I heard a very interesting interview on Fesh Air today. It is not that long, about 30 minutes.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102373662

The interviewee, Grodin, works with people who have been traumatized. Some of these are Tibetan monks who have been tortured. Some are Holocaust vistims who are now experiencing demetia. They seem to have passed beyond the trauma but then something happens to trigger it again.

For the monks. sometimes their meditation seems to being up memories of the abuse. for the Holocaust victims, Grodin thinks the dementia makes the mind move beyond somethi9ng that has suppressed the bad memories.

I'm wondering if something in this mechanism somehow hints at what happens when people end up in BSTs. Maybe they de-repress when they die and the bad memories come forward, in some cases, and they get entrapped in a BST. Maybe the mental state some can get into after a traumatic experience is a kind of BST.

This is a really interesting story. Sometimes people here ask questions such as, why are there BST's? Maybe this interview has the seed of an answer.

After all, does any of us really know how the mind works?

I certainly don't know how our mind works Lucy, but what you wrote surely rings true to me.
Maybe it's this way: Some live their life in a way, so that every earlier life-episode is not only in the past, but as well really over in the sense this person said good-bye to it, it's all well worked through, closed, and the conclusions of this past-experiences are integrated well into the present.
Others (and I guess that's more common) have a more sequenced lifeline, meaning many events of their life are not really closed; projects which couldn't have been maintained due to outer circumstances, experiences that are "not done", not worked through, mysterious occurings, and of course experience of extreme pain and fear.

Now my line of thoughts is, could it be, the more quasi-separated sequences there are in one's life, the more "surprises" there will be in the afterlife, as all those not-goodbyed past events could function as crystallization cores for a specific afterlife-surrounding? This thought seems to be supported by the fact, that in the afterlife there aren't these physical cycles (dates, daytime, sleep-wake, hungry, digestion etc.), so that all these undone past events could come to the surface more easily than in the physical, where all the details of daily routine can provide a cover for memorizing.

Spooky

Yeah that seems to be what happened with the Holocaust survivors who later suffered from dementia. As they lost the usual framework we all live in, the long-ago memories surfaced and apparently they would confuse what was going on now with memories of being prisoners and being abused.

And they possibly thought they had put all that bad stuff in the past and moved on. In fact, many of them had literally moved on, as many of these folks are now living in Israel. So they went on and surely functioned. But all that bad stuff was just a few neurons away. So something removed the protective layer of new habits and the structures we all take for granted, (dates, daytime, sleep-wake, hungry, digestion etc.), and I think Altzheimers affects your ability to keep this stuff straight, and then the old memories took over and they thought they were back in the prison camps.

Sounds like folks in BSTs to me.

So how do you know when you've sufficiently processed "bad" experiences so that you won't get stuck in them at a future time by this type of process?

People think they are immune to this sort of thing until it happens to them.

Very nice interview. It is interesting to me to hear the doctor's methods to help the monks. I see that he uses different interactive methods, including chanting, healing sounds such as tibetan bowls, and guided meditation to help calm them. I believe that these methods are completely effective, especially when used regularly. Choosing and using different methods like these is very empowering, whether used immediately after traumatic events, or much later.

It makes a lot of sense that these experiences continue to exist within the mind. I know exactly what he is talking about regarding people feeling like they have 'lost their souls' -- and having that appearance after their traumas. For anyone who has been 'brainwashed' it is a terrible experience, no matter what methods are used.

We are, each of us, exposed many times a day to information and expectations which can be very harmful over time. For others, it is even worse, and much more personal.

In addition to 'calming' methods, I believe that even stronger 'empowering' methods can be helpful, as well. To simply find yourself in a 'peaceful' state is not always enough. I think that inner strength is something that can be built up, reinforced, and absolutely relied upon.

What I believe people don't realize is that we are all traumatized in some ways.

Your theory makes sense to me. One thing he emphasized was giving people a 'choice' -- meaning, that you can't really 'force' these 'cures' on people who are suffering in this way. They must be given freedom to choose their own healing, to walk their own path to acceptance. I really feel strongly about that, at this point in my own journey.

For those with dementia, I have read that healing 'visual' journeys using nature videos and other kinds of presentations can be helpful. I am not an expert in this field, but I can relate to all of this from a personal perspective.

I was surprised that, for the monks who had been traumatized, meditation did not provide peace but instead sometimes intensified the bad memories.

That just opens up so many questions.

I was traumatized once and sometimes would have horrific dreams about what happened. So if I had been a great meditator the way I think Tibetan monks probably are, would I have had the same "horrific dreams" when I meditated? Is there some part of the mind that is activated both in sleep and in meditation?

I guess I am somehow comapring a PTSD type experience to being in a BST.

There is also something about the intensity of a tramatizing experience that is somehow significant. The intensity somehow must help to create that situation when it is no longer physically happening. Or crerate a state of mind that can focus. How could that be harnessed without the bad part?