The “Trauma” Question & Neuro-Semantics: Will Elian Be Traumatized?

As we all know, our frames of mind (i.e. meta-states) govern what we see and hear and how we process information.  Depending on the frame that we bring to a subject (i.e., how we meta-state it), we can play all kinds of games.

In the Elian Gonzalez case (which seemed destined to stay in the news for months), we have a case of those who see it in terms of Family, Politics, Justice, Power, etc.  In the last few days, however, a new question has arisen–

Will Elian be traumatized by the Events of his taking from the relatives home and restored to his father?

I want to respond to this as a psychologist who has “expert” status in the court system here in dealing with family therapy and the custody of children and also (and more importantly) from the perspective of Neuro-Semantics.   Accordingly, we now need to ask some other Framing Questions:

• Will an event traumatize the boy?
• Do events, in and of themselves, carry the power to “traumatize” at all?
• What are the mechanisms in the human brain/ nervous system that creates this experience that we call “Trauma?”
• What role do beliefs, ideas,  values, understandings, etc. play in this?

Almost every psychologist I’ve seen interviewed on CNN, FOX, CBNS and the mainstream news programs have expressed the old Psychoanalytic Frame and Behavioral Frame — Events, in and of themselves, traumatized.  If you have had an experience you have to be traumatized.  It will show up in some symptom.  If we don’t see symptoms, it means that the person is “in denial,” repressing, not being true, etc.

From the NLP and especially the Neuro-Semantic standpoint, this is utter non-sense.

An event, any event, is but a trigger.  In and of itself, it has no “meaning.”  “Meaning” does not and cannot exist “out there.”  It all depends upon a person’s Frame — beliefs, meanings, understandings, etc.  Pick an event, any event …

• criticism, insult, rejection
• firing from a job, downsizing,
• economic distress, bankruptcy
• rape, molestation, robbery
• accidents, wars, fights, gangs
• divorce, death, sickness, etc.

Does Everybody respond to such negative and traumatic events in the very same way?
Do some people come through distressful events in a resilient way?
Are there such a phenomena as “children of survival” like those who grew up in a war zone (as in Lebanon) and came out without the internal strategy of “learned helplessness?”
Did every Vietnam vet suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
Does everyone diagnosed with cancer role over, give up, and pine away?
Does everyone divorced, raped, or widowed become crippled emotionally?
Does every millionaire who files for bankruptcy lie down and never try again?

The power to formulate, program, and structure human experience  our thoughts, feelings, states, coping skills, mastery skills, future, etc. does not lie in events but in our frames of mind about the events, the meanings that we construct about the events.

Martin Seligman studied “Learned Helplessness” (1975) and identified the three “Ps” that govern this most unresourceful strategy that creates depression and non-resilience.

P — Personal: “It’s about ME”

P — Pervasive: “It affects EVERYTHING about me.”

P — Permanent: “It will LAST FOREVER…”

Later he discovered he and his associates could reverse the effects of learned helplessness by reversing these Frames… and so he came up with “Learned Optimism” (1990).  Change the Frame and you change the Game.

Will Elian be traumatized?

It all depends.

It depends upon the maps (frames) that his father and others helps him to set in his mind.  It depends upon the mapping that he buys and embraces.  It depends upon what he believes and what he wants to believe.

To set the Frame that he will, inevitably, inescapably, and without question, “be traumatized” is to — well, set that frame.  And frames (whether a primary state or meta-state) involves state dependency and operate as self-fulfilling prophecies or expectations.

Yet when a person seems to lack that awareness as most of the psychologist’s I’ve seen interviewed, they then blindly establish a frame.  I hope Juan Migil doesn’t listen to that and does not set that frame for Elian.  I hope that he sets other frames:

You are loved and valued.

You had quite a journey, what have you learned?

Things happen but they do not determine your future.

Children are “resilient” precisely because they do not have their frames set very well yet.  This gives tremendous power to parents and those who help set the frames for them.  After all, when we are 6 years old and have little understanding of the world, ourselves, and little ego strength to figure things out, we rely upon and are highly susceptible to the Frames that others set.

For me, if the relatives of Elian burdened that child with Political Frames, they did him a real injustice.  If they burdened him with “You need to Fulfill the Dying Request of your Mother” frame, they put him at a real disadvantage.

Is that what it’s all about?  A situation like this can be about almost anything– whatever someone wants to make this “about.”  This describes our meaning-making power.