August/September

We Need a Mass Movement of People Like You
Bill Moyers

Is Fox News Biased?
The Center for American Progress

In Praise of Unruly Women
Arianna Huffington

Returning From War: A Family Affair
Shri Estes

Healing Our World From the Inside Out
Carol Hwoschinsky

From Hurt to Heart: Healing Conflict at its Roots
Eryn Kalish

Are We In Danger Right Now?
Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

Our Clean-Energy Birthright
Jeane Manning

The Organic Foods Movement
Paul Cienfuegos

Genetically Engineered Foods May Pose A Health Risk
Jeffrey M. Smith

Sacred Menstruation
Julie Gauss, CCH

Shifting Into a New Era of Peace and Harmony
John Darling

Cosmic Calendar
Salina Rain

BACK TO TOP

Are We In Danger Right Now?

By Peter Moore, MFCC, CGP

Whenever we move into survival mode, all other needs—such as for love, respect, kindness, peace, security, etc.—are put on hold. The primary need, on an individual level, is for our own survival. When the pursuit of our need to survive is threatened by the very methods we have used for that survival, a crisis comes into being. In addiction recovery speak, we have “hit bottom.” If we are now to adopt a new way of being, one which moves from the paranoid position which views everything around us and even our own internal processes (such as bodily events and feelings) as threats, we are likely to feel a sense of fear. This is because we do not have experiential knowledge that this new way will, in fact, help our survival.

On a global scale, we have the astonishing claim that wars can be fought to bring peace, despite thousands of years of written evidence that any violence perpetuates itself. On an individual level, we seem to act as though judging ourselves or others will meet other needs besides our own survival.

Let’s look into this more deeply. In early childhood, for survival purposes, we lump together physical, emotional and mental hurts. When we are given a hateful look by our primary caretaker, we may feel so hurt that it may seem as though we cannot survive this hurt, especially if that caretaker refuses to acknowledge the hurt, or blames us, or even says, “Stop that crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about!” If this occurs often enough, by a certain age we will have successfully developed a survival pattern to deal with this heartbreak. There will be an accretion of more and more sophisticated survival patterns layered one on top of the other, each being added as our neurology and inter- and intra-personal skills develop. But one thing will remain common to all survival strategies: they will come on line, so to speak, without any conscious volition or knowing. Any survival pattern worth its weight will have to be so well grooved that it’s automatic and unconscious. Imagine if you had to weigh the pros and cons and make a conscious decision about appropriate action, if, when you were about to commit to crossing the road, a truck you hadn’t noticed suddenly appeared in your view. This is why any attempt to move out of survival mode will come after the fact. Once we become aware that we are in this mode, a doorway opens and we can choose a new path.

The layer of patterns might look like spacing out and numbness; then depression or collapse; then, trying to rise above the hurt; enduring it; and then perhaps developing a complex system of behaviors which have as their root an avoidance of unendurable hurt. Then, when there’s a perceived threat, we can numb our feelings by moving into our heads. As we get older, we enter the black and white world of good and bad feelings, good and bad behavior, and good and bad people—that is, if our caretakers are themselves raising us from a triggered position based on power over us. By “triggered,” I mean something in the situation is unconsciously reminding our parents of something they suffered, and their survival patterns are set in motion.

This brings us to the central theme of the present discourse. Whenever we find ourselves judging or putting a label on ourselves or others, we are, in fact, in triggered survival mode. Think about it: when you are judging, what do you feel in the center of your chest? Until we ask ourselves this question it is likely that the energy needed to sustain judgment (which is a head trip) has depleted our heart energy center and overcharged our brains (tightening the solar plexus, one reason the third chakra is linked to the mental level).

If we are not actually in a survival situation, the fact that the heart chakra is depleted leads to a negative feeling. A negative feeling (as opposed to a “bad” feeling) is an indication that some need is not being met; a positive feeling is a sign that a need has been met. However, when in survival mode, we are unlikely to deal with this negative feeling effectively—in fact we may look at it as further proof that we are in danger, and thereby lessen the chances of meeting this higher level need. An example of a higher level need centered in the chest might be to love and be loved, or treat ourselves and others equally and with compassion and respect.

Some radical cardiologists have worked holistically with patients whose arteries are getting blocked. An increase in love and forgiveness risked by these patients has resulted in unblocking of these arteries. So when we bypass our hearts and stay in defense mode, this gives a whole new meaning to heart bypass surgery.

Whereas in childhood we were dependent and therefore in real survival danger when faced with, for example, the overwhelming feeling of heartbreak, in adulthood we may react as though this is true when in fact we are safe. The automatic efficiency of the defensive reaction is explained by the deep grooving in our neurological network established before we had learned to talk.* Therefore, it takes many years of compassionate concentration to restructure a different brain that is less reactive—some estimates are about ten years. I call this process the “agony of concentration.”

Think of the survival reaction as being at the level of the reptilian brain: when we become aware that we’ve been triggered we can ask ourselves if we are in imminent danger physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually—and that the danger is so high our end is near. Since, in the vast majority of situations the answer will be no, we have used our neo-cortex to mediate our response. It is this repeated mediation of our survival response which eventually grooves a new pathway. It’s not enough to establish once that we’re not in danger (“been there, done that”) since it is the repetition which calms the survival oriented brain.

Let the phrase “Am I safe right now?” become almost like a mantra. For many of us, being in an intimate relationship, being a boss or employee, raising children will be areas full of potential conflicts which trigger our early adaptive strategies. Sometimes the mantra will need to be asked several times a minute! Is the person you are reacting to holding a gun with the look of someone who wants to shoot you? This is the intensity of feeling which we had as a two year old child if our caretakers were cold and angry with us. The raised eyebrow (for example), as well as a lot of other non-verbal cues are all being assessed unconsciously by your brain, way before you will have any consciousness of seeing these cues—in fact the very act of seeing is a higher-order generalization based on numerous guesses your brain makes as to what is or is not important among the myriad of visual stimuli affecting our retinas. So when you “know” someone is being hostile to you (“It was your tone of voice”), even that is debatable. Actually, “knowing” something is often a sign that you’ve been triggered. It might seem too scary to be lost in a sea of intersubjectively created reality.

The “agony of concentration” refers to several things. First, the task of reassessing a situation is much slower than the automatic response. Secondly, awareness that you may be misreading the situation opens the door to meeting needs beyond survival. This is hard to do because, in thawing out our receptiveness to having these needs met, inevitably the original pain of situations in the past when we had to freeze up will arise, and, close on its heels, there comes the realization of the loss of all the years spent in survival mode, depriving oneself of feelings of satisfaction, joy, wonder, curiosity, and the like. Ironically it is the current negative feelings such as anxiety, dread, fear, loneliness, despair which are proof positive that we are, in fact, not in danger. I guarantee my clients that should an actual danger show up in my office, such as fire, earthquake, a masked assassin, then all these feelings will evaporate. The reason for this is that survival mode now fits the situation! We actually are in danger! When the crisis is over, then our systems will alert us to higher level unmet needs (beyond survival) by giving us these same negative feelings again. Through risking confronting ourselves about the danger we’re in, compassionately reassuring ourselves we’re safe, we can begin to look to ways of filling these needs, needs such as love, respect, kindness; peace and security; universal health care coverage, free education for all who want it, and the peaceful dismantling of the military-industrial-congressional complex.

Peter Moore is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a practice in Eureka, CA, and can be reached at (707) 442-7228. *For a review of recent evidence surfacing from brain scans, see “Deep Scars Can Be Healed” in the April/May 2002 issue of Sentient Times, at www.SentientTimes.com.