Distillation

I am in a mode of simplifying, and wanting to make Autonomics increasingly straightforward, applicable, and accessible. Last month we released Autonomic Compass, the most down-to-earth, plain language explication of Autonomics I have done.

In the next few weeks we will be releasing a short book for first responders, Autonomic Triage. I’ve written this to help anyone who works in a role where they have to move toward events that other people are moving away from. I’ve written it as a sort of pocket handbook (at 4 x 6 inches it will literally fit in a large pocket) that distills down the basics of autonomic tracking to help responders support people confronting overwhelming experiences.

It was inspired by two relatively simultaneous events. I met and had several deep conversations with someone who works in search and rescue (SAR), and we spoke about a number of the missions this person has been sent on. SAR’s motto is ‘Any time, anywhere, any weather.’ He told me stories about getting deployed in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, to head up into the mountains to search for someone. He told me about moving in the wake of a wild-fire to clear out people who had not evacuated, embers still smoldering all around.

Pretty much any time he is deployed, he is going directly into a situation that most other people would be trying to get away from. I have tremendous respect for this, and also recognize that it means that almost by definition that if he does encounter someone, they will be in the grip of an overwhelming experience. If SAR has to come looking for you, you are not having an ordinary day.

Around the same time as these conversations, during a week of non-stop rain in Northern California, I totalled my car on the highway. I was traveling at about sixty miles per hour when the car hit a film of water on the road and began to fishtail. The auto-correct function engaged, took autonomous control over the steering, and then proceeded to do exactly the opposite of what was required to steady the car, putting it into a flat spin. I did two complete rotations (720 degrees) before crashing headfirst into the median. And then another spin for good measure as I ricocheted off the wall.

The accident stopped traffic on the highway completely. I was, miraculously, unharmed. No one was, thank goodness, seriously injured. But in its wake I was in a very high-energy state, and when the first responders showed up on the scene, first the California Highway Patrol, and then the fire department, not a single thing that they attempted to do with me was autonomically-informed. I literally, in prioritizing taking care of myself, disregarded and dismissed every single request that they made of me. Here’s a close-up of the car:

Here’s the scene on the highway a moment after the crash:

In addition to the general sobering of the experience– the time from driving north listening to a podcast to fishtailing to hitting the median was probably five seconds– the degree to which the first responders completely failed to notice the needs of my nervous system, which are the primary determinant of whether or not I will end up with a post-traumatic stress injury- astonished me.

I mean, think about this. In an overwhelming event, barring severe injury, the primary determinant of the severity of the sequelae, which govern how you will recover, are how well someone works to support your Autonomic Nervous System.

I realized that the responders are not getting any training whatsoever about how to discern what kind of an autonomic state a person is in after an experience like this, and then of course zero training in how they would support them once they did discern this. The same I believe is true for police, fire, EMTs, SAR, paramedics, nurses, camp counselors, etc. Anyone whose job description includes, or could include, dealing with someone undergoing an overwhelming experience should understand at least the fundamentals of autonomic triage. Anyhow, lemons into lemonade, the book is out in a couple of weeks.