The Feeling of Adrenaline

When the body's HPA axis get's dysregulated, and cortisol cannot tell the hypothalamus to "cool it down", something happens - a jitteriness, little appetite, poor-sleeping, at first, but if the causes underlying the dysregulation aren't recognized and dealt with - whether it be dietary, sleeping, or drugs - the reinforcing feedback loop will continue to grow larger until...

There is a certain feeling known from my history which I can only describe as "liquid metal"; the feeling is adrenaline, but what is important is what anxiety does: the cortisol helps release the energy in fat cells for energy, while the adrenaline helps increase blood flow to the muscles of the limbs for "escape".

There is no escape, however, when the threat is something mental happening in your head. When the mind feels the "cool flow of liquid metal" through its veins, it is understandably terrroized by it. The coolness of the adrenaline enhances heat loss, and so the person both sweats and shakes; shakes and the sweats in turn operate as "background referents" for the thinking process the mind then engages in. The cause of the process or the dynamics making it operate the way it does are not properly recognized: the mind 'latches on' again and again to its objects. This 'latching' comes from a break with an awareness and control of the body: when you are physiologically dysregulated, there is absolutely no logic behind letting yourself get caught up in beliefs that only dysregulate you further.

Disembodiment, Coldneess, and Fear

“Because parents were taught to ignore their children’s cries and desires, children were forced to experience the sense that there was no benevolent power in their surroundings and robbed of the opportunity to identify with a nurturing parent. Further, frustrated by their parent’s behavior, children projected their own angry feelings onto the parents, imagining the elders to be more aggressive than they might actually be in reality. In turn, they felt the only way to protect themselves was to become aggressors, tough kids. Indeed, they were “taught” that the whole world was populated with aggressors and grew up under an injunction to show no sign of weakness. Hitler himself called upon them: “We ask you to be hard, German youth, and to make yourself hard! We cannot use a generation of ‘mother boys’, of spoiled children.” Those children who exhibited such supposed self-assurance and self-reliance, in turn, received official approval as valued citizens through the party organization for children and youth. They were to be “above” being hurt, omnipotent beings who would inflict aggression on others perceived to be weak. Their own dependency needs as seen in “undesirable” groups and individuals would become their targets. They did not know that their self-assurance was defensive and false.” – Vamik Volkan, Blind Trust, pg. 76, 2004, Pitchstone

“Under the influence of Nazi propaganda, German youngsters could no longer imagine their parents as loving caregivers. The idealized image of Hitler and his representatives devalued any old image they might have had of their parents. Therefore, they had no internal motivation to mourn; we do not struggle with giving up valueless images. Of course, many parents became Nazi’s themselves; under these conditions, youngsters “loved” their parents as members of the idealized group, but could not mourn or feel remorseful about losing the images of their parents simply as parents.” – Vamik Volkan, Blind Trust, pg. 78, 2004, Pitchstone

“When Nazi Satanists perform their sinister rituals with Hitlerite references, they embrace a dark will to power and rehearse a murderous intent toward their enemies. In this cultic milieu, the trappings of Hitler and Satan both represent symbols for elitism combined with anger and aggression toward the “New World Order” capitalism, Christianity, democracy, other races and humanity in general (“the herd”). The Swastika and Third Reich imagery join black candles, skulls, and magical pentagrams in a tableau of ritualized transgression and exclusion from the rest of society.” – Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, And the Politics of Identity; pg. 231, 2002, NYU

The first quote is about what Germans prior to the rise of Hitlerism had been guided to do with regard to raising their children; "scientists" promoted the idea that parents should ignore their children's cries because it would make them "stronger". This of course is in direct contradiction to modern infant and attachment research which shows that ignoring the cries of infants raises stresses hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which lowers the child's "window of tolerance" for emotions. In effect, ignoring the cries of ones own infant is training your infant in feelings of "despair" and "desperation".

The second quote shows how German pediatrics segued into Nazi propaganda: having already been trained in feelings of 'helplessness', the child has become conditioned to defer to authority. This German habit (a very self-conscious one that is aware of the results) of rearing children led to a society where even the children of "good enough" parents were pulled in by peer pressure and the mass idealization of strength, power and virility.

Disembodiment is the experience of a subtle stress that may sometimes be unnoticeable, inasmuch as if we don't "name" a quality of self-experience, we don't get any semiotic traction on its activity or presence within our minds. As the saying goes, you have to "name it to tame it". Sounds like a pop-psychology cliché, but its essentially true: the left hemisphere is the language and 'digital' and 'serial' hemisphere; whereas the right hemisphere represents affects and emotions. Thus, the left hemispheres "naming" of the problem is actually a correlation between hemispheres.

So, if someone doesn't have a name for disembodiment, or have any understanding as to the etiology of it in trauma, and the way and manner it provokes the formation of a personality built around somatic feelings of 'coldness' and the psychology of fear, it will have no power to control the formation of ideas and meanings that follow. Instead, existing ideas which one has already interacted with (and probably already have a relationship to) jut into consciousness and force the mind to interact with them. It is from disembodied backgrounds like this that chance-interactions with cultural-material can determine what the mind thinks about. As a rule, it is typically a "transformation" - a sort of semiotic scrambling - so that general life issues become re-represented in different form.

The last quote is from Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's study of contemporary neo-fascist and occult groups, which have mythologized the Nazi's in the same way that the Nazi' mythologized Germany's medieval kings. I do not pretend to know what its like to do evil things, or to believe that "evil" - or "sinister energies" - exist, and are not simply made-up concepts that have emerged in the semiosphere and become "represented" in yin-yang ways when the "magician" goes into a trance.

I do not understand any of this - I only know it exists, people believe this, and the things they are involved with appear to have an objective existence, although I question every interpretation that doesn't begin from culture and actual perceptual experience.

a reply to: Astrocyte

This should be taught in elementary schools...

I do not understand any of this - I only know it exists, people believe this, and the things they are involved with appear to have an objective existence, although I question every interpretation that doesn't begin from culture and actual perceptual experience.

I cannot agree more. Perspective is shaped from the womb to the grave and trauma can have a long lasting, and devastating, effect in shaping personality and character traits.

a reply to: Astrocyte
No offense - I don't really have any idea what you are talking about. Why not throw on some music grab a drink and forget the world for 5 minutes. In that 5 minutes the world can be what ever you want it to be. It can be a lot better place then what you have described above.