Since Gary raised the issue of trauma, thought would get the ball rolling on trauma trance. Trauma can be sudden and shocking or accumulatively created. A trauma trance can be something short-lived, or something that lasts months, years or even permanently. The results of trauma depending upon severity has a huge range of symptoms such as, a zombified state, disconnected in certain areas and/or numbed out, hypersensitive in other areas, hallucinations (all kinds), automatic pilot, blind rages, uncontrollable weeping, panic attacks, going through the motions.

If you say something frightening and/or negative to someone who is already in a traumatized state whatever you say becomes embedded in them. It can be harder to reach them with a positive suggestion in such a state however, but worth trying. The film "Persona" by Bergman is one of my favorites for it portrays the relationship between a traumatized woman (played by the beautiful Liiv Ullman) who has stopped speaking and her therapist (played by the also lovely Bibi Andersson). To my recollection, the cause of the trauma that caused Ullman's silence remains a mystery as does she, while the therapist reveals herself more and more, becoming more and more vulnerable in the process of her identification with her patient. The patient/therapist division is broken down. Another interesting subject.....but I digress.

Post traumatic stress disorder can be caused by a singular event, which can be something that happens to one from outside, or an emotional response to being shocked by something comparitively minor (e.g. the garish face of clowns can be traumatic to small children, inciting a fear of clowns for a long-time to come) depending upon for example, ones age, vulnerability at the time and/or whether one had low blood sugar.

What about the victims of war....the trauma of ones family being killed, ones limbs blown off. When it is beyond sadness....no tears can possibly express the degree of pain and suffering? How to rehabilitate the well being of war veterans who have, seen and experienced so much and return but never return....looking at the world and everyone in it with the glazed/damaged look unable to feel excitement or their feelings anymore, so numbed out by trauma trance are they, many reliving time and time again, the memories that so destroyed their sense of sanity.

Animals in zoos and circuses experience trauma trance as well, not only human animals are capable of numbing out to pain, or boredom or tyranny. How many of us have seen the bear or elephant bobbing to and fro in it's lonely concrete display area? Where is there to go, what to do....? Boredom and abscence of socialization with ones own kind is deeply traumatizing.

Identifying trauma trance can be epiphanous or require some help to realize. Working therapeutically on sufferers of trauma trance is a delicate area....requiring careful listening skills and moment to moment attention, not to mention the right approaches in suggestion.

On another note, trauma trance can be something experienced in a culture on a mass level, such as what we have seen occurr with the events of Sept. 11. The constant replaying of the twin towers on tv over and over put the country into a traumatic trance. When you are in this kind of shocked out trance state, it is easier to plant suggestions. The primal survival mechanisms are the most susceptible. So, fight or flight automatic response is the most tappable.

Most big news stories tap into fear and through repetition ad nauseum of the images that frighten or sicken, deposit messages ("the news") into the mass consciousness. If, you are one of those who chooses not to wire yourself to this matrix but obtain your news from various sources, you can escape the trauma trance to a degree, but not entirely, unless you work quite hard at it via meditation or whatever works for you, as the sheer force of being surrounded by the mental climate of trauma creates a substantial trauma vibration to contend with in addition.

Phew! Enough said on this one for now.....

Other thoughts invited.