How the Mind Processes Trauma
Essential to understanding how Trauma can affect our lives is the understanding of how the Mind processes Trauma.
The Mind is a wonderful mechanism which is capable of facilitating a vast array of computations in an instant. However, despite its obvious complexity of structure and function, its Purpose is, by contrast, remarkably simple. The sole purpose of the Mind is to facilitate and ensure the Survival of the Being that it serves. That's it...Survival.
How does a Being's Mind serve him or her? It does so by (among other means) recording all experience data that is received through the senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, etc.) and then storing that data for Survival purposes: interpretation, comparison, computation, decision-making, etc.
As a rule, every moment of a person's life experience - EVERY moment - is recorded in the Mind of that Person. It is well known in the fields of psychology and psychiatry that, even though we experience periods of what we call "unconsciousness", the Mind, itself, is never completely unconscious, and is ALWAYS recording data received through the senses. Just as a security camera's value is directly tied to its ability to record data; likewise, the Mind's survival value is directly tied to its ability to record and retain experience data. Therefore, it must always be "on".
What does the mind do with this data?
The late L. Ron Hubbard, as a result of years of research and experimentation, came to the conclusion that the Mind can be said to have three basic functions, or "parts". The two parts most relevant to this article are what Mr. Hubbard referred to as the 1) Analytical Mind, and the 2) Reactive Mind.
The Analytical Mind is the rational part of the Mind which is capable of evaluating and comparing data for the purpose of making rational decisions.
The Reactive Mind, however, is that part of the mind which records traumatic experiences and uses the data as a warning mechanism to prevent future injury or trauma.
When a Person undergoes a painful experience, his/her analytical mind shuts down, in part or in total, and his/her reactive mind "kicks in" to the degree that the analytical mind shuts down. Thus, any experience data that is recorded by the reactive mind is not recorded in the analytical mind, and is thus normally "invisible" to the person, and therefore is not understood by the Person (regardless of what he or she thinks). How could it be understood when it was never Analyzed?
The problem with the Reactive Mind is that it does not "think", it only does what its name implies...it REACTS.
For example,
...if someone were to take a pair of pliers and clamp down as hard as he could on your finger, and then calmly count from (5) to (12); and then, after releasing your finger, ask you to recall what he said while you were in pain; you most likely would not be able to recall that data, because while he was clamping down on your finger, all of your attention was on the pain you were experiencing, and on the intention to escape that pain. Everything else in your environment would be reduced to "insignificance" because your analytical mind would have shut down. The data that the man is asking for was recorded, but not in your "analytical" mind. It was recorded in your "reactive mind".
Afterwards, any time you hear someone count from (5) to (12), you may experience a "pain" in the finger that was clamped, because the "reactive mind" remembers the pain that it associates with those numbers.
As long as the data from a traumatic experience is not analyzed and understood, it will continue to interfere with a person's ability to properly interpret present time situations; and the person will invariably be found "reacting" to situations -- usually, without ever knowing WHY he or she is "reacting" that way -- instead of reasoning through situations. This condition is a major cause of stress, depression, violence and panic attacks.
Because the "reactive mind" is PART of the Mind of a Person, it too is working for the survival of the Person; but not by Reason. It uses only the impulse to avoid pain, whether physical or mental/emotional. It only REACTS.
Example:
If a person is touched on his or her shoulder, from behind, he or she might suddenly become frightened and react as if he or she was in danger when, in Truth, there was no danger. What happened? The "touch" possibly restimulated a painful or traumatic experience from the past which began with "a touch", and in that present moment, the person's "analytical mind" shut down, and the "reactive mind" kicked in and took over in an attempt to "protect" the person from possibly re-experiencing that past traumatic experience. In this "reactive" state, the person is literally "out of control".
A very effective way of becoming less "reactive" (out of control) is to analyze (or confront) the data in the reactive mind. In other words, one must confront, examine and resolve the traumatic experience. Once this is done, the experience is then understood and can no longer cause the Person to "react", because the "identification" of the elements in the experience with the pain of the experience, is now "broken". The person is now in greater Control over that data and can use it, or NOT use it, as he or she pleases.
This is Essential to recovery and empowerment.
