The survivor’s difficulty with the orienting response means their cognitive processes lack perceptual feedback, and image-style thinking compensates for this deficit to some extent. Image-style thinking consumes significant cognitive resources; it inhibits the rise of arousal levels and blocks the subject’s contact with the outside world. The process and content of image-style thinking lack sociality, leading survivors to appear repressed and profound, but in reality, they rarely reflect (although much reflection is done in quiet solitude, reflection is actually rooted in the subject’s experience of social norms, and thus has an extremely strong social nature; the weaker an individual’s sociality, the poorer their ability to reflect), and they lack self-awareness. The survivor’s capacity for image-style thinking, having been highly developed over a long period, is an important tool for sparking inspiration and coordinating fine, complex thought activities. Used properly, it can unleash astonishing creativity.

Image-style thinking is suitable for analyzing and experiencing grand, stable, clearly structured systems; it is not suitable for real-time interpersonal interaction.

Relational Mapping

The subject will replay the same behavioral patterns and interaction styles across different times, spaces, and levels. Relational mapping, in behavioral analysis, is when we map a relationship type that is relatively unfamiliar to the subject onto a relationship type that is relatively familiar to them, or map a later-developed relationship type onto an earlier-developed one. By analyzing the subject’s behavioral expression and emotional dynamics in the relationship they are relatively familiar with or that developed earlier, we identify the emotional dynamics behind their behavioral expression in the relatively unfamiliar or later-developed relationship. Relational mapping is significantly important for narrative restoration. Currently, the most thoroughly researched and widely applied relational mapping is the family-social relationship map.

The family is a condensed society; society is a complex family. By observing a person’s behavior in family relationships, one can, to a certain extent, predict their behavior in social relationships. In the general division of family labor, the mother usually plays the role of the unconditional nurturer, giving the child the most basic life support. The father usually plays the role of the conditional nurturer, guiding the child to learn to face challenges and to learn to adapt to and utilize social rules. The subject’s relationship with their mother will influence how they perceive the relationship between themself and the world. The subject’s relationship with their father will influence how they perceive the relationship between themself and society. If the mother’s attitude toward life is negative, pessimistic, and narrow-minded, then even if the subject receives meticulous care, they may still develop a cold and selfish personality. If the father is extremely emotionally unstable and unpredictable (e.g., sometimes caring and nurturing, other times cruel and tyrannical), then the subject may never be able to develop an affinity for social rules and authority figures. Anyone who appears powerful will make them feel fear. When facing challenges and pressure, they will always yield easily.

Tools: Cognitive Correction and Social Norms

The process of cognitive development is the process of dissolving cognitive conflicts so that recent experiences can be appropriately placed within cognitive schemas. Cognitive correction is the process of identifying stagnant imaginary perceptions, dissolving extreme emotional reflexes, and modifying maladaptive cognitive schemas, so that subjective reality and objective reality return to synchronicity. The framework and details of cognitive correction can be referenced in the recommended books at the end of this article.

No matter how lonely a person’s situation, no matter how many betrayals they have endured, social norms (which, at the individual level, can also be understood as “human nature” or “normal human feelings”) are always their most basic and reliable cognitive resource. Understanding of social norms directly reflects the subject’s degree of socialization. Socialization enables the subject to develop complex, rich, and delicate emotions and conscience from simple, primitive emotions and perceptions; it turns the subject from an ordinary biological organism into a “person.” Bullies often first occupy the moral high ground, making the bullied person believe that they (the bullies) are the masters of the rules, thereby mentally crushing the bullied person, causing them to fall into helplessness, so that the bullies can then unscrupulously carry out their bullying.

Survivors are generally dull toward social norms. In their cognitive processes, the status of social norms has been replaced by various overly meticulous and unrealistic cognitive schemas. The purpose of cognitive correction is to help the subject identify and eliminate their unrealistic cognitive schemas, let go of their long-outdated self-inhibitions, and become sensitive once again to social norms. A good sense of morality (a sense of justice) is the self-helper’s most important emotional driving force.

Tools: Insights from EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a widely used trauma treatment technique. Its simple methods and miraculous effects put many complex trauma treatment techniques to shame. Many theorists have offered various explanations for this. Here is a simple explanation from the perspective of somatic experience:

Visual information is critically important for the subject to perceive space, maintain balance, and regulate their own state. If we try to stand on one leg with our eyes open versus with our eyes closed, we can recognize the value of this information that we normally never notice. Therefore, “eye movement” is a highly efficient activity: it can break the state of freeze/paralysis, yet it is not so strenuous as to cause distraction. When the traumatic experience is evoked, it can prevent the subject from falling into a complete freeze. The body’s self-regulation ability thus remains active. This gives the subject the capacity to directly face the evoked painful experience, and consequently, the opportunity to dissolve the trauma.

From this viewpoint, all activities that can break the state of freeze or paralysis without causing significant distraction, and which provide clear feedback, have potential therapeutic value. However, for self-help, such an activity must also possess sufficient intensity.

Trauma is like a manhole. However you fell in is how you must climb out. Getting out of trauma, just like forming trauma, requires enormous energy support. EMDR looks simple, and “eye movement” certainly cannot be called intense, but it is inseparable from the therapist’s guidance. The standardized setting of the therapeutic context and the therapist’s clear, gentle, and firm voice are important sources of healing energy. If there is no therapist, the survivor needs to find other reliable social resources. When social resources are temporarily unavailable, our body becomes the most important and reliable source of energy. We can fully rely on our own body to supply our energy, allowing ourselves to feel the body’s flexibility and strength even while directly facing the trauma energy.

Self-help literature often avoids the topic of intensity. On the one hand, this is because many readers are happy to accept the suggestion “I am weak,” as this reduces their pressure. On the other hand, authors generally do not want to see readers have accidents due to attempting high-intensity activities. Therefore, I must also post a disclaimer here: all my suggestions are based on personal practice. They have been tested and proven safe on my body, but this cannot represent the general situation. Assessing physical fitness requires medical knowledge, and I am not a doctor.

Group activities have the best results, but they place demands on both the organizer and the participants. The exercise I prefer most during introspection is jumping rope. Cordless (imaginary) jump rope does not count, as it cannot provide sufficient feedback. Jumping rope allows us to maintain an effective connection with our inner strength while directly facing our most intense fear, thereby giving us the opportunity to complete the reprocessing of the painful experience. The state of ceaseless jumping is just like the bouncing of a boxer, fully activating our body, ready to fight at any moment. This kind of rope jumping, carried out in a state of mindfulness, I call “Mindful Jump Rope.”

Before using jump rope for healing, our endurance and proficiency need to reach a sufficient level, so that we do not become irritable or distracted due to repeated interruptions or lack of stamina. This sounds troublesome, but it is actually not difficult. As long as the form is correct, the more proficient you become at jumping rope, the more effortless it is. It is far less strenuous and safer than running. As an aerobic exercise, jumping rope promotes deeper breathing and faster blood circulation, which is conducive to maintaining a mindful state. Our goal is not speed; stability is far more important than speed. For me, controlling the duration to within half an hour, stabilizing the rhythm at 50 jumps/set, and reaching a total of 800 jumps is already sufficient (I also add some weight). As long as we train scientifically (tutorials are readily available online) and persevere, even starting from scratch, we can easily reach this level within three months. Compared to the arduous journey of healing, such an investment is trivial. In fact, once I enter the state, the actual intensity far exceeds these numbers.

Allowing the energies of fear, retreat, and rigidity, and the energies of softness, flexibility, and power to collide freely within the body, while firmly believing that the latter will ultimately defeat the former—this is precisely the concretization of love. Only those who have wrestled with their deepest fears can welcome qualitative change. To a large extent, psychotherapy is just teaching us to be honest about our own fear. If a person can achieve this relying solely on their innate talent, then all knowledge of psychotherapy is superfluous.

Chapter 4: The Internal State: Emotion, Inhibition, and Helplessness

Concepts: Emotion (Primary/Secondary, Positive/Negative)

The Concept of Emotion

From the perspective of somatic sensation (proprioception), emotion is the summary naming of somatic sensation. From the perspective of pressure, emotion is the overall assessment of the nature and intensity of psychological pressure. From the perspective of activity level, emotion is the summary naming of the subject’s own activity level and arousal level. The higher the activity level, the richer the emotional experience; the higher the arousal level, the more intense the emotion. A so-called “full personality” refers to the ability to simultaneously maintain a relatively high level of motor arousal and a strong activity level. From the perspective of conscious object differentiation, different pressures cause feelings of tension (stress) that require different coping methods. Different coping methods cause these feelings of tension to undergo different changes. The differentiation of coping methods causes the differentiation of conscious objects. Simultaneously, the primitive feeling of tension also differentiates into different emotions. Humans share similar sensory and motor abilities and therefore develop similar capacities for emotional experience. If the process of emotional differentiation deviates, the individual will separate from the masses in certain fundamental aspects of personality, such as some sexual minorities.

Emotion is closely related to the state of the autonomic nervous system. An individual may occasionally feel heavy-hearted even when calm; this abnormal experience comes from sporadic dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, similar to a muscle “twitch.”

The performance of the mother’s autonomic nervous system is considerably consistent with that of the fetus. If the mother suffers from severe autonomic dysfunction, the infant will very likely be born with an extremely fragile autonomic nervous system, which is one source of trauma susceptibility.

Primary Emotions and Secondary Emotions

Primary emotions are those that a person concerned will inevitably experience based on the general cognitive process when an event occurs. Secondary emotions are those generated on the basis of primary emotions, due to personalized cognitive processing. For example, everyone is playing a game, and the balloon in your hand suddenly explodes. At this moment, fear is the primary emotion; shame is the secondary emotion. Abnormal emotional patterns are the most direct manifestation of psychological trauma. Survivors often struggle initially to distinguish primary and secondary emotions, but as treatment progresses, they will discover that many emotions they originally thought were primary are, in fact, secondary. Cognitive Behavior Therapy and its variants hold an absolute advantage in processing secondary emotions. It will unlock the outermost shackles on the survivor, becoming the first guide on the survivor’s path to self-healing. As the survivor’s understanding of emotion gradually aligns with that of ordinary people, they will gain the ability to embark on their own unique journey of self-healing.

Positive Emotions and Negative Emotions

“Surprise” or “tension” is the primitive form of all stress emotions. It develops into different stress emotions depending on the coping process. Positive emotions can be understood as various kinds of flow, competence, or security. Negative emotions can be understood as the feeling of a drive being interrupted (needs being ignored). All positive emotions carry a keynote of “self-actualization.” All negative emotions carry a keynote of “self-conflict” or “strength falling short of ambition.” Take excitement: if the body can methodically carry out actions and various lines of thought continuously emerge in the mind, it is interpreted as excitement. If one is full of energy but cannot use it, and the various lines of thought in the mind are repeatedly interrupted, it becomes anger. If the body completely freezes and the mind goes blank, it becomes fear. No matter how strong the negative emotion we experience, we must strive to focus our attention on what needs to be done; only then can we push the emotion to transform in a positive direction. In Morita therapy, this principle is summarized as, “Go with the flow (accept things as they are), and do what should be done.”

Positive coping will cause negative emotions to converge into specific anger or grief, which is ultimately released through struggle and mourning. Negative coping will cause sharp, intense emotions to gradually diffuse into mild, chaotic anxiety, which continuously accumulates into intense, chaotic mania, ultimately causing the subject to break down and fall into depression.

Survivors are extremely adept at converting negative emotions. They can transform anger into extremely destructive mania in a very short time. Survivors must become aware of the intermediate processes of emotional transformation to be able to adjust themselves; otherwise, they can only seek help from professionals.

Important Negative Emotions

1) Anxiety

“Anxiety” is the ultimate form of all negative emotions. If negative emotions remain unprocessed, they will gradually diffuse into a chaotic sense of blockage. This emotion is anxiety. If the subject is unable to bear the anxiety, they will fall into depression.

Extreme anxiety is “mania.” The chaotic nature of anxiety determines that mania is not always experienced as a negative emotion. Mania can manifest as irritability (rage) or as inexplicable excitement. Similar to depression, the mania of CPTSD survivors is also a sub-threshold state and must not be confused with the mania in bipolar disorder.

2) Anger

Without aggression (or “confrontation”), there is no fight-or-flight response. Healthy aggression is the foundation upon which a person establishes and secures their life. For an ordinary person—getting angry and fighting, getting scared and running—a smooth stress process is the most direct and common way to activate energy. No matter how complex or “mature” an adult’s stress patterns become, they are all developed upon this foundation. Trauma in early life causes survivors to learn behavioral inhibition and response inhibition very early. Although most of these children appear quiet and “well-behaved” much of the time, in reality, their problem-solving abilities never develop. In them, the most basic human aggression continues into adulthood in a very chaotic manner. Behavioral inhibition prevents impulses from developing into action; response inhibition even dissolves the impulse itself. When behavioral expression is insufficient, the interpretation of emotion also becomes difficult. Survivors commonly suffer from alexithymia.

If aggression is not properly guided, it becomes anger. A conflict arises in the dividing of conscious objects, and the subject cannot quickly complete integration. The subject, having low activity level, hastily identifies an object-to-be-explored as a trustworthy object. The subject produces an impulse to blend, but new information causes the subject to recognize hostile components in that object, and the subject then produces an impulse to attack. The subject wishes to release this aggression in an appropriate way, but the trust that has not yet been dissolved refuses to provide clear support for the development of the attack impulse, acting as response inhibition. The primitive impulse to attack cannot develop into specific, precise aggressive behavior. Aggression that cannot be released in the most constructive way becomes anger.

The anger of trauma survivors is often mixed with emotions like fear and shame. The energy within the anger greatly intensifies the anxiety, causing the subject to fall into mania (rage). The energy originally used for orienting and tracking loses its target and becomes an out-of-control force. This process can be compared to moving a stone: It looks like an ordinary stone, and you estimate you can lift it with just a little effort -> You find yourself restricted by some force and cannot move it even with great effort -> You fumble around for a long time but cannot figure out what the restriction is -> Time is tight, you use more and more strength, feeling that this much strength should be more than enough to move it -> Eventually, just moving it is no longer enough; you feel you are being mocked and just want to destroy everything. Or take a cat hitting a ball: There is a cat, and on the table in front of it is a row of seemingly identical ping-pong balls. It easily knocks them off one by one. But the last ping-pong ball is glued to the table; it cannot knock it loose no matter how hard it hits. Its cognitive abilities are insufficient to explore the cause of the problem, but it is unwilling to let go of the previously fluid experience. Thus, it hits harder and harder, entering a state of rage. This is the process of getting angry.

Survivors frequently switch rapidly between helplessness (blind obedience) and mania (rage). They have almost never experienced what “gentle yet powerful confrontation” feels like.

3) Fear

Physical pressure, on the one hand, makes us tend to fall, and on the other hand, makes us feel the power contained in our muscles. Psychological pressure, on the one hand, oppresses our senses, causing us to involuntarily tend toward closing our senses and experiencing restricted activity; on the other hand, it also causes us to produce the impulse to fight. When the former dominates, we experience fear; when the latter dominates, we experience anger. Any acute stress event that exceeds our adaptive capacity will organize a “tug-of-war competition” between fear and anger in our hearts.

Stress causes us to feel surprised and become vigilant. This feeling of surprise and vigilance is a “sense of crisis.” If the subject is already fully physiologically mobilized and psychologically prepared, and is sufficiently confident in their cognitive resources and social support system, this sense of crisis can also be experienced as pure excitement.

When the pressure causes the subject to feel an immense impact, the arousal level rises dramatically, yet they have neither the time to explore carefully nor the knowledge of how to release their confrontation. The tendency to close off the senses will grow stronger, and the sense of crisis will develop into a sense of fear. In terms of activity capacity, fear can be understood as the tendency toward withdrawal and self-enclosure.

All fear, behind the scenes, is responsibility the subject is unable to bear. Imagine a sudden crisis puts you in a state of tension. If you can withstand the pressure and complete the coping response, your feeling during the crisis will be interpreted as a sense of crisis. If you are consistently unable to complete the coping, you will feel fear. Extreme fear often causes dissociation; dissociation means the closing of the senses.

For CPTSD survivors, both flashbacks and awakenings bring intense experiences of fear. If the subject is not prepared to take responsibility and does not pay attention to accumulating internal resources in daily life (or releasing suppressed internal resources), they may follow this tendency to close their senses, allowing themselves to fall into a state of numbness. They do not ignore the pressure; rather, they surrender before the pressure causes a real disaster. They escape the fear, and thus they escape the awakening. Their personality fails to develop.

From the perspective of the autonomic nervous system, an individual in a state of fear, on the one hand, must observe the environment with all their might and carefully experience connections, which requires the parasympathetic nervous system to be sufficiently excited. On the other hand, the sympathetic nervous system must be sufficiently excited to enable the subject to form adequate resistance to the pressure. The enormous contradiction between the two makes fear an extremely traumatic emotion. If the subject cannot safely release the energy within it, they will inevitably fall into autonomic nervous system dysfunction. Autonomic dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of stress disorders. To a large extent, trauma intervention techniques are techniques for intervening in the feeling of fear.

4) Loneliness

Loneliness is a secondary emotion mixing feelings of desolation, emptiness, and helplessness. It is the boring experience that “one’s own activities have no effect, and no activity can drive oneself”; it is a sense of deprivation. Loneliness mixed with intense fear is the feeling of abandonment. Loneliness mixed with intense frustration is depression.

Difficulties in exploration caused by hidden, special physiological defects, and the continuous, unconscious emotional neglect caused by family crises, can all make the subject feel separated and isolated. The subject feels the world has rejected them, that they have lost the basic connection between themself, their cognitive resources, and their social support.

The interpretation of emotion often relies on the empathy of others, just as we often need a mirror to know our own appearance. Lonely people commonly suffer from alexithymia. Fear of not being accepted by oneself, and loneliness, will trigger each other, falling into a cycle. On a mental level, the subject will unconsciously fall into a state of rumination to avoid this overwhelming fear and loneliness. The subject self-reports feeling grief and anger during rumination, but to an observer, the real protagonists are the cycle of loneliness and fear.

5) Shame

If we must speak of the most intractable and destructive emotion in psychotherapy, it is undoubtedly pathological shame. The feeling of shame distorts compassion, blocks inter-subject emotional connection, and causes the survivor to miss every force that could have saved them.

Shame is a secondary emotion based on fear. Shame is different from guilt; guilt causes us to take action, whereas shame blocks our action. Self-inhibition, self-focus (narcissism), self-attack, and micro-management are all directly related to shame. Normal shame is transient, but the survivor’s shame is often accompanied by freezing and clumsiness, and has a strong compulsive quality. Shame is always accompanied by cognitive schemas related to self-attack. Of all fears, the fear of one’s own emotions and behavioral impulses is the most fundamental. The subject does not know how to coexist with their own impulses; the psychological conflict always ends in a stalemate.

Only when the subject feels the reliability of their own primitive impulses can they experience the natural bond between themself and the world, and subsequently develop affinity for themself and the world. Toxic shame means the subject mistakenly identified a hostile object as a trustworthy one, or confused the untrustworthy and trustworthy aspects of an interaction partner, even believing the attack they received was a well-intentioned reminder. Once shame becomes a habit, the subject can proficiently interrupt their own drive before the impulse is even confirmed (that is, before it forms a “thought”). Restoring vitality thus becomes impossible. At this point, it is already very difficult for the survivor to walk out of the shadow of toxic shame on their own.

Susceptibility to shame easily gives survivors the impression of being narrow-minded or overly sensitive, a fact that distresses them as well. Some theories attribute this susceptibility to continuous suppression from caregivers during childhood. But we must see that faced with the same suppression from caregivers, many resilient children are not affected. Everyone is full of flaws, everyone might mistakenly criticize others, and everyone might receive mistaken criticism. But a person with “spirit”, no matter how disturbed they are, can quickly refocus their attention on what needs to be done. They become vigilant because of criticism, but they also avoid becoming overly involved in the critic’s emotions. A caregiver’s suppression of a child comes from the caregiver’s own trauma and fear. Smart children can distinguish the caregiver’s fear from their own fear, and will not simplistically associate fear with seriousness or authority, thus not granting fear extra power. They can even consciously use this fear. Attributing the problem to the caregiver’s mistakes does not help the survivor, but we do not believe the fault lies with the survivor, either. This is absolutely not the time to get entangled in right and wrong. That the survivor managed to survive traumatizing parenting means they must have done something right. But that they remain trapped in this state of barely surviving means there must also be some important things they failed to do. Only by making the survivor realize what they did, and what they still can do, can we truly help them.

Shame susceptibility can often be traced back to certain hidden physiological defects. These physiological defects limit the subject’s adaptive capacity. The subject often feels as if they are experiencing some kind of hallucination. This limits their self-confidence, making them easily influenced by all kinds of negative evaluations. Survivors need to spend a very long time learning to remain honest with their own feelings. The defect makes one more likely to encounter malice, but it also makes one more likely to see human conscience.

6) Grief (Bereavement)

Grief (or bereavement, 悲恸) is born from loss; it is an intense experience of helplessness and defiance. Grief is a contradictory emotion, possessing characteristics of both depression and anger. Depending on the psychological support and cognitive processing available, grief can be guided toward mourning, depression, or anger.

If grief is not acknowledged and accepted, mourning cannot be completed. Suppressed grief will turn into depression and eventually develop into numbness. The suppressed energy will strive to find any outlet, releasing itself through intermittent bursts of mania. The critical point from grief to depression (the “moment of despair”) is referred to in some psychodynamic theories as “the last scream.”

Emotion and Feeling (Affect)

The relationship between emotion and feeling/affect is analogous to the relationship between sensation and perception. Feeling/affect can be understood as emotion that has undergone sufficient processing. The process of emotion rising to the level of feeling/affect directly reflects the individual’s cognitive processing ability (so-called “rationality”) and degree of socialization. Abundant feelings will not support a narrow cognitive schema; a person rich in wisdom will not be a cold-blooded animal. Cognitive processing ability and emotional maturity are two sides of the same coin. The stronger an individual’s capacity to feel emotion, the higher their cognitive processing ability, and vice versa. Think about it: isn’t the time you are most inspired also the time your emotional experience is richest?

If “tension” is the primitive form of all stress emotions, then “vigilance” is the primitive form of all feelings/affects. CPTSD survivors rarely feel alert; in the eyes of observers, they look as if they have never woken up. They rarely experience rich, delicate feelings; they can only experience primitive, intense emotions or completely nothing at all. Thus, they often give the impression of being rude or cold. They are always swept away by simple, intense emotions and can only make simple, rigid stress responses, severely limiting their adaptive capacity. Thus, the “activity level” described earlier is actually an external indicator describing the richness of an individual’s emotional experience. Insufficient activity level is equivalent to the “desertification” of the emotional world.

The degree of differentiation of conscious objects is always consistent with the degree of differentiation of feelings. Take “shyness” (害羞) as an example. Survivors have a low degree of affective differentiation; for them, shyness and shame (羞耻) are the same thing. In order to fight the toxic shame brought by trauma, they throw away the ability to be shy as well. This makes them often appear rude and offensive in social interactions, full of aggression. When they learn healthy shyness and complete the differentiation of bashfulness and shame, they naturally learn to respect others.

Concepts: Alexithymia (The Inability to Name Emotion)

Alexithymia may have a physiological basis. If the subject has no sensations, no hallucinations, and even their dreams have no color, then their alexithymia is likely physiological. For such people, this article is powerless. This article only concerns alexithymia that can be intervened upon through psychotherapeutic means.

The severity of alexithymia varies significantly between individuals, and its sources are diverse. Insufficient socialization, emotional neglect in childhood, mind-body dissociation, and abnormal mind-body states can all cause alexithymia.

Alexithymia caused by insufficient socialization is the most common. From a socialization perspective, everyone suffers from alexithymia to varying degrees. We have all experienced various indescribable feelings. These indescribable feelings may linger in our hearts for a long time, until at some inadvertent moment, we suddenly realize what they are. When an individual enters a new environment, but no one guides them, they can only rely on their own exploratory spirit to establish relationships with the environment. Low activity and arousal levels mean the survivor’s stream of experience is missing various details. Undeveloped impulses and incomplete explorations make it difficult for them to interpret the changes in their own stream of experience. Various stirrings can ultimately only be attributed to anxiety, anger, and depression.

Emotional neglect suffered in childhood may result in the subject never learning how to integrate their somatic sensations into emotions and name them, much less integrate them into complex feelings. For example, they may express that their heart is racing, they are sweating, or they are dizzy, yet be unable to realize that this is a feeling of tension. They might even assume something is physically wrong with their body, failing to realize this is a natural response to stress. Depressed individuals commonly exhibit “somaticizing.” The suffering they feel is an intense negative emotion. This intense experience exceeds the individual’s general understanding of emotion, leading them to believe something is wrong with their body. This is the main source of pathological alexithymia.

Alexithymia caused by mind-body dissociation and abnormal mind-body states will be mentioned gradually below.

Alexithymics do not understand their own emotions, and thus cannot perceive the influence of their own emotions in real time, much less consciously utilize this influence. They cannot control their own emotions, making them more prone to emotional reactivity. They act impulsively and offend others because they cannot control their emotions, yet remain completely unaware. If the massive energy within emotion cannot become wealth, it will inevitably become a burden.

People feel and understand others’ feelings/affects through empathy. Alexithymics cannot recognize their own feelings, and thus cannot recognize the feelings of others. In the eyes of an alexithymic, others’ words and actions often appear particularly exaggerated.

Traumatization destroys the survivor’s normal developmental trajectory. Even as adults, the depth and breadth of their accumulated interactive experience are not much stronger than those of a child. Their various abnormal manifestations are, to a large extent, the result of developmental stagnation.

Concepts: Conditioned Reflexes and Emotional Flashbacks

The Sequential Interpretation of Conditioned Reflexes

The process of establishing a conditioned reflex can also be understood through the process of forming a sequential behavior. A conditioned response can be seen as a sequential behavior formed with an unconditioned reflex as its core component; the conditioned stimulus can be seen as the significant component among the conditions that match the sequential behavior. Take the Pavlov experiment as an example: food stimulating the oral cavity causes saliva secretion. This tacit understanding (match) is a “hard-wired connection” developed through long-term, stable matching during the evolutionary process. When the dog hears the bell for the first time, the disturbance of the interaction loop puts it into a stress state. It feels “surprised” and becomes vigilant, simultaneously activating all sensory channels to carefully discriminate the explorable objects in the environment. It then feels (not just “realizes”) the connection between the bell and the food at a physical level. As it becomes more proficient in coping with this connection, it can complete its preparation to contact the food upon hearing the bell, causing saliva secretion, thereby maximizing the efficiency of contacting, chewing, and digesting the food.

The more intense the subject’s stress response (the more intense the “surprise” felt), the easier the conditioned reflex is established, and the easier the conditioned stimulus is generalized. The establishment process of conditioned reflexes can be divided into two categories: “shock” and “repetition.” Corresponding to the formation process of trauma, these are “acute stress events” and “repeated torment.”

Emotional Flashbacks

Conditioned reflexes are always accompanied by certain emotional fluctuations. If a conditioned reflex’s main content is intense changes in somatic sensation (proprioception) and sharp fluctuations in arousal level, then this conditioned reflex can be called an “emotional reflex.” The emotional reaction within it is called an “emotional flashback.” A “flashback” in the general sense, in addition to containing these strong emotional components, is also accompanied by the arousal of imaginary fragments or memory fragments. In the treatment of PTSD, a distinction is often made between “intrusion” (which comes from imagination) and “flashback” (which comes from memory). Unlike PTSD survivors, for CPTSD survivors, the authenticity of these imagined or remembered fragments is already very difficult to verify. Therefore, this article will not deliberately distinguish between “flashback” and “intrusion,” referring to them uniformly as “flashbacks.” Compared to flashbacks carrying imaginary or memory fragments, pure emotional flashbacks are even more difficult to identify and process because the relevant episodic memory has already been lost. These emotional flashbacks that have lost their corresponding episodic memories mean that although the subject has forgotten the stories of these traumas on a cognitive level, they have never forgotten them on a physical level. These survivors have often already accustomed themselves to the limitations that emotional flashbacks place on their activity capacity, seeing them as part of their own instinct.

Emotional flashbacks interrupt the subject’s stream of experience and destroy the subject’s interaction with reality, preventing imaginary perception from being updated through reality testing. Therefore, unless a reliable supporter helps the subject stay lucid when the emotional flashback is triggered, the emotional reflex, unlike general conditioned reflexes, will struggle to extinguish on its own. The psychotherapist, to a certain extent, takes on this supporter role. In self-help treatment, the subject needs to rely on the techniques in Chapter 4 to stabilize themselves when a flashback is triggered.

Intense and frequent emotional flashbacks can cause autonomic nervous system dysfunction, thereby forming various somatic symptoms.

Plaza Anxiety Reflex

This is an example of an emotional reflex. Some survivors, as soon as they strike a more upright posture, such as holding their head high and chest out, will feel panic in their hearts and their minds go blank. As soon as they enter a crowded place, they become emotionally agitated, overwhelmed by anxiety, fear, or agitation. These manifestations are similar to agoraphobia, but the intensity is not as severe, and it can be called a plaza anxiety reflex. Traumatic experiences cause ordinary life situations to lose their original mild meaning. Facing a turbulent crowd, the survivor is like facing a floor full of cockroaches, a tree full of cicadas, or a mountain full of wild beasts. They only feel agitated or even nauseated. This unreasonable reaction makes it difficult for the survivor to accept and respond to the kindness of others. After the situation is escaped, the anxiety, along with a sense of relief (the relaxation response), transforms into a secret joy. This is the anxiety-euphoria cycle that makes some survivors seem inexplicable. It is a weakened version of the depression-mania cycle.

The Internalization and Externalization of Trauma

When flashbacks develop into emotional flashbacks due to the loss of corresponding episodic memories, the subject will begin to see these extreme reactions as part of their own personality. At this point, the subject has completed the internalization of the traumatic experience.

The triggering of sequential behaviors occurs in an instant. Even if the subject maintains mindful attention at all times, it is difficult to perceive it in time. Although the subject can identify the trouble the trauma brings them, it is very difficult to pinpoint the specific emotional reflex, much less sort out its origin. But this does not mean they cannot identify their own emotional reflexes and find the trauma hidden behind them. First, the traumatic experiences of CPTSD are always replaying repeatedly in the survivor’s life in various different ways; it is not necessary to find the single, initial traumatic event. Second, we can, through “Focusing,” experience the connotation of the emotional reflex, thereby endowing it with certain imagery, allowing the indescribable feeling to be confirmed and interpreted.

The process of finding an episodic home (narrative) for emotional flashbacks that have lost their episodic memories is externalization. Externalization is also called “narrative restoration.” When discussing the plaza anxiety reflex earlier, the subject realized that their experience facing a crowd was similar to facing cockroaches, that they had once witnessed a beast-like crowd; this provides a clue for externalization. Appropriate externalization is impossible without subtle and profound experience (felt sense). Externalization is not the goal; rather, it is to facilitate the understanding of our feelings and provide a line of thought for processing the trauma.

Traumatic Reenactment

The traumatic experiences of CPTSD are always replaying repeatedly in the survivor’s life in various different ways. This “traumatic reenactment” is one form of trauma externalization.

If individuals experience “working together with one heart” during a stress event, they may, in their spare time after overcoming the difficulty, try to play different roles from the event to consolidate their coping experience. This is playful reenactment. Playful reenactment usually has a certain creativity; many collective rituals originate from various playful reenactments. If an individual feels isolated, abandoned, and feels unmanageable fear during a stress event, they may develop traumatic reenactment. If the individual plays the role of the perpetrator during the reenactment, it means they are asking the world: “Isn’t this going too far?” If they play the role of the victim in the reenactment, it means they are seeking to be seen, to be rescued. In a single reenactment, the individual may switch rapidly between the roles of perpetrator and victim. Traumatic reenactment is directly driven by flashbacks; the individual often lacks awareness of the reenactment.

Concepts: Drive, Energy, and Catharsis

Drive

Motivation (dynamics) and pressure are two sides of the same coin. The former focuses on constructiveness, the latter on threat. When we are not focusing on this internal difference, we can use the concept of drive. Drive is the unification of pressure and motivation.

Drive can be divided into two categories: one category drives the subject to maintain a certain arousal level; the other drives the subject to take action. In subjective experience, the former is mainly perceived in the form of the “emotional backdrop”; the latter is mainly perceived in the form of “desire” or “impulse.” In daily expression, only the latter category of drive is regarded as pressure or motivation; the former category represents a baseline or reference plane. The “no-pressure state” or “state of calm” that people speak of refers to the state where the first category of drive is dominant.

Low muscle tone and low activity levels make guiding drives much more strenuous for survivors than for ordinary people. They require more physiological mobilization and psychological preparation to cope with any challenge; otherwise, they give up very easily.

In the subject-environment narrative loop, the most basic first-category drive is the sense of surprise. The most basic second-category drive is the desire to explore. They embody human curiosity. When we are awake, we are constantly being mildly startled. It is precisely these mild startles that allow us to maintain a certain degree of arousal.

In the inter-subject narrative loop, the most basic first-category drive is the sense of affinity. The most basic second-category drive is the desire to communicate. They embody the human prosocial instinct.

The desire to communicate is the subject’s impulse to communicate externally, including two aspects: the desire to express and the desire to be expressed (needed). The desire to express is also the “desire to be understood,” meaning we expect our own feelings to receive universal recognition and acceptance from people (including ourselves). The desire to be expressed, or the “desire to understand,” means we expect to be needed by others. If exploratory behavior is suppressed by reflexive negative emotions, the desire to communicate cannot develop into effective communication. Even when CPTSD survivors are given the opportunity to express themselves, they will speak incoherently in a panic, their posture awkward; their true desire to express is instead suppressed. Even when they get the opportunity to understand others, they find it difficult to initiate effective exploration, and instead frequently become the “trash can” for narcissists. Their true desire to understand is deeply frustrated. If the desire to express is not satisfied, the subject easily develops narcissistic tendencies. If the desire to be expressed is not satisfied, the subject easily develops masochistic tendencies.

The process of confirming a sense of accomplishment is like a small child yelling to their mother, “Mommy, look!” They can then confirm the nature and significance of the accomplishment from the mother’s reaction. For an ordinary person, the sense of affinity and the sense of accomplishment form a stable cycle. A sense of indebtedness (guilt) comes from the deviation between the subject’s interactive performance and general human expectations; it plays a regulatory role in the cycle. In extreme cases, a sense of indebtedness develops into shame. The lack of a sense of affinity prevents the sense of accomplishment from being confirmed. The subject often produces a compulsive desire to communicate and feels an inexplicable loneliness. The survivor’s drive is often dominated by a sense of indebtedness. Survivors understand that their performance has various problems but cannot pinpoint where the problems are, and thus they often have various feelings of indebtedness. This makes them easily yield when facing personality attacks, and they are always at a disadvantage in “status games.” (A “status game” refers to the game played by subjects in a bilateral relationship over the identities of “superior” and “inferior.” The superior is the dominator, the inferior is the dominated; parties of equal status are “cooperators.”)

Because they are overly familiar with the sense of indebtedness, survivors often intentionally or unintentionally drag others into this kind of “mutually indebted” interpersonal relationship, bringing immense pressure onto others without realizing it.

Emotional Dynamics

Drive manifests at the mental level as emotional dynamics. The observer’s overall perception of the emotional dynamics determines how they understand the subject’s personality. The process of behavior analysis is the process of identifying and sorting out the emotional dynamics behind the behavior. Behavior analysis detached from emotional dynamics is meaningless. Everyone does many things that seem foolish in hindsight, but only those who can clarify their emotional dynamics during the event can learn the lesson and accumulate experience. Learned helplessness causes depressed individuals to lose their emotional dynamics. On a cognitive level, the depressed person believes “all activity has lost its meaning,” but on a mind-body level, they have lost the experience of being alive. The so-called experience of being alive refers to the “emotional connection” between the subject and the world.

Our emotional dynamics change with age and changes in life status. Our views on past experiences also unconsciously change accordingly. If the subject fails to recognize the impact that changes in emotional dynamics have on cognition, they will easily feel they have “gained some insight” when looking back on the past, as if their First Kind of Growth never stagnated. They feel that if they returned to the past with their current cognition, they would certainly perform better. In reality, if they truly returned to that past situation, their psychological state would inevitably be incompatible with the activity they needed to perform. If they wanted to accomplish anything, they would have no choice but to re-awaken their past vitality and enter their past state. This would reactivate their faded emotional dynamics, and their past behavioral patterns and cognitive schemas would be re-evoked. They would quickly discover that they are, in fact, still the same old self.

People who are truly able to gain insight during growth do not casually offer life advice to those who come after them, because they know they must first resonate with the other person’s emotional dynamics before they can say anything meaningful. CPTSD survivors (especially individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome) commonly have a tendency to lecture others.

Energy

Confrontation accumulates energy. Corresponding to the two types of drives, energy can also be divided into two types. One type allows the subject to maintain a certain capacity to respond to change; this can be called “basic energy.” Its intuitive manifestation is the dynamic balance achieved through the mutual confrontation of the body’s agonist and antagonist muscles, allowing the body to both maintain a certain posture and possess sufficient flexibility. The other type allows the subject to cope with acute stress events; this can be called stress energy. Its intuitive manifestation is the subject’s heightened emotions and tensed muscles during an acute stress event. Strictly speaking, basic energy also belongs to stress energy. Basic energy reflects the subject’s accustomed arousal level and coping ability.

Exploration circulates energy. During exploration, the subject must strive to maintain sufficient activity level while simultaneously maintaining a high arousal level.

Blending dissolves energy. Like energy in the physical sense, energy does not disappear into thin air. Successful blending often brings a brief increase in activity level (similar to “supercompensation” in sports psychology). The subject’s emotional intelligence thus has the opportunity to improve. This relaxed yet energetic feeling is subjectively experienced as a sense of pleasure. If this experience can be appropriately placed within the cognitive schema, the subject will also experience an enlightenment-like feeling. If we compare the human body to a piece of iron, then muscle fibers are iron atoms, the body’s micro-activities are the random motions of the iron atoms, acute stress events are impacts received by the iron, and energy is the temperature of the iron (or the kinetic and potential energy of the atoms). The iron’s deformation and recovery under impact is the human body’s stress process. The impact forces some iron atoms closer together, and their collisions become more intense (analogous to the strengthening conflict of micro-activities). Macro-scopically, this manifests as the iron’s resistance to the impact (analogous to significant activity coordinated by micro-activity). After the impact, the iron block will undergo a process of gradually returning to normal temperature from a high temperature.

Energy level can be used to describe both the subject’s state and the state of the activity. When used to describe the subject’s state, the energy level can be observed via the muscle tone level. In terms of its observability, energy level is the motor arousal level or the individual’s “excitement level.”

Catharsis

Catharsis is different from venting or complaining. The latter are equivalent to first making tense muscles even tighter, and then returning them to their previous state, thereby obtaining a feeling of relaxation. This does not dissolve the tension; it only temporarily reduces the subject’s activity level due to fatigue.

Catharsis is the concentrated and honest expression of intense emotional experience. The person engaging in catharsis takes full responsibility for their own emotional experience, whereas complainers and venters are duplicitous (their inside and outside do not match). Complainers express vulnerability while carrying aggression, throwing the pressure of dealing with the aggression onto the outside world. If the outside world refuses to cooperate, they feel even more wronged. Venters express aggression while carrying vulnerability, throwing the pressure of dealing with the vulnerability onto the outside world. If the outside world refuses to cooperate, they become even more angry. Once the outside world cooperates with their complaints and venting, it degenerates into their “energy pack.”

Catharsis comes from resonance and being moved (transport).

Pathology: The Orienting Response and Traumatization

The Concept of the Orienting Response

When the subject makes contact with a new or novel stimulus in the environment and prepares to consciously initiate an interaction loop, this behavior is called the “orienting response” or the “curiosity-exploration response.” The orienting response is the core of the stress response; exploratory behavior is the core of the orienting response. In common terms, the orienting response is the activity the subject subconsciously engages in to figure out “what is going on” when an interaction loop is disturbed. The process of the orienting response can be summarized as: “Surprise -> Composure (pulling oneself together) -> Exploration -> Differentiation (slicing the problem).” The quality of the orienting response directly reflects the activity level of the brain’s prefrontal cortex (the highest-level part of the cerebral cortex).

Our attention becomes fixed on things that arouse our curiosity (desire to explore), until this curiosity is affirmed. If curiosity is constantly negated, the individual easily falls into self-doubt and becomes increasingly neurotic. Mental manipulation tactics like “gaslighting” utilize this principle.

The disturbance of the interaction loop triggers the orienting response. The rise in arousal level temporarily weakens the higher cortex’s defense against sensory information, allowing real perception to briefly suppress imaginary perception, thus opening a path for the updating of the body image. The orienting response is the prerequisite for establishing a conditioned reflex; a stimulus that cannot evoke an orienting response cannot become a conditioned stimulus. The state of mind-body activation triggered by “surprise” can only be sustained briefly. Within this duration, all perceptions and exploratory behaviors are perceived as a whole. The organism strives to explore the relationship between the new real perception, its own experiences, and its motor commands, establishing new conditioned reflexes and forming new cognition. The stronger the sense of surprise, the easier the conditioned reflex is established, and the more difficult it is to extinguish. If the orienting response cannot be completed within this entire duration, it is very easy to produce psychological trauma.

The Process of Traumatization

A well-adapted individual will immediately stabilize themselves upon encountering an acute stress event and activate the exploratory impulse. After exploration is complete, they will initiate the fight-or-flight response or execute more complex behaviors.

If the subject’s activity capacity is restricted, the arousal level will continuously rise until the orienting response is completed or a freeze occurs. Freezing is a manifestation of orientation difficulty. The subject can neither make an effective differentiation (slice the problem) nor receive a response from exploration; they feel “at a complete loss.” This is accompanied by an extremely high arousal level, which may even trigger a near-death experience. This extreme arousal level cannot be maintained long-term. If the subject cannot release the energy and resolve the freeze, there is a danger of completely losing their mind (“scared crazy”) or even their life (“scared to death”). To maintain life, the subject has no choice but to accept this chaotic state of the phenomenological world and rapidly release the accumulated energy. The massive stress energy fails to help the subject outwardly overcome the crisis; instead, it turns inward and destroys the subject’s primitive response patterns and their primitive ability to judge resources and threats. It fixes in place the inhibition that the higher cerebral cortex (mainly referring to the prefrontal cortex) placed on various response tendencies during the freeze state, causing the subject to learn the ability to inhibit or even sever mind-body responses (this is an extreme form of “response inhibition”).

The subject abandons their original orienting response pattern, gives up exploration and struggle, and loses the sense of flow in daily activities, falling into a dissociated state of consciousness (“sluggishness”) and a limp, powerless physical state (“paralysis”). This state is “surrender.” The unfinished fight-or-flight response becomes the subject’s self-conflict; the subject is thus trapped in an incomplete stress process. Afterward, when the subject faces a new challenge and needs to activate energy again, these self-conflicts will also be activated. Old and new conflicts in the phenomenological world mix together, leaving the subject even more at a loss. The extreme “freeze-paralysis” cycle replaces the relatively mild “tense-relax” cycle. The normal exploration process is repeatedly interrupted by flashbacks or emotional flashbacks. The normal orienting response is replaced by reflexive freezing and self-conflict. At this point, we say the subject has been “traumatized.” Colloquially, their “soul is lost.”

In terms of activity level alone, “paralysis” and “freeze” possess the same quality; both are manifestations of degraded muscle coordination. “Freeze” is the body tensing in all directions simultaneously, with activity level sharply decreasing, the body accumulating very high energy, and the subject feeling intense pain. “Paralysis” is the simple, crude release of the energy accumulated during the freeze; the body “deflates” in all directions simultaneously. Although on the surface the subject appears to no longer be tense, and even very relaxed, their activity level cannot be restored. The exhaustion of activity level makes the establishment and triggering of sequential behaviors difficult. The subject feels that actions which had already become habits now feel strenuous. Exploration of novel stimuli also becomes strenuous and dull. The subject exhibits “difficulty initiating tasks.”

In specific narratives, freeze may be described as shock, panic, cowering, clumsiness, rigidity, being stunned, mania, agitation, breakdown, or neuroticism. Paralysis may be described as limpness, lethargy, sluggishness, being in a daze, blankness, emptiness, dissociation, confusion, dullness, gloominess, stupor, indifference, breakdown, depression, being checked out, helplessness, incompetence, powerlessness, laxity, withdrawal, surrender, or dissociation. These descriptions may be confused with normal exploratory responses such as anticipation, surprise, curiosity, vigilance, reverence, calmness, composure, immersion, concentration, relaxation, daydreaming (reverie), zoning out, or meditative states, and are thus deceptive.

Laxity and relaxation are different. The former implies dysfunction and paralysis, while the latter implies factual completion and psychological letting go. Laxity implies muscle atrophy, whereas relaxation implies latent explosive power. Long-term relaxation can lead to laxity (i.e., “use it or lose it”). To restore relaxation from long-term laxity requires the subject to be tempered through exercise in certain stressful situations. A stressful situation will put the subject into a state of stress, which for a survivor often means fear and mania.

The Compensation and Economizing Effects of Parasitic Tension

Freeze and paralysis are typical manifestations of low activity level and can be collectively termed “rigi-paralysis”. In many CPTSD survivors, rigi-paralysis replaces the normal, relaxed, and nimble neutral posture, making them appear stiff, clumsy, lazy, and scattered in the eyes of observers.

Although parasitic tension makes many originally easy and fluid activities sluggish, makes “finding the feeling” difficult, and limits the subject’s activity level, it also makes certain limited activities easier, and makes the subject more sensitive to certain types of risks. For some people, this can make their activity capacity adapt more easily to various crude cognitive schemas. The subject not only doesn’t reject the parasitic tension but actually develops a dependency on it, believing they have “gained insight” and can be more “worry-free.” This is the compensation effect of parasitic tension. Such people often leave observers with the impression of being “dull-witted” or “oafish.”

The economizing effect refers to parasitic tension making the subject feel they no longer need their previous basic energy. The drop in energy levels alleviates the pain of self-conflict and brings a comfortable feeling of laxity. This feeling of laxity is subjectively indistinguishable from a healthy feeling of relaxation (just as it is difficult for us to distinguish the feeling of moving our hands from hot water to warm water versus from warm water to cool water). This causes the subject to sink deeper and deeper into the state of rigi-paralysis. Regarding the part of their activity level that has been restricted, the subject only has a vague sense of limitation; they do not directly associate it with the parasitic tension. They may not even be aware the parasitic tension exists. Only when the parasitic tension is lifted due to some accidental reason can the subject see to what a dangerous degree their energy level has dropped. The closer the relationship between the trauma source and the subject, the more severe the self-conflict, the more complex the parasitic tension, and the more significant the compensation and economizing effects. The compensation and economizing effects will eventually dismantle the survivor’s neutral state, causing them to establish a symbiotic relationship with the trauma. At this point, the trauma has developed into CPTSD.

We can compare the body to a giant kindergarten. Every child in the kindergarten represents an impulse (activity tendency) in the body. The children’s playing and fighting make up the kindergarten’s daily life. Although the director is very tired, the children’s vitality makes him feel satisfied. One day, a major crisis suddenly erupts in the kindergarten. The children fall into chaos. Only then does the director realize he completely lacks sufficient crisis-response capabilities. Thus, he ties the children up in a way that is convenient for responding to this type of crisis. In the future, when he encounters a similar crisis signal, he just has to pull the ropes to react quickly. After the children are tied up, there is significantly less conflict. He no longer has to be so exhausted every day. He thinks he is simply brilliant, and so day by day, he slacks off. The children, having been tied up for a long time, slowly lose their vitality. They go from cannot move to not wanting to move; even their muscles begin to atrophy. The director always feels that compared to other kindergartens, his own lacks a certain vigor and creativity. He wants to do something, but he finds he has no idea where to start, and he feels very tired after just the slightest movement. His current state is clearly very comfortable; maybe it’s better to just muddle along like this. This continues until one day, the kindergartens hold a joint activity. The director unties the ropes on the children. Only then does he discover that all the children are already at death’s door.

We can also compare the body to a cup of liquid sol (a colloid). Every colloid particle in the gel represents an impulse (activity tendency) in the body. A massive external impact causes the colloid particles to aggregate. The tiny colloid particles turn into relatively large clumps, unable to continue their active Brownian motion, and gradually settle at the bottom of the cup. The nature of the sol has changed, but an uninformed person feels it has become clearer and purer.

The Generalization of Crisis Signals and the Triggering of Flashbacks

Before the subject sinks into a significant freeze, the high arousal level causes sensory stimuli to be comprehensively drawn into cognitive processing. The subject will feel their sensory capabilities have temporarily expanded to an unprecedented degree; at this time, the subject will give observers the impression of being highly agitated. As the freeze gradually becomes apparent, the impression the subject gives gradually changes from agitated to clumsy. When the subject gradually breaks down mentally, clumsiness gradually turns into sluggishness. The greater the increase in arousal level and the longer the duration of the stress process, the more sensory information is incorporated into cognition, to the point that ordinary information, universally present in the environment and usually ignored, may become associated with the acute stress event. If the crisis coping fails, this ordinary information may be stamped with the imprint of trauma, becoming a trigger for emotional flashbacks. From then on, the survivor always feels that life is seemingly filled with unnamable yet unlocatable danger signals. This sensory overload causes them suffering. Even calm situations can no longer make them relax. The slightest disturbance in life may evoke their traumatic experience. This is a “flashback.”

Flashbacks remind us that the mind-body stress state has never been fully resolved; it is still waiting for us to process it. Flashbacks embody the body’s questioning of the environment and its worry over its own coping abilities. It is a hint from the past self to the present self, and a communication between the historical self and the present self. The body constantly evokes these memories during calm moments to test whether the crisis has been resolved, while simultaneously examining whether the subject has learned the required coping skills. Flashbacks generally only appear in a daily state. In a state of restraint, because self-inhibition is stronger, flashbacks generally do not occur. Therefore, there is usually a time lag between the occurrence of the traumatic event and the appearance of flashbacks. The longer this time lag, the longer the subject’s state of restraint has lasted, and the greater the trauma’s impact on the body.

When facing a traumatic event, a healthily developed subject will deny its legitimacy and affirm the rationality of their own stress and confrontation. A survivor, however, will deny the legitimacy of their own state and reactions before and after the traumatic event, and rationalize the traumatic event, believing it was a reasonable “lesson,” the “superior” teaching them to learn to adjust their own state. Survivors cannot distinguish between the experience of being humiliated and being taught; they also cannot distinguish between the mind-body states of freezing and composure. Because their early experiences of fear were never appropriately soothed, and their primitive responses to crisis never received appropriate affirmation and support, their self-soothing ability and crisis-coping ability never developed. Whether they are startled, humiliated, or taught, they only know how to respond by withdrawing, while simultaneously experiencing deep shame.

The Development and Release of Freeze

The general response process for crisis coping: Crisis signal -> Orienting response: confrontation and blending -> Crisis resolution -> Return to serenity.

The freeze-recovery process for crisis coping: Crisis signal -> Orienting response difficulty -> Arousal level rises further -> Orienting response difficulty -> … -> Freeze -> Crisis resolution -> Delayed burst of energy -> Orienting response completed -> Return to serenity.

The trauma formation and compensation process: Crisis signal -> Orienting response difficulty -> Arousal level rises further -> Orienting response difficulty -> … -> Freeze -> Crisis resolution -> Delayed burst of energy -> Receives no response or only negative responses -> Generalization and normalization of crisis signals -> Attention deficit and hyperactive manifestations -> Repression and adaptation -> Numbness -> Autism. In this pathway, the freeze ultimately develops into autism. The survivor’s autism and the autism of an individual with Autism Spectrum Disorder are sometimes indistinguishable in their manifestation.

Take a toddler (not yet 2, just beginning to learn language, has lived with grandparents and uncle for a period, is very familiar with them, but they still cannot provide parental-level security) as an example to illustrate the process of generating and releasing a freeze: The grandparents bring the child to an unfamiliar environment. The child cannot yet confirm the safety of the environment and cannot even find a peer to be an “explorer guide” -> Orienting response difficulty, arousal level rises, “clumsy” manifestations begin -> Before completing the orienting response with the grandparents’ support, the child is picked up and passed around by strangers. They look very friendly, and the grandparents nearby also seem very supportive, but the strange smells on these people still make the child vigilant. The toddler simultaneously experiences contradictory feelings of familiarity and strangeness, kindness and threat -> Arousal level rises dramatically, but the toddler desperately inhibits their fight-or-flight response. After all, the grandparents seem to support these people; a drastic stress response seems inappropriate -> Falls into a freeze -> Barely maintains self-inhibition, enduring enormous mind-body pressure -> The crisis scene is resolved, the child returns home to a familiar and kind environment -> Bedtime arrives, self-inhibition is lifted -> Wakes from a nightmare, the fear experience is fully evoked -> Cries and screams -> Grandmother’s comfort -> Falls asleep again -> Wakes again from a nightmare, crying is more severe -> Grandmother tries harder to comfort -> Mind-body energy is gradually released through the crying. The child, through the environment’s feedback (the grandmother’s flustered-but-not-chaotic, rhythmic quality of movement during the comforting; her wholehearted concern; the warmth and calm of the environment) gradually recognizes the danger has passed -> Crying subsides, returns to serenity.

For an adult survivor, the release of trauma energy and the ceding of mind-body control are merely the first step toward awakening. How to mobilize drives to activate the mind and body is the bigger problem. A vitality-deprived mind and body are like an exposed reactor core, liable to be reoccupied by response inhibition at any time. Activating the mind and body requires not only correcting self-defeating cognitive schemas but also reliable, healthy subjects as interaction partners. A living organism is the most active interaction partner, and humans are the most active living organisms. “Co-dancing” with others is the simplest, most effective, and sustainable method for activating the mind and body. Survivors usually do not have such people in their living environment, so the most crucial step is to “walk out.” Before walking out, appropriate cognitive preparation is needed. Survivors should cherish every encounter with an attitude of gratitude. Entirely new interpersonal relationships are like a brand-new mirror box (referencing Ramachandran’s “mirror box experiment”), providing new “social channels” for perception, giving the subject the opportunity to update their self-image.

The Orienting Response and Emotion

The orienting response is always accompanied by arousal fluctuations. The more agitated the emotion, the smaller the space for cognition and full exploration, and the more difficult the adjustment of mentality and behavior (though the reward for completing the adjustment may also be greater). In this agitated state, if the orienting response cannot be completed, the frustrated fight response may evolve into mania, and the frustrated flight response may give way to helplessness. Take the Asch conformity experiment as an example: When the subject discovers their inconsistency with the group, the orienting response is evoked. If they remain unable to perceive the tricky nature of the experiment itself, and are powerless to oppose the group, they will fall into helplessness amid self-doubt. If they can clearly see their situation in time, their differentiation of conscious objects will deepen. They will let go of their psychological bond with these people at the concrete cognitive level, and these people will no longer be able to affect them. If they believe these people are relatively rule-abiding, they will classify them as trustworthy objects that “cannot be conspired with, but can be used as a background to help maintain the experimental state,” and thus continue to focus on the experiment. If these people increase their interference, provoking their stress response, they can classify them as hostile objects and exercise their right—to withdraw from the experiment (i.e., the “flight response,” which is permitted in the experiment) or to expel these people from their activity space (i.e., the “fight response,” which is not possible in this experiment). This is “releasing confrontation.” The completion of differentiation means the completion of the orienting response; the complete release of confrontation means the completion of the stress response.

Both fight and flight are expressions of refusing cooperation; both are confrontational. “Confrontation” is the opposite of “surrender.” Therefore, the fight-or-flight response can also be called the “confrontation response.” However, the fight-or-flight response is not a blind confrontation; it is carried out on the basis of a clear differentiation of conscious objects. Confrontation aims to restore and develop blending. The process of fleeing danger is the process of running toward safety, so the confrontation response can also be called the “confrontation-blending response.” If the state of blending cannot be restored, the confrontation cannot be fully released. The subject is forced to choose between “restraint,” “surrender,” and “continuing exploration and confrontation.”

The exploration phase of the orienting response can be called the exploratory response. In this phase, the differentiation of conscious objects is not yet clear. Subtle confrontation and blending run through it from start to finish. Therefore, the exploratory response can be seen as the aggregation of various subtle confrontation responses in a complex manner.

The exploratory response includes various probing behaviors—like a dance, looking left and right, advancing and retreating. If the subject is unable to complete the exploration due to various restrictions (e.g., insufficient prerequisite information, lack of time, being threatened, isolated and helpless, flashback intrusions, betrayal by a trustworthy object, etc.), these mutually contradictory probing impulses may become entangled, like mutually antagonistic muscles tensing simultaneously, accumulating high energy but unable to move. The mutually contradictory impulses confront each other, and the subject experiences anxiety. Anxiety signifies that the orienting response is deadlocked. Anxiety disrupts the mind-body connection, obstructs the formation of a felt sense (experience), and prevents differentiation from proceeding normally. Because differentiation cannot be completed, when the subject releases confrontation, it is as if they are being held back by something. Their drive is constantly interrupted, making the confrontation unable to be “satisfying,” causing the energy level of the confrontation to continuously rise, thereby producing anger. Differentiation in close relationships (including intimate relationships) is particularly complex and subtle, and therefore often involves more anger and helplessness. Although out-of-control anger may destroy the bond relation in a physical sense, it still, in a psychological sense, reflects an acknowledgment of the bond. Appropriate aggression allows us to maintain the bond while simultaneously protecting ourselves.

Pathology: Self-Inhibition and Micro-Management

Self-Inhibition

Self-conflict is the internalization of the stuck confrontation between the subject and the stressor. It creates superfluous psychological conflict. It is like extra seasoning that ruins the taste of an originally normal activity. The pressure brought by self-conflict forces the subject’s aggressive tendencies and withdrawal tendencies to both become stronger. The subject must consume a large amount of cognitive resources to prevent themselves from losing control. This is self-inhibition, colloquially known as “internal friction”. A subject with severe self-inhibition often gives the impression of being “screwed-up” or “twisted” (拧巴), appearing at times excessively weak and at other times excessively aggressive. Self-inhibition can be divided into two main categories: behavioral inhibition and response inhibition.

In subjective narratives, the “twisted” manifestation can be traced back to various experiences of losing composure, embarrassment, or awkwardness (psychological shadows). These experiences of losing composure lead the subject to believe they are incompetent to handle a certain kind of pressure, yet they are unwilling to escape it. The shame caused by extreme experiences of losing composure may cause the survivor to develop a near-global self-inhibition. The survivor stubbornly believes their instinctive reactions are ugly rather than lovable. Self-inhibition helps them conduct detailed self-censorship before acting to avoid making a fool of themselves. Self-inhibition creates an unnamed fire of anger. This anger destroys the possibility of the subject establishing emotional connections with others, which in turn makes the subject feel even more ashamed. Self-inhibition is further reinforced, falling into a vicious cycle.

In a specific daily activity, people often only notice one pole of the self-conflict. In a self-help context, if the subject wants to accurately identify and dissolve self-conflict, they must consciously view these contradictory manifestations as a whole; this is the “Paired Consciousness” of Section 4.3. In a therapeutic relationship, the counselor often exposes the individual’s self-inhibition by creating a relatively neutral environment.

In an observer’s eyes, the language of a self-conflicted person often has a “push-pull” style: they first throw out an extremely aggressive conclusion, and then add a relatively objective piece of evidence or a relatively gentle consolation as their defense or remedy, or vice versa. For example: “Are you blind? Didn’t you see XXX?” The first sentence comes from their internalized confrontation, and the latter sentence represents self-inhibition. (Or, they might not say the first sentence, but simply say the second sentence while carrying the emotion of the first.) Aggression causes them to lose control; self-inhibition further wastes attention. A self-conflicted person needs a very long time to realize that, in many cases, objective and neutral expression (unlike the neutral state, expression must have an inclination, otherwise it isn’t expression; “neutral” here means “harmonious with the environment”) is not only the most effortless, but also the most powerful.

Willpower

The ability of the subject to use the agency of attention to give more support to specific impulses is willpower. Willpower is also the ability of the subject to consciously maintain synchronicity with a specific conscious object. Willpower rapidly consumes activity level in a short time; the lower the activity level, the weaker the available willpower.

Willpower and the ability to self-soothe (see Section 2.14) are different expressions of the same ability. Willpower emphasizes “action”; self-soothing emphasizes “non-action.”

Restraint and Behavioral Inhibition

When facing a crisis that cannot be escaped temporarily, if conflicting impulses are allowed to develop unchecked, the individual will eventually collapse in extreme freeze. To avoid collapse, the subject must exert willpower and strive to maintain restraint. A person who consciously restrains themself is a strong and wise person. They appropriately lower their arousal level to greatly extend the sustainable duration of the orienting response, enabling themselves to wait for the right moment while enduring. They have a high awareness of the energy stored within them. When the stress process is finally completed, their character seems to have completed a tempering. Conscious restraint, as a highly mature coping ability, is somewhat difficult to master. It teaches the subject to “maneuver” (周旋), beyond the extremes of submission and confrontation. In contrast, people more easily become passive restrainers.

Passive restraint is a relatively common type of self-inhibition, referred to in this article as “behavioral inhibition.” Although a passive restrainer maintains restraint on a physical level, they lack awareness on a cognitive level. The poverty of their cognitive resources causes them to remain stuck long-term in a state of restraint without knowing it. Behavioral inhibition consumes cognitive resources. When their already scarce cognitive resources are occupied by other activities, preventing them from completing behavioral inhibition, or when a safe environment makes them feel inhibition is no longer necessary, this stored energy may cause them to exhibit a terrifying side. Many passive restrainers try their best to restrain themselves when contacting strangers, needing to appear friendly even when they have been violated. This causes energy to accumulate further. This pent-up energy can only be released in the relatively safe home environment or when they face those who are even more vulnerable than themselves. Therefore, passive restrainers commonly exhibit the characteristic of “raging at home” (being a tyrant at home but a coward outside). As they age, they generally develop various functional disorders or even psychosomatic diseases. The former includes insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, aerophagia, reflux disease, etc.; the latter includes central serous chorioretinopathy, coronary heart disease, etc. The fluctuation cycle of their condition is often closely related to the subject’s emotional rhythm.

Response Inhibition

In an extreme freeze, if restraint cannot function and the support system is completely absent, the individual will eventually collapse, shifting from “freeze” to “paralysis.” In this near-paralyzed state, the individual no longer resonates with the situation, no longer moved by any stimulus. If this experience repeats, the individual may have the chance to learn the “knack” of severing emotional connection, learning to cope with all pressure using “numb indifference.” They no longer produce the impulse to blend into the situation, and thus no longer feel the impulse to resist the situation, and thus no longer feel any pressure. This is response inhibition. The subject’s body is in the world, but their heart “isn’t playing this game anymore”; they have lost the most basic trust in the world. Once response inhibition becomes a habit, personality development inevitably stagnates. People with low activity levels are often very adept at response inhibition without realizing it.

If the subject’s exploratory ability is constantly negated and punished by a trusted object, they may learn to subconsciously avoid their own orienting response. This is a habitual response inhibition. In a specific stress situation, habitual response inhibition may manifest as learned helplessness, cold indifference, or even boredom.

Behavioral inhibition is merely striving to prevent an impulse from developing into a behavior, whereas response inhibition is the inhibition of the impulse itself. In subjective experience, the former is often interpreted as “endurance,” accompanied by the feeling of blood rushing through the veins; the latter is often interpreted as an experience of fatigue or boredom. The uncomfortable experience accompanying behavioral inhibition will motivate the subject to seek change, whereas response inhibition causes the subject to lose interest in stimuli, often requiring a cognitive shock to produce the will to change. Good response inhibition helps the subject fully integrate into society; poor response inhibition causes the subject to resist social contact. The process by which a subject learns response inhibition is the process of being educated. Adaptation to one community may affect the ability to adapt to other communities. Response inhibition that is deeply bound to a specific community may cause severe maladaptation in other communities. Selective adaptation to communities reflects the individual’s level of education and psychological health.

Response inhibition causes the body to lack response impulses, so the subject cannot receive corresponding perceptual feedback, and cognition becomes “rice for the cook” (i.e., making bricks without straw). Poor response inhibition makes survivors often feel they are missing the feelings that normal people ought to have in a corresponding situation. They will fall into mind-wandering in the compulsive search for feelings. Response inhibition is one reason survivors often experience memory retrieval difficulties and alexithymia. Mind-wandering, to a certain extent, is compensation for the missing behavioral impulses, just as we hear our own tinnitus if we force ourselves to listen for sound in a quiet environment. “Mind-wandering,” a “blank mind,” and the sudden surge of intense negative emotions in a calm situation (emotional flashbacks) all indicate the existence of response inhibition.

Response inhibition is also the core of hypnosis.

The survivor’s sluggishness and numbness come from self-inhibition, not brain damage. This is the fundamental difference between them and intellectually disabled individuals on the phenomenological level.

Micro-Management

Micro-management is the extension of behavioral inhibition and response inhibition; it is compulsive self-monitoring and self-imprisonment. Intense shame or fear causes survivors to attempt to deny and suppress all their own instinctive reactions, using willpower to take over all their activities. Survivors trap their own minds and bodies firmly in a state of numbness, and then meticulously self-censor to avoid mistakes, racking their brains to do so. However, the more concrete the thinking, the easier it is to have blind spots; the more concrete the behavior, the easier it is to “lose the feeling.” Survivors discover that no matter how careful they are, it is hard to get it right, and they can only remain trapped in annoyance all day.

If depression is “learned helplessness,” then response inhibition is “learned indifference.” The subject actively severs the emotional connection between themself and potentially trustworthy objects, shielding their own feelings to avoid revealing behavioral incompetence or inability, avoiding making themselves look clumsy. Learned helplessness and learned indifference are both learned non-responsiveness. Diffuse shame is the driving force that maintains micro-management. No matter how many cognitive schemas related to micro-management the survivor accumulates, they are woefully inadequate for coping with real, fast-paced, unstructured social situations. Micro-management only makes the subject clumsier and more rigid. This positive feedback loop creates the compulsivity of micro-management.

The long-term progression of a survivor’s micro-management habit can develop to an astonishing degree. For example, when learning motor skills, they compulsively focus on the placement of various body parts rather than their own stream of experience, appearing slow, clumsy, and inefficient, as if they are manipulating a numb, rigid puppet. When talking, they are always thinking about how to agree with the other party, how to escape the tense state, rather than concentrating on the content of the conversation, which causes their dialogues to often terminate after no more than two rounds. When analyzing problems, they often exhibit the standards of a quasi-philosopher, appearing complex and ingenious, but completely impractical. Micro-management makes their actual performance always far clumsier than their true ability. They cannot follow their own feelings and impulses to actively explore; therefore, their learning efficiency is very low, and their skill proficiency improves very slowly.

The reason compulsive micro-management is absurd is that the subject妄想 (delusionally hopes) to adapt to the infinitely complex and rapidly changing world—which is full of activity—by relying on limited logical thinking abilities, without improving their own activity level. If they could see how pathetic they look, they would know how much they ought to be angry. Anger means the subject is resisting their long-held habits, which will become the starting point for change.

Micro-management has special applications in hypnosis-based psychotherapy techniques. In a context of mutual trust between client and therapist, the client, in a hypnotic state, cedes a considerable portion of their own control to the therapist. The therapist operates the micro-management, allowing the client to personally witness how benign self-management coordinates with one’s own biological instincts.

Self-Hypnosis

Survivors learn self-hypnosis before they learn to use language and other tools to capture, feel, and escape pain. Response inhibition becomes their basic tool for coping with pain. In their experience, pain always recedes on its own; it is not that they did something to eliminate the pain. Not feeling pain is because they didn’t make a mistake or escaped in time, not because they received enough love and support. From pursuing stimulation to enduring pain, enduring fear, and enduring anxiety, their normal developmental tendencies are replaced by self-harm (self-abusive/masochistic) tendencies. A sense of efficacy is replaced by a sense of guilt.

Pathology: Learned Helplessness

The Concept of Learned Helplessness

The depression discussed in this article mainly refers to the reactive depression commonly present in CPTSD, PTSD, Asperger’s Syndrome, and anxiety disorders, rather than typical depression. The theory of learned helplessness holds a unique advantage in explaining and responding to reactive depression.

On a cognitive level, depression manifests as a loss of the sense of meaning. However, as Irvin Yalom said, life intrinsically has no meaning; what is interesting is why humans only believe this when they are depressed.

Organisms possess an innate exploratory impulse; “making trouble” (tinkering/fidgeting/exploring) is the instinct of life. Meaning is a social explanation that people endow these instincts with during activity. In other words, one must first have the experience of being alive before one can have the meaning of life. If a person, through constant setbacks, falls into learned helplessness, believing they are fundamentally powerless to escape their predicament, and convinces themselves to give up the struggle, their exploratory impulse may be completely suppressed. At this point, the subject will feel that everything has lost its meaning. This is the experimental psychologist Martin Seligman’s explanation for depression.

The Subject-Environment View of Learned Helplessness

Martin Seligman used the dog electric shock experiment to provide a path to immunizing against learned helplessness. A wild dog (or wolf), no matter how many inescapable shocks it suffers, will never completely give up the struggle. They will grasp every subtle clue with all their might, waiting for the situation to change to escape the predicament and return to normal. But a laboratory-bred dog easily gives up the struggle after multiple failures, falling into a state of depression. Even after the crisis is lifted, they cannot recover their original vitality. Compared to lab-bred dogs, wild animals always face more pressure and risk in life; therefore, life pressure cannot explain the cause of depression. The reason wild animals do not easily fall into learned helplessness is that they must trust themselves, be responsible for themselves, and face challenges directly in their natural environment (such as leading the pack or scaring off small children); they will not be easily tamed by any force. These experiences of controlling pressure immunize them against depression.

The process of human growth is the process of guiding one’s own primitive impulses to fully exert their constructive potential. This process involves numerous complex and subtle balances and requires the comprehensive coordination of all one’s impulses. Only people with strong “psychological muscles” can do this with ease. A fragile person easily, intentionally or unintentionally, blocks their own stream of experience (i.e., “self-defeat”) while scrambling. So-called fragility refers both to spiritual fragility and physical weakness. It can even be said that all spiritual fragility essentially comes from physical weakness. “Physical weakness” determines susceptibility to depression.

Learned helplessness diminishes the subject’s attention to the effectiveness of their own behavior and to changes in external pressure. The higher cortex of the brain becomes less sensitive to sensory stimuli and behavioral outcomes. The spirit gradually disperses. Even if the subject accidentally performs a behavior conducive to escaping the predicament, they cannot produce that “brightening before the eyes” (rise in arousal level) feeling. Instead, they feel, “It was nothing special.” Therefore, they find it difficult to notice environmental changes, have no motivation to reassess their situation, and thus can only remain dispersed and helpless. This is the phenomenological explanation of learned helplessness. From this perspective, learned helplessness is, in fact, an arousal regulation disorder. Depressed individuals often experience intense anger during the awakening process, which places high demands on the helper’s abilities. If this anger is not relieved, it easily diffuses into mania, making the problem more complex.

For an ordinary person, mental dispersion is alarming. An ordinary person will find ways to keep their attention focused, escaping the state of dispersion. But those with learned helplessness are already adapted to dispersion. They only feel a hazy anxiety and dissociation; they may even feel this state is very comfortable. They even become a source of “contagion” for dispersion, causing others who interact with them to often feel an inexplicable discomfort. During an interaction, a person with learned helplessness tendencies can appropriately remind the other party that their thinking is rather jumpy (a euphemism for dispersed), that their ability to maintain the topic is poor, and that to ensure the conversation is constructive, the other party must do more to maintain the topic and reduce divergence. Reminding the other party is far more reliable than reminding oneself. Due to a lack of self-awareness, self-reminders often create compensation in other areas, making the problem more complex. When executing tasks independently, a person with learned helplessness tendencies must constantly remind themselves to anchor onto the core goal and be vigilant against any behaviors or thoughts of randomly “adding extra ingredients,” even if they are cloaked in encouragement or confidence.

Learned helplessness limits the individual’s exploratory capacity. When facing problems, the helpless person always tends toward superficial, generalized, and theoretical attributions, lacking a vivid sense of concrete participation. This results in a very low differentiation of conscious objects, making it difficult to take targeted actions. This causes the pessimist tendency in depressed individuals. A negative, pessimistic attributional style and learned helplessness form a chicken-and-egg cycle.

Viewed from its source, depression is exhausted confrontation. Viewed from its destination, depression is stuck mourning or stuck struggle. The process of an individual walking out of depression is the process of re-learning to trust their own instincts, unfurling their own nature once again, and developing their adaptive capacities.

The Inter-Subject View of Learned Helplessness

The literal meaning of “helpless” reveals its essence well: “without help from anyone,” or “isolated.” But the person concerned is often unaware of this source and can only explain it as their own lack of ability or excessive fragility. Of course, their own ability is a factor, but just as few people are born strong, our inner strength is continuously accumulated in the postnatal growth process through mutual support with others. If a person always falls into helplessness, yet the social support system they are in constantly implies that they should attribute this interpersonal relationship deficit to their own personal deficit, then they will fall into learned helplessness. Learned helplessness, in turn, further weakens the subject’s ability to develop relationships with people. From this perspective, the cause of learned helplessness is people, not events. Learned helplessness might be more accurately called “compulsive loneliness.” Its essence is toxic interpersonal relationships. One can only grow by developing healthy interpersonal relationships and constantly learning from facts, accompanied by a healthy and powerful social support system.

Helpless individuals generally lack the ability to communicate as equals. In interactions, they either degenerate into cowardly subordinates or become violent superiors. To cultivate the ability to communicate as equals, refer to the works of Marshall Rosenberg in the recommended reading list.

The right to interpret meaning is far more important than meaning itself. The subject must strive to learn to grasp the right to interpret meaning, especially learning to find the meaning in the process. When the subject realizes their behavior is becoming less and less worthy of attention and increasingly meaningless, they must quickly compose themselves out of their dissociation, realizing they are degenerating into a subordinate, a helpless person, a surrenderer. This vigilance will drive the individual to re-examine their support system and see their unmet needs. Then, emotions such as anger, frustration, disappointment, loneliness, and compassionate grief (grief, sympathy) will emerge. If the subject can fully embrace these emotions, they have the opportunity to find a way to preserve their own strength and avoid falling into helplessness.

Tools: Mourning and Letting Go

The Concept of Mourning

In psychotherapy, mourning is not a simple catharsis of sadness; it is an alchemical process of transforming intangible pain into life-sustaining nutrients, an active psychological reconstruction technique. It is both a surrender to loss and a reconstruction of existence. The loss here can refer to the permanent disappearance of any person, event, or thing that has played a constructive role for the subject. Growth is both a process of continuous gain and a process of continuous loss. A negative force exists in life, constantly dissolving our meaning and negating our value. From the perspective of the philosophy of death, we experience tiny deaths every day.

Whether a loss is worth mourning is highly subjective. Imagine a couple forced by life pressures to go out to work late every night, only returning after dawn. Their young child frequently wakes up in darkness and solitude, unable to feel a single familiar breath, and inevitably feels an inexplicable grief. For some naturally sensitive children, this grief can even have a psychological significance similar to grieving a death. If family members can fully recognize the traumatic nature of this separation experience and work with the child to build psychological resilience, the child has the opportunity to use this as a turning point to learn strength. Otherwise, the child is very likely to retain psychological trauma from this invisible “emotional neglect.”

Unmet expectations, fruitless efforts, contributions that were slighted, the warm daily life that should have existed but in reality never did—all these possess the nature of loss and will impact the subject’s psychological endurance. Ordinary people engage in many micro-mourning processes every day. The ability to mourn largely determines the subject’s ability to accept reality. For people with severe psychological trauma, mourning is only possible after shame and fear have been sufficiently processed, a certain capacity for self-compassion and self-responsibility has been cultivated, and they no longer see “giving up hope” (letting the heart die) as “surrendering.”

Mourning includes two aspects: feeling the significance that the departed thing held for oneself, and feeling that the loss is irreversible. That is, “knowing what one has lost” and “knowing there is nothing more one can do.”

Regardless of the psychological school, the application of mourning relies heavily on opportune timing; it cannot be forced. But this timing absolutely does not mean passive waiting; it also requires strenuous struggle to make it easier to obtain.

Imagine waking up in the dead of night. At this time, all sounds are silent, everything is hidden in darkness, the hustle and bustle of the day is temporarily put aside, and the body’s energy is at its lowest point of the day. At this time, the emotions the subject feels can be regarded as their “emotional backdrop.” If a person’s emotional backdrop is always drowned in frustration, and they want to cry but have no idea why, it means there is a large amount of unfinished mourning within them.

Mourning and Bonds

Mourning begins with being moved (touched). Imagine the silhouette of a passerby on the street reminds you of a relative who has passed away. The sense of intimacy that previously only this relative could evoke surges in your heart. However, before you have time to rush forward, your consciousness begins to remind you that your relative no longer exists. Preventing you from falling into the illusion of their return is the duty of consciousness. Yet, the irrepressible stirring in your chest is human instinct. This experience of intense tearing between emotion and cognition is grief (bereavement). Leaving enough psychological space for this tearing, allowing the mind and body states to restore coordination, is the process of mourning.

Mourning ends in responsibility. Before confirming there is nothing more they can do, everyone must experience sufficient struggle and tearing; otherwise, the mourning cannot be thorough. If mourning cannot be completed, the individual cannot let go of the past. They may repeatedly reenact behavioral patterns that are long outdated, delusionally trying to save their former self. This severely limits their adaptive capacity. The developmental level of many trauma survivors has long stagnated in childhood. They easily indulge in ruminating on those beautiful times that are gone forever; however, this rumination not only fails to bring strength but actually exacerbates their depression. The completion of mourning signifies the reintegration of mind and body. The subject plucks up their courage anew and begins to face a broader and more challenging life. Only at this point can the exciting moments of growth become the internal strength that motivates people to keep moving forward.

In the movie Titanic, facing the reality that the great ship was sinking and only a few could be saved, the people boarding the lifeboats almost all said goodbye to their relatives remaining on the ship with tears. Tears have a magical power; they allow people to let go of psychological bonds that were otherwise difficult to release, without having to live out their remaining years weighed down by guilt. But Rose, facing Jack, could not shed a single tear. At the last moment before the lifeboat was lowered, she jumped back onto the ship. Her refusal to cry was not an unwillingness to accept reality; rather, it was the belief that she still had a choice more worthy of persistence.

When should one accept loss, and when should one not? This question can only be answered by seeking the answer within one’s own heart. Behind acceptance is the choice of responsibility. Often, “picking things back up” tests courage and wisdom far more than “letting go.”

An Example of Mourning

Considering that a child’s situation is purer and gentler, and less likely to cause discomfort to the reader, an example of a child is selected here. No one was injured in this event; you can read it with peace of mind.

A is a child just over two years old. She often spends weekends at her grandmother’s house and has a deep psychological bond with her. Her uncle is also home on weekends and often plays with her; their relationship is also very good. One afternoon, the grandmother, after comforting A to sleep, had to go out for an errand. She left A alone on the bed and instructed the uncle to keep an eye on her. At this time, the uncle was working in the next room. Two hours later, A woke up and immediately began to cry loudly, calling out for “Grandma” incessantly. The uncle heard the sound and came over, intending to pick her up, but A was unwilling. The uncle handed her the favorite doll from the head of the bed; she ignored it. The uncle told her that Grandma had gone out for an errand and would be back soon, proposing they play with building blocks while they waited for Grandma. A did not respond and continued to cry and scream while lying prone on the bed. The uncle asked again, “Uncle is sleepy too, let’s sleep together.” Then he covered A with a small blanket and lay down next to her, pretending to sleep. A cried and yelled even louder. The uncle felt helpless and tentatively said to her: “I’m not going to bother with you anymore, I’ll just leave you here to cry alone. I’m leaving, okay?” A replied: “You can go.” The uncle thus left the room. A continued to cry loudly on the bed, calling out for Grandma. About five minutes later, the crying and calls gradually stopped. A got off the bed and left the room. Holding her doll, she found her uncle and wanted to play together. The uncle asked her: “Are you still sad?” A replied: “Not sad.” The uncle asked: “Don’t you know Grandma will be back soon?” A replied: “I know.” The uncle asked: “Then why were you crying?” A fell silent. The uncle realized the answer might be beyond her expressive abilities and asked her: “Even though you knew Grandma was coming back, you just felt too awful inside, and felt you had to cry it out to feel better, is that right?” A nodded repeatedly and replied: “Uh-huh, yes.”

A has a lively personality and deep feelings for her grandmother. During the periods when her mother is absent, her grandmother effectively functions as her secure attachment object. Supported by this attachment relationship, the child can fully explore at a very high arousal level without suffering sensory overload. Attachment gives her the courage to engage in challenging activities and reap extraordinary excitement and accomplishment from them. While gaining this sense of accomplishment, her bond with her attachment object also deepens. The process of exploration is the process of enjoying her grandmother’s protection; the vitality she displays during exploration is also her feedback for her grandmother’s meticulous care. During the exploration process, her arousal level and stress level both reach optimal levels, and her activity level reaches its limit. In this state, if the attachment object suddenly disappears, the loss of security expectation destroys her normal attention patterns, and she will experience extreme fear. The immense sensory pressure causes her to experience sensory overload, and her spirit rapidly collapses. When A, sleeping peacefully in her grandmother’s arms, woke up to solitude, she felt that the most solid and reliable part of her heart had suddenly disappeared. She met the void with a relaxed body, active emotions, and open senses, feeling an intense sense of oppression and emptiness.

A’s crying and screaming were clearly not to “manipulate” her grandmother, because she knew her grandmother couldn’t hear; furthermore, it was not because she felt abandoned, because she knew her grandmother would be back soon. The grief she experienced was definitely not a simple feeling of loneliness; otherwise, she would not have refused her uncle’s suggestion to play together. This grief contained an extremely rich power. Within it was not only disappointment, fear, loneliness, sadness, and frustration, but also anger, defiance, nostalgia, cherish, and longing. It was as if her beloved dolls had been accidentally scattered all over the floor, and she had to carefully pick them up and put them back in order. She did not want this organizing process to be interrupted by external forces. Finally, she collected her feelings and reorganized her senses. She began to play games with her uncle while waiting for Grandma to come home.

In this event, the child did not experience a permanent loss, but this was still a very typical mourning process. A two-year-old child can already understand the meaning of “Grandma will come back.” However, regardless of when she comes back, the heart-wrenching sense of loss the child experiences in the present moment is real and must be appropriately processed. Only after this emotion is fully processed can “Grandma will come back” become actual comfort. It is just like when we comfort others, we often say, “There are still many days ahead; you must cherish the beauty left in life even more.” Thus, we see mourning is both letting go and regaining hope. The two-year-old child doesn’t understand any grand principles; the reaction she produced authentically displayed her emotional intelligence. For a child to have such emotional intelligence, one can predict her path of growth will go further than that of ordinary people. A child with poor emotional intelligence would easily experience shame, helplessness, and frustration in this situation. If they receive no response for a long time, they are very likely to gradually become numb.

Tools: Working with Dreams and the Half-Awake State

Dreams

During sleep, the activity of the brain’s higher cortex decreases, compulsive self-inhibition is lifted, and somatic experiences that were avoided by the subject during self-inhibition may find expression in the dreamscape. Therefore, dreams can become a window for us to understand our own true experiences. The focus here is on the emotional content of dreams, not on Freudian metaphors or symbols. The survivor’s mystical tendencies make them easily attracted to Freudian analysis, which ironically makes simple, direct analysis more difficult.

The dreams of survivors usually have a strong traumatized color. For example, some survivors often let out terrifying screams in the middle of the night, deeply troubling their families or roommates. In their dreams, they are often in a state of extreme loneliness and incomparable depression. This often indicates the existence of abandonment trauma.

The Half-Awake Time

A survivor’s prefrontal cortex activity is significantly lower than that of ordinary people. Reflected in their mental state, this means they are often in a chaotic and scattered state, as if they have never fully woken up. This is also why their reality-testing ability is significantly weaker than ordinary people’s, and why they are overly numb to abnormal information in the environment. Their various imaginings possess a dream-like reality, to the extent that they often use “mind-wandering” to relieve their boredom and take pleasure in it.

Before getting up, people go through a process of gradually waking from the dream state. During this time, we can both see the images from the dream and feel the emotions of the dream, while also hearing external sounds and possessing a certain ability for reality testing. We possess a degree of self-awareness, yet we do not have excessive response inhibition. All the impulses stirred up by thoughts can be closed-looped within the dream; they do not develop into real behavior. The body is in the most relaxed state one can experience in daily life. An ordinary person’s prefrontal cortex is like a fully charged electric motor; it can start operating immediately upon activation. They rarely notice, and find it difficult to utilize, the intermediate acceleration process. But the survivor’s prefrontal cortex is like an underpowered motor. This helps them grasp a certain “knack” for maintaining low-speed brain operation, allowing the awakening process to be greatly extended. They thereby obtain a special method for observing their own behavioral impulses and response patterns. In this half-asleep, half-awake state, the subject has the opportunity to observe the parasitic tensions in their body that have long been ignored. The identities of observer and actor form an extremely fragile unity at this time. This state of consciousness is also a special hypnotic state.

One reason CPTSD survivors find it difficult to form profound experiences (felt sense) through Focusing is that their traumatization process began too early. A large amount of parasitic tension has already been deeply accepted by them and is very difficult for them to identify, and thus cannot be focused on (it can also be understood that these parasitic tensions are highly stable, have lost their activity level, and thus cannot be perceived). Although most parasitic tensions have become habitual, a small portion will still be released to some degree during sleep, and then quickly revert to their old ways upon waking. This portion of parasitic tension—the part that fluctuates with the sleep-wake cycle—can be captured in the half-awake time. Focusing on these parasitic tensions can often “pull the turnip and bring up the mud,” thereby providing clues for identifying the more primary parasitic tensions.

Once a fast-paced activity accepts Focusing, it gradually slows down. Once slow-paced activities accept Focusing, they mutually evoke one another and become richer and richer. This is the power of Focusing. It is like an overly active person who, under our gentle gaze, gradually slows down upon realizing their “out-of-bounds” behavior; or a listless person who “finds the feeling” during a “co-dance” and gradually becomes active. It is precisely because of our gentle attitude that they can relax and quiet down or become active, rather than suddenly freezing out of shame. This gradual slowing or mutual evocation process is very important. In it, the subject will experience the fundamental difference between mind-wandering and healthy imagination. Mind-wandering is monotonous, boring, and self-centered, whereas healthy imagination is rich, delicate, and relationship-centered. Mind-wandering causes the subject to self-enclose; healthy imagination causes the subject to integrate deeply with the world. Mind-wandering is compulsive, its rhythm difficult to control; healthy imagination has a strong activity level, its rhythm changing with the situation. Mind-wandering reinforces self-inhibition; healthy imagination promotes self-expression. Mind-wandering scatters the subject’s attention; healthy imagination maintains and promotes interactive equilibrium.

Like a hypnotic state, this half-awake state can assist self-awareness, but it cannot liberate drives, because this state itself repels drives. The liberation of drives must be carried out in life. During that process, mind-wandering may be repeatedly evoked. The subject will, in the repeated fading and evoking of mind-wandering, complete the narrative restoration of the traumatic event and clarify the stuck stress process. Only when the trauma is fully processed, response inhibition is lifted, and drives are liberated, can the survivor break free from mind-wandering. This process is analogous to a high-speed piece of equipment breaking down: we must stop the equipment before handling the fault, but after stopping it, our repair process cannot get real-time feedback. We can only repair a little, then start it up to see, then stop it again, adjust again, and start it again. After repeating this cycle many times, we discover that many of the equipment’s problems are interconnected; we simply cannot completely fix one problem before processing the others. It is like installing a tire: we do not completely tighten one lug nut before tightening the others; rather, we first put the main nuts in, then tighten each nut a little, one by one. After many cycles, all the nuts are tightened, and the tire is completely fixed in the correct position. This is truly a process that tests one’s temperament, but the good thing is that most survivors possess a patient and meticulous character.

This state is actually quite a luxury. Maintaining it requires ample time and a serene external environment. (Serenity is absolutely not dead silence; it includes gentle and rich environmental stimuli, such as sunlight, birdsong, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the sounds of breakfast being prepared, etc. All these signals convey information of safety and peace.) When the subject leaves this state, they should be grateful to the people who provided these conditions for them.

Dreams and Flashbacks

Agonizing over whether the fragmented images in flashbacks are real memories is of no benefit to healing. These images might come from real memories, or they might come from books read, movies watched, or stories heard. These images are just materials spontaneously invoked by our body in the process of transmitting information to us, used to help us understand our present experience. On a detailed level, we should understand flashbacks just as we understand language. Flashbacks are the language of the body. Regardless of the authenticity of the various fragmental pieces of information in a flashback, they are only “vocabulary.” Just as we don’t concern ourselves with the etymology of specific words when we speak, what we should be concerned with is not the origin of the various details in the flashback, but the emotions contained within these details, the organizational method of these details, and their meaning for the present moment. On a holistic level, a flashback is a waking dream. We should treat flashbacks exactly as we treat dreams.

Tools: Training Humor

Interaction relaxes people; relaxation promotes interaction. A relaxed and active interactive field is the soil where a sense of humor grows. A sense of humor is life’s most important lubricant, helps to immunize against trauma, and is also one of the qualities survivors lack most.

When the manifestation of things conflicts with our cognition, or when the manifestations of different parts of a thing make us feel uncoordinated, a “dissonant” situation arises. Facing dissonance, we first feel “surprise,” and then quickly develop feelings like “odd,” “awkward,” “novel,” “mysterious,” or “laughable.” Humor is the ability to transform various feelings of dissonance into a feeling of “laughable.” “Odd” and “awkward” are negative feelings; “laughable” is a positive feeling. When facing a problem that does not need to be deliberately solved, humor dissolves its catastrophic nature in an intelligent way, allowing energy to flow again.

If you are unintentionally pushed by someone, you must first re-stabilize yourself and regain your balance before you can decide your next reaction. Similarly, after a subject is stimulated, the shorter the time from shock to composure, the better. The subject must have the ability to rapidly accept their own true emotional stirring (being moved) to fully utilize the effect of training. Regardless of which school of training one adopts, the training process must avoid the interference of secondary emotions and avoid using awkward laughter or self-blame to evade uncomfortable experiences. If you find yourself beginning to produce avoidance tendencies, you must slow the pace of training and breathe deeply appropriately, to ensure you can fully bear the emotional arousal. During the process, focus on what you are experiencing, not whether you look strange or different from ordinary people, and certainly do not be busy finding abstract explanations for what you are experiencing.

Chapter 5: Integration: Diagnosis, Conceptualization, and Awakening

Pathology: The Formation of CPTSD (Injury and Stagnation)

Injury and Stagnation

A tree that does not receive enough nutrients will not grow, much less blossom or bear fruit. Another tree is constantly having its branches chopped off and pests thrown onto it; it also will not grow or bear fruit. Although the outcome is the same, these are two completely different stories. The former is “stagnation”; the latter is “injury.” Developmental stagnation creates a “vulnerable state,” and the repeated traumas suffered due to this vulnerability cause even more comprehensive stagnation. The two are mutually causal, thus forming the internal complexity of CPTSD. People often over-focus on the story of injury and neglect the story of stagnation; they over-focus on the wounds left by the chopped-off branches and neglect the branches that should have existed but never grew; they over-focus on significant, dramatic events and neglect the most common, daily details that should have occurred as naturally as breathing during the growth process but never did.

The process of individual growth is the process of an individual, with the support of social relationships, developing from a natural person into a social person by constantly encountering and resolving conflicts in interactions with reality. The growth process is, to some extent, a process of the soul being constantly injured and constantly healing. This can be analogized to fitness. Muscle fibers are constantly experiencing subtle tears and super-compensation during repeated resistance, gradually becoming stronger, and the subject’s sense of control over the body grows stronger.

Whether “stagnation” or “injury,” the source is a “jam” in the cycle of encountering conflict and resolving conflict—that is, the long-term “suspension” of the subject’s own state caused by various unresolved orienting responses. These incomplete orienting responses can be understood as various “unfinished business” (unfinished struggles, incompetent challenges) or “things that should have happened but did not” (neglected psychological crises). When one’s heart has too many things it cannot let go of, one cannot open oneself up to rebuild emotional connections with the world. Urging or criticizing is meaningless, because they do not want to be this way either. This unfinished business means that the subject’s mental map contains excessive blank spaces, severely affecting the map’s continuity, to the point that even if a new landmark is discovered, they don’t know where to place it. It is not just incomplete; it has lost its expandability.

Some trauma self-help theories call the process of transcending stagnation “self-mothering,” and the process of transcending injury “self-fathering.”

Traumatic Stress and Stress Disorders

In continuous social cooperation, the subject’s coping abilities develop from levels they are familiar with and competent in toward levels they can potentially understand and become competent in. The distance between the content a subject can master as an independent individual and the content the subject can understand and complete within social cooperation was called the “zone of proximal development” by Vygotsky. Trauma commonly forms during the process of the subject crossing this zone of proximal development.

Developmental and traumatic are two sides of pressure. Pressure not only challenges the subject’s skill reserves, but it also challenges their existing social support system. (This article discusses all concepts within interaction loops; therefore, when speaking of a social support system, we are also speaking of its relationship with the subject. Survivors easily overlook the power they possess within relationships.) Whether a pressure is seen as developmental pressure or traumatic stress depends largely on whether the subject experiences more “working together with one heart” or more “being abandoned and isolated” during the coping process.

The essence of all traumatic stress is various man-made calamities, not natural disasters. Whether it is a sudden acute stress event (significant traumatic stress, also called a “traumatic event”) or long-term, repeated, inescapable chronic torment (subtle traumatic stress), neither is sufficient on its own to directly cause trauma. What truly causes trauma is the “emotional abandonment” or “state of nothing to attend to” experienced by the subject during these events. The former is the terminology of the inter-subject interaction loop; the latter is that of the subject-environment loop. They experienced indescribable pain, their mind-body state was violently disturbed, yet they received no response from the real world, as if this pain was natural and meaningless. They cannot effectively process this pain. The cycle of encountering conflict and resolving conflict cannot be completed, and their mind-body state cannot be restored. They cannot achieve growth from the pressure, trapping themselves in a no-man’s-land of the soul, able only to use self-inhibition to escape the pain. Over time, the subject will form terrifying emotional blind spots; they will become sluggish and foolish.

Traumatic stress tells the subject, like a bully, that their original quality of attention is insufficient to cope with “ordinary” pressure. Thus, the subject can only degrade from a balanced attention quality to a limited, rigid attention quality to cope with disasters that may appear at any moment. Although the subject’s ability to deal with a specific injury is strengthened, their ability to deal with unexpected injuries becomes weaker. Even others’ healthy aggression is enough to trigger their fear. They become a person who cannot take a joke and cannot handle pressure.

The traumatic stress is already history; the stress disorder continuously destroys our present life. Developing good coping ability is the core of treating, and even gaining immunity to, stress disorders. If we understand trauma as an earthquake and the injured soul as the rubble, then the stress disorder is the various inconveniences we feel living in the rubble. What we need is to rebuild our home, not sit in the rubble cursing or falling into abstract discussions about the earthquake’s cause. Over-focusing on the trauma grants the trauma more influence and may even cause secondary trauma. It is just like how you are very likely to sprain your ankle if you desperately kick and stomp on the rubble.

In the early stages, stress disorders manifest centrally via three points:

  1. Restricted activity level. The subject’s body and spirit are in a state of unknowing tension or paralysis, clearly out of sync with the environment.
  2. Avoidance of emotional fluctuations. Any stirring makes the subject feel as if facing a great enemy. The subject’s emotions seem reduced to only fear and anger.
  3. Exploratory and coping abilities are severely limited or even completely lost. They are stuck in a state of not knowing what to do, tormented by a tension they cannot put down, able only to use negative self-soothing strategies (mind-wandering, dissociation, self-stimulation, etc.) to avoid the pressure. Over time, the subject will compensate by developing various cognitive schemas and behavioral patterns that clearly deviate from social norms.

As time passes, these manifestations gradually evolve and compensate, creating increasingly complex problems.

Everyone endures various traumas during their life, but only a portion develop stress disorders. To overcome a stress disorder, one must learn from those who have experienced trauma but avoided the disorder. Moreover, one must learn through observation; just listening to stories is useless. In other words, survivors should strive to find role models, not kindred spirits.

Those who have trauma but no stress disorder generally possess a powerful capacity for reflection (re-digestion). They can use flashbacks to complete the reprocessing of the trauma, complete the stuck coping process, release the blocked energy, and return themselves to calm. If the subject always collapses, avoids, or falls into rumination during flashbacks, they may develop increasingly complex problems.

Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma and CPTSD Formation

Infants and young children possess the healthiest vitality and the fullest passion. While being nurtured, they are also giving this energy back to their caregivers. When survivors become parents, they actually gain an opportunity to restart their First Kind of Growth. If their traumatization is already deeply rooted at the cognitive level, they will personally destroy this gift of life, becoming a “traumatized caregiver.”

Trauma affects the caregiver’s ability to establish an attachment relationship with the child. Children are extremely sensitive to their caregivers’ emotional states. Severely traumatized caregivers often fall into unconscious dissociation. Their body is present, but their spirit is completely absent. This severely affects the child’s sense of security. In extreme cases, a traumatized caregiver is completely unable to establish a secure attachment relationship with the child. They will raise children with the most severe psychological problems.

But such caregivers are, after all, a tiny minority. More trauma is transmitted in the name of love. This is the most heart-wrenching aspect of intergenerational trauma. The poorer the child’s physical constitution, and the deeper the psychological bond with the caregiver, the more easily they are influenced by the parent’s trauma.

Regarding physical constitution: If a child is born physically weak, they endure far greater pressure than ordinary people when exploring the unknown world and very easily experience continuous and severe psychological distress. They need far more spiritual support than ordinary children. If caregivers cannot detect this suffering, the children very easily develop complex traumatized manifestations.

Like the “highly sensitive personality” mentioned earlier, the statement “born physically weak” may also not be reliable. Trauma and physique interact. The earlier the trauma is formed, the greater the impact on physique. The weaker the body, the more susceptible it is to trauma. In extreme cases, an infant may be extremely weak at birth. Trauma and susceptibility are mutually causal; it is difficult to say which came first. It is another chicken-and-egg cycle problem.

Physical weakness means movement is strenuous and the ability to react to change is weak. A vibrant child, having fully interacted with important others in their life and established a deep, secure attachment relationship with their caregivers, can view the various understandable and perplexing manifestations of their caregivers in a relatively balanced way. They can identify the signals of a shift in the caregiver’s state at the first moment and timely adjust their own interactive patterns. For example: “Dad is very reliable most of the time, but occasionally he is very perplexing. Sometimes he becomes like a statue or a robot, surrounded by a silent, rigid aura, as if his heart suddenly fell into some unseen crisis. At this time, I need to immediately adjust my state, temporarily leave him, or try to approach him in other ways; otherwise, he will likely explode in a way I can’t handle.” This sensitivity and reactivity allow the child to be immune to trauma. When they get a little older, they can understand that the caregiver’s extreme reactions are actually caused by the caregiver’s own psychological shadows and have nothing to do with them. But a child with a weaker constitution will often say, “Dad (or Mom) is always moody and unpredictable.” The cognitive task of “differentiating the nurturing side of the caregiver from the traumatizing side” puts too much pressure on them; these children cannot handle it. These children’s phenomenological world is always filled with terrifying uncertainty. Their collapse (the prefrontal cortex “crashing”) is only a matter of time.

Regarding psychological bonds: Empathy is also an important pathway for transmitting trauma. The more innately sensitive the child, the easier this phenomenon occurs. Therefore, we can understand the child’s traumatized manifestations by understanding the caregiver’s construction of their own growth history. For example, some children have abandonment depression, yet people cannot find any experience related to abandonment trauma in their history. However, one of their parents was often the disfavored one at home since childhood, the character despised by their mother and bullied by their siblings. Such parents often have a habit of sighing. They like to share their tragic and helpless life experiences with their children but are unable to let their children gain any strength from it. Another example is certain children with ADHD manifestations. One of their parents often has a particular fondness for interrupting the child. These parents claim to support the child while simultaneously making a huge fuss during the child’s process of exploring the environment and expressing curiosity, raising various negating opinions with an intense attitude. Yet they feel nothing is wrong with their behavior. When an onlooker points out their problem, they seem to suddenly develop amnesia and just deny it flatly. (From this, we can see how unreliable the self-reports of survivors and their family members are. Understanding trauma cannot rely excessively on the subject’s narrative; one must also have the insight of a detective.) These parents often lacked support since childhood, frequently being kicked around like a ball by others, yet unable to find the reason themselves. These people, who grew up in a fog, very easily raise children suffering from ADHD.

The feelings of fear and abandonment experienced by these children are actually the parents’ feelings. It is just that their young minds have no way to complete task separation while empathizing with their parents. The reason many children are easily drowned in toxic shame is simply that they deeply feel the caregiver’s fear. They blame themselves only because they do not want the caregiver to be immersed in fear; they hope to share the caregiver’s burden.

The Intergenerational Transmission of Listlessness

The earlier the “unfinished business” is formed, the more foundational the position it occupies in the subject’s behavioral patterns, the harder it is for the subject to be aware of its existence, and the more intense the pain felt when attempting to break through it. The subject’s behavioral manifestations will be closer to AS.

This section uses the intergenerational transmission of listlessness as an example to explain the application of the concept of unfinished business.

Facing an enthusiastic and vibrant companion, some people not only fail to evoke their own inner enthusiasm but instead feel an inexplicable fear, even consciously avoiding blending in with the group. They suffer over their own loneliness but cannot explain the reason.

This manifestation may be related to the subject’s relationship with their mother. This correlation is not absolute, but it is a model worth referencing. This mother, for certain reasons, has a depressive, listless, and muddled personality. As long as the subject exhibits a healthy, positive interactive model, they will inevitably hit a wall in their interactions with the mother. Over time, they will learn to suppress their own energy and lower their own arousal level to ensure their interactions with their mother can be stable and fluid. In this listless state, they fully experience the attachment with their mother. From then on, this listless mental state becomes associated with safety and trust, while an excited mental state becomes associated with frustration and isolation.

When they walk out the door and begin establishing relationships on a wider scale, their previous interaction model naturally becomes the starting point for new relationships. The enthusiasm of the group evokes their energy, but while they are excited, that inexplicable sense of fear and isolation is also reflexively evoked.

If their coping ability is well-developed, they can maintain connection with the present moment amid intense emotions, and they will interpret this inexplicable fear as part of the challenge. They accept the companions’ challenge, and the companions’ enthusiasm eventually infects them. They will break through the fear and integrate into the new collective. When they return home, the vibrant version of them will inevitably conflict with their mother. They will recognize the severe problems existing in their mother. They damaged the bond with their mother for the sake of the bond with their companions; this is also a necessary path of growth. Of course, they might also use their intelligence and eventually change their mother, which is a happy ending for all.

If their stress-coping ability is not fully developed, or their body is too weak, the intense fear will sever their connection with reality. They cannot recognize the goodwill in their companions, cannot feel the reliability of the environment; they just purely feel danger. This causes them to consciously avoid interaction. They sacrificed the possibility of establishing bonds with peers in order to maintain the bond with their mother. From then on, they can only interact with people who are depressive, listless, and muddled like their mother. This severely affects the development of their social skills, making them susceptible to various traumas.

In the second scenario, “re-examining the bond with the mother” becomes the unfinished business.

Secondary Trauma and Vulnerability

Imagine a child falls down. Even if they want to lie on the ground, when a butterfly flies past, they will still unconsciously stand up and run after it, the previous frustration swept away. The human body is not a fragile glass cup. Everyone has a powerful innate self-healing capacity. What truly keeps an individual trapped in trauma long-term is often secondary trauma.

Imagine a child who already has some behavioral capacity is abandoned in the desolate wilderness due to parental negligence. At first, they feel intense helplessness and fear, but they quickly calm down and begin exploring alone. They might accidentally discover the charm of this lonely world; they might even think their parents wanted them to understand and protect this little world. When they finally find their parents, they feel exceptionally intense excitement. They eagerly display their exploratory findings, but not only do their parents show no recognition or care, they unthinkingly treat everything as filth and mock and criticize the child. At this moment, the child feels their entire world collapse. They have completely lost their emotional home.

This is secondary trauma. Secondary trauma possesses a far greater destructive power than the primary trauma. Many events that do not seem severe in an observer’s eyes nonetheless cause extreme trauma to the subject, giving the subject an impression of being “fragile.” Such traumas often belong to the category of secondary trauma. For example, some people fall into a severe depressive state after a breakup. They seek psychotherapy because of it, but in reality, the breakup is absolutely not the original source of the trauma. The seeds of the trauma were planted long ago on the path of growth, just waiting for the final trigger to break the soil. The formation of trauma is not just explosive; it can also be cumulative. The recorded traumatic event is very likely just the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

CPTSD survivors commonly exhibit psychological vulnerability. Long-term psychological vulnerability inevitably leads to physiological vulnerability (the “susceptibility” in the neurophysiological paradigm). Long-term vulnerability often manifests as the excessive weakness of overall abilities and the excessive compensation of localized abilities. Many of the survivor’s special “talents” (such as “super attention,” etc.) are the result of long-term compensation.

The Push-Pull Effect

A child usually has two primary caregivers (generally parents). If the two caregivers’ parenting styles are uncoordinated, the intense orienting responses triggered by this will drive the child to conduct various “out-of-bounds” explorations to clarify their situation. This may help them achieve self-rescue, or it may lead them down the wrong path. If both caregivers are traumatized caregivers and their types are complementary—for example, one is tyrannical and harsh while the other complains about fate and everyone else; one is self-absorbed while the other is depressive and listless—then the two caregivers will form a “push-pull effect” on the child. This can be analogized to the “red-face/white-face” tactic (good cop/bad cop) in negotiations. This “collusion” has a terrifying accelerating effect on the formation of CPTSD.

If the caregiver exhibits significant contradictions in different aspects of life—for example, providing meticulous care in daily life, but complete spiritual neglect or even extreme suppression—this will also produce a push-pull effect. Those with plentiful food and clothing become depressed; those who survive catastrophe feel grateful. Material abundance combined with spiritual deprivation is far worse than pure adversity. The push-pull effect generated by the disparity between the two can destroy the child’s willpower.

The Loss of Emotional Stability

When CPTSD survivors finally manage to temporarily awaken from listlessness and exhibit exploratory behavior, the long-unresolved differentiations and unreleased confrontation easily push them rapidly toward fear and mania. Subsequently, they feel shame for their loss of composure and fall back into depression, thus repeatedly swinging between the two extremes. This is fundamentally different from bipolar disorder. The survivor’s mania is terrifying to the average person, but it carries no social danger; on the contrary, it is a manifestation of fear and withdrawal.

The rising, falling, and transformation of emotions have their own spontaneity. Even if left alone, anxiety will gradually transform into excitement or depression, and vice versa. This is also a manifestation of the human body’s biological rhythms. However, only by completing the orienting response, and subsequently completing differentiation and coping, can the emotion truly subside. Otherwise, the subject will be constantly and repeatedly triggered into emotional flashbacks by various minor daily stimuli. They will deplete all their energy repeatedly swinging between sluggish numbness and emotional explosion.

Pathology: The Formation of AS (Self-Defeat and Early Trauma)

The Expansion of Trauma-Informed Thought

Being trauma-informed can, to a certain extent, be understood as being informed of “trauma diversity.” Trauma diversity means that psychological trauma is far more complex, more widespread, and more influential than people currently understand. Trauma’s influence may be behind people’s various behavioral manifestations, but these traumas, and the process by which they exert influence, are rarely sufficiently recognized or reported. Trauma can occur at any moment during an individual’s growth process; an individual may have already suffered severe trauma during the embryonic or infant stage without receiving any attention. Traumatic experiences may rely on traumatic events with clear storylines, or they may be extremely complex and subtle, making it difficult to construct a strongly narrative story. Psychotherapy based on trauma-informed principles is oriented toward the unique traumatic experience of each individual, not rigid medical diagnostic labels.

Trauma can be classified on a continuous spectrum from general to specific. The more social (general) a trauma is, the more likely it is to receive sufficient attention and processing. Many human social rituals (such as funerals) possess the nature of trauma treatment (accepting loss, completing mourning). The stronger the individuality (specificity) of a trauma, the more likely the trauma is to be ignored. In extreme cases, it may be impossible to find an appropriate means of expression for it in the public discursive space. Concepts like “embryonic trauma”—just saying them is enough to shock the world. For a long time, people’s understanding of trauma has been too superficial, and the related research methods and means of expression too crude. For problems that cannot be reasonably explained within the framework of trauma, people can only attach various “mental disorder” labels, pushing the responsibility for the problem onto various inexplicable “innate factors.” These individuals are thus completely marginalized.

As people’s understanding of trauma deepens, more and more psychological disorders are beginning to be re-examined within the framework of trauma. As we walk through this world, every one of us experiences various psychological traumas to some extent. In a way, we are all survivors. There may be the shadow of trauma behind many of our strong motivations; this is nothing to be ashamed of. Recognizing the universality and diversity of trauma helps us to “de-demonize” and “de-stigmatize” trauma and related psychological disorders, awakening more people to the importance of trauma and compassion for survivors.

Self-Defeat and Early Trauma

Self-defeat refers to a kind of systemic defect within the body, unrecognized by the self, that continuously interferes with one’s activities, obstructing one from establishing positive emotional connections with others. The subject feels that compared to others, they always possess an ineffable limitation, as if they are missing an important sensory dimension.

The root of self-defeat is primarily abnormalities in early development. The various subtle deficits (muscular deficits, neurological deficits, etc.) caused by these developmental abnormalities make the subject far more likely than ordinary people to fall into helplessness when facing various pressures. A fragile body struggles to provide definite somatic feedback. The subject finds it difficult to understand that analyzing problems relies not only on reasoning, but also on the body’s feelings; that even the reliability of reasoning must be confirmed by feelings.

Early trauma refers to psychological trauma formed during the subject’s fetal and infant periods. Sources primarily include health crises of the mind and body during the mother’s pregnancy (such as witnessing the sudden death of a relative), asphyxia occurring during childbirth, and severe interference in the process of caregivers establishing attachment with the infant (such as the infant suffering a severe injury but receiving no care).

The intergenerational transmission of trauma is primarily the intergenerational transmission of insecure attachment models. When individuals who were unable to establish secure attachment with their caregivers become caregivers themselves, their process of establishing attachment relationships with their children will inevitably encounter similar difficulties.

Self-defeat, early trauma, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma are the three major sources of AS/ADHD. Compared to trauma in the general sense, these three are often extremely hidden, lacking clear, traceable episodic narratives, and can be collectively referred to as “hidden trauma.” Because they do not conform to the general definition of psychological trauma, they can also be collectively referred to as “early breakdown.” The earlier the survivor’s traumatization process begins (especially before one year of age), the more their long-term manifestations approximate AS; otherwise, they approximate CPTSD. Real-world AS/ADHD/CPTSD are all the results of multiple factors working together. It is easy for people to see the last straw that broke the camel’s back, but “a leaking roof on a rainy night” (one disaster after another) is the true portrait of the formation process of various psychological disorders.

When asphyxia first occurs, the subject usually struggles desperately. As oxygen is gradually depleted, the struggle gradually ceases, muscle tone drops significantly, the subject gradually loses consciousness, and finally proceeds toward death. A portion of survivors suffer irreversible brain damage due to prolonged asphyxia; they will be diagnosed with intellectual disability. Another portion of survivors experience a relatively shorter duration of asphyxia; the impact on them manifests more as a decrease in the activity level of the mind and body. This type of subject has a very high probability of developing CPTSD or AS. Surviving newborns do not understand what the optimal arousal level is; they are only instinctively adapting to their bodies and their environment. They accept this muddled “rigi-paralysis” state as the starting point of their lives, and interact with the world on this basis. This lays the groundwork for their difficult destiny. Rigi-paralysis forces them to additionally tense their bodies to complete various daily activities that should be easy. This rigi-paralysis possesses the same physiological and psychological significance as the freeze caused by traumatic events, and is even harder to orient to.

Generalized ligament laxity is a developmental abnormality that begins during the embryonic stage, characterized primarily by excessive joint range of motion. In a relaxed state, the patient’s body is like a shelving unit with loose screws; they can easily make many movements that ordinary people must train hard to achieve. The stability of every joint, the impact resistance of the joints, the body’s balance ability, and the clarity of perceptual feedback during activity are all much weaker than in ordinary people. Under the same conditions, the patient is far more likely to be injured than ordinary people. When engaging in various activities, they need to excessively tense their bodies to maintain stability and impact resistance. This self-generated state of tension has a similar physiological and psychological meaning to the excessive tension caused by acute stress events, and it is even more difficult to orient to. Often, although the patient intuitively maintains a normal posture, because the joints are not placed in the most appropriate position, the way their muscles exert force is not the same as an ordinary person’s. Different patterns of muscle tension produce different somatic sensations. The patient always feels something is not quite right, but others feel nothing at all, as if the patient is experiencing a lingering “hallucination.” This feeling, which cannot be oriented to, holds the same psychological meaning as the orienting response difficulty during a stress process. A subject suffering from generalized ligament laxity can only save themselves by engaging in scientific muscle training, strengthening the muscular support around the joints, and using strong muscles to compensate for the lax ligaments. Otherwise, their body will expose increasingly severe problems with age; they may even experience severe joint degeneration in middle age.

If you accept the preceding statement, you will feel that the AS manifestations caused by generalized ligament laxity are intervenable—just work out hard. But in reality, the pathology of generalized ligament laxity has potential complexities. Abnormal ligament development may imply abnormal connective tissue throughout the body; the nervous system thus becomes fragile. The nervous systems of AS individuals are commonly more fragile than those of ordinary people; they are easily disturbed by factors like drugs and viruses. They often show a surprising intolerance to anesthetics and painkillers.

The pathology of AS caused by cerebellar developmental abnormalities is similar to that of AS caused by generalized ligament laxity and will not be repeated.

If the mother suffered severe psychological trauma during the period from pregnancy to the infant’s first birthday (or had long-term psychological trauma), the changes in the body’s internal environment and personal aura caused by the immense suffering will likewise place enormous pressure on the fetus or newborn infant. Fetuses and newborns cannot distinguish between the self and the environment, between “mine” and “not-mine.” They realize from the feedback they receive that their own various rich and subtle activities receive no response and are unnecessary. Faced with this terrifying experience, like a stone sinking into the sea, their only effective coping method is to utilize their own neuroplasticity, adjust the synaptic connections of the cerebral cortex, cause the brain to enter a relatively closed mode of operation, and make themselves sluggish and numb, in order to adapt to this “emotional abandonment.” This places the subject in a state of “self-focus” from the very starting point of life. Emotional abandonment is not caused by the caregiver’s subjective malice, but it is the “emotional reality” the child must face. In fact, it is precisely because there is no subjective malice that emotional abandonment is so difficult to trace. It will exert a continuous influence on the child’s personality development in a hidden way, making it difficult for the child to establish strong emotional connections with others, thus forming AS.

Children who grow up in a depressive, anxious family atmosphere commonly have severe memory retrieval difficulties. Such children must know the “why” of many things in order to remember them, and thus often appear overly keen on getting to the bottom of things. When they fall into a predicament, it is very difficult for them to find an entry point by easily tracing back details and reacting deftly, as ordinary children do. For them, the world seems exceptionally chaotic, and they feel they will be harmed if they are not careful. Under immense psychological pressure, they will gradually compensate by developing the characteristics of ADHD or AS.

From this, it is clear that different AS patients may hide completely different etiologies and pathologies beneath similar manifestations. AS/ADHD is just a collection of symptoms, not a scientific diagnostic label.

Neuroplasticity can cause AS, and it can also rescue the subject from AS. Neuroplasticity is the physiological basis for the curability of psychological disorders.

Neurodiversity and Labeling

Unlike individuals with intellectual disabilities, individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome often experience an intense sense of limitation. They feel they are fully capable of performing better, but this physical shell seems disobedient, yet they are clearly not paralyzed. This vague sense of defect develops year after year, forcing them to choose between “accepting the self” and “changing the self.”

Accepting the self will drive the individual with AS to seek a common identity label. For this type of individual, neurodiversity means the diversity of identity labels. AS or “Aspie” (the self-designation for this type of AS individual) is not a neutral noun; it represents an identity. Their uniqueness thus gains a shareable meaning, which makes them feel peace and strength. They no longer blindly pursue change, but rather see this uniqueness as a gift of fate. Although they are more limited than ordinary people in some aspects, they also have the opportunity to develop more fully in other aspects. This is the so-called “what you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts.” Although change might improve their quality of life in some aspects, it might also cause the unexpected loss of abilities they cherish (such as limited super-insight, instant location ability, etc.). These abilities are often highly ornamental and sometimes practical, making many individuals with AS proud. When an AS individual “awakens” and no longer exhibits typical AS manifestations, these abilities are generally lost because intellectual resources are redistributed. Although a rich emotional world compensates for their loss, they still feel regret. Human intellect is like muscle; whether the subject believes their strong muscles are a gift or the result of training, “use it or lose it” is an indisputable fact. Informing this type of AS individual that “so-called neurodiversity traits are just a special type of traumatized manifestation” will make them feel offended.

Another type of individual with AS, however, explores diligently on the path of changing the self. For this type of individual, neurodiversity is human diversity; this is a concept that needs no emphasis. For those willing to appreciate them, they are, like everyone else, unique and irreplaceable. If they must attach a label to themselves, then everyone should be labeled. For those who hold prejudice, creating a label and emphasizing its unique value does not change those people’s views; on the contrary, it deepens the divide, provokes unnecessary arguments, and invites more malice. Although self-defeat and early trauma do not have clear storylines like general traumatic events, this type of subject is still more willing to place their abnormal manifestations within the PTSD spectrum rather than the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) spectrum. They would rather discard the “neurodiverse” label, believing that only awakening can allow their personality to fully unfurl. Only by changing the “small self” can they accept the “greater self.” Each individual’s trauma story is unique. This path of exploration is so lonely that many give up halfway, falling into learned helplessness amid constant setbacks. Every one of them who persists to the end deserves to be called a hero.

The Trauma Stories of Asperger’s Syndrome Individuals

For those seeking to change the self, Asperger’s Syndrome is a kind of extremely complex PTSD (XCPTSD) or extremely early PTSD (XEPTSD) caused by self-defeat, early trauma, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. The descriptions of CPTSD survivors in this article are basically all applicable to individuals with AS. The unique manifestations of AS individuals are the result of excessively early traumatization. The earlier CPTSD is formed, the closer its manifestations are to AS.

Using metaphorical language, the trauma story of an AS individual can be told as such: A person born physically weak is knocked to the ground by a force that, while perhaps not objectively powerful, is much more powerful than themself. They try to stand up but find it very difficult. Ordinary people, unaware of the severity, do not provide adequate help. Thus, the person can only live by crawling. They gradually adapt to this way of life. Although it is not convenient, they no longer feel pain. If they want to change themself, they must first use various tools and methods to strive to stand up, returning to the long-lost neutral state. Then, through strengthening and stretching, they must regulate the muscles that have become imbalanced or even atrophied from long-term crawling, only then restoring a normal life. After this, they need to, through relentless training, make their energy levels exceed those of ordinary people to achieve trauma immunity. Once trauma immunity is established, the original trauma-susceptible constitution may then display special advantages. This is why outstanding AS individuals are often considered to have a scholar-type personality.

Humans generally begin to fade their child-like passion around age 6. The compulsive symptoms in AS individuals, caused by their lack of a sense of vividness, often begin to reveal themselves at this time. In late adolescence (around age 15), intensely fluctuating hormone levels and increasingly complex interpersonal relationships bring a torrent of experiences that overwhelm the AS individual. Their various problems with anxiety, fear, and depression will erupt comprehensively at this time. After age 25, body hormone levels tend to stabilize, and they gradually begin to calm down. The life experience of hitting walls everywhere forces the subject onto the path of self-rescue.

Pathology: Comorbidity of AS, CPTSD, and PTSD

The traumatization of the subject is the traumatization of inter-subject relationships. Trauma can be classified according to the subject’s relationship with the other subjects in the traumatic event: self-defeat, early trauma, family trauma, social trauma, and acute trauma.

Self-defeat and early trauma make children require stable, safe environments even more. Only sufficiently sensitive, warm, and stable caregivers can establish secure attachment relationships with such children. Parents who lack sensitivity or who suffer from severe trauma themselves will encounter great difficulty in raising these children. They struggle to understand these children’s needs and thus cannot establish secure attachment with them. Simultaneously, these children are more susceptible to attachment-related traumas such as early separation or frequent changes of caregivers.

Family trauma comes from abnormalities in early life attachment relationships (mainly the relationship between the subject and caregivers). It overlaps with early trauma, and a clear dividing line cannot be drawn. This is precisely why AS and CPTSD cannot be accurately separated. The self-defeat, early trauma, family trauma, social trauma, and acute trauma suffered by the parents can all become sources of family trauma suffered by the children.

Social trauma comes from the setbacks the subject suffers in the process of establishing and developing relationships with others. When an individual first walks out of the home and begins to establish broader social relationships, they may replicate the behavioral patterns used when establishing relationships with their siblings. They then recognize from the unexpected reactions of these unfamiliar peers that this is an entirely new relationship type. However, an individual who grew up in an insecure attachment relationship (especially one raised by a depressive mother) is already accustomed to maintaining themself in a low-activity state. Their emotional interactions with family members are not rich, and thus it is very difficult for them to understand the unique emotional information conveyed by others’ unexpected reactions. They will generate feelings similar to being abandoned by relatives. They thoughtlessly extend their family relationship model to social relationships, granting excessive trust to strangers, and are thus extremely susceptible to various injuries. Therefore, the trauma of many CPTSD survivors does not come from their caregivers, but from social life. This trauma from social life is social trauma.

Acute trauma comes from various sudden natural and man-made disasters.

Examining the inter-subject relationships in a traumatic event must take into account the subject’s own degree of conscious object differentiation. For example, the same trauma from a family member might only fall into the category of acute trauma for an individual with rich social experience and highly differentiated conscious objects. But for an individual with a low degree of conscious object differentiation, they will feel their entire personality has been negated. The closer the relationship between the subject and the other subjects in the traumatic event, the more hidden, subtle, and complex the trauma. Otherwise, it is more significant, clear, and simple.

If we recognize the traumatic nature of self-defeat and early trauma, AS and ADHD can be brought into the CPTSD spectrum. AS can be seen as extremely early-onset CPTSD. If we accept the Theory of Structural Dissociation, then CPTSD can be further brought into the dissociation disorder spectrum. CPTSD can be seen as a non-obvious dissociative disorder. Thus, the understanding of a psychological disorder depends, to a considerable extent, on the treatment strategy we choose.

From the perspective of ASD, the diagnoses of AS and typical autism are mutually exclusive. But from the perspective of CPTSD, AS and CPTSD in the general sense can coexist.

Self-defeat and early trauma cause the subject’s ability to withstand pressure to be weaker than ordinary people’s from the very starting point of life. Facing family trauma and social trauma, they are thus even more powerless. Therefore, individuals with AS easily develop general CPTSD. The survivor’s “chaotic and scattered” temperament makes them easy targets for malicious individuals, and thus they are more likely to encounter acute stress events, and subsequently develop PTSD.

The comorbidity of AS, CPTSD, and PTSD can lead to extremely complex traumatized manifestations, placing extremely high demands on the courage, patience, care, and wisdom of both the therapist and the person concerned.

The Path Forward: Self-Conceptualization

The Connotation of Self-Conceptualization

The self-reports of survivors are often unreliable. This is detrimental to the survivor establishing a relationship of equal cooperation with a helper and, to a certain extent, affects the practice of trauma-informed principles. Yet, we cannot expect survivors to undergo systematic professional training like a therapist. One of the purposes of this article’s creation is to help survivors develop the ability to produce reliable self-reports.

Self-conceptualization blends professional conceptualization and mentalization. It is completely different from case conceptualization in a counseling relationship; it cannot be simply compared to a doctor treating their own illness. The very reason the subject chooses self-help is often because the counseling relationship has failed. A better analogy would be: A lost person, relying on what they see and hear and the tools in their hand, explores and draws a map simultaneously. They must also climb every high tower they pass (equivalent to “awakening moments” where new experiences are gained in life) to repeatedly confirm if the map they are drawing is accurate enough. Every time they finish drawing a region, they must pick it up and carefully compare it against the large, public map, seeing if their map can be pieced onto it and approximately where it should go. This continues until one day they discover their map fits perfectly into the large map. They have finally walked out. The large map has also become more complete, and their contribution will bring convenience to other pathfinders.

The Goal: “Graduating” from CPTSD

Recovery vs. Graduation

Many scholars firmly believe that CPTSD can never be completely cured, such as Pete Walker, author of Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving. Yet, many survivors very confidently report their own recovery experiences. This lends a certain metaphysical color to the recovery from CPTSD.

Recovery and Cure are typical pathological concepts. They are based on the individual’s state before the injury, and treatment means helping the individual return to that baseline through various interventions. Just as severe illnesses leave various sequelae, it is expected that CPTSD cannot be completely cured.

However, treating psychological trauma as equivalent to physiological trauma is, ultimately, only a crude analogy. Human psychological growth is irreversible. Few people wish to go through the baptism of life only to end up with no growth. The concept of recovery, theoretically, cannot even apply to psychological trauma. If we can understand that every healthy human body contains over 100,000 types of viruses, it is easier to understand the limitations of the pathology paradigm—it cannot explain our relationship with these viruses in our body; even the concept of a “virus” comes into question. Compared to cure or recovery, the social relations paradigm prefers to use terms like graduating from CPTSD or post-traumatic growth. Graduates do not aim for recovery; they have a more transcendent pursuit. Relying on their own talent and resilience, they mastered the arduous challenge arranged by fate and walked toward a new life.

Strong vs. Weak

Strong and weak are not rigorous concepts. Discussing them here is not to create a binary opposition, but to introduce the most special category of survivors.

In the novel The Remote Savior (遥远的救世主), the author, Dou Dou, speaking through the protagonist Ding Yuanying, reveals her philosophy of “Strong Culture” and “Weak Culture.” This thinking also applies to the theory of psychological self-help. The ultimate purpose of psychotherapy was originally to help people become stronger (more competent and adaptive), yet the current social reality dictates that the majority of people who rely on psychotherapy are the weak. This thick atmosphere of weakness severely affects the linguistic construction of psychotherapy theories. Many trauma treatment theories carry their own “weak person temperament”; they can help survivors improve symptoms, but they cannot help them transcend the trauma.

The weak first idealize recovery or cure. When that proves unattainable, their attitude gradually shifts to learning acceptance and coexistence. The strong use “graduation” as the node; relying on their superhuman wisdom and perseverance, they continuously move toward new life. The former endures the pain of a bleeding wound; the latter endures the pain of childbirth. In the eyes of the strong, the so-called self-rescue of the weak is just endlessly licking the wound, massaging the wound, just making it stop bleeding; it doesn’t count as science at all. The weak always like to assume that before they were injured, they were in some “perfect state,” understanding psychotherapy as a return to that perfect state. However, this backward-looking recovery is destined to be an extravagant hope. When the dream of recovery is shattered, the discourse of “coexisting with CPTSD” becomes mainstream.

To grow, one must look forward. Growth is like fitness: muscle fibers become thicker and stronger through the continuous process of subtle tearing and super-compensation. The strong have no desire to thrash about for ages only to end up back at the starting point. In this world, aside from those who spin cocoons around themselves and cling to their deficits, who isn’t covered in scars? Trauma causes the weak to fall into the hell of CPTSD; it makes the strong stronger. It is the weak person’s epitaph; it is the strong person’s whetstone.

After a long struggle, the vast majority of the weak will accept the reality that they can never become strong. They turn to seeking theoretical defenses for their own predicament to achieve self-consistency and gain comfort. But there are always some unyielding people who, although also weak, have the seed of a strong person buried in their hearts. What the social relations paradigm does is precisely to point out the direction for these people. Their path of self-strengthening is an ode to the human life force. They use their strength to prove that CPTSD cannot only be “recovered” from, but transcended. This article is most concerned with precisely this group; they are their own “revolutionaries.” Society needs the strong, and it also needs the weak. The strong are worthy of pride; the weak are not shameful. Rather than mocking and blaming each other, we need to respect our respective destinies and play our respective roles well.

Phenomenological Indicators of Graduation

Overall, graduating from CPTSD has the following phenomenological characteristics. These experiences are so intense that they often give the person concerned a feeling of rebirth.

  1. Ability to stably maintain a calm yet alert mental state. So-called calm (serene) means the subject no longer feels numb and no longer falls into mind-wandering. Rich environmental information floods the mind simultaneously but no longer causes sensory overload; instead, it becomes nourishment for the spirit. When an individual first finds this state, they often experience a happiness like being in a mother’s embrace. So-called alert means that general stress no longer causes the subject to feel anxiety, fear, or shame; instead, it makes the subject clear-headed, flexible, sharp, and invigorated. The subject can think while simultaneously experiencing during interactions.

  2. Becoming fond of activity. In their spare time, the subject cannot help but want to move; they feel they must find something to do, but they do not feel anxious about this.

  3. Becoming close to others. Prosociality is fully activated. Maintaining emotional connections becomes a natural matter. The subject, without needing to think, can feel the personalities and tendencies of others during interaction and can naturally form good boundaries. An emotional connection is not an emotional entanglement; if you can accurately perceive a person’s indifference and resistance, this is also an emotional connection.

  4. Flashbacks become constructive. Flashbacks no longer cause collapse. Instead, they become a dialogue between the past self and the present self, a “mutual empathy” between the present self and the past self. Extreme flashbacks become ordinary “remembering,” transforming from a disastrous storm into a usable resource. They do not disappear, but they are no longer terrifying. The ability to hold and digest flashbacks is an important component of emotional intelligence. The capacity of this ability is the fundamental difference between the strong and the weak.

  5. Intense spiritual experiences. Intense spiritual experiences are the most significant characteristic distinguishing the CPTSD recovery process from the general PTSD recovery process. A so-called spiritual experience can be understood as the misalignment of experiential feeling and the conscious object. For example, the aforementioned feeling of happiness, like being in a mother’s arms, despite having done nothing. This can be compared to a child who sealed off their senses due to emotional abandonment finally waiting for their mother’s arrival. They activate their long-sealed senses, throw themselves into the embrace of the world, and restore the most basic emotional connection with others. It is only because the childhood mother and the self are both no longer present that this experience becomes an ineffable “mystical experience.” The CPTSD recovery process is characterized by a spiral ascent. In the continuous cycling, the flashbacks the subject experiences become stronger and stronger, and the resources for coping with the flashbacks also become richer. The spiritual experience after each cycle ends also becomes stronger. Some people, upon awakening, even feel an ultimate “Great Love” permeating heaven and earth. Because this happiness comes too suddenly, some people fail to recognize the specific reasons behind it and may walk the path of metaphysics as a result.

  6. Actively welcoming life’s challenges. These experiences represent the subject’s return to a healthy “neutral state.” It is like a person bedridden for years who finally stands up straight and tall, able to flexibly carry out various activities. However, if the subject wants to integrate into social life and realize their self-worth, they must still fully accept the baptism of life, making up for the lessons missed in personality development. This is likewise a grand and serious life task. The subject will take their long-lost life force, throw themselves into the torrent of life, and begin their “Second Growth,” just like a fresh college graduate diving into a society full of opportunity and challenge.

Integration Tool: Written Expression

Human oral expression often shifts with the situation, possesses extreme flexibility, and often contradicts itself without the speaker’s awareness. But once these expressions land on paper, they are forced to accept a consistency test. Written expression forces us to maintain cognitive consistency. This helps us discover the loopholes in our own cognition and promotes the development of self-awareness. Only when we recognize how much we love to use double standards will we have sufficient motivation to engage in self-analysis.

Written expression can be divided into analytical expression and narrative expression. Survivors are generally not good at oral expression but often possess excellent written expression skills, especially analytical written expression. Survivors must both fully leverage the advantages of analytical expression and also value narrative expression, especially the value of uplifting, positive life experiences.

Repeatedly examining analytical expression while in different moods helps the subject identify the hidden emotional dynamics behind the analysis, increasing the depth of cognitive processing. Behind every expression, there is an emotional drive; as the saying goes, “one speaks from feeling.” Absolutely neutral expression is fundamentally unrealistic; it is just that we, as the ones in the midst of it, are often unaware of those hidden motives. When time has passed and we pick up our old records again, we easily discover the problems. This is an opportunity to understand the self. We must remember that analysis is for action, not to find excuses for our inaction. Only action can complete reality testing; analysis must end in action. Any analysis that cannot lead to action can be counted as cognitive rumination.

Survivors’ lives are filled with negative stress events and various negative experiences. The energy contained in these recorded positive life events becomes a scarce resource in treatment; they become an important force in resisting cognitive rumination. Any brief experience that makes one feel invigorated should be recorded in detail. In the process of transforming experience into language, the subject will often make unexpected discoveries. Many survivors habitually say, “I’ve never had a positive experience,” but this is unrealistic. Everyone’s life has positive experiences, even if they are just extremely brief, subtle feelings. When survivors deny their positive experiences, they are also convincing themselves that they no longer need to bear the responsibility of changing themselves.

Integration Tool: External Investment (Finding Purpose)

Supplementing Perceptual Feedback

A survivor, whose illness was so severe that even washing their face and brushing their teeth felt strenuous, happened to look up at the mirror while washing up and became interested in the self in the mirror. When they paid attention to the self in the mirror, they unexpectedly discovered that the agonizing process of washing up became easier. This was not only because their attention had shifted, but also because their body had truly relaxed. The image in the mirror not only attracted a portion of their attention but also supplemented their perceptual feedback (here, mainly visual). Compulsive self-focus was weakened, and self-inhibition was thus weakened. Only then did they realize that these simple activities could have been very easy.

Setting a Role Model

Many people have this experience: When running alone, they can’t run more than two steps before they feel they can’t go on. An intense feeling of fatigue makes their body feel as if it’s filled with lead; they simply cannot get active. But as long as there is another person running in front of them, or some other interesting thing continuously running ahead of them, they seem to suddenly become stronger. The time they can persist increases tenfold, and after finishing the run, they feel more invigorated than exhausted.

This is the power of a role model. The role model activates our internal resources, allowing us to reach an arousal level more suitable for the specific activity, while simultaneously reducing the focus on our own feeling of fatigue. Many survivors are especially reliant on such role models. When they are alone, their “difficulty initiating tasks” is extremely severe; everything seems to take extra effort. But the moment a reliable companion is present—even if this companion does not intentionally motivate them—they become high-spirited, their attention concentrates, and their capacity for action is astonishing.

The reason for this problem is that these people, most of the time, place far too much attention on themselves. Self-focus leads to self-inhibition, which severely limits a person’s flexibility.

Finding Spiritual Sustenance

The simplest and most effective way to undo self-focus is to invest attention in high-activity objects. The most typical example of external investment is the process of an emotionally mature parent raising a child. The aforementioned physical confrontation ability training also requires high-intensity external investment. If the survivor cannot temporarily withstand high-intensity external investment, they can first focus on other objects with relatively gentler activity levels. Although the activity levels of flowers, birds, fish, and insects cannot compare to humans, they are just right for a survivor. Therefore, raising flowers or pets can serve as a means of regulating the mind and body and alleviating trauma. Cats and cacti are likely not very good choices. Cats are highly independent; in the human-cat relationship, it is mostly the human’s one-sided giving. Cacti are too easy to care for and lack sufficiently significant interaction with the caregiver.

Grasping the Connotation of Vitality

Relying on simple external investment to dissolve trauma is unrealistic. The meaning of external investment is to help a subject long trapped in trauma to grasp (not just “know”) the connotation of “vitality,” and subsequently move from the “small self” to the “greater self.” In the process of cultivating a plant, no matter how carefully we care for it, we ultimately must rely on the plant itself to grow. We can only carefully observe the plant’s growth status, continuously obtain feedback, and timely adjust our methods of caring for it, allowing it to fully express its nature and grow better and better. When we see the plant thriving under our meticulous care, we also feel our own vitality has been affirmed, and the “self” has been expanded. When the subject applies this understanding to their own body, it is possible to awaken the vitality that has been long imprisoned within. Once the subject begins to interact intimately with their own body, the daydreams naturally vanish.

Finding a Worthy Partner for Dialogue

After the subject has some grasp of “vitality,” they can attempt to invest in others during interpersonal interaction. We must place our attention on other people, listen earnestly, observe carefully, and continuously ask questions following our orienting response, slowly activating our innate social abilities—rather than focusing on whether we are nervous or stupid. If the other party is an emotionally mature individual and holds a sincere attitude, they will feel our respect from our questions and will not rashly determine the questions are “stupid.” We can also judge from the other party’s attitude whether the interaction is worth continuing. In reality, as long as we listen earnestly, it is impossible to ask a stupid question. Inappropriate questions often mean something is wrong with the interaction, and that is not solely your responsibility. Perhaps it means you need to discuss something extra, or perhaps it means it is time to terminate the interaction.

Doing What Must Be Done

The illness of many individuals with psychological disorders often reaches a turning point when their own children are diagnosed with even more severe psychological problems. The subject shifts from self-rescue to rescuing others, like a boxer facing a challenge directly. They completely cast off self-pity and self-focus, walk out of their own narrow and enclosed small world, and release their fighting instincts. Morita therapy holds that the highest realm of treating psychological disorders is to abandon treatment. But this principle, full of dark humor, is quite difficult to grasp.

The opposite of self-pity is “forgetting the self” (selflessness). The parents, preoccupied by their children’s trauma or other more important problems, have no time for their own. They shoulder the responsibility and begin to strive to exert their own light and heat, releasing the life instincts of struggle and creation. This life instinct is precisely the most powerful weapon against all psychological problems.

Survivors easily confuse emotional investment with emotional avoidance. Take boxing as an example: participants experience moments of anxiety, fear, excitement, surprise, and anger during the competition. If the participant fully accepts these strong emotions and completes the challenge without falling into collapse, then their phenomenological world has undergone a baptism. This holds vital significance for the development of psychological resilience and is fundamentally different from “escaping pain.”

Integration Tool: Finding Your “Noble Person” (Helpers)

This article has repeatedly used the observer perspective. Survivors easily interpret the “observer” as some cold and detached character, but I hope they can be understood as a warm companion. This companion is witty and sensitive, capable and patient, possessing extraordinary vitality and observational skills. They can coexist with pain or unease with compassion, can freely experience and express various emotions, and are adept at perceiving the human factors behind various manifestations. Due to some twist of fate, they simultaneously perceived certain extraordinary deficits and shining points in the survivor. This intense contradictory experience makes them genuinely interested in the survivor. This is the kind of person Barry M. Prizant describes as naturally possessing “SCERTS” (or “Uniquely Human” insight). This kind of fortunate encounter (karmic connection) is something a survivor can hope for but cannot seek; otherwise, no one would be interested in a long-winded theory of self-help.

Such a companion is unlikely to be a “kindred spirit” who suffers from similar troubles. The idea of “psychological mutual help” seems beautiful, but in practice, it places high demands on both the participants and the organizers and is very difficult to implement. In the movie Front of the Class, the first thing the protagonist’s mother does after taking the protagonist to observe a so-called “support group” is to tell the protagonist to forget the experience. Mutual help groups that lack a strong organizing core invariably degenerate into emotional “trash stations.” They turn individual cognitive rumination into collective cognitive rumination. Not only does this not help members escape trauma, it actually promotes the “cross-infection” of trauma. Such scenes easily leave observers with the impression that “survivors are narrow-minded and self-righteous.”

Survivors who have gained some insight often tend to help others in need. This is the manifestation of basic drives functioning normally. But before taking action, the survivor must ask themself: Has my awakening truly reached the level of “restored health” or even “trauma immunity”? Although I can convey my insights to others using language, my own “survivor temperament” might more easily infect the other party, ultimately leading to a result contrary to what was intended.

The degree of psychological health can be tested using activity level as an indicator. The stronger the activity level, the better the psychological health. For a companion living with you, besides observing the agility of their eyes and the proficiency of their movements during interaction, the following method can also be used to test their activity level: Twist a piece of toilet paper into a roll. After the subject falls asleep, the tester lightly tickles the subject’s face with the paper roll. If the subject can accurately and proficiently swat the paper roll away without interrupting their state of sleep, the subject has good activity level. If the subject’s actions are slow and inefficient, their activity level is not ideal. If the subject is easily awakened, they may have traumatized markers such as hypervigilance. Due to the influence of the human body’s biological rhythms (especially the sleep cycle), the test results may not be stable; therefore, one can try several times at different times.

Chapter 6: Stories from the Journey: Case Studies and Phenomenological Examples

Note: This section involves specific life experiences and may easily trigger emotional flashbacks.

Telling psychological stories using the language of the body or life is often more accurate than stacking up seemingly rigorous but pale terminology. Listed here are several stories describing the daily state of a survivor. These stories contain both real elements and metaphorical colors. Please pay attention to the parts that resonate with you.

Stories of the Lost Wanderer (Self-Perception)

1) After the Show

While the crowd celebrated, he hid outside the window, silently watching the excitement and splendor within, simultaneously anticipating and fleeing. After the crowd dispersed, he quietly entered the venue, imagining and reliving the events in loneliness and solitude. Loneliness is the keynote of his life. He is surrounded by a sense of isolation, always feeling that something is missing (being welcomed, having his social existence affirmed), but unable to remember what.

2) Sad Music

He loves immersing himself in beautiful melodies. But unlike ordinary people, almost any music is savored by him as having a taste of sorrow, as if all music is just using a joyful scene to describe a sad emotion. Indulging in this sorrowful experience is not only unhelpful for relaxation, but it further weakens the body’s activity level. It wasn’t until a friend pointed out the loneliness in him that he realized this sorrow actually originated from his desolation and loneliness.

When people are moved by something, they express this feeling with behavior, and then expect a response from the interaction partner or other participants. A stirring that receives a response develops into true joy. If this expectation is unmet, they can only retract their behavior and suppress this stirring. This feeling of suppressed stirring is sorrow; it is equivalent to the experience of a beautiful thing in one’s heart being destroyed.

3) The Shiver

He experienced the feeling of “cold” for the first time. He felt his body spontaneously contract, even tremble, but he didn’t know what to do, and no one told him what to do. He either followed his body’s impulse and curled into a ball, or he avoided any environment that made him have this experience. It wasn’t until one day that he discovered you can put on clothes when you are cold.

4) The Pained Singer

As soon as the wound began to hurt, he would sing (mind-wander) to divert his attention. When his ability to divert his attention had reached the pinnacle of perfection, he often found himself unconsciously singing but having forgotten the original reason. He mocked himself as “neurotic,” but his heart was unwilling to accept it.

5) The Reckless Blind Man

A repressive growth environment makes the survivor unable to distinguish between peaceful calm, awkward silence, and dangerous dead silence. Long-term psychological tension makes it difficult for the survivor to distinguish a safe sense of relaxation from a dangerous sense of falling; thus they easily place themselves in peril without realizing it.

6) The Butterfly Effect

He was walking distractedly and frantically on the way to school, paying no attention to the passing vehicles. Suddenly, a large hand yanked him back. He turned his head only to discover it was an old classmate he hadn’t seen in years. Just at that moment, a speeding truck grazed past him. He had been inches away from death or dismemberment.

Fate is just that bizarre, full of various coincidences. Many times, one small mistake is enough to make decades of future effort look pale in comparison. Without noticing, we have already brushed past death time and again. The roots of a survivor’s numerous, complex problems often come from just a tiny deviation at the starting point of life. The butterfly effect sounds cool, but only when it lands on us can we feel its weight. How sigh-worthy is the drama of life, and how rare is the quality of gratitude.

7) The Decoy Physiological Defect

This is a typical “wear-and-tear trauma” case.

His feet were somewhat deformed, but because no one could see them, he paid it no mind. He also never felt this was related to his other, more severe problems. What truly caused him pain was his hunched back, lower back pain, and extremely poor balance ability. Since childhood, he couldn’t stand straight or walk steady, and tired after the slightest movement. Yet, he never received any correct guidance, only constant evaluations of “melodramatic,” “fragile,” and “useless.” Until one day, he read an article about the chain reaction of pes valgus (a symptom caused by abnormal foot bone development). He tried to correct his foot posture according to the article and unexpectedly found he could actually stand straight with ease. An unprecedented feeling of lightness and agility flooded his body. But before he had time to be happy, he felt a sharp, stabbing pain shoot up from the soles of his feet. He finally realized that the root of his long-term so-called back problems was entirely in his feet. The symptoms in his back and waist were the inevitable result of his body striving to adapt to the abnormality in his feet. Because the development of the foot problem was gradual, the body could adapt in time, so he had never felt pain from his feet. The body had transformed a sharp, localized problem into a mild, global problem via “pes valgus,” “tibial internal rotation,” etc. The body’s adaptation made the problem easier to bear, but it also trapped him long-term in a posture that severely limited his activity capacity, ultimately inviting all kinds of trauma and damaging his mind-body health and quality of life.

After understanding this, he began to work hard at learning to walk like a normal person, while simultaneously working hard at rehabilitation training. After a period of time, calluses grew on the soles of his feet, and the pain became bearable. (This problem required surgery to completely resolve, but the surgery’s success rate was not high; he chose to accept this defect and learn to coexist with it.) During the rehabilitation process, various muscle imbalance problems in his body were exposed one by one and resolved one by one. This prepared him physiologically for the recovery from his psychological trauma.

8) Laughing Fit

Laughter can rapidly shake off the feeling of tension; it is a relaxation method even simpler than deep breathing. Laughter may signify relaxation, or it may signify resistance to and avoidance of pressure, regardless of whether that pressure is constructive or harmful. A single simple laugh can both break a tense standoff or destroy a painstakingly built atmosphere. Severe trauma survivors often give the impression of “giggling stupidly.”

Social interaction means the surging of energy, but he has no idea how to use this energy. The stuck energy within his body already makes him overwhelmed; he cannot tolerate any more emotion. He is preparing to flee at all times, and may even laugh out loud at extremely inappropriate moments during major occasions. Laughing at oneself, combined with mind-wandering, is equivalent to continuously “massaging” the psyche. Although it cannot eliminate the pressure, it makes the pain bearable. He wanders in his mind through all kinds of laughable scenarios, letting out chuckles from time to time. Suppressing the laughter consumes his already limited willpower. He can only indulge himself, laughing foolishly without stop. This behavior is extremely similar to the “inappropriate laughter” (self-laughing) of schizophrenia, making him simply doubt his sanity.

9) The Devil by the Bedside

He was just a child then. He woke up in the middle of the night and saw a devil, black as the abyss, standing right by the bed. It made no sound, did not move, just silently stared at him. He felt terror, and simultaneously experienced a deep sense of loneliness, as if falling into a bottomless abyss. He wanted to cry, but knew no one could hear. He heard the sound of vehicles fading into the distance on the road outside; he knew those hurrying pedestrians had nothing to do with him. His family was all out of town making a living; they couldn’t help him now. He listened to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the living room, the rustling of the leaves in the gentle breeze outside the window, and knew the surroundings were silent. All around was darkness; it was the dead of night. He could only deceive himself into falling back asleep, while his body was left behind in the trauma. From then on, the sound of the wind, the sound of the clock, the deep night—all symbols that originally signified peace—were deeply branded with trauma and loneliness. His world was drowned in fear and loneliness.

10) Crispy Skin Ghost and Coward

A “Crispy Skin Ghost” (colloquialism for a fragile/brittle person) is someone who is particularly easy to injure. A “coward” is someone who finds it difficult to convert the energy of a high-arousal state into the power of action. Cowardice and brittleness are mutually causal. They set themselves and the environment in opposition, rashly placing themselves in the position of “prey (the dominated)” rather than “hunter (the dominator)” or “cooperator.” They can’t even be bothered to struggle. If we say that the ability to find the perfect solution in a low-arousal state reflects a person’s creativity, then the ability to respond to crisis in a high-arousal state reflects a person’s resource reserves. Survivors often value creativity while dismissing resource reserves.

11) The Person Who Isn’t Awake

Only an active body can produce rich sensory stimulation. Rich sensory stimulation is the prerequisite for maintaining arousal. The two form a positive feedback loop. His colleagues always evaluated him as seeming like he had never fully woken up.

12) The Dislocated Shoulder

Psychological trauma is like a dislocated shoulder. The dislocation is painful, and resetting it is also painful. The process of the subject saving themself is like them relying on their own effort to overcome the pain and complete the relocation. The clumsiness, panic, and helplessness during this time deserve to be understood, not mocked. And if the subject wants to receive others’ understanding and support, they must first learn to understand and support themself. Survivors must learn self-compassion.

13) Tossing and Turning

He doesn’t have insomnia, but every time before he falls asleep, he always has to toss and turn for half the day. When he used to live in a collective dormitory, this habit caused great distress for his lower-bunk roommate. He constantly changed his body posture but always felt uncomfortable all over. He did not realize that these states of tension, lodged in various parts of his body like arthritis, were precisely the relics of psychological trauma. They are exposed when the body needs to relax or when external interference decreases (like before sleep at night). Restlessness is the survivor’s subconscious means of regulating these parasitic tensions. If they are not even allowed to be restless, these parasitic tensions stored in the body may trigger more complex mind-body problems.

Note: This story has potential complexities. Systemic muscle or joint discomfort may be caused by certain muscle or joint defects (like generalized ligament laxity), and the vulnerability caused by this systemic musculoskeletal defect may make the subject highly susceptible to trauma. Therefore, his discomfort may be a hybrid product of psychological trauma and physiological defects.

14) Sighing

After we complete a tense and arduous task, or give up a task we are incompetent to perform, we often “let out a long sigh.” This sigh unloads the accumulated tension in the body, lowers the arousal level, and allows us to enter a relatively relaxed state. Therefore, sighing has the effect of unloading pressure and interrupting drives. Survivors (especially those stuck in the restraint phase), due to their decreased micro-activity levels, often habitually tense their bodies to a level far exceeding ordinary people during daily sensing and thinking. After the sensing and thinking are over, they require more relaxation, and thus often have a habit of sighing.

To be able to maintain a certain level of concentration, we must share a certain amount of control with those around us. Thus, their inexplicable sigh not only interrupts their own drive, it also interrupts our drive. Positive people are unwilling to associate with those who sigh and groan all day. In this way, survivors push away the very people who could help them.

15) The Voyeur / Bystander

He has never thrown himself wholeheartedly into any activity. His lack of participation makes him hold a skeptical, “want-to-but-rejecting” attitude toward all interaction partners. He traps himself in the “composure phase” before exploration begins, never carrying out true exploration, living only in his self-righteous observations and imagination. He even becomes intoxicated with this feeling of “being in the midst of it, yet standing outside it.”

16) The Criticizer

Survivors are easily attracted to people who are highly autonomous but extremely unreliable, becoming their appendages. In order to coexist with these people, they are even willing to endure all kinds of criticism and humiliation. If we observe these “trashy people,” we will discover that they commonly possess a powerful energy that survivors lack most (similar to “bandit energy”). Although this savage, primitive, simple, and crude energy has significant destructive potential, it also allows these people to exhibit powerful vitality and a spirit of resistance, which holds a peculiar charm in the eyes of the survivor.

Survivors commonly suffer from “initiation difficulty.” Criticism and humiliation can produce extra stimulation, promoting the initiation and completion of activities. If no one criticizes them, they will even imagine a critical voice in their mind, constantly urging themselves on, making themselves improve their efficiency. This kind of voice is the “Inner Critic.” Thus, the reason survivors are unable to walk out of trauma’s shadow is, to some extent, that they have already formed a dependency on the energy stored within the trauma. They find it very difficult to realize that the efficiency of an activity is determined by the fluidity of the interaction. If we can establish positive emotional connections with interaction partners in healthy interpersonal relationships, and experience a sense of flow in the interaction, our efficiency will naturally increase rapidly, and we ourselves will become more powerful. The survivor’s inefficiency is not due to a lack of supervision; on the contrary, it is because their excessive self-criticism makes them lack the patience and passion to establish and maintain interaction loops.

17) The Negator

This story, to a certain extent, reflects the intergenerational transmission model of trauma.

When the traumatized caregiver answers a question that requires skill, it triggers an intense emotional flashback. If the questioner is a stranger, they will deliberately suppress themself to avoid losing composure. But if the questioner is their child, they can vent their emotions without restraint. They will not answer the question; instead, they will directly reprimand the questioner as “Stupid!” In the child’s memory, their own desire for expression is always negated by the caregiver, as if the moment they open their mouth, they only expose their own stupidity. Slowly, they become afraid to express, always ashamed that they cannot ask good questions. They have forgotten that if their earnest listening and sincere questions are met with negation, the first thing they should feel is anger, not shame. They become weary of self-censoring before asking questions, and so they cleverly learn “response inhibition,” completely losing their curiosity and desire to explore. This way, they rarely need to ask questions. This lack of exploration makes them extremely ignorant of the world, making it even harder for them to ask good questions. Self-enclosure causes their traumatization to deepen.

18) The Person Holding the Stone

If encountering a traumatic event is like having a giant stone thrown at you, and the stone is too heavy to carry forward, then: Mourning is steadily placing the stone on the ground. Anger is smashing the stone back. Mania is holding the stone and crashing into things randomly. Complaining is holding the stone and wailing. Depression is holding the stone and lying on the ground. Neuroticism is struggling forward while carrying the stone.

19) The Foreign Language Learner

Survivors often use “learning a foreign language” to describe the difficulty of learning interpersonal skills and developing adaptive capacity. This is not being melodramatic. The difficulty for an adult survivor to achieve “Secondary Growth” is absolutely comparable to learning a foreign language.

The linguist Chris Lonsdale (Long Feihu) proved with his personal experience that the reason adults struggle to efficiently master a new language is not that the brain’s learning ability has degraded, but that no one treats them with the pure passion, care, and patience that they treat a small child with. It is also very difficult for them to embrace a new interaction with the passion and curiosity of a small child, without any preconceived biases. The reason trauma survivors struggle to develop adaptive capacity is the same. Chris Lonsdale’s research brought entirely new inspiration to people’s understanding of “learning.” If survivors want to complete the life homework left behind due to trauma and achieve Secondary Growth, they must cherish all the goodwill and care in their lives, and seize every opportunity to apply this infant-like learning method.

20) Unfinished Business

He is always used to silently burying his head and exploring the path alone. When others awaken him from his absorption, his cold and stern expression is simply intimidating. He himself often frets over his severe lack of affinity. It wasn’t until one day he realized that the barrier between himself and the outside world existed because he still had “unfinished business.” He had been trapped in no-man’s-land for too long. He had to repair the signposts, draw the map, and bring the important information back to the people of the world. His coldness was not due to some personality defect; on the contrary, it was precisely because of his deep bond with the world.

Stories of the Lost Wanderer (Interpersonal)

1) The Shut-in Goes Outside

A shut-in, who had stayed home for 20 years since age 3, was finally encouraged by motivational chicken soup to walk out the door. To feel sufficiently safe, he brought a lot of money, only to be robbed on his very first outing. From then on, he saw everyone as a potential robber and was even more unwilling to go out. The motivational chicken soup only encouraged him to go out; it never told him how to take the first step.

2) The Turtle Pulling in its Head

The little turtle hid in its shell, trembling. Fear drowned its senses, preventing it from receiving the environment’s feedback. Thus, it never came out again for its entire life, and even forgot how to come out.

3) The Half-Familiar Friend

He has a strong desire to express himself and is always generous in sharing his knowledge or experiences with others. But he finds that others don’t seem very interested, and even frequently show reactions like disdain or contempt, making him feel frustrated or even angry. Occasionally, someone feigns interest. He gets excited for half the day, only to discover either that the other person isn’t on his wavelength at all, or that it was just a prank. He finally collapses, becoming resistant to interaction and socializing. Even if someone sincerely wants to get close to him, he can only wrap his armor tighter in terror.

After many years of reflection, he finally realized that he had never correctly understood his relationships with others. Those people who hurt him were merely “half-familiar” acquaintances (not close friends); their reaction was just a counter-attack to being offended. (“Offense” can be understood as the subject feeling their own orienting response was maliciously interfered with.) Only a small part of it came from true malice. Meanwhile, those who truly wanted to be close to him, those truly worth befriending, were, most of the time, ignored by him.

In an unfamiliar situation, our most natural behavior will be very different from others’. If we make movements that the other person is unaccustomed to, it will make both ourselves and the other person uncomfortable. The process of building familiarity is the process of feeling, physically (and not just consciously), that we are in sync with others, that we share a common experience. His mind-body state was tense long-term; he had never experienced expansion and synchronicity, and thus had never experienced the difference between “familiar” and “unfamiliar.” He thoughtlessly extended his family relationships into society, attracting a small number of people as friends while simultaneously inviting countless malicious responses.

4) Inadvertent Provocation

Due to cognitive rigidity, survivors are very dull to interpersonal conflict. Their handling of various conflicts of interest is often simple and crude. Although subjectively they have no malice, they often give the impression of being barbaric, unreasonable, and arrogant. They thus easily provoke intense resistance from others, causing themselves to suffer unexpected vicious retaliation. He doesn’t know why he so easily attracts the hostility of others, and gradually falls into learned helplessness amid his frustration.

5) The Boring Epiphany

It is much more strenuous for him to guide his drives than it is for an ordinary person. He needs more physiological mobilization and psychological preparation to cope with any challenge. When the challenge is successfully completed, his sense of accomplishment is also much stronger than that of an ordinary person. This intense sense of accomplishment makes him eager to share his epiphany with those around him. However, the language of human life was not prepared for these complex and subtle insights. He strives for ages, but the things he says either sound utterly commonplace to others or simply incoherent. The dissonance between his boring expression and his excited state gives him the impression of being “stupid,” and his desire to communicate is deeply frustrated. Over time, he compensates by developing strong narcissistic tendencies.

6) The Two-Faced Man

Imagine you are just a child, and all your resources come from one person. All the care you receive comes from him, and all the harm you suffer also comes from him. He encourages you to take all kinds of actions, yet almost any action you take meets with his negation. How should you face him? How should you react when he is harming you? Your brain isn’t enough; cognitive processing cannot be completed. Thus, you turn yourself into a mental patient.

7) The Person Who Hums the Siren

He stood there blankly, his eyes empty, his mind fogged. He felt he ought to be thinking about something, but he didn’t know what to think. Response inhibition made him emotionally indifferent. If he didn’t allow himself to mind-wander, he would feel blank and empty. Just then, an ambulance passed in the distance, its siren sounding “woo-woo.” He felt as if he had seen a shooting star in the pitch-black night sky. He suddenly became excited and also began to make a loud “woo-woo” sound. Everyone nearby turned to look at him simultaneously, their gaze like they had discovered a mental patient. He felt incomparable shame. He had finally relaxed just a tiny bit, only to end up curling up even tighter.

8) “Taming”

Borrowing the concept of “taming” from The Little Prince, psychological trauma is the result of mutual taming between the survivor and the traumatic event. The devil by the bedside caused all ordinary imagery to be branded with the imprint of trauma. The treatment and transcendence of trauma is a similar taming process. Whether it is the house, the stars, or the desert, they are beautiful because of something unseen (a mysterious treasure, a rose, a hidden well). Look toward the starry sky in your heart and ask yourself: Has “the sheep” eaten “the flower”? You will find that everything changes depending on your answer. “Taming” is a profound blending.

9) The Outsider

When the survivor enters a special atmosphere as an outsider, because the others in that atmosphere do not share a similar orienting response, the subject cannot understand their own orienting response impulse and is left at a loss. The difficulty in cognitive processing causes emotional abnormalities such as agitation and excitement.

10) The Perfect Person

To please the traumatized caregiver, the CPTSD survivor constructs an entire set of meticulous and unrealistic standardized personalities or ideal personalities. All behavior that conforms to the standard is taken for granted, while all behavior that does not conform must be condemned. If they cannot find such a standard for a moment, they collapse. This obsession with the “perfect person” makes them paranoid and harsh toward others in interpersonal interactions, while lacking self-awareness regarding themselves.

11) The Judge and the Sinner

Every time he regained a tiny bit of vitality, the severe expression and harsh accusations of the traumatized caregiver would immediately strike him back down to his original state. He gradually learned to fear and be ashamed of his own nature. When he extended this fear and shame to his attitude toward his peers, his abnormality could no longer be corrected through healthy interaction with peers.

Shame reinforces self-focus; withdrawal limits real perception. Intense imaginary perception packages this self-focus as external focus (this is also emotional reasoning), as if he were a sinner at trial, forever surrounded by the critical gazes of a group of judges. Others need only emanate an aura or tone similar to that of the judges to evoke the survivor’s anxiety, fear, and shame. The survivor thus becomes a “coward.” In interactions, they always easily place themselves in an unequal position, always at a disadvantage in the “status game,” making them very susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. Their own agency fails to develop.

Their growth environment makes it difficult for them to separate the nurturing side of their caregivers from the destructive side. If we can re-experience the interaction process with our family of origin from an adult perspective, we have the opportunity to understand and transform those maladaptive psychological states and cognitive schemas. Although perfect caregivers do not exist, smart children are adept at using observation and exploration to establish and develop relationships more with the nurturing side of their caregivers. In this process, the child gradually experiences the complexity of personality, slowly learns to understand the caregiver’s flaws and shortcomings, and finally learns to view people’s strengths and weaknesses objectively. If CPTSD survivors want to break through themselves, they must learn to reconcile with their family of origin. This process of reconciliation is integration, it is mourning, and moreover, it is independence. Those who blindly flee their caregivers cannot develop their own internal “fatherhood” and “motherhood.” They have no sense of responsibility or self-discipline; they know neither how to care for themselves nor how to care for others.

12) The Slave

He tends to unthinkingly accept various limitations and even harm, then meticulously seeks to coexist with these various threats, and then learns helplessness through constant setbacks. This can be described as a kind of self-abuse (masochism).

His self-abusive tendency originates from the psychological shadow left by the traumatized caregiver. In the process of interacting with the caregiver, on the one hand, his body and mind express a strong tendency toward resistance; on the other hand, his cognition tells him, “They love you, and you should love them. What’s the meaning of being so tense?” When the subject seriously attempts an activity, they are in a clumsy “vulnerable state.” In this state, the subject shares a portion of their control with their companion. Much trauma is caused by untrustworthy companions in this state. The more the subject invests, the more vulnerable they become, the more control they hand over, and the heavier the trauma they may suffer. Sharing control is the most basic way people get to know each other and build trust. Ordinary people can use this to identify the reliability of their companions. But he (the survivor) blindly relies on his companion while simultaneously displaying a strong avoidance tendency, appearing cognitively chaotic, behaviorally contradictory, and inefficient. Immense psychological pressure makes him resonate more easily with negative emotions than positive ones. An emotionalized community gradually forms around him.

13) The Story of Love

Understanding the intergenerational transmission mechanism of trauma is not for resenting parents. On the contrary, profoundly recognizing the meaning of suffering can increase one’s capacity to bear suffering, thereby gaining the courage to face pain and digest pain. The process of striving to digest the pain oneself is the process of shouldering family responsibility. The karma passed down through generations in the family will end with oneself. No matter how much cruelty the trauma reveals about the family truth, this is, in the end, still a story about the transmission of love.

Empathy can transmit trauma. This reminds us to cherish our feathers and not waste energy on those who are not worthy.

14) The Overly Conscious Person

The survivor’s emotional reasoning habit causes their self-focus to be interpreted by them as external focus. They project this tendency of self-focus onto others (projection), causing them to easily overestimate the various restrictions present in others’ behavioral logic. They therefore often make various assumptions about others based on their so-called “perfect person” and feel angry at others’ unexpected (free) behavior. If they could let go of their harsh criticism, they too would reap freedom.

15) The Eyes Behind the Back

The emotional backdrop of some survivors is extremely bizarre. They often feel as if there is a pair of eyes behind their back, coldly watching them. They cannot explain this feeling and may even become mystical or “spacy” because of it. In reality, this feeling of being monitored by a cold gaze is shame mixed with an intense sense of isolation. Trauma limits people’s ability to express emotion, causing them to resort to such graphically vivid, terrifying expressions. Shame and fear mutually promote each other. If a person’s emotional backdrop is flooded with too much shame, they become a “coward” in everyone’s eyes.

Although this graphically vivid expression is terrifying, it creatively concretizes shame. This ability to concretize emotion is a human instinct. As early as the prehistoric cave paintings, humans already fully displayed this talent. This feeling of being watched by cold eyes hints at the source of the shame. It tells us that an individual dominated by toxic shame has lost the ability to get along with those “eyes behind their back.”

The so-called eyes behind the back are the various people in the background of the life stage. When we participate in social activities, we are not just dealing with specific individuals; we are also dealing with everyone in the environment. Every move we make may produce widespread influence, subsequently causing unforeseeable consequences. When we are arguing with someone, as long as a third person is present, our argument will exceed the scope of a simple dispute, unconsciously evolving into a competition for the third party. It can even be said that, in the vast majority of cases, our arguments are for the third person to hear. If no third party existed, two people in direct opposition would very likely just come to blows, because both know well they have no hope of convincing the other.

All “cowards” (weak-willed person) are people who are insensitive to the “air” (the atmosphere). They do not know how to get along with these eyes behind them, yet they cannot ignore their existence. They are always confused as to how others’ attitudes toward them just changed. In their distress, they seek comfort from various “chicken soups” (self-help platitudes). These chicken soups either tell them, “Walk your own path, let others talk,” or “Don’t overthink it, others don’t care that much about you.” Although such words have a certain comforting effect, more often they lead the person to the opposite extreme, making them increasingly numb, dull, and self-isolating. In complex social environments, these people, on the one hand, always severely ignore the various important signals released by others, and on the other hand, often underestimate the rich information released by their own behavior. In the end, they “don’t even know how they died.”

There is a segment in the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes: The awakened Caesar holds a bag of cookies and tells another chimpanzee to distribute them to the group. But that chimp snatches the bag, pulls out a cookie, and intends to keep it all. Caesar says nothing, just lightly nods his head, as if to say: “Go ahead and eat it, if you dare.” That chimp immediately sees the anger in the eyes of the crowd, instantly loses his nerve, and obediently begins to distribute the cookies.

In this segment, Caesar gained power, while the other chimp gained fear. The deciding factor in the middle was precisely the gaze of the crowd. When the subject feels these gazes are like the eyes of judgment, coldly staring at them, they will feel fear and shame. But when they feel these eyes are with them, they will feel power. Those who can enjoy the gaze of the crowd are all people who can reap strength from the gaze of the crowd. They see the crowd’s emotions move with their own; they feel the crowd is with them.

This ability to connect with the crowd is a human instinct. As early as the primitive societies, our ancestors, when chasing prey and dodging beasts on the savanna and in the jungle, had already learned to follow the various subtle changes in environmental information and team atmosphere, timely and effectively adjusting their actions, completing coordination without needing to yell. This ability to establish and maintain a tacit understanding with the environment is an important reference we use to evaluate others’ intelligence levels. If a person lacks this ability, they are easily despised and ostracized.

The reason cowards are cowards is not because they are stupid, but because trauma caused them to lose the ability to get along with these gazes from behind. In their phenomenological world, they are like prisoners, their every move monitored by cold gazes. They can only bury their heads and work; even looking up is a crime. Even if there is no one around, they will consciously take on the duty of those monitors, constantly criticizing themselves. They naively believe that as long as they preemptively criticize themselves, they can avoid others’ criticism and obtain forgiveness.

What these people need to do is not learn to desensitize themselves to others’ gazes, and certainly not to use self-deceiving words like “as long as I’m not embarrassed, the one who is embarrassed is others” to comfort themselves. This is not only useless, but it will also make them more lonely and powerless. On the contrary, what these people need to do is, in every interaction, pay more attention to the “air.” If they feel at a loss, they might as well slow the rhythm, gently look around, and perhaps they will unexpectedly gain strength from the expressions, speech, and bearing of others. Even if they discover that no one is paying attention to them at all, they will feel freedom and relaxation, not helplessness. Two people in the same environment, even without any substantive communication, are providing support for each other. Their every move is transmitting various information about the environment to the other party, telling the other party whether it is currently worth being nervous, whether any noteworthy abnormality has appeared. Rebuilding humanity’s most basic tacit understanding is a vital link in the recovery process for trauma survivors. Trust in others allows us to truly relax.

Being able to see the strength in others that is with you is an extremely encouraging experience. Experiencing this just once is enough to sweep away all feelings of shame. At this point, that terrifying feeling of someone behind you naturally disappears. The individual feels a freedom they have never felt before.

16) The Gatekeeper and the Hermit / The Butler and the Traveling Master

Survivors are immersed in their own little world and need others to provide various basic securities for them. They are therefore often extremely demanding of others, with meticulous, high standards, appearing to have no sense of boundaries. They place overly high expectations and spiritual reliance on those around them. Once those expectations fall short, they feel disappointment and anger.

17) The Soldier Who Went Too Deep Alone Unknowingly / The Lost Traveler

Helpless people await aid, but focused people detest interruption. When ordinary people solve problems, the problem itself guides the development of their exploratory behavior, making them more and more active. Survivors are the opposite. They tend to rely on quiet thinking to find solutions, which may cause their mind-body activity level to drop further. Survivors, long trapped in conscious activity directed at internal objects, cannot distinguish between the helpless state of loneliness and the immersed state of exploration. Not only are they unaware that they truly, badly need help, they instead often feel disgusted by others’ help, as if they are being despised. They are like soldiers who have broken away from their unit and gone deep behind enemy lines without realizing it: powerless against the enemy, yet unable to recognize their comrades. They are physiologically in a state of high arousal but cognitively trapped in helplessness.

Survivors avoid eye contact not due to an innate defect, but because as an “isolate,” they cannot confirm whether others are safe and reliable. They want to observe the environment but fear attracting attention. The high arousal that accompanies eye contact makes them feel fear and shame. They cannot use appropriate eye contact to obtain information; they know neither when they should make eye contact nor when they should look away.

18) The Abandoned Child

Imagine a child is trapped in a predicament. They can use words or actions to express a confrontational attitude. If the resistance is ineffective, they may exhibit an intense fight-or-flight response. If fight-or-flight is also ineffective, they can still seek help from those around them. But what if their calls for help consistently fail to receive any meaningful response? At this point, an intense feeling of fear helps them block their senses, allowing them to enter a brief dissociative state. If the process of coping with the pressure is never completed, the dissociation turns into the relatively milder, but more persistent, “mind-wandering.” For many CPTSD survivors, behind their mind-wandering is a profound sense of abandonment. They appear, on the one hand, emotionally indifferent, yet on the other hand, are very easily manipulated by others. Negation from anyone is enough to break their spirit. They have lost their “home” emotionally.

19) The Dark Labyrinth

When facing the weak, people easily expose the darkest, most evil side of their hearts. Survivors struggle to develop cognitive schemas through interpersonal interaction, one reason being that they rarely receive the treatment ordinary people do. For many survivors, ordinary people are all two-faced, duplicitous, selfish, petty people; the so-called experience they share holds no practical value whatsoever.

In reality, survivors also receive a great deal of goodwill and care in their lives; it is just that their mind-body state makes it very difficult for them to resonate with this bright side of human nature. Just as all fresh flowers lose their color in the darkness, survivors have forgotten that their own body is the best searchlight. As long as they can maintain the most basic interaction with the world, they will sooner or later walk out of the labyrinth. Even if they don’t walk out, the traces they leave behind will become signposts for those who follow.

20) Learning Driving vs. Solving Problems

For an ordinary person, it is easier to understand growth by comparing it to learning to drive. In countless subtle, ineffable interactions, the person and the car gradually reach a tacit understanding. Movements go from unfamiliar and rigid to fluid and natural; energy goes from total concentration to being at ease. The process of human social development is the same. But trauma survivors are accustomed to understanding learning as “finding the principle” or “memorizing the formula.” In their eyes, the world is rigid and lifeless. But in reality, the one who is rigid is them. In the words of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), they have lost “psychological flexibility.” They struggle to understand that feeling is the foundation of reason; they always use so-called rationality to seal off or even escape feelings. The suppressed emotions will look for any outlet they can find. Survivors believe they are pursuing “rationality,” but in the eyes of others, they either appear cold and harsh, or extremely emotional.

Trauma restricts a person’s “learning window.” An ordinary person learning to drive can learn during the day, and can also learn at night using the streetlights. But in the survivor’s world, streetlights do not exist. They want to practice driving when there are fewest people, only to discover it’s impossible. They cannot understand why their world has no streetlights, so they desperately search for the reason, and miss the sunlight too. They have no time to learn, and thus they never learn to drive.

The world has both warm sunshine and dark corners. If you have no light, you must cherish the sunshine all the more. Trauma makes people more sensitive to the threatening factors in the environment, making it harder to notice the developmental factors. Even if survivors are surrounded by people full of love and passion, they are completely blind to it. In their eyes, the world is full of indifference, selfishness, and greed; no one understands them. But others feel that they are overly mysterious and unpredictable, making it impossible to know how to approach them. They keep others at arm’s length, unable to accept or express goodwill. A person cannot feel love from people who do not understand them, just as a person cannot be persuaded by people who do not understand them. When one is far removed from love, care, and help for too long, the human soul inevitably becomes rigid. They cannot understand their own various rigid manifestations and begin to suspect they have an innate defect.

Accepting others’ goodwill and finding what one is passionate about in life—this is a task that only the survivor themself can initiate. If they do not extend their hand, no one can ever grab it.

21) The Rescuer and the Rescued

Many survivors are accustomed to appearing in various relationships in the posture of the “Rescuer.” They have a strong, irrepressible complex about helping others.

Rescuers are often people who have lost their vitality due to long-term emotional neglect. Loneliness is their emotional backdrop. They need to rely on the vitality of others to drive themselves. But other people are too free. Rescuers must ensure that others are, psychologically, as similar to themselves as possible, so that others’ vitality can be fully used by them without harming them. This is why they appear to have an excessively strong need for control. In other words, the “Rescuer” is simultaneously “One Who Waits to Be Rescued.” They hope others can rescue them just as they rescue others.

Many rescuers over-extend themselves to fully understand and help others, even at the cost of delaying their own development. The reason they appear to have no boundaries is that they are trying too hard. Even when facing people who are not familiar at all, they will be overly enthusiastic, like a close sibling or even an elder. If others reject their kindness out of vigilance or feeling offended, they feel as if they have been abandoned by a relative. Because rescuers have been traumatized themselves, they are more easily able to feel the helplessness of others, and their compassion is stronger. Therefore, in terms of the motivation to help alone, they are not fundamentally different from ordinary people; their degree is just more intense.

What rescuers need to do is to recognize the effort they put into seeking rescue, fully mourn their own childhood, and stop expecting “to be rescued.” They must apply the strong compassion they have for others onto themselves, learn “self-compassion,” strive to take good care of themselves, and do what they are supposed to do. When the rescuer accepts their childhood losses, completes their self-integration, clarifies the boundaries between what they can do (strength), should do (responsibility), and cannot or should not do, and no longer holds excessive expectations of others, their compassion will naturally return to a normal state. They themselves will also become more sensitive to the personalities and intentions of others, and their understanding of interpersonal relationships will become more profound.

Stories of the Awakening Moment

Here are listed several stories capturing the survivor’s everyday moments of awakening. A severely traumatized individual needs to experience many “awakening moments” before their awakened state can reach a self-sustaining level, just as a weak body needs continuous exercise to become strong.

1) A Worthy Thing to Be Nervous About

He was, as usual, about to be late, but if he ran, he could still make it. Yet, he just couldn’t feel any tension at all, as if he intentionally wanted to be late. At that moment, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was playing in his headphones, reached a part where the atmosphere was dark and ominous, and the tempo markedly increased. Unconsciously, his footsteps quickened, and he actually started to run without thinking. For the first time, he felt that being late was something worth panicking about. He ran very fast but didn’t feel tired, as if his body was filled with strength. The road needed to turn, and the grass and trees obstructed his view. He had to pay attention to the road conditions while sprinting, but this had already become an effortless matter. Finally, he rushed into the office building at the last second before being late and successfully clocked in. While letting out a long sigh of relief, he felt the entire world become incomparably clear. The noise that had swirled in his mind all day disappeared. He felt a relaxation and clarity he had never felt before. His body, usually limp and weak, for the first time felt light and agile.

This was the first time the stress response gave him the strength for action rather than immediately falling into collapse. He did not use willpower to force himself; rather, he let the surging energy carry his entire body to complete the task.

Music is the survivor’s tool for dispelling loneliness, placing emotions, and maintaining arousal. As soon as the music starts, the survivor falls into mind-wandering (daydreaming), thereby avoiding the sensory overload or spiritual emptiness brought by facing reality. Since music can make him fall into mind-wandering and withdraw from reality, it can also be used to promote the release of self-inhibition and push him into reality.

Note: The music spoken of here is real music, not the noise in a daydream, and certainly not the hallucinations of schizophrenia.

2) A Worthy Thing to Be Excited About

He finished eating in the mall and was preparing to go downstairs. An unusual noise came from outside, followed by the clamor of people. He was long accustomed to response inhibition, so the strange noise didn’t affect him in the slightest. After all, in his experience, he was always making a fuss over nothing, often treated as neurotic. He adapted to this strange noise without thinking, just as an ordinary person adapts to the sound of firecrackers during the Spring Festival holiday. But the cheering sound that followed made him vaguely feel this was not simple. “I should probably look up,” he thought. He raised his head and saw a crowd milling around the mall entrance. Some held umbrellas; some held up their phones. The strange noise and clamor continued. He finally realized something worth paying attention to was happening.

In that instant, he felt as if the world had been illuminated. He felt a rare sense of clarity, just like that time he ran into the company to beat the clock. The difference this time was that he felt his own curiosity. He quickly walked out the main door, only to discover a huge hailstorm was falling outside. The young people were either taking photos, discussing it, or their faces were brimming with surprise; some showed panic or even worry. Large hailstones crashed onto the ground and immediately splashed far away; some rolled to his feet. He watched all of this, infected by the emotions of the crowd, and became one of them. This time, he did not lose his composure; instead, he “awakened.”

The scenes and painful experiences of being baselessly reprimanded in childhood flashed through his mind and body. Complex emotions surged into his heart. He felt some fear, some anger, some excitement, and some sadness. Finally, these emotions all disappeared, leaving only the excited feeling of energy flowing smoothly. He finally realized that the crowd’s reaction was not shameful; on the contrary, it was the very manifestation of vitality. His own coping ability had failed to develop for a long time, remaining stuck at a child’s level, which is why he often seemed to be making a fuss over nothing.

An unfamiliar way of expressing vitality is like an unfamiliar art form; at first, it might make us curious, or it might make us feel it is bizarre. But as long as we face it with an open (expanded) heart, we may, by some future chance, resonate with it. From then on, as if awakened, we gain the ability to appreciate or even participate in it. This is the fateful connection between a person and art; one should treat life the same way.

3) Lovely People

They were so lovely (cute/lovable), he was intoxicated. After helping each other a few times, he gained some familiarity with them, and the interaction began to heat up. At first, he still felt some shame, but the goodwill he felt from them quickly suppressed his anxiety reflex and confrontational tendencies. He gradually recognized that this was a pure and friendly interaction, containing no element of trickery or hidden motive. He felt a long-suppressed energy in his body begin to slowly flow. He truly understood how narrow-minded his former self had been. He would no longer assume he was in love with someone or someone was in love with him just because of a small stirring of the heart, nor would he rashly assume others were tricking him.

He distinguished, at a finer level, different feelings of “being moved” (heart-stirring). He began to detest his previous listless, paralyzed posture, because that posture obstructed him from experiencing the wonderful energy contained in the heart-stirring moments of interpersonal interaction. Slowly, he began to “straighten up and brace himself” (become vibrant/sharp).

Recognizing the loveliness in others and developing an interest in others is the first step for the survivor to walk out of the self and toward others. Such opportunities are rare and precious.

4) Deep Stretching

He finished a moderate-intensity night run and was somewhat fatigued. He found a tutorial video for post-run deep stretching and followed the teacher inside, gradually adjusting his body to the correct posture in slow, rhythmic deep breaths. He slowly relaxed his whole body, clearly feeling the tension in his body being released through the stretching of specific muscles. While confirming his posture was correct enough, he strove to maintain the stability of the posture through deep breathing. After completing the entire set of movements, he went to sleep.

When he woke in the middle of the night, he discovered that the “theater in his head” that had long plagued him had vanished without a trace. The world had never been so silent. A survivor’s body may seem paralyzed and weak, but it actually contains a large amount of subtle tension. These states of tension are the remnants of traumatic events; they represent the various behavioral impulses that were evoked during the traumatic event but never developed. It is precisely this parasitic tension that causes the compulsive state of mind-wandering. Deep stretching can only temporarily eliminate the mind-wandering, allowing the subject to taste how refreshing life is without the “head theater.” To truly dissolve mind-wandering, one must directly face the trauma and improve one’s own activity level. When the rich experience of real life puts the mind-wandering to shame, the mind-wandering will naturally scatter and disappear.

5) Co-Dancing

She woke him from his mind-wandering. Her friendly attitude and her experience allowed him to learn to dance in an informal teaching situation. As she danced, she more or less brought him along in the dance. The steps were not complicated. After some awkward moments, his ears sensed some connection between the music and the dance steps. He began to realize her movements were rhythmic. By the end of the dance, he found he could already follow her movements, his footsteps were relatively light, and he could even avoid accidentally stepping on her feet.

When we help survivors improve their activity level, it is like co-dancing with them. We elicit a state and let them learn within it, yet they do not need to be taught by us. When the subject attempts to expand their own activity capacity, they will subconsciously and continuously adjust their posture and movements until they can obtain a “sense of flow.” This example has metaphorical meaning: If “She” is the quality of mindful attention, and “He” is the blocked stream of experience, then the process of co-dancing is the process of a felt sense (experience) forming. If “She” is the helper and “He” is the person being helped, then the co-dancing is the most ideal helping process.

6) The Leader

This is an imaginary situation, possessing the quality of a dream. Whether it is logical is not important; what is important is the process of energy arousal and release that it displays. This exercise of using imaginary scenarios to train stress-resistance is often used in the training of professional athletes.

Imagine: Your child is on a swing upstairs, and you are watching him from below. The child seems to have discovered some knack and gradually swings higher and higher. Then he suddenly discovers it’s a bit too high. He wants to stop but finds he has no way. He starts to panic and tries to struggle, only to find he is still swinging higher—his behavior has already frozen, trapping him in the motor pattern of “swinging higher.” He finally cries out in panic. You watch as he is about to be thrown off, and there is no time to rush upstairs. Thus, you yell to him in a firm tone, telling him to crouch down when swinging to the low point and stand up when swinging up—this seems to be what he was already doing, so it doesn’t work, and he cries even harder. Only then do you realize you said it backward. So you take a deep breath, fight back your panic, and tell him to take a deep breath too: Strive to stand up when swinging down, and crouch down when swinging up. His legs are already losing strength, but your firmness and calm composure grant him strength. He follows your command and diligently executes the movement. Finally, the swing slows down. You rush upstairs and catch him in your arms, as if you both have just experienced a rebirth.

For a CPTSD survivor, it is just as terrifying to become a leader and be trusted by a vulnerable person as it is to become the one being led and have to trust a reliable person. Learning mutual trust under pressure is a vital lesson in the survivor’s personality development.

7) The Skilled Barber

The barber’s skilled technique flowed like clouds and water. The sound was crisp, the movements fluid, the touch gentle. His hands roamed over his head like a dance. Every push and press was gentle yet definite, allowing him to cooperate effortlessly. Every snip of the scissors stopped at just the right point yet was completely unambiguous. His movements shifted as fast as lightning, making him momentarily unsure how many hands were on his head. His attention wanted to tightly follow that wonderful touch and sound, only to discover it was impossible; they were incomparably clear, yet completely unpredictable. Slowly, he found that there was actually no need to struggle to pay attention to every single movement. When he stopped controlling his attention, those touches and sounds actually converged into a wonderful symphony. He finally let go of his compulsive self-control and began to appreciate this moving piece of music. Relaxing moments from his life gradually surfaced in his mind; he remembered the warm daily routines with his family many years ago.

When he paid his bill and walked out of the barbershop, the myriad lights of the small town at night, the traffic, the bustling crowds, actually made him feel a peace and warmth he had never felt before. The town had always been this way; the one who changed was him. Only then did he realize that the incessant music playing in his head during his daily mind-wandering was actually compensation for the missing symphony of life. He experienced true relaxation for the first time. His higher cortex, for the first time, let go of its airs, transforming from an oppressor into a listener.

8) The Warrior’s Disgrace

After several days of scientific and progressive fitness, he seemed to have found a certain sense of flow. This sense of flow was rapidly expanding to all facets of his life; he felt his long-lost energy returning. At the same time, his compulsive self-focus was still pushing him, insulting him, like a harsh overseer. He struggled to maintain the interaction between his body and the environment, fighting against the habit of self-focus. Although no flashback images appeared in his mind, his body, like that of a child facing humiliation alone, stubbornly remained active while simultaneously trembling involuntarily. This time, he ignored the harsh voice in his heart. He did not deliberately suppress this “disgraceful” (狼狈, láng bèi - meaning wretched, battered, embarrassing) trembling; instead, he strove to focus his attention on the most important interaction. Slowly, a deep self-compassion surged up from the bottom of his heart. At this moment, he finally understood the true meaning of “Follow nature, and do what should be done.”

Previously, “disgraceful” had always been synonymous with making a fool of himself. Every time he faced a situation where he might look foolish, he would use an awkward laugh or self-deprecation to avoid the uncomfortable experience. Now, for the first time, he felt the courage within the trembling. He began to feel ashamed for having mocked others’ “disgraceful” moments. This prosocial sense of shame (guilt) was different from withdrawal-based shame. Not only did it not cause him to fall into self-negation, it actually made him feel the profound bond between himself and the world. The process of releasing a stuck impulse is often accompanied by trembling. This self-transcending trembling and the trembling of retreat are subjectively indistinguishable. Only after the individual has walked out of the trauma can it be appropriately assessed.

Psychological breakthroughs are commonly accompanied by trembling and disgrace. All disgrace deserves compassion. Anyone who easily scorns another’s disgrace can be cleared from one’s list of friends.

Chapter 7: Conclusion

The dual perspectives (inter-subject and subject-environment) of interaction loop theory lay the narrative foundation for the entire text.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Somatic Experiencing are the basic tools for CPTSD self-help. The two approach from opposite directions, promoting the transformation of trauma.

For severely traumatized individuals, Awareness Through Movement (dynamic awareness) is more useful than quiet “meditation.”

Survivors must strive to find their own “neutral state.”

The breakthrough point for CPTSD self-rescue is identifying and breaking through unconscious self-inhibition, developing conscious self-restraint (maneuvering), and restoring good activity levels and optimal arousal levels.

The breakthrough point for Asperger’s Syndrome and ADHD self-rescue is confirming the sources of self-defeat and early trauma; there is often more than one such source. Afterward, one must still process the PTSD and CPTSD that developed due to this inherent vulnerability.

Fitness is extremely important for the recovery from psychological trauma. Survivors engaging in fitness must pay special attention to “warm-ups” and “stretching.”

Felt sense is the core ability of the self-helper. Under the embrace of mindfulness, allowing the energy of fear and withdrawal to fully collide with flexible and powerful energy within the body is the fundamental model of mental training.

A “Noble Person” (benefactor) requires more fortunate timing (karmic destiny) than “kindred spirits” and is more worthy of cherishing.

How individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome view their own uniqueness depends on how they find the balance between “changing the self” and “accepting the self.”

“Abnormality” is a deviation from the social norm. At a deeper level, it comes from a deviation between the individual’s understanding of “consensus” and that of ordinary people. Psychological problems can only be most comprehensively understood when placed within interpersonal relationships, and solutions can only be fully effective when based on sufficient empathy. Empathy can be understood as empathy between different parts of the subject, and also as empathy between the helper and the person being helped. Self-help and other-help complement each other. The linguistic system constructed in this text builds a bridge for communication between ordinary people and survivors, helping to improve the efficiency of self-help and mutual aid.

To summarize in one sentence: Physiological dynamics determine psychological dynamics; social dynamics determine individual dynamics.

For the following materials, those for which an English title is listed should be prioritized in the English edition; the Chinese edition is only for reference. Many difficulties encountered when reading the Chinese edition can be resolved by reading the English edition.

Psychology Foundation Must-Reads

Chinese Title English Title Author(s)
心理学与生活 (第19版) Psychology and Life (19th Ed.) [USA] Richard Gerrig / [USA] Philip Zimbardo
改变心理学的40项研究 Forty Studies that Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological Research [USA] Roger R. Hock

Asperger’s Syndrome Must-Reads

Chinese Title English Title Author(s)
爸妈治好了我的自闭症 Autism Breakthrough: The Groundbreaking Method That Has Helped Families All Over the World [USA] Raun K. Kaufman
(None) Autism as an Infantile Post trauma Stress Disorder: A Hypothesis Zhou Ting / Yi Chunli
(None) Switched On: A Memoir of Brain Change and Emotional Awakening [USA] John Elder Robison

Cognitive Behavior Therapy Must-Reads

Chinese Title English Title Author(s)
★被忽视的孩子：如何克服童年的情感忽视 Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect [USA] Jonice Webb / [USA] Christine Musello
不成熟的父母 Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents [USA] Lindsay C. Gibson
伯恩斯新情绪疗法Ⅱ The Feeling Good Handbook [USA] David D. Burns
不原谅也没关系：复杂性创伤后压力综合征自我疗愈圣经 Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving [USA] Pete Walker
叙事疗法实践地图 Maps of Narrative Practice [AUS] Michael White
创伤后应激障碍的治疗：认知加工疗法实用手册 Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD: A Comprehensive Manual [USA] Patricia A. Resick / et al.

Psychodynamics Must-Reads

Chinese Title English Title Author(s)
存在主义心理治疗 Existential Psychotherapy [USA] Irvin D. Yalom
心理治疗中的依恋：从养育到治愈，从理论到实践 Attachment in Psychotherapy [USA] David J. Wallin

Somatic Experiencing & Sensorimotor Psychotherapy & Somatics Must-Reads

Chinese Title English Title Author(s)
身体从未忘记：心理创伤疗愈中的大脑、心智和身体 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma [USA] Bessel van der Kolk
★唤醒老虎：启动自我疗愈本能 Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma: The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences [USA] Peter A. Levine / [USA] Ann Frederick
动中觉察 Awareness through Movement [ISR] Moshe Feldenkrais
聚焦心理：生命自觉之道 Focusing [USA] Eugene T. Gendlin
创伤后的自我成长 Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation [UK] Janina Fisher

Injury-Free Movement Must-Reads

Chinese Title English Title Author(s)
健身路线图：精准训练与无伤运动导航书 (None) Chen Zouqi

Selected Reading

Chinese Title English Title Author(s) Remarks
精神障碍诊疗规范（2020年版） (Diagnostic and Treatment Guidelines for Mental Disorders (2020 Ed.)) China National Health Commission Diagnostic Guidelines for Mental Disorders
对伪心理学说不 How to Think Straight about Psychology [CAN] Keith E. Stanovich Psychology Pop-Sci
深入大脑 The Brain with David Eagleman [USA] David Eagleman Documentary, Psychology Pop-Sci
维莱亚努尔·拉马钱德兰：通往心灵中央的旅程 Vilayanur Ramachandran: 3 Clues to Understanding Your Brain [IND] Vilayanur Ramachandran TED Talk, Psychology Pop-Sci
心理咨询面谈技术(第四版) (Psychological Counseling Interview Techniques (4th Ed.)) [USA] John Sommers-Flanagan / Rita Sommers-Flanagan Case Conceptualization Techniques
蛤蟆先生去看心理医生 Counselling For Toads: A Psychological Adventure [UK] Robert de Board Psychotherapy Pop-Sci
唤醒大脑：神经可塑性如何帮助大脑自我疗愈 The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity [USA] Norman Doidge Research related to Neuroplasticity
身体会替你说话：内心隐藏的压力如何损害健康 When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress [CAN] Gabor Maté Psychosomatic Illness and Intergenerational Trauma Transmission
孩子的注意力90%可以靠营养改善 Finally Focused [USA] James Greenblatt / [USA] Bill Gottlieb ADHD Nutrition (Use with caution)
用图像思考：与孤独症共生 Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism [USA] Temple Grandin ASD Individual Autobiography
习得性无助：论抑郁、发展与死亡 Helplessness: On Development, Depression and Death [USA] Martin E. P. Seligman Learned Helplessness Theory of Depression
这世界唯一的你：自闭症人士独特行为背后的真相 Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism [USA] Barry M. Prizant / Tom Fields-Meyer ASD Pop-Sci
阿斯伯格综合征完全指南 The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome [UK] Tony Attwood Asperger’s Syndrome Pop-Sci
临床催眠实用教程 Trancework: An Introduction to the Practice of Clinical Hypnosis [USA] Michael D. Yapko Hypnosis Theory Foundation
催眠疗法：探索性案例集锦 Hypnotherapy: An Exploratory Casebook [USA] Milton H. Erickson / [USA] Ernest L. Rossi Clinical Practice of Hypnotherapy
体验催眠：催眠在心理治疗中的应用 Experiencing Hypnosis: Therapeutic Approaches to Altered States [USA] Milton H. Erickson Theory and Practice of Hypnotherapy
心理创伤疗愈之道：倾听你身体的信号 In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness [USA] Peter A. Levine Somatic Experiencing Pop-Sci
聚焦：在心理治疗中的运用 Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change [USA] Ann Weiser Cornell Clinical Practice of Focusing
焦虑症与恐惧症手册 The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook [USA] Edmund J. Bourne CBT Self-Help Classic
人间游戏：人际关系心理学 Games People Play [USA] Eric Berne Transactional Analysis Theory
给心理治疗师的礼物：给新一代治疗师及其病人的公开信 (The Gift of Therapy) [USA] Irvin D. Yalom Psychodynamics Related
(None) Care of the Soul [USA] Thomas Moore Psychodynamics Related
情感依附：为何家会影响我的一生 Lives Across Time / Growing Up [USA] Henry W. Massie / [USA] Nathan M. Szajnberg Psychodynamics Related
积极心理治疗案例：幸福、治愈与提升 (Positive Psychotherapy Cases) [AUS] George W. Burns Clinical Practice of Positive Psychology
费解与显然：动作神经可塑性和健康 The Elusive Obvious: The Convergence of Movement, Neuroplasticity, and Health [ISR] Moshe Feldenkrais Feldenkrais Somatics Theory Overview
成为有能的自己：探索自发性与强迫性 (The Potent Self) [ISR] Moshe Feldenkrais Feldenkrais Somatics Theory and Method
身体的智慧 (Body and Mature Behavior) [ISR] Moshe Feldenkrais Feldenkrais Somatics Theory and Method
解放聪明的“笨”小孩 (None) Wu Duanwen Exploration of Sensory Integration Therapy for Child Behavioral Issues
爱的艺术 The Art of Loving [USA] Erich Fromm Family-Social Relational Mapping
ACT就这么简单 ACT Made Simple [AUS] Russ Harris Introduction to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
森田疗法指导：神经症克服法 (Guide to Morita Therapy: Method for Overcoming Neurosis) [JPN] Takehisa Kora Morita Therapy Practice
非暴力沟通 Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life [USA] Marshall B. Rosenberg Neutral Expression Techniques
宗教经验种种 The Varieties of Religious Experience [USA] William James Overview of Mystical Experience
如何在6个月内学会任何一种外语 How to learn any language in 6 months [NZ] Chris Lonsdale TEDx Talk, Thought Inspiration
少有人走的路：心智成熟的旅程 The Road Less Traveled [USA] M. Scott Peck Thought Inspiration
原始思维 (Primitive Mentality) [FRA] Lucien Lévy-Bruhl Thought Inspiration
小王子 The Little Prince [FRA] Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Thought Inspiration
中国哲学简史 (A Short History of Chinese Philosophy) Feng Youlan Thought Inspiration