Trauma Happens Below and Before the Mind ~ Part One ~

(NOTE* – I capitalize several words that have other cultural, spiritual, and contextual meanings).

This is part one in a three-part series on how Trauma exists as preconditioned states held in the body and brain, that determine present day experiences and responses.

There is a previous series that speaks about Mental Illness in a larger context that may be helpful to read. HERE is the link to the first one.

The intention of this  series is to help us all become familiar with how trauma effects us as individuated selves, as brains, and as embodied consciousness.

Let’s Talk about Trauma…

Trauma is a very big and very personal subject, and there are many differencing opinions about what is, and is not, traumatic. I have lived the experience of C-PTSD and being Neurodivergent most of my life, so I may not be completely objective about this subject.

Also, I have been a front-line clinician for almost 30 years and can attest that most people with any chronic health condition, of any kind, is on a spectrum Trauma.

One way to safely engage this subject is the idea of little ‘t’ trauma and capital ‘T’ Trauma. Depending on your personal experience, or your clinical experience (if you are a clinician), it is up to you where you draw a line between those similar but profoundly different volumes and dimensions of distress.

This article is going to go on a deep dive into some of the ways that trauma, Trauma, Chronic Distress (Anxiety, Depression. Etc.), Chronic Illness and Pain, Neurodivergent experience, and many aspects of diagnosable Mental Illness, exist before and below your Mind.

All of the above conditions, and many others, share the experience of pain (especially existential pain) and a visceral sense of imminent overwhelm.

Imagine you are in an Uber. You are the experience of the ride – the Mind,. The car, traffic, potholes, and driver’s abilities to avoid crashing  are ‘below and before’ your Mind.

Depending on the day, your subjective volume of distress and imminent overwhelm, can determine your experience of Trauma and Pain. So much of our emotional, visceral, and existential distress is held in the body, just below the Mind. Your instincts, visceral drives, and intuition, while driving through traffic, are embodied experiences, just below your Mind.

Imagine, while driving along, you have a seat belt on and are balancing a cup of soup on your head. As the driver navigates traffic and survival, you are now responsible for not spilling the soup. This is a metaphor for wanting to fit in socially – to make sure everything ‘looks good.’

Everyone is watching!

Depending on your culture and conditioning, your subjective sense of fitting in instead of Belonging, can compel you to behave ‘without thinking.’ From before the Mind.

Sometimes life is like a rough ride through busy traffic with a bowl of hot soup on your head. The closer you get to overwhelm, the more your social interactions feel like crisis management – from before your Mind.

This imagery is meant to bring your awareness to the experience of anticipating consequences. The more challenges you have faced so far, the more you expect to crash into the world with hot soup in your lap.

**If you are new to this approach to helping yourself or others engage with Trauma, Addiction, and Chronic Illness, this short series of articles explores the Four Wounds of Trauma.

The First Wound is Hypervigilance.

The Second Wound is Comfort Seeking.

The Third Wound of trauma is Social Disorientation – Loss of Trust.

The Fourth Wound is Existential Pain – Loss of Self Trust.

Front of House, Back of House

If you have ever worked in a restaurant, you will know that the place where you interact with customers, where people eat and drink, is called the ‘front of house.’ As a Server (waiter/waitress), how you think and talk there is all about the customer experience. It is not about if you are having a good day.

Once you go into the kitchen, you are in the ‘back of the house.’ What and how you think, and especially how you talk is very different. What is going on back there is a frenzy of survival strategies, reflexes and reactions, and a need to rely on the people around you to keep it together. No one is having a good day.

As a person learning about the Mind, there is a part of you that is sitting at a table, eating whatever your Mind offers you. There is a part that may practice Qi Gong or Yoga, that is like the Server, hoping your choices are good for you – or at least taste good.

There is also a part of all of us that sits and watches the whole thing (front and back), either stoically cleaning glasses or chopping vegetables into bite sized pieces.

There are many other potential people in your restaurant, but the two I would encourage everyone to get to know better (and maybe even help) are the manager and the chef. Your manager is always the one who is responsible (gets blamed) for how everything goes. Your chef has been flying by the seat of their pants since you first had to take care of yourself, running on instinct.

 Below and Before Your Mind

“In Zen practice we fall back into the Unborn Mind, ‘the Mind before we were born’ – forever.”

In some meditation traditions, and most models of Trauma Therapy, it is said that in order to heal or expand the Mind, we have to separate the clear and turbid from the body. We all have ways of moving, breathing, and ‘holding ourselves,’ that are just a part of who we are – as emnodied beings. Some of those embodied or somatitice patterns  exist as expressions of our adaptive, curious, and authentic ‘Self’. And some of those patterns are latent habits that helped us fit it and get through previous experiences. The kind of experiences that form your adapatability.  especially the experiences that come from  That is a fancy way of inviting each of us on a journey of exploring the polarities of subjective clarity and conscious purification, and what your internal dialogue says when you are at your wits end, or how your body feels before, during, and after a panic attack.

And every State in between…

At the extremes of a spectrum, there are two ways to experience your Mind. One is automatic and unconscious, the other is consistent conscious curiosity about the capital T Truth about your experience.

At first, clarity isn’t about clarity. It is about consistency. It is about staying curious with the experience of your and anyone’s Mind.

One comes from the back of house, from what has happened and what is usually happening in your physical Brain and Neurophysiology, your Neuroception, and your Proprioception. I will discuss that shortly

The other way the Mind can be obstructed is more visceral and emotional. As human beings we are social creatures, and historically our ability to connect to others could be life or death. Connecting with and collaborating with other people and other egos takes a successful ego.

Social conditioning has worked since we were hunter gatherers. It is a lot more complex and distracting than ever now, but the Ego is just a story – at least in some ways. Your personality/ego/identity/self is always there, whispering its worries and adaptive bias from behind the curtains of awareness.

As above, consistent curiosity is the <?>

Your Instinctual Nervous System (Brain, Embodiment, and Movement) are below your Mind, and your Social Survival Self and its reflexes are before your talking Mind.

Unless you change the rules…

Your life experiences, especially the best and worst experiences, determine how your mind interacts with the world

In part two<?>

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