Sensory Overload and Stress

As we move into the new millennium, we witness the effects of increasing environmental, economic, and psychological stress. Sensory overload is taxing the human system. The pressures upon all life on earth have reached unparalleled proportions.

Our bodies are subject to an onslaught of man-made stressors: crisscrossing fields of microwave, radio, television, and electronic transmissions, pollution, noise, and traffic, as well as the bombardments of information and advertising, and the requirements to produce more and more efficiently in the face of fierce economic competition. Add to that the threats of terrorism and war that have created a palpable level of world anxiety and we have a culture dominated by stress, tension, and fear. We are beings of energy vibrating at the edge of disintegration in a sea of over-stimulation.

How do we maintain our balance? What do we do when an intense stressor such as a lost job, divorce, or the death of a loved one lands on top of the load we bear? What if, to complicate matters, this load rests on a personal history of trauma?

One of the main reasons we have a hard time breaking out of this cycle is that we do not realize how deeply we are affected by stress. On the surface, we may speak of being in a time-crunch, feeling burned-out, or needing to get away. We joke about vibrating from all the pressure. When our stress is intensified, we feel that we are going to go ballistic. We blow off steam in more or less productive ways, from exercise to alcohol to road rage, but the underlying pattern of denial remains.

Psychologists describe our perpetual tension, or the fight/flight response, as a reaction to the relentless fronts of over-stimulation. This response pattern is characterized by high-frequency brain waves termed beta waves. We are functioning as if we are on high alert all of the time.

Moreover, medical scientists are discovering how this state of perpetual tension adversely affects our well-being. Stress creates chronic patterns of muscular tension. Muscular tension restricts the flow of blood, lymphatic fluid, and nerve impulses. Cells are deprived of oxygen and nutrients and unable to clear toxic substances. This leads to chronic pain, cellular toxicity, and decreased immune response.

On an emotional level, we experience chronic anxiety and reactive response patterns marked by inappropriate anger and projected blame and criticism. Mentally, we become locked in rigid thinking patterns marked by a defensive mindset governed by fear. Spiritually we resign ourselves to being victims of circumstances and isolate ourselves in a survival mode. While our problems are not new, the pace of modern life has multiplied their negative effects exponentially.

If that sounds overly grim, take heart. It can be motivation to shift our state of awareness. It can intensify the search for ways to live differently. In recent decades, a time-honored light has begun to shine through the dense, tangled lines of our modern networks. This light radiates through a variety of old and new refractions. We see the emergence of a multitude of holistic practices.

In support of these phenomena, research has shown that certain exercises for the mind and body reduce stress and produce deep relaxation via slower alpha-theta brain-wave frequencies. In the states affected by these exercises, such a slowdown simultaneously occurs in many of the body's systems. This slowdown produces integrating, synchronizing, and healing effects. The practice of these exercises can develop capacities within us that will enable us to handle the pressures of our lives.

Taking these exercises even further, we are able to develop senses and modes of perception that have been latent in human evolution, as we know it. We can develop the ability to perceive and cultivate ourselves as the energetic beings that we are on the most fundamental level.

As an entry point to the expansion of the conscious domain, biofeedback research shows that we can positively affect aspects of our lives that we thought were automatic and inaccessible, such as brain-wave frequencies, heart rate, respiration, and chronic muscle-tension, to name a few. Guided-imagery research has proven the power of imagination and visualization in overcoming disease and increasing wellness. Meditation research describes how, through the application of awareness and intention, we can positively affect the intricate pathways that serve as conductors for qi ("chee"), the universal vitalizing force that enlivens our bodies.

Dr. John Sarno, a physician who specializes in pain relief, has shown that emotion and consciousness play a large role in health and disease. He has coined the term Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) to describe a host of symptoms that are caused by stress, tension, and repressed rage. To show the direct relationship of consciousness to TMS he found that "Awareness, insight, knowledge, and information were the magic medicines that would cure this disorder" (The Mindbody Prescription, New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1998, p. xxi). This supports what physicists have been saying for many years, which is that consciousness and physical reality are interwoven; mind and matter are inseparable. In the context of the qigong meditation, we see how body, emotion, mind, and spirit form a feedback system that can be used to shift our state of being.

Tension-causing sensory overload is both our most predominant problem and our window of opportunity. It is through a thorough understanding of our stress that we will find a new way. When we uncover the source of stress and take action to release this tension, we open to new possibilities. We recover and develop our fuller sensitivities and feelings of vitality.

These are not the mists of fantasy or the mere ear tickle of sweet sounding words. This is a well-mapped path. The Chinese have used Qigong Meditation as a powerful tool for self-development for thousands of years. You can receive a free introduction to this method and discover a step-by-step program of qigong meditation in my "LEARN QIGONG MEDITATION" course available from http://www.learnqigongmeditation.com

Copyright 2006 by Kevin D. Schoeninger

Kevin Schoeninger: M.A. Philosophy, Certified Personal Trainer, Qigong Meditation Instructor, and Reiki Master. http://www.learnqigongmeditation.com

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Mindfulness Psychotherapy For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) first came to the attention of doctors during the First World War when relatively large numbers of soldiers returned from combat exhibiting intense emotional distress in which they seemed to re-live the terrifying events of war long after the event. However, war is only one context in which PTSD arises. Later, it became clear that this phenomenon of delayed emotional reactivity could result from many other contexts such as accidents and illness, physical assault, rape or witnessing acts of violence and devastation, natural or man-made. Childhood abuse is now recognized as one of the major sources of PTSD.

In general PTSD can be defined as severe recurrent emotional anxiety reactions that originate from an intense and traumatic experience. A trauma occurs when there is a combination of sensory and emotional overload that cannot be processed and integrated into the psyche. A war scenario provides many intense visual, auditory and contextual stimuli that are completely foreign to the average person, as does sexual abuse, rape or witnessing a car accident. Context plays a very important part as in the case of childhood abuse, where the child's model of how his parents should behave cannot be reconciled with the parent's actual behavior. The experience of intense fear that accompanies trauma becomes encoded into the internal memory imprint of the associated sensory experiences. The unprocessed sensory experiences and associated emotional reactivity become submerged and repressed in the subconscious mind as a core emotional complex. When the appropriate stressors are present or when the suppressive activities of the ego are weakened, as is the case during sleep this repressed emotional complex is activated leading to a repeat experience of the emotional trauma, often with the associated visual imagery in the form of flashbacks. Like other core emotional complexes, the repression is never complete and negative emotional energy leaks into present experience leading to general anxiety, phobias, recurrent anger, sleep difficulties, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviours and substance abuse. These can be described as the layers of secondary reactivity that form around the primary trauma reaction and which, in their own way, shield the core emotional complex from further processing and integration by the psyche.

There are many approaches to treating PTSD, some involving medication and others focussed on psychotherapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a particularly useful approach, because it focuses on the client's actual patterns of habitual negative thinking and beliefs and attempts to change these into more positive and functional forms. The form of cognitive therapy described in this article is called Mindfulness Meditation Therapy (MMT), which can be defined as the direct application of mindfulness to an emotional complex to facilitate transformation and resolution. Mindfulness describes a particular form of awareness that is present-centered, direct and non-reactive towards an object of awareness. It is best described as the combination of PRESENCE and INVESTIGATION in which there is an openness of mind and heart to fully experience and know what is present in our field of awareness. Presence is one of the most important components of sensitive listening as when we are listening to a friend who is suffering. As we know from experience, simply being there with him or her in this way with complete attention and presence is often more important than what we say or do. In this same way, learning to be fully present for our emotional suffering is highly therapeutic and is perhaps one of the major contributions to the healing process. The other aspect of mindfulness is simply learning to recognize all the patterns of habitual reactivity that takes us away from being fully present for our emotional suffering. Meditation in the context of MMT refers to the direct application of mindfulness and presence to the emotional suffering itself, which becomes the object of our meditation. In general, during MMT, we allow the emotional complex to unfold and differentiate into more and more subtle content. This differentiation into specific feelings, memories and sensory content leads to direct transformation of emotional complexes and literally makes the complex easier to digest.

Traumatic memories have a specific internal structure in the form of intense imagery. This imagery may be photographic in quality, revealing the actual memory of the traumatic event, but more often it also includes abstract elements of color, shape and movement in something resembling a surrealistic collage. Whatever the form of the imagery, this internal representation is an essential part of what is required to produce intense emotional reactions. This is referred to as the Structural Theory of Emotions, where emotional energy is encoded in the specific sub-modalities of size, color, intensity, movement and texture. An intense emotion is likely to be encoded in intense colors such as red and orange and the imagery is likely to be large and close in the person's inner visual field, whereas neutral emotions are likely encoded in neutral colors such as pale blue or white and appear small and far away. It is by becoming aware of this internal structure of the imagery that encodes the emotional energy of the trauma that we can explore the possibility of changing the imagery and thus changing the emotional intensity of a traumatic memory. This concept is developed to an art in the therapeutic modality called Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP. Just as language is made of words that represent internal experience, imagery represents the natural language of the mind - the mind thinks in pictures and uses inner imagery to organize experience and memory.

The Structural Theory of Emotions proposes that by changing the structure of the imagery it is possible to change the intensity of the emotional reaction. Thus, if the color changes from intense red to soft yellow and the imagery becomes smaller and further away, it is very likely that the emotion will be much less intense. However, for this to work effectively the imagery must arise experientially from the emotional felt sense, rather than be created through deliberate visualization. Similarly, the direction of change must arise experientially, rather than be imposed externally. In this way, the client maintains close presence with his inner experience and knows that what happens is meaningful and relevant to his or her specific transformational process. This is why mindfulness is such an important part of the transformational process, because it allows us to be exquisitely sensitive to what is meaningful and what is not. The investigative dimension of mindfulness also provides the best approach to uncover the detailed inner structure of the emotion and provide meaningful content.

A central focus in MMT is to uncover this internal structure of the traumatic memory and then to investigate this experiential content. There is no attempt to interpret what arises, only to experience fully and know completely whatever arises. This process essentially de-constructs the emotional complex into smaller parts that the psyche can digest and integrate into more stable configurations that do not continue to generate emotional suffering. Of course, this requires considerable preliminary preparation so that the client can experience the internal imagery without becoming overwhelmed by it. This preliminary phase of MMT is focussed on establishing the Mindfulness Based Relationship (MBR) in which there is sufficient stability and non-reactivity to allow the imagery to unfold into present awareness. There are many approaches to achieve the right MBR, such as watching the imagery as if projected on a screen or placing the imagery at some distance in front. Through mindfulness and careful investigation, the client can discover for himself what works best for establishing the MBR. However, once a client begins to witness specific details about the imagery, he inevitably finds it much easier to establish the MBR, because the specific content gives him a specific focus and this tends to prevent hyper-reactivity. The MBR is an essential part of the transformation process for many reasons, the primary reason being that it allows the compacted emotional complex to unfold into more manageable parts. At another level, the MBR allows the client to fundamentally change the way that he relates to his inner emotional experience and he begins to break free from seeing himself as a victim of the emotional trauma. This in itself is an essential requirement for change.

Throughout the whole process of Mindfulness Meditation Therapy, as developed by Dr Peter Strong, of Boulder, Colorado, the client is repeatedly exposed to the source of his fear, but in new ways that don't involve being overwhelmed. This exposure desensitization effect is regarded by most schools of psychotherapy as an essential part of overcoming PTSD and Mindfulness Meditation Therapy provides a very subtle and specific way of doing this. However, the heart of the transformational process occurs as the mind begins to make subtle changes in the core experiential imagery at the core of post-traumatic stress. The client discovers ways to change this imagery, and some suggestions are also made by the therapist. Through a process of creative exploration, the client transforms this inner imagery and the effect of this is to transform the PTSD. Trauma becomes reduced into a form that can be assimilated as a memory and ceases to produce recurrent anxiety.

Peter Strong, PhD is a scientist and Buddhist psychotherapist, based in Boulder, Colorado, who specializes in the study of mindfulness and its application in Mindfulness Meditation Therapy. He teaches mindfulness meditation (vipassana) and works with individuals and couples using Mindfulness Meditation Therapy for resolving difficult emotional problems, including anxiety, depression, phobias, grief and trauma and the management of anger and stress.

Besides face-to-face work, Peter also works with individuals and couples online via SKYPE. For Online Counseling, visit http://www.counselingtherapyonline.com

To learn more about Mindfulness Therapy, visit http://www.mindfulnessmeditationtherapy.com
Email inquiries welcome.

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