Sunday, January 26, 2025

Sunday, January 26, 2025

 

   Yesterday, I mowed the large backyard area. Today, I mowed the strip running parallel to the street. There's not much grass growing now; it's our dry season. Grass, as I remember it from the East Coast, does not exist in my yard. The only blades that grow long are the seed spikes.  I never heard of them when I had a full lawn. This lawn looks like a scruffy beard. I mow it because I like mowing, which gives the lawn a neater look.

      Fourth-grade MH's parents texted me shortly before 2 pm asking if I could meet with her at 2. At the time, I was on the phone with my friend, Jean, doing our daily water meditation. I got off and worked with her.   She continues to have trouble repeating the words as dictated.  I don't consider this a problem when students delete a word here and there, but her deletions frequently alter the sentence's meaning. I will make mistakes like that, trusting too much in my ability to correctly glean the meaning of the words with a quick scan.  When I write, which I do a lot, I often leave out the word not more frequently than I would like to admit.   In me, it's a sign of hurrying; in MH, I'm afraid it's a sign of something else.

  In reading about the polyvagal theory, I'm learning more about fear responses.  I am familiar with the list. Traditionally, it was just fight and flight.  The freeze response to a threat was included in the lists later.  Wiki lists research on the response as early as 1975. I don't know when it was included in the list of survival responses.  It is described as the response of prey animals. It's a protection when death is inevitable. It also has a positive survival response, like not moving when a hunter searches for you. Movement is a dead giveaway.  However, if the freeze response becomes chronic, it can cause anxiety. My best guess is if any of the defensive responses become chronic, it can produce anxiety.

   I heard a story about a school bus full of children who were kidnapped for ransom.  They were placed in an underground bunker equipped with air and water.  The bunker started to collapse. The driver and an older child went to work digging their way out.  They freed everyone.

   A psychiatrist was interviewed. How many children did he think would be traumatized by the event? He said, "Oh, one or two. The rest should be fine."  The only one who had a successful life was the boy who worked with the driver to dig them out.  The feeling of helplessness is deadly. 

   I would say surrender is always deadly.  I heard that continued fighting in the face of sure defeat is also deadly.  I can imagine. It is literally deadly in the face of malicious captors, or it's a path to madness.