Van Der Kolk’s Mohawk of Self-Awareness and Punk Rock as Therapeutic Intervention

Nothing says healing from trauma like a mosh pit.

The Bodacious Bonhoeffers are back and this week we discussed “Losing your Body, Losing your Self,” Chapter 6 from Van Der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score.

Van Der Kolk (Vandie) engages the ways trauma dis-integrates the connection between one’s body, mind and emotions. He explored how his traumatized patients had difficulty feeling parts of their body, an inability to tell what object were through touch and reading the feelings in others. When non-traumatized persons are resting there is a natural process of self reflection: checking in with one’s body and forming a felt sense of self. With traumatized persons that doesn’t take place. The integrating areas of the brain aren’t actively connecting these diverse inputs. When Vandie went further he found that non-traumatized brains were actively engaging their Mohawk of Self-Awareness (orbital prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate and insula)(p.93). The reason for shutting down this connection to one’s body as well as a felt sense of self is tragically simple. When someone is in a prolonged state of terror and fear of annihilation the brain learns to cope. The brain reacts by disconnecting from the over arousing emotions by shutting down connection to emotions in general. Additionally when the brain experiences the body as overly aroused (perpetually frightened) it disconnects from the body. This reaction has all kinds of heart-breaking consequences; from a sense of psychic deadness, to an inability feel like a self, to difficulty reading the emotions of others (which can lead to re-victimization).

Van Der Kolk suggest what’s needed is a sense of agency, knowing how one feels, connecting with the sensations of one’s body, moving from action towards language and a safe connection with others. In short, one needs the soul healing effects of punk rock. I know you know already… but let me lay it out for you.

Agency: There’s nothing more punk than agency. Philosophically punk is concerned with deconstructing systems of power and holding to the sacred, inherent agency of individuals. Trust your experience.

Knowing what you feel: Punk rock is experienced through feeling. The instruments and quality is secondary to the emotionality. It allows one to experience a range of emotions particularly the difficult ones of anger and rage.

Connecting with the sensations of one’s body: Punk provides a way of knowing ones body through allowing one to react to internal emotions with outward expression. The sense of feeling and doing become linked.

Move from action to language: Punk bridges the felt sense of pain, powerlessness, anger and rage to language and motion. This integrative process within the context of community creates a holding environment where a variety of socially unacceptable emotions can be held interpersonally and, increasingly, intrapersonally. Through this process, punk introduces a language to explore experience.

Safe connection with others: One of the devastating aspects of trauma is that the body in distress can’t be met by the relief of bodily contact with another because often that is the way the distress was introduced in the first place. Mosh pits, however have the ability to introduce a holding environment where one’s body can make contact with another’s within the containment of the pit. There is a sense of impact and contact, moving you from alienation into a felt sense of community and relationship.