When I was six years old, I stepped in a wasps’ nest. It was early autumn, and I was playing in the garden of my family home with a friend. I remember that the nest was hidden by fallen leaves. In the house, our two mums were talking, until they heard our screams as we tried to make our way back towards the house.
This is a nice illustration. On the issue of an automatic response to wasps I fell off my bike, breaking my arm on a wet winters day as I cornered sharply on an adverse cambered roundabout. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just hit the deck fast and hard and it hurt. For three years following I could not make my body corner at speed. My head was fine, but my body refused. A weird feeling of frustration at automatic avoidance. I wondered if this reaction was set up my the sympathetic adrenal medullary pathway as it did not feel like psychological fear - more like a body response I could not access. I seem to have erased it through exposure now.
Thanks Nick. So it didnt feel so much like an emotional reaction but like a kind of avoidance or refusal. Interesting. And of course people might have an avoidance of emotionally intimate relationships that might also feel non emotional. As you say that adrenal medullary pathway might be one way we store memories of what is not safe.
Yes, the neurology is brain stem only, not cortical right, and the studies on long term meditators so no reaction from HPA to a sudden bang, but a jump from the SAM. I am sure there will be plasticity subsequently in other brain regions, many below perception and some within, so impossible to untangle but an interesting thought nonetheless.
Thanks for brilliantly exemplifying narcissism. Actually, narcissism is an Adlerian compensation or Freudian ego defense for poor infantile narcissism or the self-loathing brought on by abandonment in very early childhood. It is visible in the "pathological narcissism" (Eric Fromm) of Donald Trump in which his repression of the self-loathing he experienced when he was abandoned by his dying mother at 2yo, and blamed himself as all such children do. He is stuck in the massive infantile narcissism of the 2yo due to extreme trauma, as are many other personality traits of his Borderline Personality Disorder. Ultimately, narcissism is a survival mechanism to prevent self-destruction, not unlike, perhaps, your overly lengthy recounting of your childhood encounter with wasps.
Thanks for your comment, Greeley. Yes so i would suggest that self-loathing lines up with ‘distancing from self’ and maternal abandonment would impact most strongly by leaving emotional vulnerability of the infant left unmanaged. We can use either the psychanalytic language or the language of attachment trauma to describe these aspects. Avoidance of self destruction would break away from the theory im describing.
When I was about 12, I was sitting on the front porch with my mom and the lady across the street who tried to tell me there was a bee (actually a wasp) on my arm but I had already felt an insect there and unconsciously tried to get it away and the motion of my hand caused it to sting me on the inside of my wrist. It was my first sting. Since then I have learned to be more aware and to understand that wasps are not naturally aggressive unless they have been riled up. When we noticed a yellow jacket nest in an outside wall, we called "Bennie the Bee Man" who was associated with Vespa Laboratories where temporary workers in the cooler months dissected the venom sacs from wasps which had been captured and placed in a deep freeze over the summer. The sacs were used to produce anti-venin. He placed a vacuum hose by the entrance to the colony nest and over the next day he collected them all.
Now if a wasp is investigating me, I gently blow it off and then wave it away. When I'm walking, I keep alert for the signs of a ground nest the same way I keep alert for poison ivy. Just things to avoid. And having had several severe cases of poison ivy that required steroid injections, I think I'm more afraid of it than I am of insect stings.
This is brilliant. Thank you.
Thanks Kate!
This is a nice illustration. On the issue of an automatic response to wasps I fell off my bike, breaking my arm on a wet winters day as I cornered sharply on an adverse cambered roundabout. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. I just hit the deck fast and hard and it hurt. For three years following I could not make my body corner at speed. My head was fine, but my body refused. A weird feeling of frustration at automatic avoidance. I wondered if this reaction was set up my the sympathetic adrenal medullary pathway as it did not feel like psychological fear - more like a body response I could not access. I seem to have erased it through exposure now.
Thanks Nick. So it didnt feel so much like an emotional reaction but like a kind of avoidance or refusal. Interesting. And of course people might have an avoidance of emotionally intimate relationships that might also feel non emotional. As you say that adrenal medullary pathway might be one way we store memories of what is not safe.
Yes, the neurology is brain stem only, not cortical right, and the studies on long term meditators so no reaction from HPA to a sudden bang, but a jump from the SAM. I am sure there will be plasticity subsequently in other brain regions, many below perception and some within, so impossible to untangle but an interesting thought nonetheless.
Encouragement and support from corrupt authorities and top powers.
Thanks for brilliantly exemplifying narcissism. Actually, narcissism is an Adlerian compensation or Freudian ego defense for poor infantile narcissism or the self-loathing brought on by abandonment in very early childhood. It is visible in the "pathological narcissism" (Eric Fromm) of Donald Trump in which his repression of the self-loathing he experienced when he was abandoned by his dying mother at 2yo, and blamed himself as all such children do. He is stuck in the massive infantile narcissism of the 2yo due to extreme trauma, as are many other personality traits of his Borderline Personality Disorder. Ultimately, narcissism is a survival mechanism to prevent self-destruction, not unlike, perhaps, your overly lengthy recounting of your childhood encounter with wasps.
Thanks for your comment, Greeley. Yes so i would suggest that self-loathing lines up with ‘distancing from self’ and maternal abandonment would impact most strongly by leaving emotional vulnerability of the infant left unmanaged. We can use either the psychanalytic language or the language of attachment trauma to describe these aspects. Avoidance of self destruction would break away from the theory im describing.
When I was about 12, I was sitting on the front porch with my mom and the lady across the street who tried to tell me there was a bee (actually a wasp) on my arm but I had already felt an insect there and unconsciously tried to get it away and the motion of my hand caused it to sting me on the inside of my wrist. It was my first sting. Since then I have learned to be more aware and to understand that wasps are not naturally aggressive unless they have been riled up. When we noticed a yellow jacket nest in an outside wall, we called "Bennie the Bee Man" who was associated with Vespa Laboratories where temporary workers in the cooler months dissected the venom sacs from wasps which had been captured and placed in a deep freeze over the summer. The sacs were used to produce anti-venin. He placed a vacuum hose by the entrance to the colony nest and over the next day he collected them all.
Now if a wasp is investigating me, I gently blow it off and then wave it away. When I'm walking, I keep alert for the signs of a ground nest the same way I keep alert for poison ivy. Just things to avoid. And having had several severe cases of poison ivy that required steroid injections, I think I'm more afraid of it than I am of insect stings.