Quote:
Originally Posted by BudFox
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"One of the things that your brain is very concerned with is relative status. People hate being low in status, especially men. Part of what happens when your status goes up is your brain serotonin levels go up. And when you brain serotonin levels go up, you're less irritable and you experience less negative emotion, per unit of uncertainty or threat. And so when you demean someone, and you lower their presumed status as far as a very primordial circuit is concerned, you alter the system that regulates their emotions, and they hate that. It's an unbelievably archaic circuit. So you mess with at your peril. It's not learned, by no means." -- Jordan Peterson
The whole thing felt demeaning. The imposed hierarchy, the powerlessness, the rejection, the implicit pathologizing, and finally being dumped. At the time I described as a sense of being on the brink of annihilation. No doubt some primitive brain circuits got activated. Total disregulation.
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Thanks, that's another good example of narcissistic injury -- status is part of identity, I would think, and when that is lost or attacked, then there is an "injury". Something important to the person is damaged. Very basic, primitive responses and feelings of pain.
What I was talking about being rejected or shamed by a therapist was slightly different, though. Normally, being shamed or rejected by a stranger wouldn't be so distressing and wouldn't affect my status. But when the therapist became important
to me, when I became attached or looked to her for help, etc., then by that attachment process it's like she became a part of me, or connected to me, my self, what I needed to survive. Not rationally, of course, but in that primitive attachment circuitry that therapists these days are assuming is "down there" and very well may be.
So I'm suggesting that the loss of that positive regard from the person of the therapist is a loss of something which I had come to regard as a part of
me and it's therefore very painful, like having an arm cut off or something. And then I would lose my sense of identity and sense that I have what I need to make it on my own in the world and that is very, very distressing. And destabilizing. Not just "hurt feelings" which one gets over relatively quickly, those incidents hurt my sense of self-efficacy and ability to function well. The "hurt feelings" didn't dissipate. A feeling that "it's all OK now" didn't happen.
This kind of thing COULD be studied objectively in lots of different ways. A better understanding could be developed and shared with therapists, to help them understand better the damage they can do to certain types of clients. I don't have access to current academic journals but I haven't seen anything on the internet about it. To my natural science mind this kind of stuff just screams -- study me, study me!