Home » Archives » 03. February 2008
26 Jan 2008 (INSIDE MY BRAIN)
February 3, 2008
It’s a Saturday and I am relaxing in a lovely beach somewhere in what they call Pasacao, the beach capital of Camarines Sur. I am enjoying a privilege card given to me by my Professor who invited me to visit Surfer’s Paradise owned by her sister. The sun is high, but the wind is cool and the waves are playful. The foods are inviting and my diet, which I call HUNGER STRIKE, is temporarily cancelled. Who could resist seafoods against the backdrop of tempting ocean and the smell of sea breeze. I have been boy watching, duh, and girl watching… errr!
I’m on my two piece and a pair of classy sunglasses. I’m on my flip flops and dangling earings, bangles and a white flaring cap. Some young couples just walked by; some children are busy building toy houses on sand. At my left are teeners playing volleyball. Close to me is a handsome guy, holding my hand (all right all right, I just added him to the picture! His invisible. I mean, non-existent, haha!) What a nice way to treat myself on a hot weekend. This is what I call pleasure!
But duh, I’m here! In front of the desktop, merely imagining that scene over and over! I wish I were there savoring the ocean breeze, munching the seafoods being served and sipping a cool penacolada. This is what’s nice in being a writer, if you cannot go to the place you want to be, you can bring the whole place to where you are! So I am bringing that paradise in my head and into this piece of what do you call this? – ahh, “LITERARY- TRASH-AND-TREASURE.”
I am on my writing mode right now. But I’m not going to imagine more things for a while. As I have decided, I will use my passion in writing in trying to understand something about medicine. So I am bringing my passion in writing into some good use but this time, not about literature but about matter-of-fact issues. In this way, I study and have fun at the same time because writing is already an appendage to me. It’s in my lifeblood! The only way to learn fast is to put what I know into my MEDICAL JOURNAL.
Since I started with imagination, I’d like to discover something about how the brain works and how we create images or retrieve memories. In short, I’d like to know the power of the mind – the PSYCHE and its pathways.
I came across a very interesting topic on neuroanatomy and behavior just now. It said that CEREBRUM is the most superior part of the brain, composed of two hemispheres, the RIGHT and LEFT, each divided into FOUR LOBES. I always get confused with which lobe is responsible for what particular function. I hope that I’ll get this right this time.
The FRONTAL lobe controls higher order THINKING, abstract reasoning, decision-making, speech and voluntary muscle movements. So when I decide, logically think, abstract and talk, I am actually triggering my frontal lobe. If something bad happens to this lobe, illogical and psychotic thinking will ensue, uninhibited behavior will manifest and speech will be incoherent.
Meanwhile, the TEMPORAL lobe is responsible for judgment, MEMORY, smell, sensory interpretation and understanding sound. So when I recall something or make a judgment, hear or smell (like the smell of delightful camaroon rebosado, spicy squid or hear the waves splashing on rocks), I have activated my temporal lobe. Any problem with this area will pave the way for aggressive and violent behaviors, olfactory and auditory hallucinations, as well as LANGUAGE abnormalities. (Tragic, isn’t it?)
The PARIETAL lobe controls SENSORY functions and body POSITION. So whenever I “sense,” feel pain, pleasure or temperature or whenever I am aware of my positions or where I am, my parietal lobe is at work! When I see a ball coming right at me from the teen players of volleyball at the beach where I just imagined, I would respond to evade it! Otherwise, I would be in terrible pain of being hit. The awareness of space and the ball coming right at me is the function of my parietal lobe. Impaired spatial ability and body image and the inability for self care are some of the problems associated with a defect in this area.
Meantime, visual function, the ability to SEE, is the work of my OCCIPITAL lobe. Visual Illusions and hallucinations indicate impairment in this part of the brain.
Now, embedded in the cerebrum is what we call DIENCEPHALON. It’s actually superior to the brainstem and consists of three structures: THALAMUS, HYPOTHALAMUS and LIMBIC SYSTEM.
What receives and relays sensory input (related to the parietal function) and processes memory (related to temporal function), as well as regulates mood is what we call THALAMUS.
Known as the control center of the body, the HYPOTHALAMUS is responsible for homeostasis. It regulates the Autonomic Nervous System, temperature, food intake, water balance, biological rhythms and drives (and the more familiar term, BIOLOGICAL CLOCK) and hormonal output of the anterior pituitary gland.
Meantime, known as the EMOTIONAL BRAIN, the LIMBIC SYSTEM regulates emotional responses. It consists of the LIMBIC LOBE and frontal cortex, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, brainstem (the respiratory center) and ANS. So it is the limbic system which is actually responsible for my emotions!
It is such a wonder how the brain works and it will always remain a mystery to me how such a tiny part can regulate all kinds of responses. The brain is one thing but the mind is another. How stimuli are perceived, relayed, interpreted and eventually how responses are generated and effected are interestingly complicated! Any defect in the structure of the brain due to trauma, lesion or congenital anomalies, hormonal imbalance. or any deficiency in the neurotransmitters responsible for regulating mood, transmitting impulses or initiating an action potential automatically lead to pathological conditions (abnormal functioning).
Well, I think I’ve had enough of this brainwork for today so I’m up for another stretching at the beach. Zaaaaappp! There goes the people enjoying the waves as they plunge into the water; the kids continue with their architectural designs made of sands. Meantime, let me put my towel on the white sand and let me lie under the sun for a summer tan. I really hate to cut this conversation but you see, I’ve just spotted a charming beach guard coming towards my direction!
22 Jan 2008 (BEAUTY QUEEN)
She walks the aisle like a beauty queen. She waves her hand with grace. Well, she is a title holder after all. In fact, she has not lost the glow on her face. She stands erect as all beauty queens do; she holds her chin high and answers questions without a trace of doubt.
Then she loses all charm and composure when she starts screaming like a leaf tossed brutally by the wind. She loses grip of reality and an upsurge of emotions overwhelm her once calm soul.
She was brought to the female psychiatric ward the other day. Her mom hasn’t slept for days because she thinks that her only daughter is so vulnerable in that place – a place where everyone has her own world, her own miseries and fantasies, her own hidden, untold grief.
Her name is Marianne Rodriguez, 22, a beauty queen. She’s beauty, brain and grace in one. In the latest pageant that she joined, she was hailed Miss Philippines International; now she’s tagged as CRAZY.
Her inmates giggle when she starts screaming like a child in pain. She’s hailed as the prettiest psychiatric patient in the ward but this time, she’s in a different contest: a race back to reality.
Severe depression overwhelmed her ego, a part of the personality which interacts with reality and balances the Id and the Superego. When the pressure is too strong or the trauma so severe, a person simply snaps! She did. Who could blame her? She was raped three weeks ago.
Unconsciously, she made a psychic escape from a reality that was too much to handle that she begins to dissociate herself from an experience too traumatic for her to integrate with her conscious self. Her memory, identity and consciousness disintegrated and slipped into a world detached from what she used to know. Her diagnosis: PSYCHOGENIC AMNESIA.
Her family was told that disassociative amnesia is a sudden inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness and is not associated with organic disorder such as brain injury. The doctor said that sometimes, memories will suddenly and dramatically flood her. Every time that happens, she begins to cry out loud. Some patients, though, never break through the barriers to reconstruct their missing past.
Her family, with the institution, has been providing her with a supportive environment that establishes safety and emotional security. Her mom and dad want her fast recovery but they were advised to stimulate memory loss gradually because the upsurge of memories could be very upsetting for her. Marianne is said to have excessively used the defense mechanism repression because her conscious self could no longer handle anxiety associated with the conflict. Any woman who is forced to live with a bitter experience she did not want to participate into, ganged, raped or battered severely, can snap and break. No one wants to be placed in a situation where one is intimidated, threatened and forced.
Rape is a violent sexual act that violates a woman’s freewill. Fresh from a party in Ayala, Manuel dragged her into the car. She struggled but he gave her a punch that made her unconscious. When she awoke, she was already in a small house in Cavite where she could scream but no could hear her plea. There, he forced himself into her repeatedly and she struggled against his strength. She was forced to become weak, helpless and submissive, the exact qualities the offender despises in himself.
Manuel’s motive was apparently of conquest and power, and Marianne was tied-up, verbally threatened, intimidated with a weapon to subdue her and eventually submit to his sexual demands to gratify his sense of power, security, mastery and control. For Manuel, it was an exciting adventure as he saw it as a test of his manhood.
After two days, he left her, beaten, bruised and scarred. He made an anonymous call to the police, who searched the place and returned her home. Marianne’s life changed and she lost herself. She had not slept nor talked for days. She retreated to a world that was tolerable, a world devoid of that tragic incident that rerouted her life. She was in a road she doesn’t know how to find her way back.
Marianne’s case is a rape by acquaintance (rapist known to her). Some rape happens as statutory (rape of a minor with consent) and incest (rape of child by relatives). Their legal aid said that it was a confidence rape as she had prior interaction with the offender, Manuel. The assault was a kind of power rape: a rape committed by a person with low self-esteem and with feelings of inadequacy and a history of poor interpersonal relationship. Manuel is one of her suitors, recently rejected. Obviously, the act was precipitated by the incident of rejection that offended his feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. He might have committed it to prove his manhood, virility and competence.
Some offenders, though, engage in the act for sexual gratification: anger rape. In anger rape, they vent their anger and hostility, their hatred and contempt against a victim who represents those women who wronged him at some point of their lives. They are fraught with conflict, irritation and irrational jealousy to the point that they become physically assaultive. In the process though they are not aroused; they simply want to channel their anger towards another that in the end could lead to homicide.
Meantime, some offenders commit the act because of the need to inflict pain and torment: Sadistic rape. Often ritualistic, aggression becomes a sexual expression and a source of sexual gratification. Breasts, genitals and buttocks become the focus of injury and the offenders become intensely excited and pleased in the victims torment, anguish, distress and suffering which are interpreted as sexual excitation rather than a refusal.
Impulsive or opportunistic rape, on the other hand, is said to occur in conjunction with other antisocial acts such during a robbery and usually is not premeditated.
With Marianne, the rape occurred with someone that she knows but in some occasions, the offender has no prior interaction with the victim: blitz rape; or that the offender assaults a woman he is somewhat acquainted to: marked victim rape. In some instances, a retardate or minor is raped: accessory to sex rape, while some women are raped during their date: date rape.
Any rape experience imposes a traumatic history. Marianne dissociated from her herself in response to that experience and she has been experiencing rape trauma syndrome. At first, she was DISORGANIZED. She felt angry, guilty, embarrassed, humiliated and dirty. She had been into denial, shock, disbelief and she was constantly afraid. She complained of having multiple physical and somatic problems and wished for revenge.
Several days or a week after, she transitioned to what is termed as REORGANIZATION phase wherein she struggles to adapt – the WHY ME? phase. She attributed blame to others, justified her actions and tried to regain a sense of control and self-protection.
For days she has had recurrent dreams and nightmares, irrational fears, such as being indoors or outdoors, being in a crowd, being left alone, and engaging in sexual activity. Her grief apparently resolved slowly. She tried to review and analyze what happened then she snapped. She broke loose. The pain was too much to bear, and the frustration was overwhelming that she regressed.
The only way to win a ticket back to reality is to lose that crown of anger, bitterness, disappointment, pain and hopelessness. She has to make them all disappear and get her back into shape by making a transition. She needs to make a transition to recovery.
She needs to piece herself together, mend her brokenness, regain her self-respect and go beyond her pain and her loss. She needs to pull herself out from that debilitating and traumatic experience and learn to be at peace with herself. She must reeducate her heart to trust the world again and re-learn to see her worth.
This time, she’s not in a competition for a title; she’s into a fight to break the chain of confusion and guilt and anger that the experience forced on her. She needs to fight for her future — a future that awaits anyone who is raped, molested or assaulted .. anyone who is robbed of something: the self-preserved dignity. Because amidst the tragedy, there is a future to look forward to.
For now, however, she will struggle; she will cry in pain like a leaf tossed aimlessly. She remains the QUEEN OF THE WARD and definitely, IT IS NOT A CONTEST SHE WANTED TO BE IN.