SHEsaysWITHaSMILE.blogspot.com

TO ERIC KANDEL and sweet aplysia. ORIGINAL POST 4/2/2006

one of the many questions keeping me awake at night is this: when is immersion therapy/desensitization therapy successful vs. when it is the stupidest thing in the world permanently damaging and fucking up an innocent person's life for good.

i watched recently a program which showed people with panic attack and agoraphobia disorders who participated in counseling and immersion/desensitization therapy with great results.

returning to locations where panic attacks occurred; re-creating stressful situations; purposely going to places like crowded malls, over bridges, to great heights... and w/couselor, step by step, they are desensitized to the environments/situations that once alarmed them, until the fear dissipates and their lives return to almost normal.

now, from my own experience.. and from what i've read, when it comes to post traumatic stress disorder, this is the exact opposite of what you want to do.

in fact, returning to the environment of the traumatic event does not desensitize, but instead, results in the exact opposite: the person becomes even more fearful, more paralyzed, more depressed, more debilitated.

with post traumatic stress disorder, the healing comes from getting as far removed as possible from locations, environment and memory triggers; for as long as possible too.

the brain should not be immersed, but completely removed from stressors which then allows the brain to return to normal activity levels. immersion/desensitization in fact results in brain chemical spills.. chaos... shock; permanent damage. i equate it with oil spills in the ocean... when there is a big oil spill - you want to act quickly to remove as much oil as possible, as quickly as possible to avoid seeping and loss of life. -you do not want to pour more oil in to solve the problem... and maybe, if we only put a little bit of oil in, in small increments, spread out over varying periods of time, marine life would eventually adapt and thrive...BUT I DON'T THINK SO.


- anyway - immersion therapy is helpful for some brain disorders and i am bothered not understanding when and why.

i just know the answer lies with eric kandler and sweet aplysia. (in search of memory. the emergence of a new science of mind).

- with aplysia, the giant marine snail, kandler demonstrated the following:

1) habitization: a weak touch resulted in an initial retraction of the exposed gill, but once repetitive touches, equal in level of intensity, were determined as non threatening, aplysia would no longer respond to the same touch by retracting. the touch went ignored.

2) sensitization: the inverse is true. but, here, what seems important is the intensity of the initial touch/stimuli. when the initial touch was nocuus/severe and aplysia was startled -not just retracting, but shocked -then subsequent touches -less intense even- would result in an even more powerful reflex/retraction/startle response.

3) classical conditioning: when neutral stimuli and shock were paired, this resulted in classical conditioning. (pavlov).


-so, the answer is in there somewhere... and i look forward to reading his book because there is also important information it seems, when it comes to differentiating between innate fears and learned fears. entirely different wiring.

but it is interesting to me -people who experience panic attacks describe their experience as sudden terror and the feeling that they are about to die. and there are interesting stories about phobias to bridges, heights, crowds, flying...

as horrific as these experiences are, they must be experienced in the brain quite differently than trauma/shock, although they seem similar in many respects.

but, look at that... panic disorders definitely fall in the habituation category, and can be treated successfully as a result.

but post traumatic stress disorder, the sensitization AND classical conditioning category. can't and shouldn't habituate

posted by SHE @ 8:53 AM