Growth Needs Context

What is Context? How Do We Use It?

What Happens When We Lose It?

One of our most essential life skills is the ability to build context - the core assumptions which enable effective choice of behavior. The literatures on posttraumatic growth, many forms of therapy, recovery from depression or significant loss describe new context as a foundational achievement: recovery happens as we create better, more valid assumptions about ourselves and the world around us.

Two other foundational qualities for recovery and growth are the development of new abilities and the development of social relationships and the associated capacity for self-regulation. In many cases, these qualities are present, just neglected. The building of positive context can reveal these capacities. In other words, as we develop wisdom, we discover new capabilities and relationships we couldn’t recognize earlier.

Traumatic events cause the invalidation of highly significant assumptions. Trauma destroys context. After the trauma, we grow with the development of positive context or wither as such development is neglected. Consider these two definitions:

Tedeschi and Calhoun:¹

Psychological crisis can be defined in relation to the extent to which the fundamental components of the assumptive world are challenged, including assumptions about the benevolence, predictability, and controllability of the world; one's safety is challenged, and one's identity and future are challenged. The "seismic" set of circumstances severely challenges, contradicts, or may even nullify the way the individual understands why things happen, in terms of proximate causes and reasons, and in terms of more abstract notions involving the general purpose and meaning of the person's existence. Such threats to the assumptive world are accompanied by significant levels of psychological distress.

And,

Brewin et al. (1996):²

Trauma generally involves a violation of basic assumptions connected with survival as a member of a social group. These include assumptions (not necessarily conscious ones) about personal invulnerability from death or disease, status in a social hierarchy, the ability to meet internal moral standards and achieve major life goals, the continued availability and reliability of attachment figures, and the existence of an orderly relation between actions and outcomes.

Any quality of learning beyond primal instinct and reflex is context - our somatic markers, biases, scripts, schemas, personalized mind-blindness, unchallengeable doubts and certainties, internal working models, values and personality. Context is nothing less than the applicable portion of our model of both the world and also how we most effectively and efficiently respond to it.

Context is positive if it affirms possibility and capacity. Positive context leads to useful behaviors. Positive context promotes attunement to the present state of mind and body. We can have positive context for negative circumstances and scenarios: the assumption we should flee in the presences of certain threats is a positive assumption.

Context is negative if it is absent, inappropriate generalized or abstract, or worse, if it is a negation of possibility or capacity. Context is negative if it emphasized the presumption of accuracy over positivity. Negative context often promotes behaviors which neglect present circumstances.

When we take time to “think,” to “access higher order cognitive functions,” we are accessing our ingrained knowledge base so we can efficiently choose the most effective behavior. As we access context, we develop behaviors with more accuracy and nuance. It would be like taking care with what you say rather than blurting out the first thoughts.

Suffering Loss

When we lose access to food and shelter, or are wounded, our physical living is threatened. We lose life fitness. When we lose context, our decisioning will be too fast (denying access to higher-order functions) or too slow (worsening peril are losing opportunity), and less effective because of lack of core understanding. Here again, we have lost life fitness. When we lose context, we face the horror of psychic annihilation. We are overwhelmed by our own life experience.

(For a greater discussion on the role of life fitness, see How Loss Creates Depression And Growth)

Posttraumatic growth is the consequence of the struggle to rebuild physical resources, regulatory resources (such as friendships or relationships) and context. Of the three, context is likely the most significant.

Tedeschi and Calhoun (2004), again:

Because of the affect involved, and the restructuring of the fundamental components of the assumptive world, growth seems to have a qualitative and quantitative difference in trauma survivors. Their attributions that growth was accomplished because of, and in the aftermath of, the struggle with trauma may be acknowledgments that much cognitive processing and affective engagement went into the changes they report. Research indicates that when persons who have experienced severe trauma have been compared with those who do not report trauma, positive personal changes are reported at a reliably higher level among trauma survivors.

So understanding how we use and lose context should offer some ideas about how to approach the creation of new, more positive and vital context.

The Body And the ‘What Is That?’

Each iota of experience is the product of body change in response to an emotionally salient object: Body-as-it-was, object, body-as-it-is. These body changes are emotions. A simple organism swims along and enters a patch of acidic water. It reacts and swims away. For a patch of food-rich water, it swims in and enjoys the bounty. The condition of the water changes the behavior of the organism.

However hard-wired by evolution, there is a process of assessment (what is that?) and behavior choice (what do I do?). Together, the answers drive the primal first sentence of experience: body-as-it-was, object, body-as-it-is - simple-organism, acidic-water, organism-fleeing. The answers determine the enacted emotion.

Assessment gathers input from our senses. We have one set of memories for such information. We compose the what from the primal question what is that? We simultaneously retrieve context from our prior experience and innate reflexes to prefigure that. We have a contextual memory to hold this evolving concept.

The Dual Memory Model

Chris Brewin et al. (2010):³

Evidence from cognitive psychology and neuroscience implies distinct neural bases to abstract, flexible, contextualized representations (C-reps) and to inflexible, sensory-bound representations (S-reps)... [Our] model is used to explain how the different types of distressing visual intrusions associated with clinical disorders arise, in terms of the need for correct interaction between the neural systems supporting S-reps and C-reps.

When an event occurs (our body encounters and object), we pay attention to the object and ask the primal question - what is that? We notice things and take in the salient information. We experience the remembered presence of this event.

At the instance of the encounter, we create two types of representations: sensory-based representations (s-reps) of the things we notice and contextual-based representations of the assumptions we make. When the object is as we expect, the s-rep and the c-rep correspond and there are few distinctions to notice. It fades from our attention.

For example, I turn to stare at the wall as I write. The wall looks (s-rep) as it is supposed to look (c-rep). I continue to stare, thinking about my writing, not about the wall. Core understanding could give rise to qualities such as mind blindness. We could choose to search for novelty amidst prefigured familiarity, but our choice would not reflect qualities of being startled or curious. In fact, such behavior might simply reflect boredom.

When something is not as it supposed to be, we experience novelty, core understanding, and speculative assumptions. Novelty is an s-rep without associated c-rep. Familiar information within prefigured context (the core understanding) is an s-rep matched to a c-rep. Speculative assumptions are c-reps unsupported by the core understanding. The combination of novelty and speculation creates emotional salience.

An event causes body change. We emote. I use the following diagram as a generalized form of body-as-it-was - ▲¹, object - ▼¹, body-as-it-is - ▲²: ▲▼▲. (For more information, see the discussion of the primal first sentence footnoted below).⁴ The presence of ▼¹ causes a body change (the difference between ▲² and ▲¹).

Our choice of emotion is based the qualities of novelty, core understanding and speculative assumption. The diagram of the primal iota of experience would show:

The outcome of an event is either favorable or unfavorable. It creates value for novel information (we learn). It determines the accuracy and value of the speculative assumptions. We now have some context for novel information and some testing of speculative assumptions.

Core Understanding

At the core of an event is familiar information in a prefigured context. This core understanding drives our emotions. In this sense, we access past experience and engage learned behaviors.

How do we pick the first piece of context? Some events demand reflex or instinct. How do we know what to do? We chose the emotion with the strongest positive somatic marker. (And we do not inhibit its behavior.) Even when we have more time to build context, we still rely on somatic markers to prioritize the development of context.

Emotions are neither good nor bad; prior experience marks them so. Somatic markers are the lowest order of ‘cognitive functions.’ Antonio Damasio describes somatic markers as the basis for gut instinct.⁵ The smallest unit of learning is the somatic marker. Like complex behaviors built from simple acts, collections of somatic markers become larger constructs - biases, scripts, beliefs, schemas, our unchallengable doubts and certainties, and even the nurture to our nature.

A new event creates a new experience of this core understanding. It provides the opportunity to modify the somatic marker associated with the chosen, learned behavior. From this experience, our previous understanding becomes either more nuanced or less valid.

If we have another identical encounter with the object, our new behavior is based on our updated core understanding. We encounter less novelty and use fewer speculative assumptions. Our response is both quicker and more appropriate. Eventually, we react automatically, like catching a baseball in a session of toss and catch.

Novelty and Speculation

Novelty provokes curiosity and other emotions associated with learning. If a novel circumstance generates great arousal, we might be said to experience awe. Awe could even provoke epiphanies - the commitment to a new set of life values.

(Such awe might evoke tremendous fear because it reorganizes our context. In the past, I have labeled frightful-awe as terror. Now, I think its more accurate to categorize awe as an emotion related to novelty, and terror as an emotion related to the destruction or absence of context. For further discussion, see my essay Posttraumatic Growth From Awe.)

When something is not as it is supposed to be, the contextual assumptions are unsupported by core understanding. Unsupported context (speculation) creates dissonance. The classic Leon Festinger quote:⁶

Dissonance and consonance are relations among cognitions that is, among opinions, beliefs, knowledge of the environment, and knowledge of one's own actions and feelings. Two opinions, or beliefs, or items of knowledge are dissonant with each other if they do not fit together that is, if they are inconsistent, or if, considering only the particular two items, one does not follow from the other...

Dissonance produces discomfort and, correspondingly, there will arise pressures to reduce or eliminate the dissonance. Attempts to reduce dissonance represent the observable manifestations that dissonance exists. Such attempts may take any or all of three forms. The person may try to change one or more of the beliefs, opinions, or behaviors involved in the dissonance; to acquire new information or beliefs that will increase the existing consonance and thus cause the total dissonance to be reduced; or to forget or reduce the importance of those cognitions that are in a dissonant relationship.

Dissonance cues vigilance and other emotions associated with concern. Terror would be a high-arousal emotion of dissonance.

1-2-3, Next

Much of psychology begins with the presupposition of an emotionally-salient object. It’s regarded as the starting point for understanding experience and examining the psyche. An object creates a single autobiographical story.

When we look at the object and the associated consequences, this simplifying assumption proves rather complex. When we encounter an object, we ask the primal question: what is that? We create a sensory representation of the object to describe what. We create a contextual representation to describe that. We experience the remembered present composed of two distinct memories.

These two memories create three core sensations. Novelty is the experience of an s-rep without a corresponding c-rep. Core understanding (familiar information contained in a prefigured context) is the experience of an s-rep with a corresponding c-rep. Speculation is the experience of an c-rep unsupported by core understanding.

Each iota of experience is built on this 1-2-3 framework: one object, two memories, three experiences. What happens when we stress this framework. How does it break down and cause so much turmoil and distress? How can we use this model to guide recovery and growth? My next essay will address these questions.

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1. Tedeschi, R., & Calhoun, L. (2004). TARGET ARTICLE: "Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence" Psychological Inquiry, 15 (1), 1-18 DOI: 10.1207/s15327965pli1501_01  ↩

2. Brewin, C. R., Dalgleish, T., & Joseph, S. (1996). A dual representation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder. Psychological Review, 103(4), 670-686. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.103.4.670.  ↩

3. Brewin, C., Gregory, J., Lipton, M., & Burgess, N. (2010). Intrusive images in psychological disorders: Characteristics, neural mechanisms, and treatment implications. Psychological Review, 117 (1), 210-232 DOI: 10.1037/a0018113  ↩

4. The Primal First Sentence: ▲▼▲
   Embodied Experience

   ▲, pronounced “ba,” is the mental representation - neural map - of the body-object, the body proper, including the brain and all the associated neural and biochemical activity.
   
   ▼, pronounced “da,” is the mental representation of an emotionally significant object, requiring attention. The mental representation is ephemeral, and is only present so long as it continues to alter the body proper. A flying bug is an object, so is cold temperature endured for a half hour. The thought of leg pain is an ephemeral object even thought the leg pain itself is part of ▲.
   
   ▲▼ is the event which will be experienced. The pairing of ▲ and ▼ will trigger an emotion. (“Ba da.”)
   
   ▲¹▼¹▲² is the sentence for the experience of the event when the ephemeral-object changes the body object: body-as-it-was, object, body-as-it-is. (“Ba-one, da-one, ba-two.”)
   
   ▲²-▲¹ or d▲ is body-change, an emotion, and
   
   ▲▼▲, pronounced “ba-da-bing,” is a simplified form of ▲¹▼¹▲².

    ↩

5. Damasio A. Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Penguin (Non-Classics); 1994, 2005: p 165-201.

   The key components [in the evaluation of a problem] unfold in our minds instantly, sketchily, and virtually simultaneously, to fast for the details to be clearly defined. But now, imagine that before you apply any kind of cost/benefit analysis to the premises, and before you reason toward the solution of the problem, something quite important happens: When a bad outcome connected with a given response option come into mind, however fleetingly, you experience an unpleasant gut feeling. Because the feeling is about the body, I gave the phenomenon the technical term somatic state (“soma” is Greek for body); and because it “marks” an image, I called it a marker. [p173]

   And,

   Somatic markers do not deliberate for us. They assist the deliberation by highlighting some options (either dangerous or favorable), and eliminating them rapidly from subsequent consideration. You may think of it as a system for automated qualification of predictions, which acts, whether you want it or not, to evaluate the extremely diverse scenarios of the anticipated future before you. Think of it as a biasing device. [p174]

   Also see, Damasio A. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2003: p147-150. ↩

6. Festinger, L. (2009, 1956). When Prophecy Fails. Martino Fine Books. ↩